Horizontal hostility Archives - Deep Green Resistance Blog

On leaderlessness and strategy: reflections on Occupy Wall Street

Deep Green Resistance believes strongly that for a social movement to be effective, it must have a strategy: a clear path to get from where we are now to where we want to be instead. Effective leadership is also necessary, and should be nurtured. Jo Freeman’s classic essay “The Tyranny of Structurelessness” addresses the folly of believing a group can or should operate without leaders; in the absence of a formal planned structure, informal and often undesirable bids for power will inevitably arise.

A new essay by Yotam Marom, sharing lessons from the Occupy Wall Street movement, confirms the importance both of strategy and of fostering good leadership. Marom attributes the collapse of OWS in large part to the deliberate tearing down of leaders and general in-fighting, And without a viable strategy, people in movements are at risk of losing focus on the goals, and instead get sucked into horizontal hostility:

We call each other out and push one another out of the movement, because we are desperate to cling to the little slivers of belonging we’ve found in the movement, and are full of scarcity — convinced that there isn’t enough of anything to go around (money, people, power, even love). We eat ourselves alive and attack our own leaders because we’ve been hurt and misled all our lives and can’t bear for it to happen again on our watch. We race to prove we are the least privileged, because this is the only way we can imagine being powerful. We turn our backs on people who don’t get it, because organizing them will not only be hard but also painful, because we will have to give up some of our victimhood to do it, because it will mean being vulnerable to the world we came to the movement to escape. Our ego battles are a natural product of a movement that doesn’t have a clear answer for how leadership is to be appreciated and held accountable at the same time. Our inability to celebrate small victories is a defense from having to believe that winning is even possible — a way to avoid the heartbreak of loss when it comes.

And perhaps most importantly: Our tendency to make enemies of each other is driven by a deep fear of the real enemy, a paralyzing hopelessness about our possibilities of winning. After all, whether we admit it or not, we spend quite a lot of our time not believing we can really win. And if we’re not going to win, we might as well just be awesome instead. If we’re not going to win, we’re better off creating spaces that suit our cultural and political tastes, building relationships that validate our non-conformist aesthetic, surrendering the struggle over the future in exchange for a small island over which we can reign.

DGR’s strength lies in our realistic plan, Decisive Ecological Warfare, to obtain ecological and social justice. We have a clear focus, a sense that we actually can win, and strong leaders to organize group efforts toward our shared goals. We invite you to join us, and we encourage all activists to proactively develop structures that make sense for their groups.

Read the entire essay by Yotam Marom: The inside story on what really caused the Occupy Wall Street movement to collapse

Resilient, Life-Supporting Resistance Communities

Marilyn Linton / Deep Green Resistance Eugene

Derrick Jensen interviewed Stella Strega Scoz, a DGR member in the Canary Islands, for the December 6th episode of Resistance Radio. Scoz heads the Integral Permaculture Academy, which takes a radical approach to permaculture practice and teaching.

Balanced resistance movements have both the outward action and the inward support and strength of strong community behind them. A system in harmony with the living world, promoting reconnection to it, and resisting the oppressive dominant systems must be built with an awareness of the current circumstances, an inclusion of indigenous wisdom from many sources and experts in applicable fields, and a heart-felt love of life.

Integral Permaculture covers all this ground and more, while working toward food sovereignty and other forms of independence from civilization. The study of Integral Permaculture in tandem with a deep green resistance is an important part of building a stable culture of resistance.

Listen to the Resistance Radio interview below, or listen on our Youtube channel.

Browse all of Derrick Jensen’s Resistance Radio interviews.

Chris Hedges on the State of Extraction: exploitation, capitalism, and patriarchy

Chris Hedges spoke last weekend at the State of Extraction conference at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, BC. While most speakers focused exclusively on natural “resources” ripped from the planet, Hedges brilliantly linked this environmental devastation with the social impacts of colonialism, imperialism, and capitalism on our most vulnerable populations. He challenged the narcissism, individualism, and identity politics that have come to dominate modern culture, including most of the left. He identified as especially insidious the widespread acceptance of prostitution and pornography: no other subjugation is so widely rationalized and dismissed as these abuses of women. Even in so-called progressive and radical circles, sexualized violence and racism are fiercely defended where no one would try to justify such violations in any other circumstances.

In fact, Hedges was temporarily deplatformed from the State of Extraction conference precisely for calling on the left to recognize the war against women as part of the larger colonialist project, in his recent article amplifying the voices of women on the front lines. Even in venues actively opposing the status quo of capitalism and extraction from the earth, any challenge to the accepted wisdom of patriarchy is met with knee-jerk attacks and an unwillingness to listen. We’ve seen this again and again in recent years as radical feminist speakers have been silenced: deplatformed from venue after venue, threatened with rape and murder, and attacked in vicious smear campaigns. The only thing unique about this latest incident is Hedges’ position as a privileged white man.

Deep Green Resistance strongly advocates for a radical view of our interlocking crises, environmental and social. We need to get to the root of our problems to fashion effective solutions. In our FAQ Is DGR a Feminist Organization? we explain:

Right now, patriarchy is the ruling religion of the planet. Women are just another resource for men to use in their endless quest to prove their toxic masculinity and breed soldiers for civilization’s constant state of war. The masculinity and the war—against people, against the planet—together have created a perpetual motion machine of domination and destruction of the land and human rights. This is why militarism is a feminist issue, why rape is an environmental issue, why environmental destruction is a peace issue. We will never dismantle misogyny as long as domination is eroticized. We will also never stop racism. Nor will we mount an effective resistance to fascism, since, as Sheila Jeffreys points out, fascism’s root is ultimately the eroticization of domination and subordination–fascism is in essence a cult of masculinity. Those are all huge spin-outs from the same beginning. The result is torture, rape, genocide, and biocide.

Please ponder this as you watch Chris Hedges give this amazing and truly radical speech:

Trigger warning: Besides the generally disturbing nature of this subject, Hedges reads a graphic account of a brutal rape from minute 46 to 48.

Also read DGR member Jonah Mix’s analysis of the speech and male backlash against it: When “Paternalism” is Worse Than Commercial Rape: #StateofExtraction and the New Manarchist.

Anti-Racist Rednecks With Guns

One of the ironies of contemporary politics is the identification of poor whites with the Republican party, even more opposed to working class interests than the Democrat party. Taken to the extreme by the Tea Party, this cooptation takes energy which might challenge the capitalist class structure and redirects it against other poor and working class people who have different skin color.

Dave Strano has worked for years against this counter-productive racism, in Kansas and Missouri as part of the John Brown Gun Club distributing anti-racist literature at gun shows, and more recently in Colorado as Redneck Revolt. In an excellent interview, Strano points out how the left, even the radical community, often practices classism subtle and overt, leaving a large segment of potential allies as easy recruits for racist elements of the conservative movement. He describes organizing within this culture to restore traditional values of opposition to exploitation:

Today, the term redneck has taken on a demeaning connotation, primarily among upper class urban liberals who have gone out of their way to dehumanize white working class and poor people. Terms like “white trash” have come to signify the view among these same upper class liberals of poor and rural whites.

To us, the term redneck is a term that signifies a pride in our class as well as a pride in resistance to bosses, politicians, and all those that protect domination and tyranny.

We’re very upfront about our position of being not only opposed to white supremacy, but to the shared culture of whiteness being one that has only been defined by being an oppressor race. What unites white skinned people currently is a shared history of being the footsoldiers of oppression. We want to ensure that as many whites as possible reject this commonly understood idea of whiteness and instead join in a common struggle with workers of all skin colors in a struggle for total and real liberation.

The whole interview is an important privilege check for middle- and upper-class liberals and radicals alike, as we work to build as broad-based a culture of resistance as possible. Read the whole article: Rednecks With Guns and Other Anti-Racist Stories and Strategies

Cathy Brennan interviewed on radical feminism and “transphobia”

Cathy Brennan is a long-time radical feminist lesbian activist working for equal rights for gay people, trans people, and women. Mark Angelo Cummings (FTM transman) and Jessica Lynn Cummings (MTF transwoman) interviewed Brennan for the July 24 episode of Transition Radio TV. Despite her work in the real world to protect trans rights and end male violence against women, children, and gender noncomforming people, Brennan has become a popular target of what the hosts term “keyboard warriors” who attack and tear down potential allies. These “transactivists” have threatened to rape and to kill Brennan and many other radical feminists expressing their analysis of gender. Brennan and the Cummings explore this radical feminist analysis that one can not simply “identify” out of this oppressive caste system, and the irony of heterosexual men who identify as women bullying and threatening actual women with whom they disagree.

Brennan speaks with clarity on the history of gay, lesbian, and queer culture; ongoing homophobia and male violence; why the interests of lesbians don’t always align with the goals of others in the GLBTQ movement, which she says has become a men’s-rights movement; and why women need women-only space to meet and organize.

The interview is an excellent antidote to the smears across the internet about Cathy Brennan and her supposed “hate speech” or “transphobia.” Brennan’s long-time experience with queer culture and human rights activism, and her resultant wisdom, is a breath of fresh air if you’ve ever wallowed through the trans hostility online.

By giving Brennan a platform to discuss these important issues, and by calling out abusive individuals and behavior within the trans community, the Cummings model what we all need to do in in our various environmental and social justice circles. We can’t build a healthy movement while being undermined by aggressive or mentally ill individuals sabotaging relationships by fostering horizontal hostility. We need to identify and expel such people from our communities, with zero tolerance for abusive behavior. Besides damaging our internal dynamics, such individuals make our movement look childish and non-serious to outside observers, potentially discrediting the goals towards which we work.

Watch the video interview below, and check out the recently featured Meghan Murphy interview for more on how horizontal hostility and labels like “transphobic” are used to silence women.

An Open Letter to the UK Environmental Movement

Earlier this year, Deep Green Resistance UK published an open letter to the UK environmental movement, asking folks passionate about stopping ecocide to evaluate the environmental movement to date, and to think and act strategically. The letter describes DGR’s strategy and approach, acknowledges that not everyone will agree with all aspects of DGR’s analysis, and asks each reader to make up his or her own mind as to which resistance options to support and pursue.

Our culture currently rewards behaviour that benefits the individual at the expense of the group. Acquisitive and insane behaviour such as denuding the landbase of living systems makes powerful individuals rich, and this is the behaviour we see from those in power. This will continue while there is still money to be made, in other words the destruction will continue until there are no more living systems left to exploit. A number of respected scientists are coming to similar conclusions.

Solutions which make no attempt to destroy this culture, or which postpone action until the distant future, are worryingly misguided. The current system is one of arrogance, sadism, stupidity and denial. It will not change of its own accord. The British government’s stance on fracking, despite massive public opposition, is a testament to this and an example of this culture’s insatiable appetite.

[…]

What we propose is that people in the UK environmental movement begin to consider whether their activism- be it community, political or radical- is effective and commensurate with the scale of the problems we face. Community gardens and anti-fracking protests are all part of this resistance movement, but unless they are linked to a larger political struggle, those efforts will fail. Regardless of what our differences might be, we need to start working in tandem.

Read the entire Open Letter to the UK Environmental Movement from Deep Green Resistance UK

Interview of Meghan Murphy

Ernesto Aguilar, a former DGR member, interviewed Meghan Murphy of Feminist Current for Women’s History Month in March 2013. Murphy presents a clear and articulate analysis of the current state of online feminism – strengths and weaknesses, successes and works in progress, allies and backlash. She spoke extensively on the destructive tendency of online discussions to turn into horizontal hostility, and the ongoing pattern of silencing women:

I don’t think that attacking and harassing feminists online counts as activism, or as supporting women, even if you kind of pretend you’re doing it on behalf of women. Regardless of how you frame it, it’s still about woman-hating, and it’s about anti-feminism, and that’s not progressive. If you’re a man and you’re harassing or silencing women, you can’t pretend to be a progressive person or a person who cares about liberty or human rights or women’s lives or the well being of women. That’s not what allies do.

Later in the interview, she gets specific about a prominent silencing mechanism:

There’s this thing that’s become popular in the feminist blogosphere, and that’s this overuse of the phobia language. I think that’s a big problem. It’s become common practice to label any [feminist] critique as a phobia. You hear things like “kink phobia”, or “whore phobia”, “transphobia”, on and on and on. And I’ve personally been accused of all of these things, and I don’t hate or fear prostituted women or trans people or kinky people.

What I want to have is conversations, and this is just another way to shut down conversation, and it’s a part of the bullying that goes on in some parts of online feminism. It’s about keeping people in line, and it’s about keeping conversations restricted within narrow boundaries. If you don’t like what someone says, you can call them some version of “phobic” and you can call someone a bigot and everyone shuts up. These are kind of the magic words that put fear in every feminist’s heart, because they know that if they’re called one of these things – some kind of “phobic” – that no one will stick up for them, because everyone else is afraid of being labeled by association. Everyone’s afraid to have real conversations, because they see what happens, and they see what happens to other feminists, and they don’t want that to happen to them.

Listen to the entire interview embedded below (originally posted at Feminist Current). And for elaboration on the tactic of shutting down feminist discourse by threatening to apply vague but powerful labels, see the latest article at Feminist Current: “How ‘TERF’ works”, by Sarah Ditum.

Horizontal Hostility Conference – Max Wilbert

Members of Deep Green Resistance Canary Islands are creating a web conference on horizontal hostility, consisting of interviews with multiple speakers. “The aim of the conference is to raise consciousness about the mechanics of oppression
and how its complex but predictable ways operate to keep us all neatly “in our place”, divide us & effectively stop us achieving social, political, environmental & economic change as quickly as we need to.”

The first interview is of Max Wilbert, by Stella Strega. Wilbert describes some of the horizontal hostility he’s experienced and witnessed, mostly around the strong stance Deep Green Resistance has taken in defense of women’s right to their own space. He laments the loss to social justice and environmental movements when activists are incapable of organizing across political differences to work together on issues of mutual concern. This wedge is especially tragic when activists turn a legitimate passion for justice against each other in attacks on insufficient “purity.”

Wilbert also compares classic government COINTELPRO repression of social movements to contemporary Internet smear tactics recently laid out by JTRIG, a secret unit of the NSA. JTRIG is devoted to sowing distrust and suppressing social movements by manipulating online discourse, through, for example, publishing lies anonymously to discredit targeted people and groups.

Learn more about horizontal hostility and how we can defend against it by watching the video or playing the audio-only version of the interview below, or reading Max Wilbert’s The Modern COINTELPRO and How To Fight It.

Browse all Deep Green Resistance member appearances.

Radfems Respond

Several Deep Green Resistance members participated in Radfems Respond the weekend of May 24th 2014, in Portland, OR. The event was facilitated by Samantha Berg, with the goal of providing safe space for discussion:

Hey social justice activists!

Are internet flamewars bumming you out?

Do interactions on social media sometimes make you feel like you’ve entered a fighting pit?

We’re tired of the lightless heat, too. That’s why Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF) has arranged for a public dialogue on two of the most controversial issues facing modern feminism, abolishing prostitution and ending gender.

On Saturday May 24 we will honor Memorial Day weekend with a political ceasefire and call for the opening of peace talks. In the spirit of honest, respectful engagement, you are invited to come ask radical feminists any questions on these subjects you may have wanted to ask but were too intimidated by rancorous internet interactions.

Please join us at Multnomah Central Library in Portland for what will be a thought-provoking day for everyone who wants clarification on what radical feminists really think about prostitution and gender.

The panelists shared important information, concepts, and experiences around radical feminism, well worth watching and reading. You can see videos of three of the presenters, and read transcripts from two of those three:

Lierre Keith

Keith speaks on the difference between liberals and radicals.

Rachel

Watch the video above, or read Rachel’s “This Is What I Said At Radfems Respond for her analysis of a radical conception of gender and her experience expressing these politically challenging ideas.

Heath Atom Russell

Read Russell’s “Radfems Respond, WoLF, and MRAs” to learn of her personal experience transitioning to be a transman, then detransitioning, and the backlash she received from the queer community for developing a critique of gender

Other Panelists

Kathleen Barry and Dawn Schiller also spoke, but were not recorded.

Backlash

Samantha Berg’s “The City of Roses Shall No Longer Tolerate Feminism” gives an excellent overview of the threats and backlash from local queer activists, angry that radical feminists were gathering to speak.

Response to Aric McBay’s “Deep Green Resistance and Transphobia”

Deep Green Resistance has refrained from making any statement in regards to the circumstances under which Aric McBay left the organization to date. This decision was made on the basis that it would be unhelpful to resistance efforts in general and also because DGR did not wish to speak badly of him.

Because he has now chosen to publicly make statements that do not reflect the actual events of his departure, DGR is issuing the following statement.

Aric McBay was part of a small, unsuccessful effort to oust both Lierre Keith and Derrick Jensen from the organization. The entire staff and many of the members resisted this attempt.

DGR’s stance on women’s spaces was only one issue on the table among others at this time. It was the women of DGR who made the decision to keep women’s spaces for women only. It was not decided by Derrick Jensen or Lierre Keith. The assertion that this was policy handed down from them is a lie.

Aric was part of a conference call about this subject and chose to say nothing. He left the organization soon after, taking a large sum of DGR money for work he had not done and which he has yet to pay back. His only comment was that there was a lack of transparency in decision making. Until that point the majority of decisions had been made by himself and a co-coordinator.

It is clear that Aric’s departure was for the best. Feminist politics, including the right of women to define their own spaces, is central to our work. Anyone who does not respect the choices of women does not belong in DGR.