In addition, observing the luxurious (in relation to Africa) living standards and situations of folks in the US, and as I’ve loitered on ‘anarchist’ forums observing the nit-picking and clear signs of exactly what you suggest – the revenge/hate stuff – which, I assume comes from being inadequately educated, over-pampered, yet facing an authoritarian juggernaut of a police state, it seems to me that the US ‘anarchists’ tend to be co-opted by the system at every opportunity, used to fill TV moments as windows are broken, or used to justify violent police response. They’re just reduced to being visual sock puppets for the corporate media to focus on. And the remaining ranks of the disaffected genuinely buy the sucker story process of ‘passive resistance’ – which means no protests, no marches, no critical mass events will ever change the status quo. Exactly as the authorities want. But I digress

I think your writing is on the right path. The first step toward disabling (or bypassing) an Enemy, requires holding a mirror to oneself – as well as examining honestly the situation at hand, without regard to how it might impact ones own self image or ‘identity’ (whatever that is).
My gut feel is that your take on the anarchists, and the general ‘revenge’ and ‘guilt’ within what passes laughingly for a ‘counterculture’ in the US, is spot on, and cuttingly accurate.

Real political action results in large scale, potentially sustainable changes, faux political actions cause broken windows, briefly blocked highways/roads – and little else, aside from nitpicking and pissing contests online.

Have you actually read my shit? Obviously not. Just because I talk about the hate culture attitudes of anarchist scenesters… somehow that means I don’t encourage people to resist civilization? Dude. Seriously. READ MY SHIT. Assholes like you gravitate toward blogs I write against some little part of your identity, and rather than reading it in the context of my entire site you pick and choose and end up sounding like a fucking idiot. People being angry at what civilization does to the planet does not give you or any anarchist scenester the right to be assholes to EVERYONE. And people who are looking for that, gravitate towards that culture because people like you let them get away with it because of bullshit excuses like that one.

As for the anarchist scene itself, I sadly have to admit my experiences have been pretty similar to yours, though I’ve had very little face-to-face interactions with anarchists. I’ve mostly interacted with them via the internet, which means an even greater likelihood for them to act like assholes (the folks at anarchistnews.org are just terrible). I think Bill really hit upon the major problem with anarchism, which is a problem you run into with most negative movements. That is that they’re so focused on what they’re against that they don’t spend much necessary effort in trying to come up with the alternative to replace it. Sure, there’s been some discussion about worker-run factories and direct democracy in communities, but this is very much secondary to opposing capitalism & the State. To make matters worse the horizontal hostility ALWAYS comes in for whatever positive project any anarchists do by other anarchists, whether it’s infoshops, Food Not Bombs or whatever. I’m fucking sick of anarchists pissing all over each others’ projects! I don’t think any paradigm which isn’t challenging industrialism itself has much liberatory potential. This applies to most forms of anarchism, but that doesn’t mean I go around hating on anarcho-syndicalism. So while I definitely identify with anarchism (opposition to the State, capitalism, authoritarianism, etc.), I don’t really engage much with the anarchist “scene”.

I have to say, your articulation in this article is so fucking good. It completely relaxed me. Keep it up man. You are doing great work. You are a trip! Maybe one of these days I can scrounge some dollars to get your book.

With love,

PZ

Don’t fucking tell me there’s no hate culture in the anarchist scene.

Also, I agree that my experiences with anarchist subculture have mostly boiled down to hate group gatherings and hate group meetings. This turned me off completely, so that now I don’t call myself an anarchist anymore, although the feelings I had for a need for freedom, which brought me to anarchist circles in the first place haven’t changed a bit. Now that I’ve moved away from anarchist subculture, however, I find I have a life a good deal freer and more empowering then I ever had while living in the terrifying domane of controlled “anarchism.” After a while, I got tried of being policed by people in my community who supposidly knew better then I did how I should live, so I left. It feels good to actually be my own boss and master again!

I’m sure there are anarchist groups around the globe who actually stand for building new ways of living, and not exacting a reign of hate and terror like some of the anarchist scenes I’ve experienced…at least I would hope so.

But anyway, as always, thanks for preachin’ the truth…

Possum

Look, I’m sorry that your experience with anarchists has been shitty, but you’re stealing my autonomy by generalizing.

Personally I think you are spending too much time and energy worrying about those people who have been fucking with you. But hey, I guess you gotta do, what you gotta do.

Either way, I dig what you’re doing with rewilding and you’ve shared some great ideas. Just know that not all anarchists are assholes!

http://www.anarchistnews.org/?q=node/10135

I definitely think we need people creating new cultures, but ones that are anarchistic; egalitarian, sustainable, non-hierarchical, earth-based, etc. but at the same time we should support those people who have decided to resist the various manifestations of domination.

That said, I will say that the anarchist sub-culture in the west, definitely seems to be lacking any real resistance. It seems that people have resorted to lifestyle changes (veganism, dumpster diving, not showering) which in my opinion doesn’t do much to resist civilization.

Rewilding on the other hand does not seem like a movement at all, but a process. A process that is often appealing to anarchists.

My attachment to anarchism as a label is my attachment to the resistance movement that i am a part of. It is also an attachment to the rage i feel at the destruction of all that i love. If i didn’t feel hate, i don’t think that i would feel anything.

Normally I wouldn’t bite a comment as vapid as yours but since I’m totally bored and not really wanting to read my insanely technical book about the origins of the Indo-European language group…

Indigenous people needed quite a bit to learn to live with the land. They had cultures that had developed for thousands of years in particular landbases. Cultures that had mythologies, rites of passage, rituals, languages, customs, taboos, governments, land management practices, clothing and tools that all developed slowly and from a cultural mindset that already existed for them. They did this because they had tight-nit family groups working together to continuously regenerate their cultures. We live in a fucked up civilization, have indoctrinated minds of domination and slavery, pacifism and domestication. We do not have tight-nit family groups with thousand year old practices. It’s entirely ignorant to say that “just going out into nature” to learn these things is as easy as you’ve stated. If it were that easy, why has no one done it? As Tamarack Song put it:

“I’m going to give you all some straight talk, in hopes that it will help to steer you on to a track might get you somewhere. The reality of the situation is that I have not met, or heard of, a single person in the past 40 years who has used the approaches that we have been talking about, who has been able to return to primitive living. This includes the authors of the popular books. Yeah, they might talk a good talk, but look at what they’ve actually done—a month in the mountains, a solo year in the woods, some time in Alaska—is that really living the Old Way? Where is the clan? Where are the elders? The children? Where is the example and clan memories to learn from?

“Why didn’t it work for them, and why won’t it work for you? Because they carried civilization with them into the wilderness, and you likely will as well. You can learn all the skills you want, and The Mother will spit you back out just about as fast as you went in. The more stubborn individuals will last a few months or maybe a year, but rest assured, they’ll be back.

“Why? Because they didn’t do their work. We come from a technological society, so we naturally think that substituting primitive technology for civilized technology is our doorway. The only problem is that Native people are not into technology. They spend only a couple hours a day providing for their simple needs, and they mostly use simple means. Look at their tools—few and crude, and their craftwork — basic and utilitarian. What a Native person excels at is what I call qualitative skills—how to sit in a circle with your clan mates and speak your truth, how to find your special talent so that you can develop it to serve your people, how to use your intuition, the ways of honor and respect, how to live in balance with elders and women and children, how to speak in the language beyond words, how to befriend fear and live love. Without these skills, you will surely die. Or else you’ll go back to the life that shuns these skills.”

While I actually think he inaccurately describes hunter-gatherers (i.e. “crude” baskets) his main point stands true.

I think that rewilding offers an outlet for the resistance ideology without the hate. That’s why I differentiate between the two. If rewilding were to become another hate culture, I would abandon it and start something else. I’m concerned with creating the world I want, and that’s what I write about. I talk about what I don’t want by showing examples, in this instance anarchist subculture. I don’t “hate” anarchists. I hate the anarchist hate culture. LOL. I have many friends who identify as anarchists, many that are also rewilding. There is a difference between individuals and their culture(s). Many anarchists of the hate culture hate on me. They send their hate my way. Of course they do. They think I am one of them and “not doing it right” as Willem said. Individually I might be more like them, but not culturally. I’m working towards creating a culture, so this is why I talk about cultural stuff. I didn’t mean to alienate you, and so I’m wondering how much it’s your own attachment to your label than the culture of hate… especially if, as you said, you agree with me on my critique?