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Atassa: Reading in Eco-Extremism #1
For many readers the first question they may ask upon picking up Atassa is "Where is the anarchy in this?" This is not the anarchism of an evolutionary (or revolutionary) transformation of this cold, bureaucratic world into a nicer, better world. It isn't about ideas. It is about something a lot more uncomfortable. It begins in the moment when Industrial Society and Its Future was translated into Spanish. The premise of that writing, much like the eco-extremist movement that Atassa journals, is that Civilization should be fought. The example of Ted Kaczynski is of what that fighting looks like: it isn't social, it isn't popular. It will probably end in failure and imprisonment.
ITS and other eco-extremists have denounced anarchism. But they have denounced it FROM within and not from the outside of anarchism. Their Wild Nature is similar to most other expressions of anti-civilization perspectives. Their anti-anarchism is an attempt to do what they did as anarchists better. Their anti-anarchism is similar to what post-left, second wave, and anti-state communists, are trying to say when they complain that anarchists often act as moralist, failure-as-a-form-of-life, close minded, parochial position. Often the position is the enemy of the goal and this is especially true as the failures of old strategies meet new (uncomfortable) approaches.
These days there are people who are unapologetically doing violence against people in the name of wildness. This journal is a collection of writings by people who agree with them. Poetry and essays that celebrate anti-humanist action for the wild.
What if the earth were truly first?
ITS and other eco-extremists have denounced anarchism. But they have denounced it FROM within and not from the outside of anarchism. Their Wild Nature is similar to most other expressions of anti-civilization perspectives. Their anti-anarchism is an attempt to do what they did as anarchists better. Their anti-anarchism is similar to what post-left, second wave, and anti-state communists, are trying to say when they complain that anarchists often act as moralist, failure-as-a-form-of-life, close minded, parochial position. Often the position is the enemy of the goal and this is especially true as the failures of old strategies meet new (uncomfortable) approaches.
These days there are people who are unapologetically doing violence against people in the name of wildness. This journal is a collection of writings by people who agree with them. Poetry and essays that celebrate anti-humanist action for the wild.
What if the earth were truly first?
- GenresPhilosophyHistory
178 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2016
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If an editor is known, however, Various is not necessary. List the name of the editor as the primary author (with role "editor"). Contributing authors' names follow it.
Note: WorldCat is an excellent resource for finding author information and contents of anthologies.
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June 28, 2017no stars because this is complicated. i didn't read this the same way i read other books. i basically read it on the edge of my fucking seat.
where to start? what to say when about half of what is presented here deals with the most vital and urgent subjects that the social movements and the left-anarchists continue to ignore and obfuscate... and the other half is some of the most confused, reprehensible, civilized nonsense that has ever passed under the label of "anti-civ"?
for now i'll leave off with dealing with recent condemnations of the "eco-extremist" tendency coming from anarchists who don't even want to do away with civilization. killing random people (or claiming to) is definitely unhinged, but if you don't want to do away with industry or all police forever then why do i give a fuck that your workerist ass wants to do away with the ITS? i don't.
it would be much more interesting to see intelligent, anti-civ critiques of this.
the nihilist armed struggle component can already be seen as having some adequate counter-points in other texts not explicitly about these groups (and pre-dating this publication), texts like "an anarchist response to the nihilists," and "letter to the anarchist galaxy," etc. etc. its always really funny that the ultra-tough, i-don't-need-your-approval, i don't believe in anything crowd chastises anti-civ insurrectionaries for their insufficiently purged leftist residues... but in a big way they obviously just want to be part of the spectacle and impact the feelings and opinions of the people in power, and are as "Platonist" as anyone else in their own way. however, the conflict with zerzan and the AP set re: hope, the future, strategy, tactics, and honesty in what your advocating for, is very interesting indeed. (see the YouTube video of Atassa responding to Zerzan).
one of the flagship essays, and one that the editor of Atassa has said he believes is the most important, is "The Return of the Warrior," a all-too-credible reading of Clastres. Clastres simultaneously was a male-chauvinist french white asshole intellectual that went to study the indians AND also failed or refused to distinguish in his category of "societies against the state" between tiny hunting bands composed of 6 or 7 people and partially-stratified, in-the-process-of-civilizing, agricultural villages composed of tens of thousands of people. nomadic societies with an insignificant domestication component. societies based on domestication and sedentism. both societies against the state according to Clastres, who occasionally just starts blathering on about all of this gender and sexuality shit that he supposedly locates in the cosmology and customs of the people with whom he lived, but without ever really offering the reader any evidence that this is how these people understand themselves, or that any of their material practices confirm the weird sexist shit Clastres is so eager to confirm. consequently, a whole lot of the HYPER-patriarchal shit written by the eco-extremists can arguably be seen as a very confused conflation of the elements of a primitive and of a civilized life. these people just refuse to entertain the idea that the exclusively male warrior/barbarian archetype is not an uncivilized figure (even if there are admirable aspects) just because he is not the post-modern techno-industrial city dweller. so, so boring.
maybe it's me but editor Abe Cabrera seems low key really into rape and considers it a part of re-wilding. a lot of this reads like hurt boys who always hated women finally finding their edgy voices. gross. not to mention pretty civilized. the eco-extremists may be striving to differentiate themselves from eco-defense and AP stuff, but, as evidenced by defenses of Rod Coronado found among the latter, they sure have a lot in common. i guess the Wild Nature dreams of women to not be raped by civilized/civilizing warring males doesn't count as Wild Nature.
on that note, every major essay in this book (and i reiterate, especially the Clastres analysis) has at least one or two parts (often more) that wildly contradicts itself. not in that oh-so-cool "our contradictions are the results of the contradictions of this culture" way, but in the "this totally undermines and discredits your own point you were trying to make" way. and i mean more specific and immediately consequential contradictions than the obvious "we're against morality/green platonism/whatever! but also Wild Nature is good!" example.
i couldn't really fault anyone for calling this (proto-) fascistic. while it's not surprising that there seem to be strong authoritarian commitments being proffered by this "Wild Reaction" mixed in with the sentiments about the individual against civ/mass society, i would probably roll my eyes at all of the most eager finger-pointers. it really is disturbing to see this turn toward shit that little insurrectionary white boys will inevitably seize upon with glee to gloss over their own lack of commitment to ending rape culture. on the other hand, i don't see how the left-anarchists hope to stop the rising tide of actions and groups like this when the Left by-and-large rejects the critique of civilization (much less acts to obstruct the Leviathan), when they don't want to do away with the most colonizing, violent, toxifying, centralized, murderous system possible. in 20 or 40 years the non-state and proto-state violence to be found around us is probably going to overshadow what is currently going on by a mile. shit, it might even make our current straits look like the edenic fuckin idyll. a lot of that violence is going to be really despicable, unscrupulous, random, confused, distasteful to our civilized sensibilities but also really and actually wrong by the metrics of probably most people across the world in a variety of societies. its probably also going to have far more resonance and less compunction or contrition than the left tendencies that keep begging people to act like model citizens before ever considering going to the attack on this culture, which they will never do.
so yeah, some good attacks on humanist, progressive garbage and the brutal and ecocidal culture of cities and interesting critiques of AP... amid a bunch of rapey warrior bullshit and authoritarianism, hurt-boy-lashes-out psychopathology, ressentiment-fueled attempts to cryptically re-erect what is basically the nuclear or polygynistic family model of gender relations, and all this non-moralistic morality, non-civilized domestication and misogyny.
where to start? what to say when about half of what is presented here deals with the most vital and urgent subjects that the social movements and the left-anarchists continue to ignore and obfuscate... and the other half is some of the most confused, reprehensible, civilized nonsense that has ever passed under the label of "anti-civ"?
for now i'll leave off with dealing with recent condemnations of the "eco-extremist" tendency coming from anarchists who don't even want to do away with civilization. killing random people (or claiming to) is definitely unhinged, but if you don't want to do away with industry or all police forever then why do i give a fuck that your workerist ass wants to do away with the ITS? i don't.
it would be much more interesting to see intelligent, anti-civ critiques of this.
the nihilist armed struggle component can already be seen as having some adequate counter-points in other texts not explicitly about these groups (and pre-dating this publication), texts like "an anarchist response to the nihilists," and "letter to the anarchist galaxy," etc. etc. its always really funny that the ultra-tough, i-don't-need-your-approval, i don't believe in anything crowd chastises anti-civ insurrectionaries for their insufficiently purged leftist residues... but in a big way they obviously just want to be part of the spectacle and impact the feelings and opinions of the people in power, and are as "Platonist" as anyone else in their own way. however, the conflict with zerzan and the AP set re: hope, the future, strategy, tactics, and honesty in what your advocating for, is very interesting indeed. (see the YouTube video of Atassa responding to Zerzan).
one of the flagship essays, and one that the editor of Atassa has said he believes is the most important, is "The Return of the Warrior," a all-too-credible reading of Clastres. Clastres simultaneously was a male-chauvinist french white asshole intellectual that went to study the indians AND also failed or refused to distinguish in his category of "societies against the state" between tiny hunting bands composed of 6 or 7 people and partially-stratified, in-the-process-of-civilizing, agricultural villages composed of tens of thousands of people. nomadic societies with an insignificant domestication component. societies based on domestication and sedentism. both societies against the state according to Clastres, who occasionally just starts blathering on about all of this gender and sexuality shit that he supposedly locates in the cosmology and customs of the people with whom he lived, but without ever really offering the reader any evidence that this is how these people understand themselves, or that any of their material practices confirm the weird sexist shit Clastres is so eager to confirm. consequently, a whole lot of the HYPER-patriarchal shit written by the eco-extremists can arguably be seen as a very confused conflation of the elements of a primitive and of a civilized life. these people just refuse to entertain the idea that the exclusively male warrior/barbarian archetype is not an uncivilized figure (even if there are admirable aspects) just because he is not the post-modern techno-industrial city dweller. so, so boring.
maybe it's me but editor Abe Cabrera seems low key really into rape and considers it a part of re-wilding. a lot of this reads like hurt boys who always hated women finally finding their edgy voices. gross. not to mention pretty civilized. the eco-extremists may be striving to differentiate themselves from eco-defense and AP stuff, but, as evidenced by defenses of Rod Coronado found among the latter, they sure have a lot in common. i guess the Wild Nature dreams of women to not be raped by civilized/civilizing warring males doesn't count as Wild Nature.
on that note, every major essay in this book (and i reiterate, especially the Clastres analysis) has at least one or two parts (often more) that wildly contradicts itself. not in that oh-so-cool "our contradictions are the results of the contradictions of this culture" way, but in the "this totally undermines and discredits your own point you were trying to make" way. and i mean more specific and immediately consequential contradictions than the obvious "we're against morality/green platonism/whatever! but also Wild Nature is good!" example.
i couldn't really fault anyone for calling this (proto-) fascistic. while it's not surprising that there seem to be strong authoritarian commitments being proffered by this "Wild Reaction" mixed in with the sentiments about the individual against civ/mass society, i would probably roll my eyes at all of the most eager finger-pointers. it really is disturbing to see this turn toward shit that little insurrectionary white boys will inevitably seize upon with glee to gloss over their own lack of commitment to ending rape culture. on the other hand, i don't see how the left-anarchists hope to stop the rising tide of actions and groups like this when the Left by-and-large rejects the critique of civilization (much less acts to obstruct the Leviathan), when they don't want to do away with the most colonizing, violent, toxifying, centralized, murderous system possible. in 20 or 40 years the non-state and proto-state violence to be found around us is probably going to overshadow what is currently going on by a mile. shit, it might even make our current straits look like the edenic fuckin idyll. a lot of that violence is going to be really despicable, unscrupulous, random, confused, distasteful to our civilized sensibilities but also really and actually wrong by the metrics of probably most people across the world in a variety of societies. its probably also going to have far more resonance and less compunction or contrition than the left tendencies that keep begging people to act like model citizens before ever considering going to the attack on this culture, which they will never do.
so yeah, some good attacks on humanist, progressive garbage and the brutal and ecocidal culture of cities and interesting critiques of AP... amid a bunch of rapey warrior bullshit and authoritarianism, hurt-boy-lashes-out psychopathology, ressentiment-fueled attempts to cryptically re-erect what is basically the nuclear or polygynistic family model of gender relations, and all this non-moralistic morality, non-civilized domestication and misogyny.
May 22, 2023
It is a collection of multiple essays. There are some "interesting" parts to understand the "eco-extremist" point of view of the critique of civilization, but the book is overall completely confused and aberrant. Super authoritarian, ambient misogyny, incredibly patriarchal, the question of rape, especially by Abe Cabrera, with rape as the origin of what they call "wild nature", in a warlike way.
In fact, it is even a kind of misanthropy that leads to anti-social criminality, which even seems to be a source of pleasure for them? it follows the logic of what they say, as the goal is to destroy everything...but wow.
The text is built around a lot of contradictions too, morality is rejected and at the same time everything is in the name of "wild nature".
Moreover, they completely ignore the fact that indigenous societies seek care within their communities, and ITS (individuals tending towards the wild) focuses only on the war aspect: war for war's sake, literally, without any goal, and not in a survival perspective. If the goal is to destroy everything, in an almost apocalyptic way, developing links with 'nature' or some spirituality is absurd. The death they want to cause is 'unnatural'.
In fact, it is even a kind of misanthropy that leads to anti-social criminality, which even seems to be a source of pleasure for them? it follows the logic of what they say, as the goal is to destroy everything...but wow.
The text is built around a lot of contradictions too, morality is rejected and at the same time everything is in the name of "wild nature".
Moreover, they completely ignore the fact that indigenous societies seek care within their communities, and ITS (individuals tending towards the wild) focuses only on the war aspect: war for war's sake, literally, without any goal, and not in a survival perspective. If the goal is to destroy everything, in an almost apocalyptic way, developing links with 'nature' or some spirituality is absurd. The death they want to cause is 'unnatural'.
September 3, 2020
Sheer joy, despite the ape hubris at this stage of doing anything at all. Eco-terrorism? Ha! Just wait: Nature will prove the ultimate terrorist, no one needs so much as lift a finger now, it is all over but the crying. Prepare to die.
December 29, 2018
The perfect book for you if you liked Fight Club, but didn’t understand it.
June 1, 2020
The satire of Eco-extremism presented in this book is excellent. I don't understand why the book upset a lot of the anarcho-leftoids, but they get upset often so it's not terribly surprising
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December 7, 2024I'm not giving this a rating because I feel like anything I would give it would be a lie. On one hand, this is clearly a work written by the most depraved, senseless, and anti-scientific thinkers of our time. On the other hand, this is their goal from the outset and they achieve their vision in a way that is horrifyingly convincing. If anything, this book should be read as a historical document on the popular knowledge that something radical must be done.
June 14, 2022
Eco terrorism? Never heard of it? Read some of the most interesting perspectives about an ideology you’ve never heard of
July 8, 2025
sorry chuds, I like women
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews