From miko-ew
Note: Just some angry thoughts, nothing spectacular. I was thinking the other day about all of the hit-jobs written against eco-extremism and decided to throw up some quick thoughts about it.
I’ve been around the tendency for some time now and have dedicated a lot of my time to it so I have seen a fair share of the moral outrage surrounding eco-extremism. And the orchestrated stinkpieces from anarcho-collectives are as old as eco-extremism itself. The collective letting of outrage over transgressions of such sanctified matters as the attacks on the “innocent,” the depravity of violence, the rejection of the glorious revolution, solidarity with the elect classes of the oppressed, blah fucking blah. The editor of Atassa, normally reserved to their work as a memelord and theoretician of matters more dignified than the screeching of anarchists, recently went so far as to put out a piece addressing some of the more frequent and inane questions that have come up surrounding the activities of ITS and eco-extremism as of late, it can be found here. Maldición Eco-extremista was also gracious enough to offer further clarification here.
But Atassa’s refutation of the inane aside, as well as the countless others that ITS and Co. have somehow had the patience to produce, it remains the case that all the noise and fury that anarchists have spit up onto the interwebs in their virtuous fits of vitriol over the last couple of years of eco-extremist activity invariably amount to self-righteous, moralizing piles of shit. It is boring, tiresome, vacuous sound which despite its great show says nothing. I mean, personally these stinkpieces would be just a bit more interesting were it the case that there was at least a shred of critical engagement with what it is that eco-extremism actually asks one to consider. But no, instead we get the old leftist tactic of doubling down in the face of opposition. Progressivism, humanism and its ilk are like a stupid child with its hands over its ears screaming to keep the sound out, only to scream louder with each contradiction of its delusions. And so we get the same repetitions of the same hopeless progressive left-humanist fantasies that have gone unfulfilled now for more than a hundred years.
But I might ask, be honest with yourselves for a moment. The progressive project lives or dies on those hopes and dreams. It lives on that ever-so human rejection of the beauty of the world that already lies before it. In place of the grand beauty of the whole it sees only a world which is in some way fundamentally and irredeemably fallen. And from this fallen world it conjures stories of a salvation in a dream-world beyond the immanent. A world of human flourishing, equality, peace, love, et al. And it cannot let these dreams go for fear of falling apart entirely. But you see, these progressive dreams and their telos (this goes for anarchists, communists, et al.) cannot survive in a heart which has opened itself to the life beyond the dream-worlds of men and seen the emptiness and vanity of “progress.” It has opened its eyes to see that the tales of the fall and of a better world beyond this one are only a lie. It sees that “the good” is already before us in the earth, in that final indomitable reality, in all its grace but also in all its terrible ferocity, for the light and the dark are one with the life of the whole. As Jeffers has put it, “The world’s God is treacherous and full of unreason; a torturer, but also / The only foundation and the only fountain.”
And so the pessimist, nihilist, inhumanist strains of eco-extremism are the nightmares which haunt those dreams which constitute the foundations of the entire humanist and progressive ideal. The child squirms at the monsters that come in the night, creeping into the shadows of his dreams to terrorize him and rip apart his most cherished fantasies. And he kicks and screams and wakes from his sleep, shivering, into that dark and merciless world in a cold sweat.
And so I would only say to you that you don’t have to like eco-extremism. I get it. It’s uncomfortable to have someone plunge the cold steel of a blade into the heart of your dreams. But your own petty discomforts with eco-extremism aside, I am sorry to tell you that you will still have to deal with us. We aren’t going away. Because we are not merely a gang of violent criminals that destroy and kill in the name of the earth or just a loose collective of edgy writers on the internet. Beyond our own individualities what we represent, what manifests itself through this tendency, is as timeless as the world itself. That eternal darkness, the ineffable, writhing chaos at work in the heart of the world. Men, when they had not forgotten the ways of the earth, had spoken of us since he first told of the world in his stories. In the tales of the darker gods. For we are also one with the gods that bring the fires devouring homes in British Columbia, for we are also one with the gods that bring creeping ocean set to devour the dwellings of men built in arrogance on top of the old swamps, for we are also one with the gods that bring furious winds which descend from heaven to rip apart the houses of men in great tornadoes.
As individualists in this disgusting Leviathan we are those in the old stories that have made pacts with the dark gods. Seeing the desecration of all that is beautiful to us we have sided with the world-eaters rather than the empty promises of man and his works. And so eco-extremism is more than a thorn in the side of your stupid political projects or a group of “problematic” psychopaths. It is a message from the dark, manifestation of those sinister and primordial energies of the world which are older than even man himself. And so should the sound of the last eco-extremist bomb go quiet, should the last words uttered from out of the tendency be forgotten, you will still have to deal with us. All the noblest proclamations by your anarchist collectives the world over will not save you.
– Sokaksin