Notes: Originally published in the 2021 Schwarze Saat, a compilation of 85 Black and Indigenous essays mostly translated into German. The German translator Elany also included this and other essays by her and her father, Samuel B. Original title was Survival in Endzeiten: Ein Wildpunk-„Manifest“. Original German texts available at https://feralfire.noblogs.org/post/2022/01/25/gesammelte-schriften-von-elany-samuel-aus-schwarze-saat/. English translations are available at 1312.noblogs.org. Elany was kidnapped by the Swiss government during the translation of these texts and remains locked up as of publication. Fire to the ALL prisons. Samuel B died poisoned by civilization before the book was published. It was dedicated to him and his words live on to fight the leviathan.
“The spectre that many try not to see is a simple realisation — the world will not be ‘saved’. Global anarchist revolution is not going to happen. Global climate change is now unstoppable. We are not going to see the worldwide end to civilisation/capitalism/patriarchy/authority. It’s not going to happen any time soon. It’s unlikely to happen ever. The world will not be ‘saved’. Not by activists, not by mass movements, not by charities and not by an insurgent global proletariat. The world will not be ‘saved’. This realisation hurts people. They don’t want it to be true! But it probably is.“
Those are some of the first lines from Desert, likely the most important anarchist work in recent times. Desert confronts us with something that that we all may feel deep inside but don’t want to be true: “Deep in our hearts we all know that the world will not be ‘saved.’”
Meanwhile, most people understand that capitalism is destroying the planet and that studies prognosticate civilization collapse… but then what happens? Certainly, the breakdown of a civilization is nothing new. Countless past civilizations have already collapsed from the power imbalances inherent in every civilization - the Roman Empire, the Mesopotamian Empire, the Incan Empire… But another thing is certain: each has been followed by an even more dangerous civilization.
We currently find ourselves in the era of capitalist-industrial civilization. This time around it acts on the global level and embodies the transformation of the once green Earth into a single desert. The downfall of this civilization will be connected to more pain and destruction than any previous civilization. And in its place, something even more dangerous could again arise if global wars for resources break out and become the new norm. Perhaps a technocratic-fascism. The signs are already there, at least.
Although the signs have never been so dystopian as today, resistance to the system has declined immensely since the two world wars. What hope remains for a global insurrectionary or revolutionary mass that surrenders to the dystopia in order to fend off something even worse? The revolutionary movements of the last two centuries couldn’t finish off capitalism while it was still in its kids shoes, today the revolutionary spirit is largely nipped in the bud. The last decade may have been shaped by new revolts, yet in none of these revolts was it possible to either mobilize a truly broad mass or to bring about actual changes. Even if we could have hope for the masses to once again develop an insurrectionary or revolutionary potential in the future, it would come too late. We don’t have time to hope and wait. The desert comes. Anarchists lose valuable time for action when they concentrate on “mobilizing the masses.” Even if you could succeed in 30 years, what will be left by then?
“The hope of a Big Happy Ending, hurts people; sets the stage for the pain felt when they become disillusioned. Because, truly, who amongst us now really believes? How many have been burnt up by the effort needed to reconcile a fundamentally religious faith in the positive transformation of the world with the reality of life all around us? Yet to be disillusioned — with global revolution/with our capacity to stop climate change — should not alter our anarchist nature, or the love of nature we feel as anarchists. There are many possibilities for liberty and wildness still.” - Desert
Active disillusionment is liberating. It doesn’t mean becoming incapacitated but fighting in the here and now, without any desperate hopes for a “world revolution” that will only leave us waiting while the world around us breaks. Wildpunk recognizes the dystopia of the future and present and tries to face it and create ways of life without at the same time falling into utopianism. The “goal” is not waiting for a better tomorrow but fighting in the here and now to build something still worth living for: for us, our loved ones, our animal and plant world, our Earth. When it is no longer about waiting and hoping, everything is open to us.
Colonialism, Green Resistance, and Fighting Eco-Fascism: An Interview With Eco-Anarchist Kevin Tucker
Colonialism, Green Resistance, and Fighting Eco-Fascism: An Interview With Eco-Anarchist Kevin Tucker
In an effort to start to broaden the voices of antifascists, we are doing interview across the radical spectrum to open up space to expanding what we understand as resistance. Kevin Tucker is a “Primal Anarchist” who takes inspiration from hunter-gatherer societies and looks to take on many of the inequities inherent in settler colonialism and industrial capitalism.
