Number 50
In this issue:
- Guerrilla war against “smart” fascism
- Smearing and cheering for the system
- Manipulating Greta
- Fighting fracking in Fermanagh
- Journalism for a world beyond capitalism
- Hyperlooping towards environmental disaster!
- Miguel Amorós: an orgrad inspiration
- Acorninfo
1. Guerrilla war against “smart” fascism
Guerrilla warfare has begun in Europe against the “smart” fascism being imposed on us all by the wealthy technocratic elite.
In the early hours of the morning on Tuesday June 11 2019, ten vehicles belonging to electricity distribution company Enedis were torched at Albi in southern France, causing damage put at 400,000 euros.
The firm is controversially imposing “Linky” smart meters on households across the country, sparking a massive wave of grassroots rebellion.
While this usually takes the form of local campaigning, legal action and physical blocking of access to meters, some opponents have taken the war with Enedis a step further.
Attacks against Enedis premises have already been carried out in Grenoble, Crest, Limoges, Paris and Besançon.
On December 6 2018, numerous Enedis vehicles, and two buildings, were damaged by fire in Foix, in the south-west region of Ariège.
Corporate media are reporting that the attacks are the work of a mysterious underground anarchist group called “ACAB”.
Smart meters are just one aspect of a nightmare society being planned for the global population, involving the computerised control of every aspect of our lives.
This techno-totalitarianism, embracing AI, 5G, the “internet of things” and transhumanism, presents itself as “sustainable” and part of a “green” revolution, but in fact involves an intensification of the industrial nightmare.
Following an arson attack against Enedis in Montreuil, Paris, the anti-industrial rebels posted a statement online.
“A nuclearised society, radioactive waste in the air, water and earth. A society of control, smart spies in the homes, everything connected, measured, under surveillance.
“Desire for revolt, desire for destruction, desire for freedom”.
2. Smearing and cheering for the system
A rather disturbing article has been doing the rounds in French-speaking eco-activist circles.
On the face of it, there is little new for English speakers in the piece by Anton Mukhamedov published on a blog hosted by Le Monde newspaper.
It criticises the Deep Green Resistance (DGR) movement, citing longstanding concerns regarding its language on transgender issues and tendencies towards hierarchical organising.
There is a quote from one of the DGR France organisers about “laws of natural selection” which smacks of a social darwinism completely at odds with Peter Kropotkin’s theory of mutual aid.
So why do we say the article is disturbing? There are two reasons, one relating to its content and the other to its author.
A closer look at the blog reveals that nestling within a perfectly legitimate criticism of a particular organisation, DGR France, is a broader ideological attack aimed at all of us who challenge the industrial system.
This is expressed most succinctly in one of author Mukhamedov’s replies in the comments section, dated March 26 2019.
Here he declares that the problem with DGR is that “it confuses the capitalist techno-industrial system with the tools of technology and forgets that we could find an emancipatory use for our tools so as to dismantle oppressive structures and redefine our relationship with the biosphere”.
At root, this is the same old message which has been touted by the industrialist left for decades. It’s not the technology that is the problem, they say, but the use it is put to, the political context in which it is situated.
But even worse still, Mukhamedov explicitly tries here to confuse social progress with industrial “progress”, in suggesting that technology could be “an emancipatory” tool for dismantling undefined oppressive structures.
Here we see the fake green message peddled by those who try to sell us (lucrative) techno-solutions to the climate crisis and by those who present “smart” technology, AI and transhumanism as offering a golden “emancipatory” future for the human species, while totally ignoring that the ongoing development of such technologies would spell certain death for the planetary organism of which we are part.
In the same comment, Mukhamedov goes on to identify as “reactionaries” those who deliberately sow “confusion” by “criticising mainstream environmentalism without even discussing what the dismantling of our civilization could imply”.
He also addresses this issue in the article itself, where he says it is “highly problematical” to welcome the ending of industrial civilization.
He complains that DGR “has for its primary aim the dismantling of existing institutions, without worrying about providing alternatives for people who depend on these”.
Mukhamedov’s argument here is the same as the one used by mainstream capitalists. “You can’t do away with our system because we have made people depend on it for their survival”.
The reality of industrial civilization is that it is killing the whole of life on Earth. That is why so many of us are now saying that industrial civilization must be stopped.
We are anti-industrialist because we are partisans for life, for all life, for real life.
But the trick always used by the system, and adopted here by Mukhamedov, is to reverse the morality.
We are supposed to believe that it is industrial society which stands for life and health, thanks to the marvels of its pharmaceutical industry, and that it is its heartless opponents who threaten to bring death and misery to millions.
Mukhamedov spins a “slippery slope” trajectory which starts with deep green bogeymen attacking industrial infrastructure, continues with them dismantling towns and setting up rural autonomous communities organised by direct democracy (an “ultra-hierarchical” concept in his view) and ends with the death of “the majority of human beings”.
While being careful (in view of his target readership) to pay lip service to traditional medicine, he in fact leaps to the defence of its industrial counterpart citing (like any good industrialist) its inventions which have saved “innumerable” lives.
Refusing to acknowledge the benefits of “modern medicine” amounts to “reactionary eugenics”, he strangely argues.
While he has to admit that “many ‘deep’ green environmentalists are not reactionaries”, and that social ecologists also call for an exit from industrial civilization, Mukhamedov claims that “the heirs of ‘deep’ green politics have often forged deplorable links between the environmental movement and theories similar to those of the extreme right”.
At this point we will immediately refer readers to the article ‘Organic Radicalism: Bringing Down The Fascist Machine‘ that we published a year ago.
Here we describe and deconstruct, in detail, the “ecofascist” smear used to attack opponents of industrial capitalism.
We mention, in passing, Alexander Reid Ross, a one-time editor of Earth First! Journal, who identified parts of the EF! network, as well as anarchists and left-wingers generally, as being affected by what he terms ideological “fascist creep”.
Mukhamedov in fact relies on Reid Ross as the principal source for his analysis of the US deep green movement.
Reid Ross also featured in an article we published last year, entitled ‘Fake Left Pro-War Neoliberals Break Cover‘.
This explained that he had just written an article in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz smearing opponents of US/NATO warmongering in Syria as stooges of Assad and Putin.
He declared: “The ‘anti-imperialist’ left is now shilling for tyrants in Damascus and Moscow. And conspiracy theories are the toxic glue binding them to their fellow Assad and Putin apologists on the alt-right”.
Astonishingly for a self-proclaimed anti-fascist, Reid Ross complained about the UK Labour Party’s “tepid response” to the alleged gas attack in Douma (now exposed as a false flag) and its “rejection of any humanitarian grounds for military action”.
He identified a “crossover between leftists and the far-right” in challenging the Western narrative on Syria.
As we wrote at the time, Ross was reading from exactly the same ideological script as neoliberal war apologists.
“He is trying to use the bludgeon of an alleged ideological association with the far right as a way of silencing voices on the left who challenge the US imperialist narrative”.
Funnily enough, of course, this same “far right” smear was Reid Ross’s weapon of choice in his attack on the deep green movement, one taken up enthusiastically by Mukhamedov in his French language version of the narrative.
Even more funnily enough, Mukhamedov seems to have exactly the same views as Reid Ross on Syria!
His 2018 article ‘You aren’t antiwar if you aren’t anti-Assad’s war‘ cites “fascism expert” Reid Ross and follows him in raising the spectre of a “red-brown alliance”.
Clearly frustrated by stubborn types who refuse to swallow Western propaganda on Syria, Mukhamedov denounces them as “reactionaries infiltrating left-wing spaces”.
He claims they are “attempting to subvert movements deeming themselves progressive in favour of a pseudo anti-imperialist and reactionary approach to geopolitics, which lacks any concern for civilians and promotes, under the guise of secular anti-imperialism, a ruthless and sectarian dictator who has executed thousands and continues to commit crimes against humanity”.
Note that this is the same morality-reversal trick again. People opposing war are presented as the baddies, lacking any “concern for civilians” and effectively being responsible for thousands of deaths and “crimes against humanity”.
This is just like the way people opposing the murder of the planetary organism are depicted as monsters who threaten to kill off “the majority of human beings”.
In both instances Mukhamedov attempts to discredit authentic anti-imperialist and deep green opponents of the industrial capitalist system by adopting a pseudo-radical critique intended to sway a left-wing readership.
He can’t condemn his opponents as “extremists”, “enemies of the West” or “anti-American” because this would do them more good than harm in most left-wing circles, so instead he calls them “reactionaries” and insinuates contamination with far-right ideas.
It is worth noting that Mukhamedov’s article was published by Pulse Media, edited by Idrees Ahmad (notorious for his attacks on anyone challenging Western narratives on Syria), the controversial Robin Yassin-Kassab and Danny Postel, who in 2014 urged the US to ‘Use Force to Save Starving Syrians‘.
Interestingly, the Pulse piece is quoted twice, and at length, in an article by Daphne Lawless, who cloaks him in the white coat of neutral expert objectivity by introducing him as a “French political scientist”.
We wrote about Lawless in Acorn 42 and referred to the piece in question, ‘The Red-Brown ‘zombie plague’: how fascist ideas are becoming popular on the Left‘ on the New Zealand site Fightback.
We noted how Lawless, a supposed left-winger, had leapt to the defence of the US involvement in Syria, insisting that talk of pro-US false flag attacks was “baseless slander” and “conspiracy theories”, tainted by association with the far right.
This was all part of “a growing convergence of Leftist and far–right rhetoric”, a “red-brown” menace, she argued, not forgetting to quote that esteemed “fascism expert” Alexander Reid Ross.
Mukhamedov was also honoured with a guest post on the blog run by “Bob from Brockley”, who was heavily implicated in the Philip Cross scandal which involves the systematic editing of Wikipedia to mute criticism of the US-led system.
Lawless, Reid Ross, Bob from Brockley and Mukhamedov clearly all very much come out of the same political mould.
Mukhamedov’s work has also been published in Lebanese English-language paper The Daily Star and in Yemeni publication Al-Jumhuriya.
The latter publication is a strange choice for a freelance journalist whose own personal website is called Revolutionary Democracy, because Al-Jumhuriya is known for its support for the Hadi regime.
Yep, that’s right, the regime, backed by Saudi Arabia, the US and the UK, which for the last four years has been unleashing hell on earth for the people of Yemen, bringing death, famine and destruction to millions of innocent civilians and creating what the UN has described as the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.
We would have liked to have provided readers with a bit more information about Anton Mukhamedov and his take on current affairs but unfortunately both his Facebook and Twitter accounts seem to have been terminated.
Here is a screenshot of what the latter used to look like.
We have never met Mukhamedov and for all we know he may be a completely autonomous and genuine activist whose views simply don’t happen to coincide with our own.
But we do find it a bit strange that this “revolutionary” always seems to be on the side of the system, defending industrialism against deep green critics, cheerleading for US intervention in Syria, lending his services to a mouthpiece of the US-backed regime in Yemen.
Whether deliberately or not, his attacks on anti-industrialists and anti-imperialists amount to a defence of the military-industrial complex, a defence which dishonestly presents itself as a noble emancipatory crusade against “reactionaries”, “red-browns” and fascists.
Mukhamedov, like Reid Ross, effectively acts as a gatekeeper of the system, embedded with what is supposed to be the opposition.
They, and all the others like them, try to define the limits of our resistance, tell us all when we are going too far, whip us back into line when we begin to question the official narrative of infinite industrial growth, of humanitarian warfare and emancipatory technology.
Their venomous smears are aimed at all of us who dare to call for real change, who dare to believe that another world is possible, who dare to challenge the system to its core.
A very useful expose of the “green” capitalist machine manipulating climate darling Greta Thunberg has now been translated into English.
Isabelle Attard, who describes herself as a green anarchist, writes: “Everything was carefully planned to transform the young Swede into an international heroine.
“Among the shareholders of the start-up, we find members of the two interconnected families: the Perssons, children of the billionaire Sven Olof Persson, who made their fortune in large part by selling cars (Bilbolaget Nord AB), and the Rentzhogs.
“The two families of investors, who met in the region of Jämtland, have no connections to environmentalism, they are specialists in finance”.
The article describes a hidden agenda which can only be described as greenwashing, a deliberate lie “that enables capitalism to continue”.
Attard adds in a PS: “So that things are clear — the cause of this young teenager and all the young people following her, all over the world, is righteous and a great source of hope for environmental awareness.
“That being said, we shouldn’t be fooled by the role of certain adults in her entourage — spin doctors, mentors, specialists in greenwashing, green growth and capitalism. To wage an effective fight, we cannot allow ourselves to be fooled”.
We have been compiling a page of links to articles on this whole issue of fake-green capitalism within the climate justice movement, which we will continue to update.
The in-depth investigations by Cory Morningstar on the Wrong Kind of Green blog are particularly worth studying.
4. Fighting fracking in Fermanagh
by ‘Fracking is stoppable, another world is possible!‘
“The people of Fermanagh came together as never before to defeat this toxic industry in 2014. We can have confidence that together we can save our county once again.”
Determined words from local councillor and campaigner Donal O’Cofaigh in response to Tamboran’s renewed bid to frack Northern Ireland.
The company was last granted a licence in 2011, but its plans to drill a borehole at a quarry near Belcoo were met with fierce community opposition.
In late July 2014, Tamboran arrived on site in Belcoo with the intention of carrying out exploratory fracking in the Acheson and Glover quarry.
Their arrival sparked a determined local mobilisation and led to the establishment of a 24-hour camp at the quarry entrance. No drilling rig arrived.
One of the highlights from the campaign included local children singing a song calling out those in power for ignoring the hearfelt concerns of their community.
In August 2014, the Environment Minister finally took heed of the community’s demands, asking Tamboran for an Environment Impact Assessment. The project was stopped. Until now, that is.
In a radio interview, Aedín Mc Loughlin of Good Energies Alliance Ireland, based in Leitrim, highlighted the cross-border aspect of the project, saying “We know that water knows no borders, no boundaries, and if they are going to frack in Fermanagh that will have an impact on our area.”
A public consultation is open until July 5. Keep an eye on the Belcoo Frack Free Facebook page for detailed guidelines on how to make a submission.
Grassroots community resistance has been the driving force behind the success of the anti-fracking campaign across Europe and, along with unfavourable geology, continues to hamper efforts to develop the industry at scale in England too.
Understanding the difference between community and society – as highlighted by sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies – has been essential to defeating fracking, and provides valuable lessons for other movements.
As a long-time supporter of the UK campaign comments in a recent article: “The frackers might not have succeeded in establishing an industry, but they have certainly unintentionally built a committed, resilient, effective movement of people”.
And it is this people power, rooted in communities, that is sending – and will continue to send – the fracking industry packing wherever it seeks to establish itself. Fracking is stoppable, another world is possible!
Taken from the third issue of ‘Fracking is stoppable, another world is possible!‘
5. Journalism for a world beyond capitalism
We are living in surreal times, when most journalists have dropped all pretence at reporting the truth.
They churn out blatant propaganda on behalf of our rulers and obediently avoid mentioning anything that might upset their paymasters.
The Gilets Jaunes revolt in France might as well never have happened, for English-speaking media. Exposure of NATO war crimes and false flags is consigned to the memory hole. The suffering of the Palestinian people is ignored. The persecution of Julian Assange is, at best, an amusing aside.
It is therefore crucial that independent journalists step forward to fill the space vacated by their corporate counterparts.
One of several encouraging initiatives is Shoal Collective, which provides “radical writing for a world beyond capitalism”.
A glance at their website, shoalcollective.org, reveals an impressive range of subject matters. Recent articles include:
* An analysis of the way the hyperloop high speed travel project uses fake green credentials to win credibility (see below).
* A call by Australian Palestinian and Jewish activists for singer and songwriter Xavier Rudd to cancel his planned concert in Israel.
* A report on how the Turkish state is continuing to try to wipe out Kurdish culture with a controversial dam which will see hundreds of majority-Kurdish villages submerged under water, displacing 78,000 people, as well as thousands of nomadic people.
* An exposé of the way the French state has been caught out using fake news in its unrelenting war against the Gilets Jaunes uprising.
* An interview with an anti-fascist fighter about defeating Daesh (Isis/Isil) in its Syrian capital.
6. Hyperlooping towards environmental disaster!
Imagine the delight! In years to come we could all be zipping merrily across continents at almost the speed of sound through massive low-pressure tubes!
Even better, we’re talking eco-chic sustainable speed, with fossil fuel air and motor transport reduced and the super-duper shiny new “Hyperloop” tubes powered by a host of solar panels.
Following the stalling of plans for a Los Angeles to San Francisco route, US entrepreneur Elon Musk reported last year that he has now received some written authorisation to start work on a Hyperloop connection between New York and Washington, DC.
Pods travelling at 1,200 kph (750 mph) would take passengers from one city to the other in 29 minutes, he said.
The Hyperloop concept has been offered by one of Musk’s companies as open-source technology and various businesses have been showing an interest.
South Korea signed a deal to develop Hyperloop and is hoping the scheme will allow people to replace a three-hour drive from Seoul to Busan with a 20-minute trip.
Plans are also underway in France for a 40-minute Hyperloop connection between Paris and Toulouse, while the first operational route could be in the Emirates, with a Hyperloop tube planned to span the 150km between Dubai and Abu Dhabi in 12 minutes. The first stretch is due to be launched in 2020.
India, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Sweden and Indonesia are also said to be interested in building their own Hyperloops.
Over the last few years, Musk and his cheerleaders have been making much of Hyperloop’s supposedly “green” credentials.
Josh Giegel, president of Los Angeles firm Hyperloop One told the Inverse website: “We’re advertising, and we really believe in, a fully kind of green solution here.”
The techno-enthusiast Digital Trends website gushed about the “fantasy of futuristic transportation” and declared: “The Hyperloop could revolutionize mass transit, shortening travel times on land and reducing environmental damage in the process.”
Norway’s Green Party also jumped aboard the “renewable” high-speed bandwagon when it called for a Scandinavian Hyperloop connection between Oslo and Copenhagen.
But potential passengers should prepare to mind the gap… between hype and reality.
Christopher Laumanns of the degrowth.info web portal in Germany warned that there were a number of questions that needed to be asked about Hyperloop, such as “do we really want to go that fast?”, “is this the kind of technology we want?”, “who will profit from this?” and “what is the real, full ecological impact of this project?”.
He told Shoal: “The hyperloop is a mega-infrastructure-project. These projects have a rich tradition of being way more expensive than the ambitious investor says they are at the beginning.
“It will have a huge impact on the landscape, especially if the pods have to travel in a very straight line, just like highways and high-speed rail, which cut through landscapes, often with tunnels and bridges”.
Plans reveal that the giant Hyperloop tubes would either run underground, as in the New York to Washington project, or be raised above ground level on pylons – in either case cutting swathes through vulnerable landscapes and fragile habitats.
And what of the steel or reinforced concrete that would be needed to construct these continent-spanning tubes? Would this be sourced, manufactured and transported with zero environmental impact?
Not exactly. Steel depends on iron ore mines, mainly opencast, and the production process involves high levels of greenhouse gas emissions, wastewater contaminants, hazardous wastes and solid wastes.
Concrete, meanwhile, is made largely from cement and that the cement industry is notoriously one of the primary producers of carbon dioxide, a major greenhouse gas.
On top of that, all the aggregates that make up concrete have to be quarried or dug out of the Earth somewhere, then transported, with further use of fossil fuel and other resources and increases in pollution.
The inclusion of solar panels in the Hyperloop marketing vision is also something of a green herring.
Enthusiasts for solar power often seem to conveniently forget that the panels themselves have a heavy environmental footprint, starting with the quartz mining, which threatens miners with the lung disease silicosis, and continuing with the caustic chemicals such as sodium hydroxide and hydrofluoric acid used in their manufacture.
The process uses not only precious water but also large amounts electricity and there is a problem with waste.
In 2011 residents of Haining in eastern China rioted for four days because the local solar panel factory was seriously polluting a nearby river, dumping toxic levels of fluoride into the water and killing large numbers of fish and some pigs.
It is unsurprising then, that Hyperloop’s claims to be eco-friendly have been greeted with scepticism by environmentalists.
Grayson Flory, editor of the Earth First! Journal in the USA, told Shoal: “The Hyperloop project is another example of dangerous greenwashing, pure and simple.
“It is a blow against a sustainable future for the planet disguised as a solution to industry-caused climate catastrophe. Environmental claims about the Hyperloop demonstrate the dominant culture’s obsession with technological progress and speed over all else.
“To prioritize high-speed transport over actual necessities for survival – such as non-toxic air, pure water, and thriving, intact ecosystems – is to ignore the very problem proponents of the Hyperloop claim they are trying to solve.
“Increasing our reliance on and dedication to technology and industry is not a rational or holistic approach to problems caused by increased reliance on and dedication to technology and industry.
“High-speed travel is not sustainable, no matter what new technology we use to make it appear so.”
Laumann, in Germany, said the broader issue of high-speed transport was important from a degrowth perspective:
“Capitalist acceleration creates the illusion of giving you more time, while it actually leads to a greater number of activities in the same amount of time, thus also creating more growth.”
José Ardillo, author of books such as Les Illusions renouvelables (“Renewable Illusions”), also agreed that the contemporary capitalist demand for high-speed transport, which Hyperloop seeks to meet, was the underlying problem.
He told Shoal: “The need for high-speed transport in modern industrial society comes within a wider historical context which was already underway at the time when the first railways were being built.
“You could say that the first need for capitalism was to efficiently link energy resources with the centres of industrial transformation, on the one hand, and on the other, of course, with distribution networks.
“The first war fought by industrial society at that stage was a war against distance. It had to nullify distance. Now contemporary industrial society is at war with time.
“Once towns and centres of production across the territory are linked together, you have to eliminate as far as possible the time needed to move between them.”
The great English writer and art critic John Ruskin died in January 1900 and so never knew the industrial insanities of the twentieth century, let alone the twenty-first.
But when he wrote in the 1870s about the madness of the railways he could just as easily have been describing the hyperloopiness of certain contemporary high-speed projects.
“There was a valley between Buxton and Bakewell, once upon a time as divine as the vale of Tempe”, he recalled.
“You enterprised a railroad through the valley – you blasted its rocks away, heaped thousands of tons of shale into its lovely stream.
“The valley is gone and the Gods with it, and now, every fool in Buxton can be at Bakewell in half-an-hour, and every fool in Bakewell at Buxton; which you think a lucrative process of exchange – you Fools everywhere”.
7. Miguel Amorós: an orgrad inspiration
“No revolt against domination can really represent the general interest unless it turns itself into a rebellion against technology, a Luddite revolt”
Miguel Amorós (1949-) is an anti-industrial anarchist theorist, close to the situationist movement.
In the 1970s he was involved in setting up anarchist groups such as Bandera Negra (Black Flag) and Tierra Libre (Free Land). Jailed by the Spanish Franco regime, he then went into exile in France.
Between 1984 et 1992, Amorós was involved in producing the post-situationist review Encyclopédie des Nuisances and became known for combining full-on revolutionary anarchism with anti-industrialism.
In an article entitled ‘Where Are We Now?’, inspired by the essay of the same name by William Morris, he wrote: “The most basic task ahead of us is to bring as many people as possible together around the conviction that the system has got to be destroyed”. (1)
He added: “Technology is an instrument and a weapon because it benefits those who know best how to use it and how to be used by it. The bourgeoisie have used machines and the ‘scientific’ organisation of work against the proletariat. (2)
“No revolt against domination can really represent the general interest unless it turns itself into a rebellion against technology, a Luddite revolt”. (3)
Amorós mused on the disastrous own-goal scored by the 19th century anti-capitalist movement when it decided that industrial development offered the best route to liberation.
He wrote: “Contrary to what Marx and Engels claim, the workers’ movement condemned itself to political and social immaturity when it abandoned Utopian socialism and chose science and progress (bourgeois science and bourgeois progress) instead of community and individual flowering”. (4)
In the essay ‘Elementary Foundations of the Anti-Industrialist Critique’, he insisted that “factories, machines and bureaucracies are the real pillars of capitalist oppression”. (5)
He added: “Our critique of science, technology and the industrial system is a critique of progress. And in the same way it is a critique of the ideologies of science and progress, not least the workerist ideology, in both reformist and revolutionary guise, which is based on taking over, in the name of the proletariat, the bourgeois industrial system and its technology”. (6)
In the article ‘We Anti-Industrialists’ he wrote that in the previous phase of capitalist domination people had worked so that they could consume, whereas in the current phase we had to constantly consume so that work existed. The anti-development struggle was based on the negation of both work and consumption, in a bid to break this vicious cycle, he explained. (7)
Rather than abandon the traditional anarchist class struggle in order to embrace an anti-industrial perspective, Amorós has often stressed that they are one and the same fight.
“The anti-industrial critique does not deny the class struggle, it preserves and surpasses it and, moreover, class struggle cannot exist in today’s world other than in the form of anti-industrial struggle”, he wrote in his ‘Elementary Foundations of the Anti-Industrial Critique’. (8)
In this essay, he also made it clear that humankind will know no happiness and no future unless we can destroy the prison of industrial capitalism, writing: “An existence designed by technocrats according to industrial norms is, in effect, a life of slavery… (9) The struggle against capital is not simply a struggle for a free life, but a struggle for survival”. (10)
Video link: Perspectives anti-desarrollistes en el segle XXI (41 mins)
1. Miguel Amorós, ‘Où en-sommes nous?’, Préliminaires: Une perspective anti-industrielle(Villsavary: Éditions de la Roue, 2015), p. 22.
2. Amorós, ‘Où en-sommes nous?’, Préliminaires, p. 12.
3. Amorós, ‘Où en-sommes nous?’, Préliminaires, p. 19.
4. Amorós, ‘Où en-sommes nous?’, Préliminaires, p. 20.
5. Amorós, ‘Fondements élémentaires de la critique anti-industrielle’, Préliminaires, p. 60.
6. Amorós, ‘Fondements élémentaires de la critique anti-industrielle’, Préliminaires, pp. 60-61.
7. Amorós, ‘Nous, les anti-industriels’, Préliminaires, pp. 55-56.
8. Amorós, ‘Fondements élémentaires de la critique anti-industrielle’, Préliminaires, p. 59.
9. Amorós, ‘Fondements élémentaires de la critique anti-industrielle’, Préliminaires, p. 60.
10. Amorós, ‘Fondements élémentaires de la critique anti-industrielle’, Préliminaires, p. 61.
From the orgrad website.
A translation from Spanish of a recent article by Amorós can be found on the Wrong Kind of Green blog.
Political prisoner Julian Assange (see Acorn 49) is still in Belmarsh high security prison, after the hearing for his extradition to the USA was delayed until February 2020. He risks being handed a 175-year jail sentence by American courts, for revealing Uncle Sam’s dirty secrets. As the Defend Assange twitter account put it: “175 years is not a life sentence. It’s a death sentence”. Meanwhile the police raid on the ABC offices in Australia confirms that it is not just one individual facing the wrath of the authoritarian neoliberal system. All journalists who reveal truth and challenge power will be targeted as the system ramps up its attacks on dissident voices.
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The Gilets Jaunes’ revolt against the neoliberal Macron regime in France is, incredibly, still going strong after 31 successive weekends and huge levels of repression. While numbers on the protests have inevitably dropped slightly, the general feeling is that this is no passing moment of discontent and that a solid grassroots network has been built which will continue to present a serious challenge to the system. Our Gilets Jaunes page now has links to more than 30 English-language articles and videos.
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“It is easy. These spaces are designed so that a worker, who probably isn’t paid enough, can change over hundreds of these adverts in one morning!” Not content with exploiting and controlling every aspect of our lives, capitalism also visually occupies our urban environment with its advertising. If you feel like taking back what is yours, the free online Street Ad Takeover Manual from Brandalism tells you exactly how to go about it.
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“Behind financial institutions’ and NGOs’ plans to ‘combat’ the climate crisis, a project aims to generate profits through the indiscriminate sale of forests. This model is being used to green capitalism…” This is the timely warning from Aldo Santiago in Guatemala, who explains how so-called “Protected Areas” in the department of Petén are a Trojan Horse for capitalist exploitation.
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“The Zapatistas of Chiapas have shown that small autonomous and federated communities can cultivate the land by and for all, provide medical care, produce natural energy, renewable and free (an option ignored by the ecological mafias). It is essential that gratuity enter, like life, into our manners and our mentalities, from which it has been banished, excluded, forbidden for millennia. No illusions, however: the struggle against the chains with which we have deliberately held ourselves back may be very long. Which is a good reason to give ourselves over to it immediately”. So writes Raoul Vaneigem, the Belgian situationist philosopher, in an article calling for ‘A radical politics of life‘.
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A call has gone out for international action against the World Economic Forum in January 2020. The WEF paints itself as a vaguely “green” organisation, and hosted Greta Thunberg at its 2019 event, but in fact it represents the vile business interests which are destroying nature everywhere. Swiss activists are planning action and an international strike against the opening of the WEF’s next summit in Davos on January 21 – “Tuesday to End the Past, instead of Fridays for Future”.
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“The ‘smart city’ project on the Toronto waterfront is the most highly evolved version to date of what Harvard professor Shoshana Zuboff calls ‘surveillance capitalism… It is a dystopian vision that has no place in a democratic society”. This is the warning from none other than Roger McNamee — prominent Silicon Valley tech investor. Find out more on the Common Dreams site.
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Yet more shocking news of the extent to which the industrial capitalist cancer is eating away at the living flesh of our world: “There’s so much plastic in the environment that bees are making nests out of it” reveals this report from Argentina.
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Acorn quote: “We must have the earth again. The communities of socialism must redistribute the land. The earth is no one’s private property. Let the earth have no masters; then we men are free”.
(For many more like this, see the Winter Oak quotes for the day blog)
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