I really ought to stop giving guest slots to people who are better than me.
For a bit of SERIES CONTINUITY, note that the Earth First! organisation, mentioned herein, got a brief passing mention in my Third Position article two weeks ago. The French neo-fascist party Nouvelle Resistance infiltrated the French leadership of EF!, and I believe Troy Southgate (of National Anarchism fame) had some involvement with the British franchise.
Yes, I mentioned Frank Chodorov--who greatly influenced the young Murray Rothbard--had himself started out as a Georgist with a similar purpose in mind. If we ever get around to Social Ecology, Murray Rothbard's odd friendship in the late 60s with Murray Bookchin will provide a further point of series continuity.
That would be spicy - I didn't get around to talking about that for lack of space, but Bookchin hated everyone I mentioned in this article.
I've always had a pretty favourable impression of Bookchin. I don't agree with him much politically, but unlike far, far, far too many radical leftist thinkers out there, he more than anyone seems to have been conscientiously aware of how radical leftism, in particular when put into practice, could lead to thoroughly authoritarian results, and the importance of guarding against these pitfalls.
Admittedly, I am far from an expert on Bookchin. I've got a copy of Social Ecology I picked up many years ago in the Anarchist Bookshop in London that I've yet to do more than to skim through.
Interesting cultural point raised in the article about ecoterrorists being America's bogeyman in the absence of 9/11. I always presumed the militia movement as being the source of American fears during the 1990s, with the likes of the Waco siege and the Oklahoma City bombing being major flashpoints and this being reflected in programmes like The X-Files.
Though as the article points out there are these slivers of similarities between the militias and the ecoterrorists, perhaps in a world without 9/11 and the subsequent changes in the American psyche we might have seen these coalesce with the militias adopting some tactics designed to preserve the world after the gubmint/FEMA/Illuminati/Rectillians come for them and for the monkeywrenchers to go more and more off grid and survivalist in nature.
I think it's weird how it's never really brought up that Tyler Durden's terrorist gang and Project Mayhem in Fight Club is all about trying to create an anarcho-primitivist society. I mean, that's really what struck me the first time I saw the movie, the whole thing about the Narrator finding his very materially comfortable life with his apartment full of IKEA furniture deeply unfulfilling, and it is first when he loses it all that he begins to find satisfaction with life, and all that talk about "you are not your job, you are not how much money you have on the bank".
I mean, Tyler at one point even gives the following little speech about his vision for the future: "In the world I see—you're stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You will wear leather clothes that last you the rest of your life. You will climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Tower. You will see tiny figures pounding corn and laying-strips of venison on the empty car pool lane of the ruins of a superhighway."
I mean, Tyler at one point even gives the following little speech about his vision for the future: "In the world I see—you're stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You will wear leather clothes that last you the rest of your life. You will climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Tower. You will see tiny figures pounding corn and laying-strips of venison on the empty car pool lane of the ruins of a superhighway."
I mean, Tyler Durden is the split personality of the protagonist so it's not like he's exactly sane.Th' everloving fuck was the author of that smoking at the time? You try and grow or live in New York without a veneer of modern technology to support you, and the ugly reality of urban pollution buildup is going to shoot you in the back of the head.
Thanks - amendedWith the risk of being a massive dick here for pointing out minute little flaws here, but the completionist inside me cannot help it. @AndyC it would appear that in posting the Privitivism article, you missed adding it into the Alternate Ideologies categories, so you don't get it up as part of the series when you click the Alternate Ideologies tag.