Horizontal-Hostility

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. ...

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. ...

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. ...

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: ...

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. ...

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. ...

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. ...

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.” ...

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. ...

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. ...