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\title{A Strategy Of Desire}
\date{06\Slash{}02\Slash{}2026}
\author{The Negationist Anti-National}
\subtitle{}






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To free ourselves from the oppression of hierarchy, from class, race, and gender, we must destroy the world as we know it. I’m far from the first person to say this. It is clear that attack is necessary even if thereit is hopeless, but still is no hope of bringing civilization to its just ruin, \emph{but it would be a mistake to believe that it}\emph{s ruin is} \emph{impossible}. Again and again I see even those who have accepted that there is no such thing as freedom while civilization still breaths, even these devotees of the creative nothing, asking the always relevant question, “What do I do?” The theorists of nothing who inspired so many of us on this path have little to say on the matter, other than “attack”. They’re hardly unreasonable for holding this position, I too think that the only appropriate response to the ecocidal slavehungry world we live in is negation. Despite this, I still find the simplistic and generalized call for attack to be little more than a cry into the void. Many of us seem to think that there is nothing other than crying into the void, on and on until we have been scraped down to nothing by the rough surfaces of the prison walls. If that is true, then I will join you in wearing myself down against the walls to prove that there is nothing above the long march of entropy, but I think that this assumption, this surrender before we’ve even begun to fight, is more effective at pacification than any call for unity, any election, or any formal organization ever was.


\emph{We have abandoned the irrationality of our power, and replaced it with a lurking sense of doom, like the only choice we have been given is between assimilation and self destruction.} Why must we neuter ourselves so? Is it so important to be perfectly accurate in our pessimism, perfectly doubtful in the possibility of our dreams being realized? Is all of that really more important to us than destroying civilization, destroying the state, living as free as is possible in this now chained world?


We are right to be suspicious of vanguards and revolutions and turnings of the wheel, but we are foolish to accept the yet unproven assertion that the civilization we live in is so totalizing as to be indestructible. That sounds like the kind of idea that civilization itself would have promulgated for the purpose of defensive propaganda. If in the end I am deemed crazy for believing that we perhaps could achieve the political and social annihilation we seek, then I do not mind that. If you think I am wrong, think that the destruction of civilization or the state is impossible, is a pipe dream, is a horizon never to be breached, then what does that belief give you? If we are as dedicated to attack as we say we are, what purpose does this despairing assertion that we are but grains of sand being thrown against the rough shore serve? If I am wrong, and you come to agree with me that destroying civilization is indeed possible, if you come to think that you can help destroy this world as we know it, I can hardly imagine that it will do anything other than increase your desire for attack and your ferocity against the forces that chain us. As it is, we appear to use a sense of impossibility as a shield, as emotional armor. Some of us even use it as a subconscious tool to prevent ourselves from taking the actions we truly desire to take. We don’t need to abandon our rationality entirely to shift to a perspective of the possible, nor do we need to maintain this perspective shift perpetually. I too have my doubts about the possibility of this great labor’s success, but sometimes, when I feel powerful enough to act, when I feel buoyed by the joy of destruction, when I am no longer held back by a sense of impossibility, then, that is when I feel free.


It is possible, or it isn’t. Believe what you like, I vacillate between those poles frequently. However, do not forget that impossibility, as well as the hopeful possibility that contrast it, are constructed, are not true states, but conceptions. If we embrace chance, anything is possible, some things are just unlikely. With that in mind, with an open eye to the ways in which we may act, in which we may succeed, in which we may finally destroy this hell-civ, I must ask, \textbf{how best can we achieve our desire for total liberation}\textbf{,} \textbf{how do we destroy the world?}


\hairline


Theis destruction I seek is not to be confused with the ecocide of capital and colonialism, is not to be confused with the state’s thirst for the blood, sweat, and tears of those many who are marked for social death, prison slavery, or wage slavery. The destruction I seek is aimed at cops, banks, bosses, prisons, and politicians. It is possible to achieve so much more than we are able to dream of. The chains of false hope, statist inertia, and social despair rob us of our power, but these chains can be broken, as can the system of domination which forged them. There are some who have a specific vision of the future, believe that their plan for how things should be organized, how people should live, is the correct one; devout to ensuring that their vision of governance or anti-governance will win the day. There are others who reject this fantastical desire to pretend that a mere rearrangmentrearrangement would banish the rot at the heart of civilization, but in its stead cling to a moralistic fervor for purity. This is of course a false binary, like all binaries, but it is false not because it does not exist, but because it is constructed, something that we have made by accepting the core moralizing impulse of civilization.


I do not have any desire to hold on to false myths, or systems of social tyrranytyranny designed for the purpose of domestication, control, and social stagnation. What I desire is actual autonomy, not just for me, but for everything that lives. As someone dedicated to self-determination, it seems absurd to me to presume that my personal inclinations as to what “free life” looks like should apply to everyone. It is strange to me how rabidly those who share my rhetoric of epistemilogicalepistemological nihilism, of the impossibility of truth, still speak with the confidence and ‘moral authority’ of an inquisitionary.inquisitionist. I am not here to put forward a revolutionary vision, or a proposal for a freer way to be, though I of course have ideas, and dreams. However, I firmly think we need a genuine nihilist vision, a vision for how this civilization of slavery, capital, and ecocide could actually be destroyed.


Clearly I have yet to destroy the world through my insufficient solitary efforts, could never pull it off alone, so what follows is a call to anarchists of all stripes to begin making a real effort to destroy the state, and the civilization that birthed it. Action is necessary now, take this proposed strategy as not only a call to develop the means to attack more ferociously, but as a challenge to those who find criticism more appealing thant action.


I also must address those of you who wish to build a new world in the shell of the old, and believe that success will be met with anything other than violence. However beautiful your collective dreams of care and abundance may be, in a world designed for extraction and privation, a world in which this condition is enforced violently from above, the beauty of one’s dream is meaningless if it is not capable of defending itself. If you wonder why there is a thirst for freedom in the hearts of the people you know, and yet no freedom in the lives they live, if you wonder why the work of care is forever multiplying and forever insufficient, look not at your capacity for care, but at the acts of repression that crush your desire for collective communion. If you refuse to destroy that which persistently salts the earth out of which your peaceful resistance grows, then you have sacrificed your potential in favor of keeping your hands clean. Care in it’s best forms is a joy, and a necessity, but when that care becomes a threat to the capacity of those in power to exert their power, unless we have the ability to defend ourselves (an unlikely proposition with numbers as they are), or are defending ourselves by destroying the forces which stomp out our efforts at a better world, then we are lambs dining with wolves.


\hairline


The friend who encouraged me to write this text describes it as my “post-nihiilstpost-nihilist strategy text” (though I don’t think there’s anything \emph{post} about it), partly because she loves adding post in front of things, and partly because she often finds my political opinions to be at odds with the anarcho-nihilist rhetoric she’s encountered. Frequently she has told me that a position I arrived at through a nihilist analysis is somehow not a very nihilist positon.position. The nihilist archetypem that she pictures, the archetype that she pictures, is a position of negativity expressed primarily through unnoticed direct actions , mixed with and a highly visible obsession with shaming mainline anarchists into reforming their organizational practises.practices. Thisat impression is surely in part due in part to the useless churn of social media and small scale public opinion,; it is and is of course, not a fully acurateaccurate picture. That being said there is something to be learned from this impression. ThisIt impression speaks to the degree that we are known for criticism, speaks to how deeply we are unwillingly steeped in theat same liberal addiction to discourse. It also speaks to the degree to which our actions frequently make ripples but no waves. I still think it is vital to do something, even if ripples are all we few are capable of making, but I am suspicious of those who take this attitude of ‘fighting even if it’s hopeless’ and turn it into ‘fighting doesn’t matter because it’s hopeless’. I think many of us who can’t help but want to fight do not realize how close those two things sound to people still caught in the quasi-religious net of revolutionary thinking. I have no interest in defanging our message, but fangs are meant to latch on, to strike their target, and our fangs seem to waste their time biting at air.


There are many things that dull our fangs, not least among them the moralistic impulse that even self avowed nihilstsnihilists have taken as a given. While it is clearer in the context of a revoultionaryrevolutionary movement, ‘morals’ are thea scourge of all forms of radical change, even those which say they have no morals to speak of. Yes, when I was a revolutionary abolitionist I eventually I came to feel some disgust at the moralistic impulses present amogstamongst mythe pious revolutionary sect I found myself a devotee to almost a decade ago, but leaving did not free me from the moralistic impulses of political radicalism. “Revolutionaries are pious people, but the revolution is not a pious event.” I wanhat something more than a revolution, something more complete, and something focused on ending \emph{all of} the systems which force us into subservience, but it is so very clear that strict and unexamined moral policing and social control are problems for revolutionaries, and nihilists alike. In both milieus, so many of the assumptions that I wished to destroy, so many of the social norms which served as handmaidens to hierarchy, were unmitigated, even amongst these people seeking to destroy the old world with or without hope for a new one.


I ought to clarify what I mean by moralism here. Morals are not ethics or values, though some peoples’ values or ethics overlap with dominant morals. Much like the state, the spine of moralism is violent control. Morals are sets of social values foisted on us from above, by ‘god’ or father, or state, or some “true ideology”. They are considered absolute, universal, and must be enforced. Morals are social mechanisms of control, constructed in support of the social hierarchies that rule us.


Contrast this with ethics, or better yet values, which, in my amoralistic conception, are self determined, seriously considered and, seriously examined, and actively lived by the holder of those values rather than enforced from above by a social system. They are also, importantly, not considered to be universal, are recognized as personal and hard won through individual effort and perspective.


Yet, eventhe most visible among we anarcho-nihilists I see so many who appear to have taken their values and mistakentreated them for as morals, who have used them as soapboxes to be stood on, rather than guides for how one wishes to live. Ironically, if the goal re were some desire to improve the morals, or practices, of other anarchists by reducing the hierarchy of their organizing apparatuses, our morlisticmoralistic methods would be inssufiencentinsufficient anyhow. Instead of living our values, and finding ways to further our own goals of destruction, we bitch and whine about how other people are doing things, and waste time complaining about how asinine so much political organizing seems.


I too want to spread anarcho-nihilist ideas, and am frequntlyfrequently angered by any project which does not sew the seeds of civilizational destruction, but I would not sacrifice the passion and potentcypotency of direct negation for a useless war of words. The questions I’m asking here are intended to help us reverse our defanging. All that anger, funneled into the digital systems which turn your outrage into money, could actualyactually fucking do something if pointed in the right direction.spinning our wheels when we could be swimming in a collective orgy of justified destruction.


How I got here, for what it’s worth. For many years the only strong political values I lived (who gives a shit about beliefs that don’t come into the world as action) were feminism, veganism, and hating cops. I became an anarchist, found myself washed down under the waves of mental illness, wage slavery, and the myth of education, then found few if any others who shared my desire to destroy hierarchy. I did the punk subcultural shit, and read zines, and books, and learned what I could, but for better or worse, I spent at least a decade with the attitude that “I believe in an anarchist revolution, I just haven’t met anyone I think could help make it happen”. For that decade I was effectively just a liberal who hated cops. After this long stretch I began to feel uncomfortable with my disengagement with politics and tried to dip my toe into basic progressive bullshit, assuming that again, my search for fellow anarcits and would be world destroyers would be in vain. It didn’t take long for me to be turned off by the uselessness of progressive action and the sheer shallowness of analysis present. It seemed so silly to be doing anything that had to do with an election while white supremacists were openly organizing in my city. Then it occurred to me that maybe I was finally someplace where people were actually trying to do the things I truly wanted to do. I sought out all the anarchist shit I could, did some antifascism, foolishly alone, and began to learn to fight again. That is when I finally met people who seemed to have the same desire for creation and destruction that I did. There were successes and failures in those projects, and I am often made uncomfortable when I think of how very religious my devotion to the cause felt, but it is through those successes and failures that I came to my current line of thinking.


My route to nihilsim, philosophically, was via gender-abolitionsim, queer-nihilism, anti-civ, and afro-pessimism. Each thread of thought has it’s own analysis for what needs to be destroyed and why, and these things intersect more than they conflict, in my interpreation anyway. I still take heart from Frank Wilderson III’s afro-pessimist assertion that “We are trying to destroy the world”. When I was a revolutionary abolitionist, I had a clear idea of how we might pursue that destruction. There are still aspects of that revolutionary abolitionist plan that I find useful, but it’s potential as a world destroying idea is limited by the intrinsic limitations of the ideas and cultures of leftist activism that influence even the most ardent would be world destroyers.


For what follows, I aim to approach the seemingly contradictory, question of “nihilist strategy” from a position of skeptecismskepticism towards ideas, and a complete rejection of hierarchy, moralization, and reform.

\section{Strategy now}


We anarchists inherit our strategies and then live them without question, like family professions that we’ve accepted as our own. We live these strategies so thoughtlessly that we think of them not as strategy, but as political ideology, and in doing so, we fail to meet the current moment, still fighting wars long past. This may seem an uncharitable characterization, but I challenge you to disprove it.


The strategic stagnation of the anarcistanarchist movmentmovement, and more importantly the swiftly changing strategic moment we find ourselves in, both suggest that we must take strategy seriously if we wish to ever have more than periodic rebellion and cyclical reaction. rebelliousness.


The hegemonic idea of strategy is likely to turn off many dyed in the wool nihilists, but I think it’s important to note that I mean something perhaps different than what you think. The fact is that our so-called unbridled chaos and our pseudo-random strikes are also strategy. TheEveryone has a strategy, but some of us have fooled ourselves into forgetting that we have one or have not realized that we strategize in the first place. current strategy, this pretense of no strategy, has left us unable to pursue the destruction we deserve except in small bursts of energy, and is frequently more of a talking point than a mode of action. \emph{So often our ideas serve only as cudgels for some pointless argument, when the place our ideas truly shine is action}. There is already a strategy of small scale direct action, and occasionally larger scale direct action, intended either as propaganda of the deed, or as personal outlet for rage. There is also a social strategy of spending hours and days and weeks complaining about how other people are too organized. The question, I think, is not ‘why do we need a strategy’ butand is more like ‘what strategy are we already using, and why?”


If you have given your decisions over to a deck of cards, Mmaybe your strategy is chaos, if so, who am I to stop you; ! That sounds great. Honestly, if that’s the case, go for it; but more likely, your strategy is something that is not too much different from a religious ritual passed down from the elders of the great cult of nothing. We are already using a strategy, and we’re foolish to not admit it. I think many of us have mistaken a lack of clearly legible \emph{“positive”} strategic goals, for a lack of a strategy. We certainly have war aims; We are seeking to fight a war of annihilation with civilization itself (somewhat different from the war of attrition that guerrillas left right and otherwise pursue.)


This strategic aim, the destruction of civilization, is nearly impossible to imagine, but destroying civilization is hardly impossible. Will we make it impossible by refusing to pursue total destruction? Will we forfeit what is possible for the simple reward of social reaction? With this strategic aim in mind, hHow effective is our current strategy of “pretend we don’t have a strategy while acting sporadically and claiming to be destructive forces of nature in constant revolt”? I’d argue it isn’t this current strategy isn’t worth much, other thanother than the value of the wonderfullness of whatever joy in destruction felt by those who tookaking action experienced in the rare instances where action occurred. I also take joy in destruction, but I have greater goals than simply increasing my own joy. There is much that could be achieved if we were not doing so alone. I believe it is possible to approach the destruction of civilization with a strategy that is non-hierarchical, decentralized, and destruction first. I think we need such a strategy, whether or not it is the one proposed here. There is no time to waste on a burning planet. It is possible to destroy together what we few could not destroy alone.


\hairline


I’m sure that if you’re reading this, you’ve already encountered summaries of what civilization is, and why we’d need to destroy it; for our purposes the specific boundaries of civilization are less important than the ways in which it functions, and where to place the monkey wrench. While I am sure that there will be more work that needs to be done towards destroying the internalized domestication we all carry, I am certain that those internalized aspects of civilization can only be destroyed if we first destroy the forces which maintain domestication themselves. I’m not going to rehash “Against the Gendered Nightmare” or “Against His-Story, Against Leviathan” but both of those address these forces thoroughly (AtGN especialy).. The important point here is that domestication is a process which must be maintained. I used to be a horticulturist, and the simple fact of gardening is pruning, culling, killingweeding, and selecting (same for any craft pertaining to our living earth and its inhabitants). What I take from this, from the fact that every planter I have ever weeded had oak seedlings growing in it, what I take from the speedy rate at which nature will reclaim even the most urbanized of places, unless culled, is that \emph{domestication is a process, supported by material actors in the world,}. \emph{\textbf{Any active process}} \emph{\textbf{and that process}} \emph{\textbf{can be interrupted.}}


With regards to a strategy of destruction, we must look on domestication with an eye to weaknesses, to process, to continuation. Which parts of civilization’s domesticating machinery are most vulnerable.? Whether or not you are of the opinion that domestication is the core evil of civilization, if we examine the machinery that maintains and continues these processes of domestication, you will still see the gears of the oppressive machinery that even irrationally pro-civ anarchists wish to destroy. Domestication is an ongoing process of which we are all a part, like pets and animals deemed food, we may never free ourselves from some of the ways that domestication has warped us, but if we are unable to become the wildness we once were, we can at least become feral.


The strategy, as I see it, is to make civilization so untenable, so weak, that even those ‘without politics’ are forced to determine their own lives. \emph{\textbf{We must make neutrality impossible}}\textbf{.} It is unlikely, almost impossible, that I will live to see the end of civilization; but it is entirely possible that I will live to see civilization lose its totality, to see civilization lose it’s complete control over the vast majority of this planet.


\hairline


Before I get into the specifics of this strategic bearing, I must lay out the situation we find ourselves in. It often seems like the actions we take as anarcha-nihilists are done in a space outside of time, and while time is a construct, I often wonder if this time-agnosia prevents us from truly meeting the moment we live in.


This is a wonderful time to be alive for those who wish for collapse. This is a horrifying time to be alive for those who wish for collapse.


Factors contributing to civilizational collapse are everpresent. One might even come to hope that collapse will happen all on its own, that civilization might fall down under its own weight. While that is a beautiful dream, I believe that no matter how weak it gets, civilization will need a push if it’s going to topple. Some of the factors I talk about here are to our advantage, some to our disadvantage, but most things are a toss up, and along with chance and luck, there is a question of force and desire. It seems unlikely there will ever be enough anarcha-nihilists or anarchists for that matter, to destroy civilization itself, but there are certainly enough of us to be a wedge, and with the cracks open wide, the possibilities become greater than we can imagine.

\section{\emph{\textbf{Complicating factors of the current moment.}}}


\emph{\textbf{Climate Collapse}}: The planet we live on is being pushed towards inhabitability, swiftly. The scale of this crisis is so great that there is nothing on this planet which can escape its impacts. The inherent weaknesses of civilization are all the weaker when worn down by the weather they themselves created. That is not enough for our destructive aims however. These factors are both challenges and opportunities. The scale of climate collapse is unanswerable by the state, and as such, many who otherwise would resist self determination, will be forced into it. There is also the pressing fact that the swiftly worsening climate is still being altered at massive scale by the processes of industrial civilization. Whether we are able to halt some of that ecocide or not, it is critical that we do not allow the state and it’s proxies to return once they have abandoned our neighbors. If we are to further the end of civilization, we must keep an eye to the ongoing rifts caused by climate disasters. There is a serious possibility of climate ‘balkanization’, and if there is any such march towards the dissolution of some existing national powers, then our opportunities for negation multiply, and our local expulsion of the most rigid immediate manifestations of civilization become far more possible. Do I really need to say more about this one? Things are very bad, very very bad, and the rate and scale of ‘natural’ disasters is such that civilizational mechanisms of response are failing. That is at the very least an opening for disaster balkanization. The increasing retreat of governmental and financial interests from regions struck with increasingly frequent and damaging storm systems is already creating more openings for the negative project. I don’t know if civilization will end completely, but I am fairly confident that civilization as we know it will shrink, and fracture, as the world it’s killing bites back.


\emph{\textbf{Economic collapse}}: I have already long felt the holes in my shoes that predict an oncoming depression. The coming crash will mostly just involve t’s hard for me to care as much about this one since it’s mostly just rich people loosing their shirts, but (the poor are already shirtless), however depressions are often times of swift radicalization. While many of these new converts to radical ideas will be of different opinions than we nihilists, it is significantly easier to do a little happy happy smashy smashy when there is a mass movement running around doing liberal shit. There’s even more opportunity if they’re going around doing commie shit, or better yet, insurrection.


\emph{\textbf{Fascist resurgence}}: Tthis is both an immediate threat and a foot on the pedal towards collapse. The horrible unanswerable question is how many people they’ll take with them, and whether or not they’ll be stopped. Destroying these fuckers is near the top of my personal destructive agenda.


\emph{\textbf{Anti-fascist resurgence}}: While thisanti-fascists are is a multi faceted group, and anti-fascism itself is less a politics than a counter-politics, it is much easier to find the others who could help you to further the project of negation when people are up in arms against the fascists (hopefully literally).


There are historical comparisons that might cause this to feel like an example of eternal recurrence, but it is also true that what is happening now hasn’t ever happened before, not exactly like this at least. That being said, it is still clear from history that these great challenges to the ability of civilization to do as it wishes to, opens up possibilities for those who wish to attack it.

\section{\textbf{On Negation}}


I’ve been told that my take on negation is potentially unpopular but I much prefer ideas which people come to of their own accord, through inquiry, critique, thought, and action, so here is my assessment of negation for your own consideration, accept or dismiss as you wish.


\emph{Negation is anything which unassailabl}\emph{y} \emph{rejects ,} \emph{\textbf{with intent to destroy}}\emph{,} \emph{the grand extant civilizational order.}


I think that in our milieu negation has become unfairly synonymous with direct action. Direct action can be used for negation, but it is a tactic just as applicable to so called “positive projects”. The thing we so frequently call negation, is a tactic which knows no specific ethos other than “illegal”. Negation is a much broader process, one for which a multiplicity of tactics are available. Like caged animals we have become so intent on chewing uselessly on the bars, that we have failed to see the true opportunities for escape that make themselves evident when one stops and observes their conditions.


We often deceive ourselves or act on instinct. If you see no problem with this, I doubt my words will change that, but for those willing to observe, there are flaws in the cage set around us, visible for those who are willing to see. For many of us devotees of civilizational destruction, we have accepted a binary of negative\Slash{}positive, a binary of violent\Slash{}non-violent, have recapitulated features of our oppression, and limited ourselves intoto a small sphere of arbitrarilyfalsely contained fenced in tactical space.


If we seek to destroy, seek to refuse proposing some system for “after the revolution”, \emph{\textbf{that does not free us from the need to}} \emph{\textbf{look at our means based on their purpose and their ability at achieving that purpose}} rather than as morally shaded projects of a “positive” or “negative” nature. The goal, even if we try to pretend there is no goal, is to do negation, to destroy the mechanisms of civility, of economy, of industry, of politics. We cannot move forward with a nearly religious faith that one single ritual tactic will further that goal.


We do not desire some Proudhonian mode of “build it, ignore the state, and the state will disappear.”, and we claim to want more than Bakunin’s focus on the negative side of the dialectic (though I hardly see why, considering most of his best ideas were taken directly from nihilism). Why then do we appear to be living through that same century old argument between prefiguration, and negation?


I believe that this instance of falling into a false binary has held us back from making the destruction of civilization actually possible, or even from making our own personal joyful destruction more effective. I would hope to be tactic agnostic, thinking not of what a tactic is, but what it will do. If I bring food and a change of clothing to my friends, or start informally organizing my friends to do this for eachother when needed, is that a positive project? What if that food and clothing is shared because they are laying low after a successful destructive action? The activity being done on the surface is not what is important, the orientation of that activity towards negation or the support of said negation is the greater measure.


This self constructed binary between negative and positive projects has been accepted in the milieu to the degree that it has become, dare I say, a \emph{moral} issue. It’s a sin to desire care, apparently. As someone who is against civilization, I must note that our species is a social one, and if we ever were to become uncivilized, we will be doing so together, in social groups. There’s a cocksure individualist isolationism that runs through our milieu, and it seems so strange that so many would accept the myths of civilization over the facts of human collectivity. There is no free human in a chained collective.


I want civilization done and over with,. I think that despite the unlikeliness of that, it is possible, and if believing it is possible makes me a bad nihilist, then you call me something else, I’ll use that title if it’s clever enough. \emph{I want negation,} \emph{and I} \emph{am uncomfortable with the idea of a} \emph{”}\emph{positive}\emph{”} \emph{project,} \emph{\textbf{but in}} \emph{\textbf{our}} \emph{\textbf{devout railing against perceived positive projects,}} \emph{\textbf{we have failed to pursue the negative project}}\emph{.} It is a grave mistake to limit ourselves by being ascetic, doctrinaire, and self righteous. \emph{I}\emph{deological purity} \emph{is useless, and ought to be disgusting to us}.


It seems to me that many self proclaimed nihilists have devoted themselves primarily to a positive project; the project of propagandizing other anarchists into reforming their methods. There is destruction to be done, let’s are much bigger things to destroy, how about we get to work on that instead.

\section{\textbf{The Negative Project}}


In my extensive reading of anti-civ, nihilist, and anarcho-nihilist literature, I have often been deeply affected by the anaylsis I encountered, but through all of that I was always left with the question, what do I do about it? I understand why Mmy favorite theorists of nothing often(salutory) have refusedwould refuse to provide hows, or would insisted on providing them in an extremely limited regard. This refusal to pin things down is It is uunderstandable that there is a refusal to pin these things down, the possibilities of nihilist action are as variable as nihilists themselves. The lack of “hows” is frequently well motivated; anarcho-nihilist and gender-nihilist thinkers, for good reasons, are not interested in hemming in our possibilities for attack. I do not want to cage our creativity of attack either, but I would like to see civilization destroyed, and think that our \emph{no ends only means} ethos is insufficiently aware of how very many means there are for the project of destruction. We are living in the greatest time of opportunity for collapse. I will not be joining a revolutionary group, but if there were a revolutionary group stirring up insurrection in my neighborhood, that sure would create more opportunities for me. if there were more of those, my destructive possibilities would be multiplied.


So how do we most fully pursue the project of destruction?


Though some of us have a bad taste in our mouths regarding revolution, it behooves us to understand the strategy of revolution, and what it’s limitations and successes have been. There are important differences in the strategy of negativity, but it would be to our ruin to misunderstand, or ignore, revolutionary strategy.


Some of the key differences between the revolutionary project(s) and the negative project are, that the negative project rejects formal organizations, reform and ‘positive projects’, party and platform, and operates with a fundamentally critical outlook towards ideas. This of course means that we will be abandoning large parts of the “revolutionary project” even if we draw from it; still, I think to make total destroy, we need to draw from revolutions of the past, whether or not we feel that they are \emph{morally} right. (and yes, often our asceticism and stated amorality feels an awful lot like morality in practice doesn’t it?)


Civilization is in many ways all encompassing, and to injure it, it is true that one could strike almost anywhere. This vastness of options sometimes can lead to a tactical paralysis, choice overload. I am certain to overlook some avenues of attack in this work, but I trust that we are creative enough to find ways to attack that none have yet thought of. Creativity is a destructive force after all. Nonetheless it would be useful to describe what appear to be some of the weakest flanks of civilization.


Categories are always a construction, subjective, based on where the lines are drawn between things are drawn. The categories I provide below are not strictly self contained and many of them intersect. The world is more complicated than a segmentation into arbitrary socially, constructed groups could ever reckon with. Nonetheless, in broad terms, these are some of the primary systems and maintainers of domestication. the organs of civilization, at least in my anatomical study. These organs are primarily intended to be examples of forces which actively maintain domestication. Without these social pruners, whatmany could grow through the cracks in the pavement and split itthem apart?.

\section{\emph{\textbf{Processes of domestication\Slash{}civilizational power}}}

\subsection{\textbf{Industry}}


This is the digestive organ of civilization. You know it. It is everywhere. Even if you have moved to a rural community to \emph{return to nature}, there is almost certainly industry and its infrastructure near you, even if hidden, even if you’ve tricked yourself into thinking that the nature you encounter there is any less marred and controlled by civilization than it is in a city. Because industry it is everywhere, it is easy to strike. Sabotage is the most reproducible method for this. To most efficiently interrupt the extractive power of industry, we must look at the things which feed it, and the systems that consume its their products. Broadly there are three pillars of industrial stability, state\Slash{}private police to ensure security, resources to extract\Slash{}tools to extract them with, and money.


The long term destructive goal would be to reduce the ability to function of industrial infrastructure (mechanical and human) until the relevant industry collapses. Begin with the most broadly hated and most manifestly earth raping or human caging of the industries wherever you are, and you may have more support than you expect. It is obvious how the actual machinery of industry is vulnerable, anyone can read Ecodefense, or The Guide, or many a manual on sabotage, but it is less obvious to many of us how many softer limbs these industries require to support their weight.


Follow the money. Striking where the machinery does its ecocide is still important, but there is a whole range of political supporters of these industries, business leaders, small time clerks and accountants and bureaucrats. When I was organizing for revolution we were often trying to answer the question “who are our mailmen?”. During the Algerian revolution, the first targets of the revolutionaries were chosen becausechosen because they, french colonial mailmen, were clear emblems of the state, not well liked, and unarmed. They picked the french colonial mailmen. This choice was helpful in making the message of the Algerian revolutionaries clearly understood through the assassinations themselves, making the assassinations less likely to lead to the death or arrest of their members, and had a material impact on the functioning of the colonial government. I don’t propose we pick one such group and everyone goes out to get every last one of them, but I do think we must look at our own strategic and tactical landscape and think about who \emph{our} mailmen are. This is likely regional. The point though is, one needn’t strike the hardest target, and there are more ways to disrupt logistics than have been yet thought of.


We also must broaden our definition of attack. There is a strict almost religious idea of what attack is and why attack is, but I am more interested in doing destruction than being edgy. The strategic goal is to destroy industry, and the strategic means is by starting with the targets whose destruction is most likely to be supported by the local populace, and targeting the least defended flanks of the industry, including attacks on the bureaucracy, whatever form they take. We must also recognize that if we are to fully do the negative project, we must use whatever means are at our disposal. The tactics are not the focus, the focus is the intended outcome. I know that we often reject intended outcomes, it is good and fun to do negation, so just do it, right? But I also think we are deceiving ourselves if we pretend to a complete lack of expectation. I am of the opinion that it is good to do destruction, and we should just get to it, but II am so thirsty for that destruction because of what I wish could be destroyed, because of the marching tyranny of the world echoing it’s bootsteps around my skull. also am still attatched to the value of greatest impact.


Ideas for means of attack against the police of various kinds who protect and support industry are discussed later. An instance of overlap between categories (remember they are not solid, are subjective and constructed)

\subsection{\textbf{Agriculture}}


For our current purposes, I will address, more specifically, industrial agriculture. If you want to find the most ardent serial rapist of the earth and her inhabitants, the only better place to look than industrial agriculture would be the boardroom for an oil company. You can blame my 20 years of not consuming animal products (aka veganism) for this, but, other than gender, there is no greater beacon of domestication than agriculture. “Animal Husbandry”, at the massive scale is but one emblem of the realized completion of the ppatriarchal project foundational to civilization of controlling reproduction and it’s products. If you want to strike at the most vulnerable aspects of industrial agriculture, I encourage you to look at the work of the ELF and ALF, for all their faults. While it may not be your particular target of desire, for those of you who are as angry about what we do to the animals as you are about what we do to humans, your acts against industrial agriculture, animal testing, and the financial machinery of both systems, are also helpful for the wider goal of destroying civilization.


The points of weakness largely mirror the weak points of industry, and like industry and finance, the ongoing march of centralization increases the vulnerability of this system through increasing dominance of large landholders and small contingents of actual ‘farmers’ (aka farm owners) and migrant laborers (aka the people doing the actual farming work that can’t be done by machine). The ravages of climate change, and the technological march to prevent direct ownership have also created openings. It is hypothetically possible to disable most of the heavy farm equipment in the western world if one were to get access to the DRM system for John Deere. Their many attempts at securing financial output, increasing security, and the centralization they use to do so, is a great risk to their operations. (see also, “The Dragon and The Hydra” by Russel Maroon Shoatz)

\subsection{\textbf{Finance\Slash{}Capital}}


While civilization is older than capitalism, capitalismthat is the dominant economic system and must be destroyed even if our goals are more total than that. Various positive projects of revolution have very strict ideas of how best to abolish capitalism, most of them are not particularly useful to us here. The strategy from communists, more or less, is to look at the world materially (by which they mean only seeing things through the lens of class) and from that they are to propagandize the industrial proletariat to overthrow the bourgeoisie and create a dictatorship of the proletariat. At some undetermined point after that dictatorship they’ll allegedly reach full communism. For us, the strategic goal is to propose no after, but instead to destroy the now. What and where to destroy?


Finance is a compound organ made up of many individuals and systems. The undergirding infrastructure includes telecommunications infrastructure, computer infrastructure, and physical infrastructure. We can glean some idea of the weaknesses by looking at money making crime. Speaking of expropriation, it certainly would be easier to destroy more things with a bit of money, preferably gained without wage slavery or subservience. The cracks in any complicated bureaucratic system are often centered around human error. As I would have said in my days doing IT, “most problems begin between the chair and the keyboard.” It is also interesting to see the ways technological centralization has made the infrastructure of global finance significantly more vulnerable. I am uncertain what the result of “AI” mistakes will be on this infrastructure, but I can’t imagine it will be good.


The poorly defended supply lines of capital are in the places where transit occurs. In some places this infrastructure, primarily telecommunications infrastructure, can be sabotaged directly; in others it is necessary to pressure the human rungs in the machine, who approve transfers, verify accounts, make millions, or verify the accuracy of millions. HThose hackerish types anarcho-nihilists out there, this would be a wonderful opportunity for you. With the increasing volatility, and the autocratic dictator of the largest economy in the world being so reactive, actions not directed at finance, but intended to attack the morale of the market, and investor confidence, could also have impacts on the financial sector, possibly simply through overreaction from the top.


Other attacks on capital include, giving free expropriated stuff to people, a la robin hood. There are places where your local conditions may mean that the foodstuff of capital where you are ismay be an extractive industry, or a tourist attraction, or a business parkk,; though different in form, the same goal applies, the point is to attempt to cut the supplies, or the consumer demand. finance off from it’s consumers. AsAs the liberal radio reminded me while I was listeninged to local news, hoping to hear of a financial collapse in real time, “consumer spending is the cornerstonelodestar of the american economy.” (and that truth applies to most of the “imperial core”) Though I think our aims of destroying civilization are better met without killing civilians,


Eexamples from the Provisional Irish Republican Army, and the Euskadi Ta Askatasuna or ETA “Basque Homeland and Liberty” are useful for examining the vulnerabilities of capital and finance. (The details I’m drawing from here are best laid out in “Buda’s Wagon: a brief history of the car bomb” by Mike Davis.) As part of their liberation struggle, one tactic used by the ETA involved bombing department stores (typically with some sort of warning before the bomb went off, with the intent of getting ‘civilians’ evacuated, though unfortuantely, not always.) This was also a tactic used by the pIRA, however their use of the tactic came to extend past department stores and the consumer engine of colonial finance, and onto the heart of european finance itself, the city of london. The goal of the pIRA’s campaign against the city of london, broadly had the strategic goal of making , was to make insurance prices for the city of london so high, that it would cripple english finance. the business and building owners so high that it would ruin them. This nearly worked, but the civilian casualties outraged even supporters of Irish Republican Paramilitarism, and greatly reduced the intended propaganda value of the carbombing campaign on the city of london. though the propaganda value of these carbombings in the city of London was greatly decreased by the civilian casualties (something also true of Mario Buda with his wall street wagon bomb). This relates to In fact, this is why I am against congestion pricing. The first congestion pricing scheme, in the city of london, was in part inspired by the car bombings of the provisional IRA. They had built up hard barriers, but those are of limited utility against a truck bomb and are not possible to install everywhere. The alternative was, of course, surveilance. In part as obfuscation of the surveilanceist desire that inspired it, congestion pricing was pushed as “green” and as positive urbanism. Of course their idea of progress is more Automated License Plate Readers, and larger surveilance databases. Don’t get me started on cameras, ez pass, and your phone. While it is less viable to start our own “poor man’s airforce” and in many ways undesireable, it is interesting to note the ways in which capital can be starved.strangle itself.


Perhaps in your region there is a financial institution who’s insurance and liability are increasing because of climate change. That could easily be accelerated. It only takes a trench one foot wide across a paved road to create the conditions for that road to be destroyed by natural processes (and quickly). Think of how your opponent spends money, how they make money, where that money goes. In those connections there is a weak link, often a piece of infrastructure, or a person. We must look for those weak points in the tendrils of capital that live near us.

\subsection{\textbf{Popular Support}}


We are not trying to create a mass movement, but it is undeniable that if we are to destroy civilization, we must also challenge any sympathy the people around us have for civilization and its norms. Though there is of course the social work of talking and propagandizing, and finding out which of your friends and acquaintances are down for what, there is also a more direct and ‘negative’ side to the creation of popular support. This applies most firmly to our most immediate enemies, fascists, cops, feds, and their sympathizers; there must be consequences. Whether or not you are able to directly deal with your local fascist, fed, or cop, it is likely that you, without doing much of anything really, could intimidate a lover of the police, or the feds, or the fascists, into being too afraid to sympathize publicly. As a trans woman, I would be happy for the irony of putting some of those fuckers back into their own closet, or a grave. They would want the same for me.


Western society as a whole is becoming more supportive of, or at least passively indifferent to political violence, and that is to our benefit. Whether we are in favor of the other forces doing the political violence, or are frustrated by the complexities of the 3, 4, and 5 way fight, the acceptance of direct violence against our oppressors will open up many avenues to we nihilists. I don’t propose that we shill, and I am not saying that we don’t have theorists who have done a great deal of work to create more nihilists, I simply wish to expand that project to the degree possible, and baring that, to find better ways to take advantage of the opportunities created by other forces rather than presuming we act in a vacuum. (an example would be, using a mass protest as an opportunity to stage a smaller kinetic action somewhere else, while a bunch of the cops are busy.) Without seeking a mass movement, we still must be aware of the social momentum of these things, in order to find the most opportune avenues for negation.

\subsection{\textbf{Police}}


This is the force you will be most familiar with. Despite what the propagandists of the military will tell you, the pigs are the only ones really doing counterinsurgency. For our purposes we must note that while confrontations with the military are possible and likely in the long struggle to end civilization, it is undeniable that our first enemy combatants will be the police. If you are interested in the specifics of how policing works, and where it came from, I highly encourage you to read “Our Enemies In Blue”. Without digging into the history of slave patrols, strike breaking state police, the Irish royal constabulary, and the Philippian American constabulary, we must be particularly aware of the functions, abilities, and limitations of police.


This is one place in which we are clearly able to find common cause with many other anarchists. The specifics of police infrastructure and vulnerabilities will depend on your location, but every department of police, sheriffs, marshals, fbi, etc, have infrastructural vulnerabilities.


I will not bore you with specifics about New York City, and will instead encourage you to learn the specifics of the police and other executive forces in your area, however I do want to illustrate what I mean by counterinsurgency in this instance, and why that is important to us.


First, it is important to note that there is a question as to whether counterinsurgency works at all for the military our enemies, but if it has been somewhat successful anywhere, that where is policing. Some of that is certainly because the approach of imperialist militaries says counter-insurgency, and then proceeds to do war as if Vietnam never won their revolution. Despite these reasonable questions of how effective counterinsurgency is in a military context, we still must understand how counterinsurgency is, and isn’t, applied in the context of policing.


Counterinsurgency is a direct reaction to the communist and national liberation struggles of the 20\textsuperscript{th} century. Considering the failure of the imperialist powers in the vast majority of their wars of occupation, it is reasonable to question the effectiveness of counterinsurgency with regards to an occupying force from somewhere else. This is partly why policing is the sphere in which counterinsurgency tactics are most thoroughly used. The goal of counterinsurgency is most easily understood in relation to fundamental features of guerrilla warfare, (as stated by arch theorist of counterinsurgency, the french colonialist david galula) \emph{“In revolutionary warfare, strength must be assessed by the extent of support from the population as measured in terms of political organization at the grass roots. The counter-insurgent reaches a position of strength when his power is embedded in a political organization issuing from, and firmly supported by, the population”}


Some of the clearest manifestations of this counterinsurgency in practice are Public Safety messaging, Police Athletic Leagues, Community Resource Officers, Quality of Life enforcement, Broken Windows Policing, Stop and Frisk. All of these are, without modification, counterinsurgency strategies.


At the root of the counterinsurgent power of the police is a network of political organizations and financial interests which justify their existence. Think of, for example, the news outlets who crow about public safety, the tough on crime DAs, the companies who produce police arms and equipment, and those who provide police discounts. Though it is fundamentally good when someone burns a cop car, or many, it is equally vital to make “regular people” feel that it is unsafe to support the police. In most places, it’s probably easier to do thousands of dollars of damage at the patrolmen benevolent association than it is to do the same at a precinct (it’s also probably easier to get away with it at the PBA). Along with the typical sabotage and political vandalism that we often already take part in, we also require more urgent forms of psychological warfare and attacks on the morale of our enemies. Making a cop so scared he quits or kills himself is as good as putting a bullet in his head. It is also to our advantage for the police to act like scared children. Though they have their fortress ideology, their “just here to help” facade which is ever so rarely carted out these days, and their indoctrinational helpers via news, entertainment, and community programs forcing kids into contact with them, it is still so very obvious how scared these pigs are.


We opponents of police should also never forget that policing is a white supremacist project. It is strategically, tactically, and ethically vital that we find common cause with those most targeted for police violence. If you’re against police, and aren’t explicitly for black liberation and prison abolition, than you don’t understand what these systems are or don’t have a heart. It is impossible to understand the function of the police in the modern context without understanding slave patrols, and the kkk.


Though this is not the place for becoming distracted by a long anarcha-feminist\Slash{}gender-nihilist rant, the psychological condition of police (In America especially, but I expect this is a fairly universal thing), is in many ways the ideal mirror of Patriarchal Masculinity. This is one instance where I can actually get some use out of my unwilling stint of being socialized as a man while not being any such thing. Some will tell you otherwise, but the patriarchy, in all it’s culturally specific flavors, is about controlling “women” and “children”. I put those in quotes because they are constructed classes, created to justify subservience. (A form of construction later used in the case of race, which the colonial powers more or less created as a post-facto justification for slavery). The logic of a cop is first the logic of white supremacy, and second, the logic of patriarchy, just ask anyone unfortunate enough to have had a pig for a father. The position of father, of man, is a position of insecurity. Men know where they are in a pecking order, and that pecking order is pecked into them throughout childhood and every day after. Being cut off from their emotions and given only anger or control as outlets, every slight is a reason for a hierarchy of shit trickling down. Boss is a dick? Take it out on your wife and kids at home. Rent is due and you feel bad, take it out on some guy you have in custody. Even the kindest seeming people with power are partaking in some kind of dick measuring contest. This insecurity is a vulnerability. This insecure mindset extends to lady pigs, it is an institutional role.

\subsection{\textbf{Gender}}


Abolishing gender, in our own lives, and eventually, in all lives, is a key necessary part of destroying civilization. In the meantime, it is important to be aware of the ways that gender influences the strategic and tactical playing field. Though most generalizations are no damn good, it is still useful to be aware of how the gendered biases of the forces we fight may be used to our advantage. An example of this comes from the battle of Algiers, in which women combatants, dressed like assimilationist rich girls, were able to sneak baskets with bombs out of the casbah and into the heart of colonialist Algiers. This example need not be taken exactly, but living in the patriarchy as we do, we must be aware of how the gendered world behaves and where the cracks are. At risk of navel gazing, under the current march of trans genocide, I and many of my friends have been pushed further into the margins. Of course some of us prefer the cracks over the sidewalk. However, this marginality is a radicalizing force for the many who are new to poverty or who are now worse off than they had been.

\subsection{\textbf{Prisons}}


This is a sphere of struggle that I rarely hear nihilists outside of Europe discuss. That might be due to limitations in my reading list, but it still seems to me that anarcho-nihilists often fail to consider how the negative project is of natural interest to prisoners. Of course, I suppose we haven’t yet adopted a negative project.


While I am no longer a revolutionary abolitionist, and think we need so much more than an underground railroad, I still think we need one of those too. There is a clear value to the negative project in having inside-outside connections, and in asking ourselves how we should be destroying prisons as a fundamental part of destroying civilization. This is another instance where some things may seem like ‘positive projects’ to the zealots of nihilist purity, but are in fact mechanisms for greater negation. This is also an opportunity to make common cause with other prison abolitionists, there are many. I still think that developing mechanisms for escape is an important aspect of making mechanisms of attack. As with other organs of civilization, points of weakness are often found in logistics, supply infrastructure, bureaucrats, low-level politicians, private contractors and suppliers, political organizations supporting prison, and prisoner depoliticization and pacification. There are many historical examples of creative ways to destroy prisons, or liberate prisoners. One example, of great interest to me, is an action taken by Os Cangaceros (the chain breakers) Who went to the newly poured concrete foundation of a planned prison, and for every ton of concrete, deposited 2 pounds of granulated sugar. That is what it takes to prevent concrete from setting, and if the concrete doesn’t set, anything built above it will sink into disrepair as soon as the structure comes into use. The pigs built the would be prison on this unsettled foundation. Before the prison was opened, the authorities were informed that the foundation was not stable and their prison would not be able to open. The authorities checked, sent their engineers and bean counters out, and found that the warning was true, their long planned, long built prison, would stand empty until demolished or until it sunk into its shaky foundation.

\subsection{\textbf{Militaries}}


The most cogent vulnerabilities of a military are most frequently dependent on the quality of logistics, the quality of equipment, the quality of the soldiers, and the quality of the political and strategic position the military finds itself in. Later on I examine logistics more fully, which should illustrate some of the ways in which the negative project could hobble a military. In any confrontation of with a military, one must be very cognizant of the political landscape, and the aims of enemy leadership. Militaries exist for the purpose of securing political\Slash{}economic\Slash{}diplomatic goals via force. If one is trying to resist a military force, in any context, it is critical to understand what the political\Slash{}economic\Slash{}diplomatic goal is.


\hairline


This list is not exhaustive of course, I’m sure you can add some of your own local enemies if you’d like to.

\subsection{\textbf{Anarcha-nihilist social war now!}}


While talking with a friend about nihilism (without any explicit goal, I just can’t shut up) I said “There is no nihilist project.” and her response “she says while making more nihilists” feels illustrative. I’ve come to disagree with past me, sure, there is no nihilist positive project, but we could (maybe even ought to) have one shared and chosen purpose, the negative project. I don’t think those of us against mutual aid have to suddenly start mutual aid projects, or go out and spend their lives trying to make a mass movement, but when we are thinking about the destruction of civilization, this inevitably must extend to it’s social structures. There is also a large degree to which the relative possibility of complete destruction is dependent on spreading our dangerous ideas to all who would listen. We currently face the risk of being nothing more than an edgy subculture, and that’s as fine as anything else I suppose, but there are many who could be convinced of the negative project if we tried. This social war is a gradual process and to you may feel largely like being yourself and talking with friends and acquaintances; after all, we don’t have a party to join, don’t have a platform to vote for, and wouldn’t want either. We may not have a party, but we do require social support, or at least social passivity. That doesn’t have to be achieved through some “positive project”, unless you see making more nihilists to better do the project of negation as somehow a positive project.


So I argue we must make more nihilists, not by watering down our ideas, but by finding the wedge to force someone to question their inherited beliefs. That is of course not to say that simply doing a small propaganda campaign, or writing a zine, or talking with your friends, is going to do the social war, however those things are necessary parts of it. Even for the most destruction focused of us, humans need food, water, and friends.


Not everyone who thinks like we do can fight, and some would simply prefer to do something else. That is part of our war too however. It is vital to both build social support for the destruction of the state and civilization, or baring that, building conditional support for destruction (which could grow into support for more negationist ends). We must also degrade social support for the oppressors, state violence, and other actors of civilization. We should look to the non-combatants that support the aims of civilization, bootlickers, cop lovers, as targets of attack. For support towards increasing our abilities at effective attack, we should look to the non-combatants of all kinds who are sympathetic to our desires to destroy civilization. There are many who would help us if we let them. People who are unable to, or don’t want to, directly fight but who still want negation, still want civilization destroyed, often have skills which could be useful to those of us interested in doing direct negation. We are as much in need of people who can provide intelligence, resources, alibis, jail support, and material support as we are in need of more combatants.


I am not particular about the methods of social propagation and propagandization, each person has their own skills and interests, but I think that, even if you are doing it with zero formality, spreading our ideas is necessary. I’m not here to suggest we become evangelists, or shill for media, or create infrastructure of self promotion, but I do suggest we strengthen the social connections we have, and in those social connections actually speak and act like we don’t want hierarchy. If you enjoy being hyperbolic, join the club, that seems to be the most prevalent tone of modern communication, but I am not personally interested in over indexing on hyperbole. Prove, without self snitching, that you are what you say you are. \emph{If you are fronting, pretending, ask why you are deceiving yourself in that way? What cultural pressures and systems of hierarchy have caused you to be performative rather than destructive?}


I have little interest in capital T Truth, but in the context of social interactions, I deeply value sincerity. Perhaps some of this is cultural, but it seems strange to me that people are so afraid of being direct, and saying what they mean. There is a panoply of social factors that influence this tendency of course, but however misanthropic, or angry, or socially awkward someone is, sincerity is important. If people don’t think you’re serious about what you’re saying, if people think that you’re all talk, or exagerational, it is significantly harder to encourage them to question their inherited morals and domesticated acceptance of hierarchy.


The social war also must include other structures of support. The negative project requires resources for furthering the destructive aspects, and the social sphere, informal connections between friends neighbors and comrades, is where we will find the least centralized, and most versatile forms of logistical support. \emph{\textbf{If we neglect the social aspect of the negative project, we are hobbling ourselves in the arena of attack.}}


Humans before civilization lived together, in many different configurations with varied lifeways that fit the environments they lived in; If civilization ends, completely, or in part, the uncivilized will still be social creatures, will still need eachother and rely on eachother. The human outside of civilization is not a solitary wanderer, and the self aggrandizing misconception that such a person is the highest form of humanity indicates the unquestioned belief in core myths of civilization. It is so strange to see people claiming to be against leviathan, while they’re parroting the ideological fiction of solitary man and savage nature.

\subsection{\textbf{Anarcha-nihilist kinetic war now!}}


We are good at sabotage, and, occasionally, good at insurrection, but we have yet to become good at war. While others will often characterize the problem with anarcho-nihilist tactics as lack of coordination, I find this to be a silly hierarchical framing. If I had to diagnose the problem, I would say that the problem is limitation of means, lack of creativity, and tactical stagnation. That is not to minimize the joyful destruction that many of us have taken part in, I welcome more of that. The question for me is, how do we take our unique skills and create a way of tearing down civilization that is as effectively destructive as war, without it’s civilizational detritus.


Even if the negative project is meant to be something further than revolution, and thus will require new and creative means, it is still vital to understand the tactics and strategy of guerrilla warfare. If you are irrationally uncomfortable with the idea of people fighting to free themselves (like the counter insurgents are), you can frame guerrilla warfare as “asymmetrical warfare” instead.


In the context of guerrilla warfare, and counterinsurgency, the battle is for the social territory; the sympathy or passivity of the local populace. The sorts of social, political, and martial projects that leftist revolutionaries use to achieve these ends are not necessarily things we should adopt, but they are illustrative of places where a negative replacement could be created.


There is a reasonable argument that guerrilla warfare as a concept is a political distinction rather than a tactical one. A professional tactician (e.g. B.A. Friedman who wrote “on Tactics”) might frame guerrilla warfare as not a different set of tactics, but an application of tactics tailored to a small, diffuse, minimally armed fighting force. At the strategic level though, there are still good reasons to treat guerrilla warfare as something different; the politics of conflict are the meat of strategy for state actors, and partisans. “War is Diplomacy by Other Means”, is a common and oft quoted principle in strategy, and is the most remembered\Slash{}popular idea from Clausewitz’s “On War” (the foundational text of modern military strategy). This conception of war, and the scope of war aims, is illustrative of the political motivations and supports for maintaining a war. What Clausewitz means here is that war is the process of achieving some diplomatic\Slash{}political end, via military violence. He is not particularly interested in what the political ends are, being only involved in securing those ends by force.


So when we are talking about guerrilla warfare, it is helpful to think of it from (at least) two different levels. At the level of strategy (much more frequently discussed) guerrilla warfare is driven by political and social forces. The fighting is done in service of a political goal, getting your colonizers to leave, getting a vote, deposing a king or president, etc. The political strategy of guerrilla warfare is to propagandize, educate, materially help, and convince some significant proportion of the local population to join, support, or quietly tolerate your political movement.


The kinetic (military pig speak for violent) strategy centers around chipping away at infrastructure, personnel, equipment, and the morale of enemy combatants, their political leaders, and their financial backers. While the phrase is somewhat tautological “all an insurgency needs to do to win, is not lose”. Guerrilla warfare is fundamentally about attrition and exhaustion, rather than annihilation. In the instances where revolutionary forces have annihilated their opponents, they have done so with relatively sizable conventional forces (except for, arguably, in the case of the Cuban revolution).


Though our goal is to annihilate civilization and it’s upholders, since we are not trying to put someone in charge when\Slash{}if we succeed, it seems very possible to potentially meet similar goals by unconventional means.


Some of our strengths with regards to nihilist kinetic war, are decentralization, intrinsic motivation, and our illegibility.


I would hope the importance of decentralization is fairly obvious to those reading this. It is important to have a social network to draw information, comrades, and resources from, and it is to our advantage that we pursue such things informally, that does not mean, however, that we should neglect these decentralized connections in favor of some self righteous desire to feel empowered by solitary action. It’s decentralized, not disconnected.


Our intrinsic motivation also seems a fairly obvious strength to me. A complete dedication to destruction is a motivation that no state could reckon with. Strong motivations, strong values, strong desires, are necessary for maximally destructive assaults on civilization’s infrastructure.


Our creativity is potentially boundless, though it is sometimes limited by petty personal arguments, and unquestioned cultural ritual masquerading as praxis or security culture.


Our illegibility stands out to me as one of our more unique advantages. The more difficult it is to identify who is taking action the more action we get to take.


One of our greatest weaknesses is social infighting, both online and in person. Some of this is an inability to mind ones own fucking business, and some of it is personal conflict disguised as political disagreement. Some of it is just regular old politics. I have many ideas for how to reduce these kinds of social conflicts, but would encourage people to read “The Individual and the Anarchist group” (amongst other works by and about CCF, conspiracy cells of fire.)


Some of our other weaknesses, other than lack of financial or material support for the acquisition of destructive tools, are lack of clear routes to action, and limited strategic and tactical thinking, but I will talk about both of those things elsewhere in this text.

\section{\textbf{Towards The Negative Project}}

\subsection{\textbf{Social\Slash{}Fighting formations}}


I suggest we embrace a diversity of tactics in all things, including social formations. It is to our advantage to organize ourselves in whichever way we personally see fit. The investigations and network analysis pursued by our enemies are bound to be less effective if our social formations are as variable as possible in composition and function. In both social and fighting formations, the most important consideration with regards to working together, is that the method be determined by the people involved directly. \emph{\textbf{Self}} \emph{\textbf{d}}\emph{\textbf{etermination, and autonomy}} \emph{\textbf{are guiding values of the negative project}}\textbf{.} In addition to appealing to my ethos of autonomy, the individual freedom and personal motivation of combatants and social comrades is also of great tactical and strategic advantage to us.


Many of us already maintain social and fighting formations in our own lives via friendships, affinity groups, and other informal means; this is not a call to abandon those methods, but to diversify and amplify them. It is also important that we approach our existing relationships with an eye towards critiquing the implicit hierarchies therein. It is vital that we build the social and material infrastructure of negation by any means necessary; e.g. propaganda, word of mouth, direct action, and anything else you can think of that might work. If there are extant movements working towards complimentary goals you are personally passionate about, for example maybe you know anarchists mobilizing against ICE, approach those struggles with a clear understanding of what the current landscape of resistance is, and attempt to find others who may come to be collaborators in, or supporters of, the negative project.


In both social and fighting formations it is important to reduce the degree of specialization and role permanency. It is good to have the skills and information one can gain from specialists, but for both purposes of redundancy and hierarchy prevention, in all ways possible, people should have more than one relevant skill, and should teach eachother the skills that they have. (see “the individual and the anarchist group”)


We also should think about the ways in which our existing skills can be used towards the goal of negation, and for those which can, how we can teach those skills to others. However, no one has the capacity to learn everything, so it is also important to have connections to many different kinds of social circles. The skills that others have may be of use to you even if the person is not explicitly in support of the negative project.


We seek to create an \emph{\textbf{ecology of negation}}. One of the primary tactics of social control utilized by western civilizations is social atomization. It is much harder to manipulate a population with a social environment that is complex, variable, and interconnected in ways that are difficult for authorities to map. I have my qualms with social ecology, but being social creatures, and being against civilization, I think it is important to understand ecology to some degree, and to apply it to our social and fighting formations. If we are successful at creating niches for autonomy and connections between those niches, we will have much fertile soil out of which to grow our negation.


In the hegemonic conception of strategy, there is a disadvantage to having a disparate force with loose connections between nodes. This challenges what the pigs and statists would call Command And Control. In the context of guerrilla warfare this is complicated by the tension between the inefficiency of hierarchy for asymmetrical operations, and the desire to maintain hierarchy in furtherance of a long term authoritarian political goal. In either case, I reject this conception.


Even some anarchists and anarcho-nihilists will suggest that there we must have direct coordination between groups in order to create effective fighting formations. An example of this tendency that particularly sticks in my throat is the frequent contention that in an instance of direct action involving multiple affinity groups, those groups ought to communicate their potential intended targets to avoid the highly unlikely outcome of two groups showing up to the same place at the same time. If I showed up to smash something and found it already smashed, I might be disappointed I didn’t get to do the smashing myself, but I wouldn’t call that a failure.


There is a serious risk in that kind of thinking, and the nosy and overcautious attitude that encourages people to share information that would better be kept secret, or who insist that cell phones are necessary for communication without considering any low-tech alternatives.


\emph{Coordination does not require direct communication}. We can coordinate by paying attention to other related actions being taken where we live, by having private (phoneless) conversations with our close friends, by keeping our ears to the ground. This is explicitly already one function of existing anarcho-nihilist publications and projects. Utilizing calls to action, communiques, and existing underground media\Slash{}mass communication projects to help coordinate our activities, or to improve our target selection, is in some ways more valuable than direct coordination.


There are some things for which direct coordination is absolutely possible, though not absolutely necessary. The things for which direct coordination can be used without serious concern are the things for which you are unlikely to get arrested.


In both our social and fighting formations we must also have a clear understanding of threat modeling. There is a great deal of security ritual, and security theater, often at the expense of actual security, but security measures have to be tailored to the situation. If you are having a reading group, it is unlikely that you have to be very secret about it, unless that reading group includes potentially incriminating texts. But if you are taking part in sabotage or direct action of other kinds, significantly more privacy and security is necessary.


Threat modeling, for our purposes, largely consists of determining A. the likely threat actors (which agencies, and individuals do you assess to be a realistic threat), B. methods of surveillance\Slash{}attack\Slash{}etc available to those actors C. the likelihood that those methods will be applied to you specifically and D. the perceived negative outcome that the threat poses.


The methods of security culture in our milieu are frequently ritualistic and ineffective, and a lack of threat modeling and a failure to clearly assess which threats are truly the most compromising, is at the root of much of that. This is a dangerous tendency. So when you are implementing a security practice, there are some questions you should ask;


— why am I doing this?


— who is it supposed to keep me secure against?


— what specific kind of thing is it supposed to prevent?


— how do I know it works?


— how likely is it that the forces I’m concerned about will use this method?


— how risky is the thing I’m doing?


— what kind of repercussions legal or otherwise could result in a security failure in this instance?


A good security method is one which addresses threats that are actually threatening, and which can be followed consistently by those utilizing it. There are other texts addressing these concepts further, but for anyone who got this far into reading this, understanding threat modeling is of utmost importance.

\section{\textbf{Logistics}}


There is a truism often stated in strategic circles “Amateurs talk strategy, professionals talk logistics.” Though our logistical needs and abilities are fundamentally different than those of the systems we fight, it is undeniable that people need water, food, and equipment if they are to fight at all. The hegemonic practice of logistics is unlikely to be replicated in our efforts, but it is important to understand how dominant logistics work as well because it is one of the key functions and supporting processes of the enemy structures we wish to destroy.


For the US military, one which continually fails at its immediate war aims, but somehow maintains hegemony anyway, the path they walk to inexplicable continued everpresence in the world is logistics. The US military is defined by it’s mastery of logistics. That is the key advantage of the US military, and in the functional structure of the military, a much larger proportion of personnel are dedicated to logistics and support operations. In military jargon, the tooth-to-tail ratio is the ratio of combat personnel to support staff. During WW2 the US army’s tooth to tail ratio was 1:4.3, that’s four point three support people for every one combatant. During the American war in Vietnam the ratio was 1:12.9. During the second Iraq war in 2005, the ratio was 1:8.1.


The point I am most interested in illustrating with those numbers is how much logistical wrangling is required to support the operations of the US military. This infrastructure extends through the entire geography of American influence. Regardless of which government you are fighting, there is likely a similar spread of logistical infrastructure across their area of control. While there are large operations and centers of military infrastructure, shipyards, airfields, bases, etc, these large conglomerations are dependent on a network of transport, communications, reconnaissance, and static defensive infrastructure. With the possibilities of drone attacks and aerial bombardment very present in the mind of military planners, it is generally considered best practices to maintain redundant equipment, and to have redundancies built into operational protocols as well. It is also wise to spread things out a bit, particularly critical infrastructure, equipment, weapons, and personnell.


Other fighting forces (e.g. the police) often have somewhat less one-sided tooth-to-tail ratios, often having over indexed on teeth. One recommended ratio of support to patrol staff in police staffing discussions is sixty percent of the on shift staff assigned to patrol duties, and forty percent assigned to support tasks. In many departments the ratio is much more one-sided towards patrol. (this increases the vulnerability of their logistics as well). For example, the NYPD in 2025 had 35,000 sworn officers, and approximately 19,000 civilian employees. While there are “sworn officers’ involved in adminstrative and support roles, if we take these numbers at face value the ratio is particularly even, almost 2:1, and is totally in line with the staffing suggestions of the “International city\Slash{}county management association” of 2\Slash{}3rds patrolling, and 1\Slash{}3\textsuperscript{rd} serving support roles. 65 percent of their staff are sworn officers, and 35 percent are civilian employees.


These civilian employees, and the computers, cameras, radios, transport vehicles, contractors, and suppliers are critical to the ability of the pigs to do their pigging. Along with the obvious targets, police cars, cameras, police themselves, it is helpful to try and suss out what the softest targets are. There is also the consideration of the psychological effect on the enemy. Burning a cop car is good materially: it costs the pigs money, reduces their operational capacity by however many cars get burned, serves as propaganda of the deed, and makes it clear to the cops that we hate them. Now, that is fantastic materially (and I sure hope that shit keeps happening), but on the psychological level, the morale of the police is unchanged, perhaps even improved. If one were to instead, for instance, burn an equivalent number of the pigs and or civilian personnel’s personal vehicles, that is a much greater headache for the pig or civilian employee, since they’re the one who has to then deal with their insurance and their union rep. It is fundamentally more personal. If the car that burns is the car of the records clerk who works for the police department out of convenience or because they’re a scared bootlicker, it’s very possible that person quits, or at the very least becomes less effective at their job. \emph{\textbf{Imagine if it were impossible for police officers in your area to get car insurance because their personal vehicles are so much more likely to show up in ‘totaled’ claims.}} Civilian employees are human infrastructure. The lines of communication, networks of cameras, vehicles, and other physical infrastructure are also extremely vulnerable to attack, and there is frequently too much of this infrastructure to defend all of it.


\emph{Military supply chain management, as described by NATO, is}


“The science of planning and carrying out the movement and maintenance of forces. In its most comprehensive sense, the aspects of military operations which deal with:


\begin{enumerate}[1.]
\item\relax 
design and development, acquisition, storage, movement, distribution, maintenance, evacuation, and disposal of materiel;



\item\relax 
transport of personnel;



\item\relax 
acquisition or construction, maintenance, operation, and disposition of facilities;



\item\relax 
acquisition or furnishing of services; and



\item\relax 
medical and health service support.”




\end{enumerate}

An example in practice: Logistical support was a severe limitation on the Blitzkrieg. Particularly on the eastern front, the amphetamine addled sleepless wermacht soldiers would speed forward at such a headlong pace that they could no longer resupply, or maintain their wakefulness and sanity simultaneously without stopping to take a rest. Supplying the vanguard of the blitzkrieg included supply lines reliant on horses. Their supply worries eventually got bad enough that they even went so far as to give the horses amphetamines.


The successes of “general winter” in the many instances of european miltaries trying to invade Russia and freezing to death in the process, are largely challenges of logistics. To survive a harsh winter as a fighting force, your logistical support must be nearly flawless. Without food, fuel, warmth, shelter, equipment, and medical care, the fighting force is nothing more than miserable people who wish they had never been sent on this mission.


It can be easy to lean towards dismissing the strategic frameworks that preceded Clausewitz, considering the outsized effect On War had on strategic thought in the west. I don’t intend to give you a full rundown of Jominian strategy, but I do think it is illustrative that the dominant strategy of warfare then (and often now) is to attack the supply lines. There isn’t a single strategic text that will tell you that is a bad idea. It is also nearly impossible to defend every bit of logistical infrastructure, the disparity of support personnel to fighting forces numerically demonstrates this.


As useful as it is to examine the ways states and other hierarchical organizations do logistics, the logistical challenges and opportunities that face proponents of the negative project are quite different.


Some of the key logistical priorities for those partaking in the negative project are;


\emph{\emph{Secrecy}}\emph{\emph{:}} The relative secrecy of a ‘supply line’ or piece of infrastructure depends on the degree of risk incurred. However for even the least risky of logistical operations (simple supply exchanges, unrestricted propaganda) it is important to ensure that your actions can be decontextualized; all activities must appear to have a legitimate purpose, or a reasonable cover. This could look like a small transportation ring also transporting free donated meals to people they know as “mutual aid”, or better yet, as part of an even less politically obvious activity.


\emph{\emph{Decentralization}}\emph{\emph{:}} All individual actors will need to be able to gather their own supplies and connect with others to supply what they are unable to acquire themselves. Each person involved should continually be learning the skills necessary to serve the same function as their comrades if something were to happen. This is a practical mechanism for ensuring that skills are not lost, and to ensure that a hierarchy based on skillset is less likely to form.


\emph{\emph{Simplicity}}\emph{\emph{:}} Start with the minimum viable version of a system and only add complexity if absolutely necessary. Complicated things break more easily, and are harder to troubleshoot when they do break. When you are planning a method for acquiring, transporting, utilizing, resupplying or coordinating something, break the process down into discrete steps and see if you are able to simplify it, retaining only the truly necessary parts. This will allow you to create more resilient networks and methods.


\emph{\emph{Fail Safe}}\emph{\emph{:}} Every system must have a backup plan. That doesn’t necessarily mean one needs to be able to replace the system on the fly, or have an entirely duplicative backup system\Slash{}method, so long as there is a plan for how to operate without the system functioning. If I did not get the delivery I was hoping to get, then I need to have a backup plan, even if that backup plan is ‘wait until I’m ready’. The key is to be thinking about your networks of supply and coordination with an eye to how they would fail and what you would do if that were to happen. Being able to respond to such things quickly is a huge advantage. It is also an exercise which helps us prepare for the unpredictability of direct conflict. “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face”, “No plan survives first contact with the enemy”

\section{\textbf{Intelligence}}


It is significantly more difficult to effectively identify vulnerable targets, and determine the most escapable and effective ways to take action if you do not have sufficient information. This is one of the limitations which most frustrates my own desires for action. All of the pig disciplines have interminable jargon and occasionally non-sense ideas stated as common-sense, but none more so than intelligence. When studying the espionage and analysis methods of state actors, it is often difficult to discriminate between fact and fiction, (though we are able to get a derivative of the truth through, amongst other things, the pentagon papers, and the break in at an fbi building during which radicals expropriated the documents which eventually exposed COINTELPRO, and other covert operations.) Despite this intentional obscurity, we still know quite a bit about the methods by which state forces gather intelligence in a confirmable way. Finding a cogent theory of intelligence is a little trickier.


Intelligence professionals categorize their operations into a few different spheres of inquiry, HUMINT, human intelligence which is the process of getting information from people, recruiting informants, putting a person in listening distance of an important conversation, having someone infiltrate a target organization.


SIGINT, signals intelligence which is anything to do with interpreting and intercepting radio, cellphone, internet, and other telecommunications signals.


GEOINT geographical intelligence, in which analysts use satellite maps, geographical facts, and footage from drones and other surveillance systems in order to determine location, topography and other location specific information about a target.


OSINT open source intelligence, a term you’ve probably seen, is the process of utilizing publicly available information to draw inferences and gather relevant intelligence. FININT financial intelligence, where intelligence is gathered utilizing financial information, literally following the money. And


TECHINT technical intelligence, in which one is gathering information about the technologies used by the enemy, primarily weaponry.


In each domain of the intelligence gathering and analysis process, there are discrete challenges, these can be broken down into a few primary functions, Collection, Analysis, and Communication\Slash{}Coordination.


Collection is the point at which data is being gathered, and is where much of the material infrastructure of surveillance and intelligence gathering are employed. For example,


in order to gather GEOINT, one requires access to a network of satellites, up to date surveys and geographical information, and footage and location data from drones and other surveillance systems. For further example, in the instance of SIGINT, collection relies on the resources and technology to intercept radio, cellphone, internet, and other telecommunications signals, the resources to store and sort that information, and the resources to prevent discovery of these interceptions.


Analysis is the point at which an analyst with a specialized focus uses the collected information and determines what is significant about this data. This is a point of great importance for the intelligence apparatus, not only because raw information resists actionability, but because the vast amount of intelligence gathered by modern spy services is so great that much of the “useful” intelligence is dismissed, or more likely, never looked at by an analyst at all. If a surveillance camera has filmed the commission of a crime, but there are ten thousand security camera feeds, on for 24 hours a day, that crime is unlikely to be seen unless someone reports it and seeks out that specific footage, or if it is encountered on accident. This is one of the reasons that usage of facial recognition and “AI” tools is such a popular desire for these nosy pigs, because they have more data than it is possible to sort through by human means. This is also the point in the process where the personal biases and abilities of the analyst have an outsized effect on the data reported. To paraphrase stalin “It’s not who collects the data which matters, it’s who analyses the data.”


Communication\Slash{}Coordination is the most centralized (and hardened) of these processes, frequently a process obscured by the best security money can by and weakest in it’s human links. This is another point at which the quality of the gathered intelligence may become muddled by an organizational game of telephone or a by the desires and myopias of high level officials in the organization.


Each function in a statist intelligence apparatus is heavily siloed. Where there are occasionally attempts to better integrate different disciplines in task forces for issues of particular interest, it is frequent that the logistical and organizational imperatives encourage the leaders of intelligence organizations all the way down the chain to maintain separation between roles. This tendency is also heightened by the internal rules of secrecy, confidentiality, and sensitivity of information which hinder the sharing of useful information between different silos in favor of attempting to prevent the leaking or interception of useful intelligence.


For obvious reasons, a negationist intelligence system would be more like, a set of localized and personalized processes of intelligence gathering and analysis managed almost entirely by the people taking direct action or their close collaborators.


Our limitations are primarily in resourcing and detectability. No one can do everything, and when you are a non-state actor, using the computer for research, or walking near one of a billion cameras, is a greater risk than it would be for a state actor. We do, however, have a very large advantage of being unknown, and largely undistinguishable from the populace at large.


A negationist process of intelligence gathering requires that each group taking action has their own capacities for espionage. It is unrealistic to think that every group or individual doing negation will have access to every kind of intelligence gathering method. This is an instance where one must lean into local conditions and personal\Slash{}group capabilities. For example, if you are very good at computers, you may use those skills to gather intelligence, but if you are horrible at using computers, then it is likely that your best approach is to gather intelligence by analogue means (recording, in person recon, eavesdropping on important targets).


It is also important to refuse a mindset of ‘intelligence for intelligence sake’. We are not trying to gather mountains of unusable information in a sweeping dragnet, we are trying to learn specific things about specific targets with the intention of using that information to advance attack or disruption of their operations. While it is important to retain skills and infrastructure of information gathering that we develop in this process, continual collection of data is useless if data collection becomes the primary goal. There are also people who do not wish to fight, but are comfortable with various forms of intelligence gathering. In these instances there are a few methods by which one could ensure that the information they’ve gathered is actually put to good use; one could provide their analysis to people they know who are potentially interested in doing direct negation, (surreptitiously, and without learning what that information will be used for, if anything). One could also, anonymously, share the actionable intelligence they’ve gathered with a counter-info site, a physical publication, or something akin to “doxing” but in a place where that information is more likely to be used for direct negation. An alternative method for intelligence sharing and analysis is to begin a small ‘research group’ in which the unstated goal is intelligence gathering.


The San Francisco BLA wrote a text which has an example process I would encourage those taking group actions to try; When planning for an action, each member of the group would do their own preliminary research and reconnaissance on one or two potential targets. The group would then discuss each of the potential targets and the preliminary info, and decide on one or two targets to gather additional intelligence on, based on viability, quality of the intelligence already gathered, and the possible ease of attack. These two or three targets would then be researched and surveiled by a subset of the group (e.g. 3 people research target A. 3 people research target B.) or both targets would be researched by the group as a whole. Once the reconnaissance was nearly complete for each target, they would collectively decide which target to strike, and begin the process of planning their action. While there are many other potential methods, this is certainly one which has worked.

\section{\textbf{A Strategy Of Desire}}


A short term strategy:


\begin{itemize}
\item\relax 
\emph{\textbf{Focus}} attack on undefendable outposts of the locally most hated hierarchies and manifestations of civilization. Ask yourself, \emph{”}\emph{who would my neighbors celebrate the death or downfall of?}\emph{”} Encourage those who are beginning to recognize the effectiveness and immediacy of direct negation, even if they currently wish only for partial destroy, rather than total destroy.



\item\relax 
\emph{\textbf{Develop}} greater capacity for action, by developing an informal network of logistical support and intelligence gathering, with aims to develop greater capabilities for covert operations. Build support among those who can’t themselves attack, but support attack happening. Their help can make attack much more frequent, effective, and sustainable. \emph{\emph{We must build our social li}}\emph{\emph{v}}\emph{\emph{es around negation, find the ways our interconnections are already supports to our negation.}} This must be a long term pursuit.


We do not have the time to do some of the training we would be best served by, but there are ways to take escalating action and to “self train”. This is more true for underground negationist tactics than it is of conventional military forces. It is not ideal, but it is the situation we find ourselves in. In the current moment the key is to take slowly escalating actions as direct practice in certain skills, some of which can be built on for the development of greater capacity of attack.


We must act, reflect on that action, learn, act again, and on the way keep and eye to how to supply the resources we most need in order to keep fighting. Build connections for getting those things. Repeat that process and as your capacity builds, develop new skills, onward and onward.



\item\relax 
\emph{\textbf{Erode}} the morale of our enemies. To fit our strengths and weaknesses, this should be done secretly via direct action, and anonymously through propaganda. Encourage open animus towards oppressive forces and reward a desire for “someone to do something about this fuck” with something being done. It would benefit us to be seen as avenging shadows answering the thirst of the subjugated for the blood of their rulers and jailers. Push not a propaganda of “you’re doing it wrong”, but a propaganda of adding fuel to the fire when attack is pursued. If the organizing minded see that there is always more material support for attack (in the rare cases they pursue it), then there is a possibility that attack will become a larger part of their modus operandi. There is something about doing which helps teach, and anyone attacking civilization furthers our goals.


In addition to stoking the ire of our neighbors and friends, we must make the smallest least appreciated personnel in each hierarchy we target feel that the risk to their safety makes their job unsustainable. The clerks, the drivers, the janitors, the secretaries, the people answering phones. \emph{Those who are actively collaborating, but who have no badge, should feel afraid to tell people what they do for a living, should not feel safe doing their work.} The supporters, snitches, and bureaucrats are soft, and yet necessary to the function of the whole. These soft targets extend to contractors and suppliers of critical items or services. The sheer number of such people makes it impossible to defend them all.


\emph{\emph{Secretly, quickly, unignorably striking at the collaborators will cause a greater chilling effect than the same level of attack against uniformed officers, and organizational leaders.}} Those with guns, or with the compensation packages to afford security, often harden their security when they feel they are under fire, but those who only have keyboards and clipboards, scatter like roaches when they find themselves under threat.



\item\relax 
\emph{\textbf{Solidarity}}, show some. When there is an oppressive force most of the people around you are hoping violence on, escalate the situation by applying violence. Widen the cracks. When local “popular opinion” supports direct political violence against a target you also want to destroy, then that is your ideal target now. Preferably striking at its weakest supports. Taking negative action with a higher chance of support also broadens the general support for attack, and the propaganda impact of the action.




\end{itemize}

When our desires intersect with the desires of actors who don’t share our full vision, we must use those desires as an opportunity for force multiplication, obfuscation of who took action, and appearance of greater numbers.


\hairline


At risk of being repetitive, but with hopes of ensuring that this line of thought is closely examined, here is another way to think of the broader shape of the strategy of desire.


\begin{itemize}
\item\relax 
\emph{\textbf{Encourage the desire for negationist action}} in your community, and social circles, both through propaganda and thoughtful targeting of your acts of negation.



\item\relax 
\emph{\textbf{Discourage the desire of our enemies to keep fighting}} through public shame, through direct action, and by finding the weakest links in the human chains of logistics and decision making.



\item\relax 
\emph{\textbf{Act on your desires}} in such a way that future action remains possible. Build\Slash{}develop better methods and supports for fulfilling your destructive desires. If you learn the skill, the opportunities for it’s use will become more evident.



\item\relax 
\emph{\textbf{Expand the desire to directly support negationist tactics}} including in material ways. Your less direct action oriented friends may have resources, information, or connections which would be useful to your goals. This help can and should be arranged with out sharing any potentially incriminating information.



\item\relax 
\emph{\textbf{Protect what autonomy you have},} to better fulfill your desires of destruction. Secrecy, caution, planning, and clear short term goals are all necessary in this regard.



\item\relax 
 \emph{\textbf{See to your physical desires and needs}} they determine your ability to fight. Even nihilist “armies” march on their stomachs, and one cannot fire a gun if there are no bullets to load in it.




\end{itemize}

\hairline


Things are obviously more complicated than that, but this is a suggestion not a rubric. Each fighter in our battle against civilization must have some sense of strategy and tactics, and it is a sometimes difficult thing to teach, not least because chance plays such a great role in warfare. Often the ability to adapt to changing conditions has a greater long term impact than well laid plans from before the conflict began. It matters not who starts the war, but who ends it.


In the end stages of revolutionary wars, the enders of these things are they who take power, and manage to keep it. I want no such directory. In many ways it is the task of the dedicated negationist to make the traditional end to war an impossibility. \emph{\emph{First we make neutrality impossible}}, forcing the situation into a fertile mess of fuel and fertilizer. We must make it a dangerous, or deadly, proposition to pick the side of oppression, of the state, of the cops, of the new dictatorship (of the proletariat or otherwise). \emph{\emph{When there is chaos,}} \emph{\emph{and}} \emph{\emph{loss of control, we must ensure that it is not replaced with order.}}


In the short term, and in our own local environments, this process could look many different ways, however that is an advantage, and the best strategy for your situation is dependent on your situation, not on some things I wrote down on a page. It is, however, difficult to take some of these general examples of strategy and break them down into something tactically usable. (at least not without a few examples):

\section{\textbf{A Strategic Exercise}}


\begin{enumerate}[1.]
\item\relax 
Define the grand strategic aim (based on the specific conditions in your theater of conflict.)


\begin{itemize}
\item\relax 
Example goal = destroy civilization in north America



\item\relax 
Via the strategy of = weakening the political, social, military\Slash{}police, and industrial machinery of civilization, with a focus on existing areas of weakness. Widen the cracks like weeds.


\begin{itemize}
\item\relax 
points of weakness also intersect with changing environmental conditions, like rising hyper-authoritarianism and climate change.



\item\relax 
With our small numbers, our strategy must rely on using social, environmental and political tides to our advantage




\end{itemize}



\end{itemize}


\item\relax 
Broad short term local strategy


\begin{itemize}
\item\relax 
Target first and foremost the most hated of current civilizational mechanisms, my current local examples being, ICE agents, Insurance Executives, and Fascists.



\item\relax 
Find movements which are moving towards (or already have) acceptance for escalatory rhetoric and political violence. People who are new to supporting political violence should be rewarded by seeing political violence which works.




\end{itemize}


\item\relax 
Define the intended campaign. (e.g. destroy ICE operations in my city)


\begin{itemize}
\item\relax 
Objectives


\begin{itemize}
\item\relax 
interrupt supply lines and other aspects of operational logistics



\item\relax 
shatter morale and civilian moral support



\item\relax 
Escalate the situation, find out what the community wants but thinks is impossible, and what the pigs fear but haven’t yet been made to experience.




\end{itemize}


\item\relax 
**These three objectives can be achieved in a variety of ways, and \emph{the specifics should be left up to those taking action.} That being said, here are some potential approaches to those objectives.



\item\relax 
Interrupt supply lines and operational infrastructure.



\item\relax 
the highest bang for your buck here would be to determine which critical supplies and resources are scarcest, or supplied by the fewest vendors. If there are 20 transportation vendors, it is easy enough to change vendors when one ceases to be either willing or able to provide support to ICE, but if there are 2 or 3 communications vendors, it would be much easier to cause them to cease working with DHS one way or another, via direct action. The key generally being to either, \emph{do}  \emph{enough damage (in dollars), destroy something critical and}  \emph{difficult to replace, or, caus}\emph{e} \emph{enough bad publicity to make the}  \emph{vendor’s decision makers assess that the amount of money lost}  \emph{by the firm will be greater than the amount gained by}  \emph{keeping the contract.}



\item\relax 
Identifying the most viable and valuable targets is a variable process, but some key considerations are, how does the target specifically provide their support to ICE, where are they, what do they do. How can their processes of support be interrupted? How well guarded is their office, their shipping center, their home? What are their capabilities, and what are yours?




\end{itemize}



\end{enumerate}

\begin{itemize}
\item\relax 
consequences on the people who work in civilian support roles, and as agents\Slash{}officers of our target forces.


\begin{itemize}
\item\relax 
The key here is to play on existing fears. Even classic ARA tactics like “Meet your local nazi” posters are of use. The people doing ICE enforcement generally do not want to be identified, and this is because they are worried about being attacked or harassed at home. \emph{So far their fear is unfounded, we} \emph{should help them find it.} Consequences on the ground, in daily life, and when asleep and unable to defend their homes, are necessary. Some methods could include: \emph{Sewing dissension in}  \emph{the ranks via information warfare, developing information}  \emph{gathering capabilities to identify collaborators near you} \emph{and}  \emph{us}\emph{ing} \emph{that information to either expose the weakest pigs and}  \emph{bootlickers} \emph{as} \emph{target}\emph{s for} \emph{your actions, spread demoralizing propaganda in areas frequently trafficked by feds.}




\end{itemize}



\end{itemize}

\textbf{At the heart of any war is a motivation. The specifics of whose motivation depend on the system of government, but in each case, the motivations are driven by the ‘popular will’ manufactured or otherwise, the financiers of war\Slash{}business interests, the hawks of war\Slash{}those who’s political, military, and corporate careers are furthered by the commission of war, and the ideologues who hae a strict ideological version claimed as their primary motivator. For states and their imitators, we can look at these material and ideological supports of war simply as points of vulnerability for our destructive project. For our own calculus of motivation, all we have is something similar to ‘the popular will’. Our position as opponents of the dominant order, and domination itself, makes pursuing anything that is remotely popular a fraught prospect. The zeitgeist after all is a ghost produced by the murder of individual perspective and autonomy. My focus on desire is not intended as a call for currying popularity, or adopting something odious like the mass line, but there are absolutely ways in which our particular bent of anti-civilizational anti-politics are in line with desires that we must encourage if we want the best conditions for the destruction of civilization.}


\textbf{In the context I live in (consider how conditions where you are compare and contrast), it is clear that the country I live in, the united states is in the preliminary stages of a ‘civil war’. I still have some fondness for the revolutionary abolitionist assertion that “the civil war never ended”, so I should perhaps say that the united states is in the preliminary stages of a hot phase in our ongoing civil war. In either case, my thinking is particularly focused on the position of american anarchists and anarcho-nihilists in the context of a hot civil war. Many of the things we currently frame as impossible are significantly more acheivable when even liberals are in support of political violence. That is not to say all of these people are safe to work with directly in most cases, but in a three, four, or five way fight, one has to be familiar with the complimentary and conflicting goals of all combatants.}


\textbf{Our motivations are both personal and global. They come from both our analysis of the world as a whole, and from our personal desire for autonomy. While we need fuel for the fire, our only motivation is to burn. In the construction of an anarcha-nihilist insurgency, we will require not only the material tools and resources to achieve our ‘military’ goals, but we will also need to find the ways in which our motivations of destruction can be amplified, even by those who do not share our project.}


\textbf{In any insurgency the key political ground being fought over, is related to “the Cause” of the insurgents, this is ideally something which cannot be provided by the enemy government. For example, in an anti-colonial struggle, the only thing the colonizer cannot do is leave. This inability to satisfy the desire of the people, a desire that has been stoked and fed by the proponents of violently decolonizing, is the achilies heel of many counterinsurgencies.}

\section{The negative strategy}

\subsection{\textbf{Negative Tactics}
\forcelinebreak 
\textbf{Important strategic considerations}}


While there is no hard and fast rule for how a revolution unfolds, or whether anything close to that will occur at all, there are some trends and patterns which are important to recognize for our own goals of destroying the social and physical infrastructure of civilization and preventing the reassertion of civilizational structures when they have been destroyed. We must take notice of the points at which we negationists have the most leverage, and the clearest imperatives.


I am drawing from a number of notable revolutions. Though we seek a more destructive end than simple revolution, it is undeniable that the moments in which we can most meaningfully advance the negative project, are moments that line up very well with the history of revolution. The most typical pattern, though far from the only pattern, is that the population of a political body\Slash{}nation with a particularly incompetent leader is unsatisfied for reasons usually both foreign and domestic. During that unhappiness the well-off lawyers, and business people, and clerks, and functionaries, become frustrated with their relative position in the decision making of their political body. This dissatisfaction is met by those in charge with less than lip service, without concession or change, more stick, no carrot. These dissatisfied “middle” and “upper middle class” people, and often some “working class” forces push for greater political representation in one form or another. These efforts lead to an unsatisfying amount of participation until even those who would otherwise be against taking violent action to pursue their political goals, are now talking about revolution. In these stages the escalation is a matter of a changing radicalism of means. The important point at these beginnings is not which political change these forces are fighting for, but the shift from believing that their goals can only be met by legal and “peaceful” means, to believing that violence is not only an appropriate means for enacting political change, but that it is necessary.


This heating up of the political environment often results in some measure of unification in the forces opposed to the regime. Unified by a shared destructive goal, and pushed and pulled by forces with varying constructive goals. In such moments strange alliances frequently form between actors with differing end goals but a shared desire to destroy the current government, or its ruler, by any means necessary. These alliances are of course tenuous, but they create a great deal of political muddying of the waters which is sometimes useful to those who wish to push a more radical position. During this phase of action one primary strategic objective of negationists would be to ensure the escalation of radical means, and to heighten the promotion of our own radical ends. The increased disorder and multiple forces attacking the state and its forces makes it much easier to amplify our own actions, and to pursue a greater and more destructive course of action where before these things were significantly more difficult to achieve.


In this hot phase, in which many political actors of varying ideologies are fighting towards one of two primary goals (defense of or destruction of the current regime) political leaders will emerge with aspirations to taking over the state or replacing it with their own preferred system of government. Some of the most charismatic of these figures perhaps could be nipped in the bud before gaining the traction to reconsolidate power, however, reconsolidation is still likely. Our goals in such a time are to perpetually escalate the situation where possible and to the degree we are able, and to make reconciliation and peace with the extant regime impossible. We must continue to push at these pressure points, weak infrastructure and supply lines of the state forces, social rage that can be stirred, systems of social control which have shown new weaknesses, and we must do so until our enemies yelp.


The most common outcome after the phase of armed uprising aimed at toppling the existing regime, is that the regime crushes the insurrection (partly by identifying public political leaders and snuffing them out) and then some form of semi liberal reconsolidation takes place, or, if it went very badly, some kind of reactionary doubling down. The second most common outcome is that the leader is deposed and some remainder of the current state reconsolidates under a slightly altered political system, either with some reforms, or simply a new leader or party of power. Occasionally these reconsolidations are slightly more radical, however in either case it is important to reckon with the likelihood that if a regime has fallen, reconsolidation will take place. The strategic objective of the negationist in this phase is to make peace impossible. Derail the reconsolidation and formation of a new order by any means necessary, preferably pushing on the points of weakness most likely to gain some degree of popular support in an identifiable segment of the local population. The goal here is to ensure that the revolution which toppled the regime continues into the next possible phase.


In this next possible phase, the reconsolidated order, the duma under Kerinsky, the Irish Free State, etc, does not maintain enough support to prevent civil war. This civil war is frequently between a variable group of political interests, be they reactionary ‘counter-revolution’, radical opponents to the moderate revolutionaries who attempted reconsolidation, or people with regional disputes exacerbated by the revolution. We must work to ensure that there are no true winners of this civil war, other than individual and collective autonomy. The greater degree of local control, and the longer that local control is able to avoid being crushed, the less likely reconsolidation becomes.

\subsection{\textbf{Tactics}}


Tactics will be addressed in a later text, partially in order to get this one out the door while it still might be useful, and because making tactical suggestions is somewhat more risky than suggesting a broader strategy. That being said, it is vital that we make a serious re-evaluation of anarchist tactics more broadly. The ineffectiveness, or liberal nature, of some of these tactics is the path down which many of us walked to nihilism. What is more concerning, is that even among we who reject a “proper” way of doing things, the realm of tactical invention (our natural realm of advantage) is largely unvisited. I do not wish to waste too much time critiquing the existing, almost ritualistic, tactics used by our broader movement, but it is important to ask ourselves if the tactics we pursue are any better than the tactics of those who we criticize, and more importantly, how those tactics further our material goals.


I will not attempt to make a complete list of possible tactics, nor do I think you should trust anyone who claims to have done so. Instead (when I get to it) I intend to lay out the broad tactical considerations. One advantage with regards to thinking about tactics, is that they are somewhat less strategy or value dependent. That is of course not to say that the most reliable available texts on tactics aren’t entrenched in a hierarchical and military mindset, simply, that tactics are something we all must use, and though we will have many tactics that are not in the statist toolbox, we can steal a few more of theirs than in the case of strategy more broadly.


To avoid confusion, for our purposes, strategy is related to broad goals, overall general methods of achieving those goals. Where as tactics are the specific how to. Strategy is the “What we are trying to do”, and tactics is the “how we do it”.


If you’re desperate for alternate frameworks for thinking about tactics, there are of course many anarchist texts and examples, but something you are less likely to have come into contact with which may be of use (though it of course should be taken with a grain of salt) is “On Tactics” by B.A. Friedman. It’s military pig shit, but useful as one method for conceptualizing tactics, and additionally is useful for understanding who we’re fighting and what some considerations for that fight would be.


I will leave you with these questions; If you want a world without these killers of the earth, without the crushing weight of oppression, or even if you simply want to be a thorn in the side of the beast that ravages you, what is the best way to do that?


If you want to destroy civilization, as I do, and see an unprecedented opportunity to do so, as I do,


then how would you take advantage of that opportunity?


What would it take to destroy the system dragging our planet to hell in a cascade of oil droplets?


Is there a strategy that might work? Is it something like the one I’ve suggested here, or has this spurred you into creating a strategy that’s better?


\textbf{What can you do, and why is the time to do it now?}









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The Anarchist Library (Mirror)



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The Negationist Anti-National

A Strategy Of Desire



06\Slash{}02\Slash{}2026


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https:\Slash{}\Slash{}mafwdistro.noblogs.org\Slash{}a-strategy-of-desire\Slash{}
   

       

       

       

       

       

       

   



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