Deep Green Resistance

Deep Green Resistance
Founded2011
FounderDerrick Jensen, Lierre Keith, Aric McBay
FocusEnvironmental justice, Social justice
Location
  • USA
MethodDirect action, education
Websitedeepgreenresistance.org

Deep Green Resistance (DGR) is a radical environmental movement that perceives the existence of industrial civilization itself as the greatest threat to the natural environment, and calls for its dismantlement and a return to a pre-agricultural level of technology. Although DGR operates as an aboveground group, it calls on others to use underground and violent tactics such as attacks on infrastructure or assassination. A repeated claim in DGR literature is that acts of sabotage could cause a cascading effect and lead to the end of civilization. DGR and far-right ecofascists use similar accelerationist and anti-majoritarian tactics, seeking systemic collapse.

DGR is widely denounced by other radical environmentalists, even those who support sabotage, because of "the group’s vanguardism, its disregard for billions of already-precarious human lives dependent on agriculture, its self-defeating attacks on anarchism and veganism, and the virulent transphobia of the group’s leaders, Lierre Keith and Derrick Jensen".[1] Some Native American[2] and other environmental groups have refused to work with DGR because of its controversial stance on transgender issues.

Beliefs

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In the 2011 book Deep Green Resistance, the authors Lierre Keith, Derrick Jensen and Aric McBay state that civilization, particularly industrial civilization, is fundamentally unsustainable and must be actively and urgently dismantled in order to secure a future for all species on the planet.[3]

DGR calls for the dismantling of industrial civilization,[4][5] and the return to a pre-agricultural lifestyle.[4]: 1 [5]: 1 

Tactics

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DGR operates as an aboveground movement[6] and requires members to take a nonviolence pledge as of 2019,[7] calling on others to use underground and violent tactics such as attacks on infrastructure or assassination.[6] DGR is one of very few environmental groups to endorse lethal violence as sometimes justified.[8] A repeated claim in DGR literature is that acts of sabotage could cause a cascading effect and lead to the end of civilization.[6] Because the organization advocates sabotage and violence, which it views as necessary tactics to achieve its goal of dismantling industrialized society and capitalism, it can be classified as an apocalyptic or millenarian movement.[9] DGR and far-right ecofascist groups such as The Green Brigade share similar tactics and an anti-majoritarian and vanguardist approach to activism, and both are accelerationist, seeking systemic collapse.[10]

In 2017, DGR filed a lawsuit against the state of Colorado arguing that the Colorado River should be recognized as a legal person. The lawsuit was dismissed in 2019.[11][12]

An article in Journal of Strategic Security describes the group as a "worrying bioterrorism threat", citing its strategy and propensity towards violence.[13] Beginning in 2014, the FBI investigated Deep Green Resistance.[7][14]

Criticism

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Anarcho-primitivists John Zerzan, Kevin Tucker and others criticize DGR's promotion of hierarchy in organizing an underground resistance, the code of conduct, the historical understanding of revolution and radical history, and the cult of personality around Jensen and Keith.[15][16][17][18] Michelle Renée Matisons and Alexander Reid Ross of the Institute for Anarchist Studies have accused DGR of "emulating right-wing militia rhetoric, with the accompanying hierarchical vanguardism, personality cultism, and reactionary moralism."[19]

How to Blow Up a Pipeline author Andreas Malm—who argues that some forms of infrastructural sabotage are justified to advance the environmental movement—condemned DGR, arguing its proposals, if implemented, would spell disaster for the vast majority of people in the world.[20][21]

Anti-trans views

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DGR describes itself as a radical feminist organization, and has been described by critics as transphobic and TERF.[22][23][24] The organisation has described hormone therapy for transgender youth as eugenics and excludes transgender women from women's spaces,[25] while Keith has compared gender transitioning to mutilation.[26] In 2019, Jensen, Keith, as well as DGR activist Max Wilbert published an article in Feminist Current saying "Hands up everyone who predicted that when Big Brother arrived, he’d be wearing a dress, hauling anyone who refuses to wax his ladyballs before a human rights tribunal, and bellowing ‘It’s Ma’am!’"[25] Keith linked the group's views on transgender issues to the environment, claiming that trans women "want to violate the basic boundaries of women" and comparing that to "violating the boundaries of forests and rivers and prairies".[2] During the fight against the Thacker Pass lithium mine, some members of DGR formed another group called Protect Thacker Pass without disclosing their affiliation with DGR. They worked with local Native American group People of Red Mountain, which broke off the affiliation saying that DGR members had not been transparent about their anti-trans views.[2]

In 2012, founder McBay left the group, saying that it promoted transphobia.[9] Earth First! Journal repudiated DGR in 2013 and said that it would "no longer print or in any way promote DGR material" because of its leaders' anti-transgender stances.[27] In 2022, during the resistance to the Thacker Pass Lithium Mine, Indigenous group People of Red Mountain broke ties with attorney and DGR member Will Falk, citing transphobia as the reason.[28] Other environmental groups involved in opposing the Thacker Pass project have distanced themselves from DGR.[29] The organization has also faced criticism for its association with Jennifer Bilek, an investigative journalist, who has, with antisemitic connotations, argued that transgender rights are a transhumanist conspiracy.[25][30][31]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ Brown, Joseph M. (2021). "Civil Disobedience, Sabotage, and Violence in US Environmental Activism". The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Environmental Politics (1 ed.). Oxford University Press. p. 369. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780197515037.013.34. ISBN 978-0-19-751503-7.
  2. ^ a b c Scheyder 2024, p. 139.
  3. ^ McBay, Aric, Lierre Keith, and Derrick Jensen. 2011. Deep Green Resistance. New York: Seven Stories Press.[page needed][non-primary source needed]
  4. ^ a b Wilbert, Max. "Max Wilbert on the Deep Green Resistance movement". Earth Tribe. Retrieved December 29, 2022.
  5. ^ a b Richardson, John H. (December 11, 2018). "Ecoextremism - Children of Ted". New York. Retrieved December 29, 2022.
  6. ^ a b c Zúquete, José Pedro (2023). "Left-Wing Extremism and the War on Civilization". The Palgrave Handbook of Left-Wing Extremism, Volume 2. Springer Nature Switzerland. pp. 257–276. ISBN 978-3-031-36268-2.
  7. ^ a b "Revealed: how the FBI targeted environmental activists in domestic terror investigations". The Guardian. 24 September 2019. Retrieved 10 June 2022.
  8. ^ Fleming, Sean (2024). "Searching for Ecoterrorism: The Crucial Case of the Unabomber". American Political Science Review: 1–14. doi:10.1017/S000305542300148X. ISSN 0003-0554.
  9. ^ a b LeVasseur, Todd (2017). "Decisive Ecological Warfare: Triggering Industrial Collapse via Deep Green Resistance". Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture. 11 (1): 109–130. doi:10.1558/jsrnc.29799. ISSN 1749-4915.
  10. ^ Loadenthal, Michael (2022). "Feral fascists and deep green guerrillas: infrastructural attack and accelerationist terror". Critical Studies on Terrorism. 15 (1): 169–208. doi:10.1080/17539153.2022.2031129. S2CID 247161917.
  11. ^ Burcham, Mia (2022). "What Is the Grass?: Defining the Ecological Person". Arizona Journal of Environmental Law and Policy. 13: 1.
  12. ^ Spitz, Laura; Penalver, Eduardo M. (2021). "Nature's Personhood and Property's Virtues". Harvard Environmental Law Review. 45: 67.
  13. ^ Spadaro, Paola Andrea (2020). "Climate Change, Environmental Terrorism, Eco-Terrorism and Emerging Threats". Journal of Strategic Security. 13 (4): 65–66. doi:10.5038/1944-0472.13.4.1863. ISSN 1944-0464. JSTOR 26965518. S2CID 230633873.
  14. ^ Brown, Alleen (August 24, 2020). "Tilting at Windmills: The FBI Chased Imagined Eco-Activist Enemies, Documents Reveal". The Intercept. Retrieved 10 June 2022.
  15. ^ "Deep Green Resistance: A Book Review". Sprout Distro. 2013-05-18. Retrieved 2016-06-25.
  16. ^ Matisons, Michelle; Ross, Alexander Reid (2014–2015). "Deep Green Resistance — a critique". Earth First! Journal. Archived from the original on 2014-08-03. Retrieved 2015-06-06.
  17. ^ "Anarchy Radio 03-08-2011 : John Zerzan : Free Download & Streaming : Internet Archive". Archive.org. Retrieved 2016-06-25.
  18. ^ "Authority and civilization". Archived from the original on July 10, 2012. Retrieved May 21, 2012.
  19. ^ Renée Matisons, Michelle (9 August 2015). "Against Deep Green Resistance". Industrial Workers of the World Environmental Unionist Caucus. Retrieved 26 June 2022.
  20. ^ Malm, Andreas (2021). How to Blow Up a Pipeline. Verso Books. ISBN 978-1-83976-025-9.
  21. ^ Review of How to Blow Up a Pipeline, Tyler McCreary in Antipode
  22. ^ Houlberg, Laura (2017). "The End of Gender or Deep Green Transmisogyny?". Routledge Handbook of Gender and Environment. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-315-88657-2.
  23. ^ "I'm Not A Gender Zombie and Neither Are You: Rejecting Anti-Trans Bigotry From Rachel Ivey and Deep Green Resistance". Autostraddle. 20 May 2013. Retrieved 26 June 2022.
  24. ^ Borden, Mitch (29 March 2016). "Transphobes Still Welcome at Public Interest Environmental Law Conference". It's Going Down. Archived from the original on 6 May 2022. Retrieved 26 June 2022.
  25. ^ a b c Taft, Molly (9 February 2022). "The Environmental Movement Isn't Ready for Transphobia". Gizmodo. Retrieved 26 June 2022.
  26. ^ Borden, Mitch (15 January 2018). "Environmental group protested for being transphobic". KMXT. Retrieved 26 June 2022.
  27. ^ Pellow, David Naguib (2019). "Eco-Defence, Radical Environmentalism and Environmental Justice". Routledge Handbook of Radical Politics. Routledge. p. 112. ISBN 9781315619880.
  28. ^ Holzman, Jael (6 February 2022). "How a fight over transgender rights derailed environmentalists in Nevada". Politico. Retrieved 26 June 2022.
  29. ^ Hill, Jessica (4 March 2022). "News reports to the contrary, opposition to proposed Northern Nevada lithium mine continues". Las Vegas Sun. Retrieved 26 June 2022.
  30. ^ Dodds, Io (26 June 2022). "How paranoia over trans rights became catnip for QAnon and the far right". The Independent. Retrieved 27 June 2022.
  31. ^ Moore, Mallory (20 March 2022). "ALERT: Transphobic feminism and far-right activism rapidly converging". Freedom News. Retrieved 26 June 2022.

Further reading

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