More Talk More Rock!

To the individuals who wrote the theses on “anti-tiqqunism”, we don’t want to spend a lot of time on you, because there’s better things we could all be doing like actually defending the forest, and we are glad some French comrades who have had horrible experiences with appelistes (the French tiqqunists who sold out anarchists at the Zad in order to negotiate for state-sanctioned land projects) got to you first on here. We hope people check out the links they shared about the history of the Zad, in reading these pieces we see familiar parallels to the specific ways militants have already been fucked over in Atlanta.

Even with no victory in sight, the tiqqunists and their liberal allies have still found ways to sell out more militant folks so they could play out their NVDA (“nonviolent direct action”) fantasies — too little too late after half the Atlanta Forest on the OPF (Cop City) side was already cut down. So tiqqunists, whatever excuse you need to tell yourself about why you didn’t defend the forest after militants were shoved out, fine, but stop gaslighting and demonizing anyone who dissents from your opinions and bad ideas.

First off, those of us replying to your statement here are also jewish, and we just want to say that just because people are critical of tiqqunism does not mean they are antisemitic... grow up. We don’t think you’re literally answering to some sinister cabal in France or anything. We like the concept of tikkun olam and feel the association is unfortunate. Maybe pick another name instead of pretending you don’t exist.

Some of the people within the tiqqunist milieu are real insurrectionary anarchists who we respect, but others are extremely counter-revolutionary, and will literally refer to on-the-ground militants as “purists”, or complain about how the movement has a “composition problem” because it’s not legible enough to liberal environmental NGOs outside of Atlanta. You sound ridiculous.

We can see that you started a new assembly just to manufacture consent for an NVDA proposal that wasn’t generating much enthusiasm or buy-in. One can be a good community organizer without defaulting to the lowest common denominator of liberalism in our words and actions and thus allowing liberals to feel like their reformist strategies are the reason we win anything, because they are not and they never will be.

It seems these arguments will never cease because at the end of the day we are simply different kinds of people — for example, there were MANY times after word got out that Georgia Power or AT&T vehicles and workers on the perimeter of the OPF forest were scared off with rocks, fireworks, etc., that tiqqunists and radlibs would want to have a “talk” about the “legibility” of these “violent” actions, and would even question some of the OPF forest dwellers sanity for attacking Georgia Power... this rang true yet again when forest dwellers attacked Georgia Power trying to mow the cut between the Cop City & Blackhall Studios/ICP side of forest, as forest dwellers from OPF saw that allowing them to cut & tame the brush would create a clear line of sight between the two sides of the woods to better surveil & attempt to catch forest defenders. Georgia Power also loaned heavy machinery to Atlanta SWAT & APD to habitually destroy the barricades at the North Gate on Key Road which led into the Cop City site.

Some of us don’t need a reason to despise Georgia Power or AT&T if we know that we simply hate civ and want to destroy it as well, in conjunction with oppressive shit like Cop City.... It also doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that these companies are funders of the APF! Just because you are worried about something being “legible” to your liberal allies doesn’t mean it is not still a viable target....

Another scary parallel is that appelistes on the Zad captured, beat and left an individual in front of a mental health institution because they had allegedly sabotaged road construction... these themes of either demonizing or labeling someone “crazy” when they dont fit the more liberally legible paradigm are manipulative and dangerous. Also, fuck a road; as Edward Abbey said, “Roads are the beginning of the end.” There are those of us who want roads and those of us who want barricades.

Tiqqunists and their sympathizers were continuously opposed to barricading the entrance to Weelaunee People’s Park, as well as the RC field adjacent to it, even when the threat of cops invading and doing a raid was imminent. They were against those barricades on the basis that it made the forest seem less open and inviting, which to them outweighed the safety of forest dwellers. The RC field was where the police entered the woods the morning they killed our comrade Tortuguita. The barricade bought some time but sadly not enough; Tort helped build that barricade and if we had more people helping reinforce it instead of trying to dismantle it, things might have been different.

It often appears the housed tiqqunists and friends and the unhoused long-term forest dwellers had a lot of ideological differences. These differences wouldn’t be as much of a big deal if the tiqqunists actually embraced a diversity of tactics IRL, instead of devising plans to squash anything they think negates their long-term plan that must be legible to the liberals who were never coming to help us scout and hold down the forest long-term anyways.

So on that long-winded note, fuck legibility. And if choosing illegible targets made us “insane” anarcho-nihilists, then fuck it, we’ll lean into that you silly fucks.

—some “intractables”