Deep Green Resistance: A Book Review

By RUHE / SproutDistro

Since this review of the book Deep Green Resistance was written, some things have changed: Deep Green Resistance has affirmed their transphobia as their official policy, Earth First! has distanced themselves from DGR, and Aric McBay has left Deep Green Resistance. However, even as DGR seems to crumble due to its anti-trans views, there has still been relatively little discussion of the other problematic aspects of DGR.

Over the summer of 2011, Deep Green Resistance – which bills itself as “an analysis, a strategy, and a movement” – started to gain attention in anarchist circles. This isn’t very surprising, as one of it’s primary theorists is Derrick Jensen – who despite not being an anarchist – has contributed to various anarchist publications such as the now defunct Green Anarchy. In addition, Deep Green Resistance argues in favor of dismantling civilization and advocates for immediately taking the steps necessary to do so – which is sadly an all-too-rare perspective.

Catching Fire to the Reign

or, Why I think the second Hunger Games film will be a spark that reduces the US Empire to ashes, and in general, why we need to manifest a subversive potential of pop-culture

by Panagioti, EF! Newswire

That’s right, I just referenced The Hunger Games and Adele in one cheesy fell swoop… No shame here. I got nothing to hide. I want to see us usher in an era where it’s commonplace for experiences of popular entertainment to end in a riot, ala Igor Stravinsky’s 1913 Rite of Spring debut.  Yes, I want people to leave Adele’s concerts (when she resumes touring after the new album, allegedly later this year) setting cop cars ablaze—in the rain—either with joy over her beautiful voice, or disgust over her obscene commercial success. It doesn’t much matter. Those riots will be like warm-ups for the big one in the Fall…

[Tired of watching the same old anti-globalization indymedia riot porn re-runs? Check out this trailer…]

On November 22, when the second film in The Hunger Games trilogy, Catching Fire, is released, I think we should anticipate every shopping plaza surrounding the corporate theaters to be ransacked, with every police station demolished (or the “Peacekeepers” as Katniss Everdeen knows them), and every building controlled by the State (“The Capitol”) occupied and turned into revolutionary day care centers where young children can be cared for while the rest of us are ripping up concrete and planting fruit tree forests across interstate super highways.

Defending the barricades, Les Miserables film

That’s right. No more fucking around. 

Deep Green Resignation and Reclamation

by former members of DGR Portland

We, former members of the Deep Green Resistance Portland chapter, are hereby severing our ties with Deep Green Resistance and especially with Derrick Jensen and Lierre Keith.

We want to make it very clear that it is in spite of, not because of, the bullying and harassment we have personally received since last weekend that we are standing by our principles and refusing to devolve into hatefulness. Individuals involved have received personal attacks including rape and death threats and we find that abhorrent and, when disproportionately targeted towards women, misogynistic as well.  We renounce trans*phobic statements made by Derrick Jensen, Lierre Keith, and other members of DGR.  We are in solidarity with the many biocentric and anti-civilization people of any gender who are against all forms of oppression and will not accept bigotry in any form.

Deep Green Transphobia

A statement from the Earth First! Journal Collective

On several occasions the Earth First! Journal editorial collective has run pieces both online and in print either written by or about the Deep Green Resistance Movement. As a collective, we’ve considered DGR to have some value to Earth First! discussions around feminism, organizing principles, ecological analysis and critiques of civilization. In 2010 we published a piece by Lierre Kieth and Derrick Jensen, and in 2012 we inserted a section from the book Deep Green Resistance on militant approaches to the ecological crisis, which was written by Aric McBay.

The Earth First! Journal collective is dedicated to providing our readers with views from diverse groups, from Earth First!ers on the frontlines to conservative farmers’ struggling against the Keystone XL Pipeline or fracking; from the Move 9 and all political prisoners to Zapatistas, liberal climate change media stars, pacifist Quakers against mountaintop removal and bomb throwing anarchists in Mexico and Greece. It is our goal to print stories and analysis that spark relevant discussion, new alliances, necessary schisms and resistance.

However, in light of DGR’s continued assault on trans people, with language and analysis that denies the struggles of trans-people and even goes so far as to deny the value, worth and power of their existence in radical movements, labeling trans people as somehow “not real,” or as Post-Modern manifestations of individualism, the Earth First! Journal collective will no longer print or in any way promote DGR material. While we don’t need to agree with an individual or organization to find their words or actions relevant for discussion we will not continue to include those whose core expression of values continues to promote exclusion and oppression.

The Early History of the Robot Wars, Part IV

In which we discuss the possibility of autonomous AI class warfare, mullets as resistance, Big Brother iPhones, the Kaczynski-bot  and other shit of great and creepy importance.

by Russ McSpadden / Carbon-based humanoid correspondent for the King Ludd & John Connor Institute of Anti-Technology

Roboter Proletarier Aller Länder Vereinigt Euch!

Etymologists trace the word robot back to robota  from old Church Slavonic, a language standardized by Byzantine Greeks in the 9th Century to Christianize the Slavic peoples. It translates variously as “servitude,” “forced labor” and “drudgery.” With cognates in German, Polish, Russian and Czech, it is a word rooted in the European system of serfdom whereby bonded tenants paid rent through forced labor, maintaining the crops, roads, mines and forests of a lordly class. So, if you are slinging double fudge yuppie lattes against your will to pay for the right to have water, food, and shelter, then you are, according to its classic usage, a fucking robot. You know the feeling right?

If The Hunger Games can’t ignite an eco-rebellion…

"Make the Odds Be Ever in Our Favor"

According to this fresh review of the Hunger Games book trilogy and recent film adaptation, written from a unique Earth First! perspective: “Hands down, The Hunger Games is pop culture’s best contribution yet to the growing eco-rebellion.”

Check it out here, in the EF! Newswire’s “Reviews” section.