It Could Happen Here - Debating Desert

Episode Date: February 8, 2022

Saint Andrew joins us for a discussion on the 2012 essay 'Desert,' and how it does and doesn't relate to our modern view of climate collapse. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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It could happen here, is the podcast that you're listening to right now. I'm Robert Evans. All right, that's my job done. What are we doing today? Hey, what's up? Hey. Andrew back at it again with another podcast.

Today we're doing something a little bit different from the previous episodes that I've done. from the previous episodes that I've done. We're having a bit more of an open discussion about a certain book that has been passed around for about a decade now and has polarized members of the anarchist community, to put it that way. Today we'll be talking about the book, the infamous polemic, Desert by Anonymous.

For those who are, you know, not aware of this extremely controversial text, Desert is a nihilist anarchist text who is published in 2011 that is mainly directed at other anarchists and seeks to address issues of climate collapse and revolution it became somewhat of a meme to tell folks to read desert um i'm not sure when that was but i just remember seeing it a lot um i think in like 2020 yeah around 2019 2020 read desert became a meme yeah yeah all over twitter and instagram and reddit but of course being a thing that exists on the internet, people naturally became torn on the subject of it.

And so there are a lot of perspectives and opinions and think pieces about Desert, some more or less accurate than others. But we are here to discuss the book, our personal experiences reading it, things we think it gets right and wrong, and what we could potentially learn going forward. So I would say the floor is yours, whoever wants to go first. I mean, I'm a huge fan of the quote that the book takes – or that it takes its name from, which comes from Tacitus, who was a dude writing in the Roman period. And the exact quote that it comes from is – and he's talking – Tacitus is talking about the Roman Empire. Robbers of the world, now that the earth is insufficient for their all-devastating hands, they probe even the sea. If their enemy is rich, they are greedy.

If he is poor, they thirst for dominion. Neither east nor west has satisfied them. Alone of mankind, they are equally covetous of poverty and wealth. Robbery, slaughter, and plunder, they falsely name empire. They make a desert, and they call it peace. Huh. Good-ass quote. It is a solid yeah and obviously i think people living

in the shadows of every empire that's ever existed can identify with that quote um it's it's a powerful kind of central idea to hang your uh extended essay i don't really know what the best term to refer to it is. Yeah, it's a long essay. Yeah, it's a very long essay. As we talked about kind of coming into this, it's extremely 2010s. So pre-Arab Spring, pre all the big uprisings and revolts we had in 2019 and 2020. There's definitely some stuff that it gets very right and and i think kind of one of the ways in which it's had an impact on me is kind of i've i've thought about what happens to sort of culture as the result of this kind of hollywood engine that is heavily tied up with the united states military industrial complex complex as a process of desertification

of ideas and the ability to like conceive of new futures. That said, I don't really, I haven't reread it in a very long time and haven't really felt called to in many ways. Because I do think, I don't know. I think there's an extent to which it's been kind of left behind. Yeah. Yeah. Some of the things that have happened since. I think.

Yeah. I will say that as someone who really came into my own as an artist in like like 2020 early 2020 although i had identified with it before um when i had read the book um i think it was in late 2020 early late 2020 so when i read the book first time i read it and honestly um there was some good, some bad, some very outdated stuff. And also some stuff that, I don't know, maybe the author felt it was groundbreaking at the time. But at this present stage, it just feels like common knowledge, common sense I mean it was it was groundbreaking in a way

for like climate realism right like this was written before climate leviathan this was written before the uninhabitable earth this was written before a lot of kind of the texts that view climate change as an absolute.

Like this was written one year before hyper objects, which is really interesting, actually, because, you know, the whole premise of that book is that climate change is done. Like it happened where like there's no turning back the clock. And the desert was written even before that. even before that. It was one of the first things now, of course, it's much more niche, but if I look back at books that have impacted me, it's one of the first books that came out

timeline-wise to take climate change as like, yeah, there's no saving it. There's no living in the 2000s. There's no living in the 90s again. It's like things are, the world's not going to end, but things are going to get worse, right? And that is kind of a big part of the book because it's also not pro-collapse.

It doesn't take collapse as an absolute. It doesn't take – it doesn't subscribe to global collapse. And that's one of the misconceptions I think people have about the book. Yeah. to global collapse and that's one of the misconceptions i think people have about the book yeah that they just assume it's like this collapse doomerous like misanthropic kind of text but which i i did not read it as that like i first read it around the same time you did um and i read it as a part of a lot of books i was reading to prep for the show when we when we were writing our first five episodes on climate change and the crumbles. So I read it

as a part of my general research. And yeah, at that point it was already kind of memefied to be like an anarcho-nihilist doomer manifesto. And I read it and I'm like, that's not what it's saying at all. It's actually saying

the opposite of that. Once I had read it, it i was like i was really taking it back at how how easily um popular perceptions of a piece of media could um i mean honestly corrupted beyond recognition yeah you know like if people a bunch of people are telling you this, that or the other about a certain text or whatever, you know, it's kind of shake. It kind of shakes you up to like actually consume it for yourself and then realize, how did y'all get that? Yeah. How did you read that out of it? It is really interesting because I'm not even sure if they did read out of it or if that was the perception they had going into it. So they read it through that lens and that lens basically, you you know changed the text in their head to fit that thing because yeah it is really interesting how how it is so

associated with like doomerism um yet if you like engage in good faith with the text it's very much not a doomer manifesto in any way although there are aspects of it that i am um that i think attitude wise that i am critical of but i think chris was gonna say something yeah so i was gonna say like i i really i i've always not liked this book like i read it back in i think 2017 2018 when it was first sort of like coming back yeah and i didn't like it then and i reread it this morning and i i like it even less now than i did then and and i think i think i i actually i actually okay so like i i think it's less now than i did then and and i think i think i i actually i actually okay so like i i think it's true that most of the text doesn't do the doomer thing but

i think i understand where people got it from because you know you have quotes in this like uh here's one yet i can already hear the accusations from my own camp accusations of deserting the cause of revolution deserting the struggle for another world such accusations are correct i would rejoin that such millenarian and progressive myths are at the cause of revolution, deserting the struggle for another world. Such accusations are correct. I would rejoin that such Molinarian and progressive myths are at the core of the expansion of power. And this is what I really, like, I think from an ecological perspective, it's sort of okay. I strongly dislike desert as an anarchist text because I think there's there's there's there's an ingrained defeatism in it that is so strong that it it it it just it it it like warps the author's perception of the past like you you get these things where he's talking about these these counter he's talking about like

the you know the what we call the classical anarchist movement from roughly like 1870 to really sort of ends with the defeat of the anarchists in spain in like 1937 and and he you know they say things like from spain pre-1936 to the jewish anarchists in north america the illegalist of france and the italian anarcho-syndicalist of argentina the inhabitants of anarchist counter societies were always by definition active minorities the minorities may have gotten larger in an instructionary moments but they remained at minorities always and that's just wrong it's factually wrong like these these movements were not minorities like the like the entire like the the like the the largest union in france was the cg like in in the early 1900s was the the uh ugc of the cg that all all of the the french spanish and portuguese country speaking countries have a

they have one union that's called the ugc and one union that's called the cgt and i can never remember which one's which but like like that was that was the largest union in france and it was a union right like it was like there's you know the same thing with argentina right for a like for a while was the largest union in argentina and i think, and this is sort of my problem with this, which is that, you know, this is a person who's basically, like, they talk about, like, they were born in the 70s, and they're writing this in 2011, in just the midst of the collapse of sort of,

like, the complete and total destruction of the old anarchist movement, right? The anarchist movement that had been born out of sort of, like, the Zapatistas and the anti-globalization movement and they'd been beaten so badly that you know i mean they were crushed they were completely destroyed and they've been beaten so badly they they they can't they they literally can't imagine winning and think that like like revolution in general like is is essentially a secular theology they repeat this over and over and over again it's like revolution is a theology revolution is a myth this

and it's like and this is this is something that's just a product of of defeat it's not a product of sort of taking seriously the conditions that are emerging around them and you know i was talking about this before the recording it's like right after this is written it's you get the movement of the squares and then you get occupy and it's like basically like every major city in the world goes into revolt the revolts are anarchist inspired and you know and then desert like this is why desert vanishes for like six or seven years because desert is is a piece that's written like it's it's a piece that's that's only happens in a very specific part of a revolutionary cycle which is when all like every everything has been crushed all resistance has been crushed uh everyone's losing hope and

then everyone starts reading desert again and then the revolutions restart and and at that point like once once once there's like you know 200 000 people in the streets again like fighting the cops it becomes less and less sort of like like that that part of its analysis becomes less and less relevant until you know inevitably everyone like there's there's a defeat and then everyone goes sort of like and i think i think that's why it has the doomer rep because it's it's it's the text that people read when you've been beaten in the streets see yeah that's that's an interesting look at it because i mean i definitely agree with the revolution is an idea like is a myth thing like i i specifically within the context of the united states which i believe that's what the book's trying to mostly focus on they they do

bring up other parts of the world and stuff. But it's definitely written by an American citizen. That could actually be wrong. It may not be written by an American, but in terms of reading it, it is kind of through a very Western lens of revolutions not happening here um and i i definitely sympathize and agree with that viewpoint and i mean if you're gonna point at me like it was 2011 then occupy happened i'm like yeah but occupy didn't but that also felt like every every attempt has not succeeded in this country to get any kind of big meaningful change that we can push towards something that's like post-capitalist um so yeah i mean i i do

think i think it's it's it's mostly targeting people specifically like communists um or marxist londonists who like are just waiting around for the revolution to happen and then don't do anything like that right that is no but that is the thing it's trying to point but but but but i think this is this is why it's a text that's like that's not good for the moment because our problem isn't that – the problem right now isn't that there's no uprising on the horizon, like everyone's been completely beaten down, no one's ever going to go into the streets again. everywhere and every single time everyone is caught off guard and every single time no one's able to actually sort of mobilize off of it and you know like like like no no one's been able to like pivot it into something that's actually like transformative but but i but i think that that's a very different problem than the problem that desert is because desert has already abandoned the possibility that an uprising can win that's i mean it's i mean i think i kind of have too yeah and then specifically abandon the idea

of like global revolution right that is that is the thing they're specifically targeting they're saying smaller specific they're saying like smaller local things actually can succeed in a lot of ways but they're trying to tie this idea of global revolution as a pacifying idea, right? Just waiting around for this to happen and tying that to this, at the time, much more niche idea. Now it's way more popular, but this idea of global collapse and how people think believing in global collapse is smarter than believing in global revolution. They think it's more realistic. But the book's saying, no, this idea of global collapse actually falls under all the same issues that global revolution has. I think I'd want to sort of comment here.

With regard to the defeatist sort of reading in the text, I understand that reading. I mean, personally, I distinguish between defeatism and dumerism. And I always think my own personality and my own perspective kind of, like, inoculates me in a way from, like, adopting that kind of defeatist attitude towards, you know, change. I don't think the book is entirely, you know, dismissive of like revolution um it just i think the main thrust of it is that it's critical of the idea of like one global revolution one global collapse what it really emphasizes is that you know climate change brings new possibilities for new anarchies plural to develop worldwide in response to changing circumstances. But at the same time, you know, in some areas,

things are going to get worse. In some areas, things are going to get better. And it's not that really one broad brush could be applied to the entire Earth. Well, but I think, I mean, I think, like, this is another thing that they're really guilty of, especially, like, there's an entire section in here where they just keep writing about Africa. And it's like, well, and they'll get pressed on it, and they'll be like, no, no, no, we mean sub-Saharan Africa.

And it's like, what are you talking – like they won't name countries. They won't name movements. They won't name people. It's just they'll just write something about the whole of sub-Saharan Africa, and it's just like, well, I think that's evidence of mistake to do that for the reasons we've kind of discussed. Anytime I see a left wing, even somebody who I think is generally on point, who starts talking about, for example, like extending their theories about revolutionary politics to places I happen to know just a little bit about, it's always very clear, like, oh, you don't know shit about Syria. Oh, you don't know shit about Libya. Oh, you don't know shit about Angola. Like, and that's, and that's like, not even a moral failing. It's just that it's impossible, it's impossible, really,

to have in depth knowledge of like, what's actually going on in those places. And what's going on in those revolutions. It's why people default so much to the whole, well, whatever side the US is on must be the bad side. And whatever side the Russians on must be the good side. It's the easiest way to look at that shit. I think that's a worthwhile critique to make and it's a critique to make any time that it happens. I agree with Garrison and with Andrew that I think the thing that is – that Desert gets right and the thing that I've seen in my own life is that like the opportunities we should be looking for are not suddenly that some sort of global revolution sweeps all of the things we don't like out of power and magically institutes something better comprehensively across the globe. It's room for little anarchies. across the globe. It's room for little anarchies. It's what we saw in northeast Syria, right, where the government pulls out and people have an opportunity to do something not perfect, but better. And I think that's kind of one of the things we talk about a lot on this show.

That's why mutual aid is valuable. It's why building these connections are valuable. It's because as things crumble, there will be opportunities to, in local areas, piecemeal institute and push for more just and better ways of living. And I think that if you're looking at kind of the broad level potentially optimistic point, it's that when you have enough of those and when they spread well enough and if communication is good enough, maybe the things that work will get adopted on a wider scale. And there's always the opportunity that when enough – when ideas spread far enough, they have a tipping point and they go viral, so to speak. But I don't – I think that while there's a lot of specifics that Desert gets wrong, I do think they were ahead of the curve in recognizing that.

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With regard to the Africa chapter, the impression that I got while reading that chapter, and I think the book itself references Samba, I got the impression that the author had read African Anarchism, History of a Movement by Sam Mba. And they were just kind of like inspired by that, I would say. Because as I do point out, they didn't like specify the specific cultures, which is an issue considering, you know, the tendency that Westerners have of, you know, being in Africa, this large brush as if it's, you know, all one way or the other. But I think what we do see now is, you know, from the Horn of Africa to South Africa to Nigeria to, I mean, recently Sudan, I believe, there are Africans smaller number organizing under the man of anarchism and there are anarchic elements that continue to persist

on the continent yeah I mean I think that's like you know I mean one of the things that they sort of got they got right was about how like this the sort of the the sort of renewal despite of urban anarchism they're talking about like chile in particular they got right um indonesia bangladesh sort of somewhat but but i think i think there's there's another like my my my my biggest issue with them in terms of the way they think about ecological stuff this comes this is something i talk about with like they they have this thing where they think that forager societies are like okay they're they're they're they're more careful than most people to frame it as like the foraging societies can be egalitarian but i i think they they they wind up talking about these sort of like the way that sort of foraging nomadic societies sort of inherently defy the boundaries of the state.

And like that's true, but you can also have like nomadic foraging societies that are hereditary slave societies. And this is a problem because there's a lot in here about that that's about sort of like they're you know they're taking this is sort of like soft anti-civ I was about to say that it has a few lines where it does specifically say civilization is the cause of

I think it's like civilization is genocide which yeah and that's silly yeah that is heavily influenced by civilizations commit genocide sure yes if you're saying that they do cause genocide if you're if you're trying to make the case that it seems to be that civilizations uh well i don't know every civilization does not commit genocide but no but civilization gives you the constant yeah civilization gives you the framework that makes genocide possible, like intentional genocide possible.

I don't know that I would agree with that because I think you see examples of genocide from hunter-gatherer societies and from so-called stateless societies. That – obviously documentation on that isn't as extensive because we weren't documenting things for a lot of it. But you do have examples from what we know of like the Americas of there were genocides committed by societies we would call stateless. So I think I might argue that like genocide is a thing that human beings do in civilization because it allows us to do everything on a larger scale, allows us to do way better genocides. That's definitely inarguable. I think – that's fair i i think i think my problem with it is is that they're going back into this sort of like they're going back into the the the you know there's this inherent binary between foragers and settled societies and that you know and and specifically they think that the these sort that the forager societies are you know inevitably going to become egalitarian it's like

that's not true and it's not true in ways that you, you can see right now in like, like, like there, like there, there are lots of places right now where you can look at, you know, forging societies that have incredibly right.

Like there's, there's like, for example, you, you get sort of, uh, you get the Fulani joining like right wing Islamist groups. Right.

And that, like that kind of thing, I think it, it has a problem with it's the same thing as looking at indigenous societies and and seeing them all on one side of the the fight with with colonizing nations as opposed i'm reading a book about the history of the mapuche right now which are historically historically like the indigenous group in Chile that resisted the law – and the indigenous group really in – you could argue in all of Latin America that resisted the longest and most effectively.

But even then, when you look at like the campaigns of the Chilean government in the 1860s and 1880s, large – like significant chunks of the Mapuche sided with the government against other Mapuche. And like that's the –'s it's always a mistake i think this is a good one of the things that you get out of the dawn of everything it's always a mistake to like look at any of these groups hunter-gatherers stateless societies it's like one thing or another they're people and some of them sucked uh just like yeah they're yeah anyway yeah there, there is one thing that I wanted to sort of push back against. Robert, you had said that genocide is a thing that humans do.

I don't think I agree with that assessment. In the sense, or at least I'd rather, I would like to clarify, or give you an opportunity to clarify what you mean by that. You know, I don't know that it's just humans, but I think that genocide is a thing that as long as we have evidence in recorded history, it seems like we have done, not just against other humans, but against other kind of hominid species. We have examples of things that it seems fair to call genocide going back further than we have any kinds of written records. You know, villages in the Balkans that were, you know,

burnt and people who, like groups of people, tribes and whatnot, who seem to have been killed in mass. And, you know, there's other theories for some of that. Some of them may have been like people trying to stop a plague. We don't, don't plague or whatever like there's not any kind of comprehensive solidity but what we do know is that as long as we have documentations of humans doing things we have documentations of things that we could call genocide i see i see i think let's look look into that a bit more i appreciate the clarification yeah can i do a balkans pivot go ahead because there's a there's a there's a thing i like i genuinely disturbed me reading it in here about the serbs during the bosnian genocide where so they're they're quoting

disturbing about that oh yeah but this is this is a i – okay, so they're reading a quote from the book Gypsy's Wars and Other Instances of the Wild where he's talking – this is about the Bosnian genocide. How is this possible in Europe at the end of the 20th century was the question that played obsessively through my mind. What the war in former Yugoslavia forced us to suggest is the fact that people proved willing to make a conscious and active choice to embrace regression barbarity a return to the wildness take the serve fighters who dreamed of a return to the serbia of the epic poems where quote there was no electricity no computers when the serbs were happy and had no cities the breeding ground of all evil and then this is this is the next uh thing that's that's the text coming back and commenting on it that some modern day militias reflect romantic desires while shelling towns massacring villages and being killed in turn should neither surprise us nor necessarily

fully invalidate romance it does however suggest along with the honest expression of joy and destruction mouthed by some soldiers in every war as well as many anarchists that there is a coupling of some sort between a generalized urge to destroy and a disgust at a complex human society and there's there's there's another part um slightly later on they're talking about uh ethnic diversity and autonomy will often emerge both from mutual aid and community and animosity between communities. I like to think, and our history has backed this up, that self-identified anarchists will never inflict such pain as Serb nationalist

militias, an example I chose purposely for the repugnance. But we should admit that our wish to fuck shit up is partly driven by the same urge to civilizational dismemberment that can be found in many interethnic conflicts and in the minds of fighters more generally. I think that's

fucked i think that's true that's just wrong i don't know no no i it's i think there's commenting a specific type of anarchist literature which is like the make total destroy thing and yeah i definitely i have observed that in people the same the same urge that you're you're so broken down by everything that the only urge that is the only creative urge you have is to destroy the things around you. I've seen that. I don't think they're necessarily celebrating

that, but they're pointing out that that urge can be there. What I think they get really wrong here is that I don't think that's the urge that is is like that that's when you're dealing with inter-ethnic conflict and when you're dealing with genocide i don't think that's the urge that's going on especially you know particularly with the serbs because the serbs like you know like when when an anarchist is doing made total

destroyer right they're you know they're like there's there's a very specific set of things they're attacking or they're you know they're attacking building they're attacking the physical infrastructure of the world when the serbs are doing the bosnian genocide like they have a very specific set of things they're attacking, or they're attacking building, they're attacking the physical infrastructure of the world. When the Serbs are doing the Bosnian genocide, they have a very specific thing they're doing, which is killing Bosnian Muslims. And I think that's an extremely different urge than the sort of – I don't think that's about civilizational dismemberment or whatever. That's about Islamophobia and genocide. Civilizational dismemberment or whatever, that's about Islamophobia and genocide. And I think that's a different – I think the genocidal impulse is a – I think a very different one than the sort of – like the impulse to break the society that has harmed you. Yeah, I think it's important to draw a distinction between – you can kill a shitload of people without it being a genocide. And I think, and it's also one of those things,

I think, sometimes where people, I think where there's hesitation to see certain acts in early history as genocide is that they're not as complete as modern genocide. But what a genocide really is, and I think it's important to lay this out, it's not necessarily killing every member of an ethnic group or a religious group or whatever kind of community, it is stopping their ability to propagate and continue themselves. That's why things like destroying churches and destroying graveyards and historical markers are part of genocide. And it's also why a lot of genocides, they left the women and children alive.

They would kill all the men and they would take the women in and they would breed with them. They might kill the kids sometimes, but it was this, the goal was not necessarily we need to kill all of you. It's we want to kill this this culture this population um i think the i think i don't yeah i think the parallel he's trying to make here or they or she um is that uh that like that type of like genocidal cultural destruction is targeted against specific groups the difference here is with this type like you know he's writing this for other anarchists he's pointing out like our destructive urge our cultural urge isn't even for a specific group it's just for everything

and that can be unhealthy sometimes sometimes you there's ways to do make total destroy that's totally fine but that can go to unhealthy places, he's not equating like ethnic cleansing with that. He's like, they are different. But when your total destroy urge is against all of culture, then yeah, that can like, that's something you should probably ponder. Yeah, I mean, that's definitely, I would agree that that's a thing that's potentially problematic, right? Like, with a number of different desires, there's a way in which that can lead to people doing really fucked up things.

Yeah, it's like, it's pointing out that type of accelerationism, not specific to ideology, but just like accelerationism in general. I mean, I think when I talk about things like the fact that – because not every culture commits genocides and not every civilization does. And throughout history, there have been more that found the idea repugnant than found the idea acceptable. But it is really a consistent thing in history, and I think the lesson with that isn't necessarily that everything could end in genocide. So I don't think the lesson is necessarily like, oh, you should look at make total destroy as if this kind of trend in anarchist thought could lead to genocide. It's that people in groups are nearly always capable of killing a shitload of other people for a variety of reasons if plied in the proper ways.

And so those of us who seek mass movement should always be conscious of that because human beings in large groups can do wonderful things, but there's a long history of them doing really fucked up shit, sometimes in ways that surprised the people that got the large group of human beings together in the first place. Welcome. I'm Danny Trejo. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America

Gasly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite

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On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian.

Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story,

as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly. I am talking to a felon right now, and I cannot decide if I like him or not. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world

as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot. Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show. I live with my boyfriend and I found his piss jar in our apartment. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing parents. Even at the age of 29 they don't let me move out of their house.

So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head and see what's going on in someone else's head, search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the one with the green guy on it the other thing i wanted to bring up is kind of more circling back to like the doomer kind of idea

um because yeah a big part of the book is trying purposely is to dissolution people with this idea of global revolution and dissolution people with the idea that we can save the Earth, because we can't. So that's a big thing. And I think for some people, if you stop right there and that's how you end that thought, yes, that does lead to doomerism, obviously. That is.

But the book doesn't stop there. The book continues on from there. Now, they continue on from a nihilistic standpoint. I'm not a nihilist. I prefer absurdism. I prefer discordianism. But those two things are pretty – they are more similar than not, is that you can be disillusioned with global revolution and the idea to save the earth, but that should not change what we do or how we feel or operate as anarchists. It's not that we should be disillusioned and then do nothing and step

aside. It's that we should be disillusioned and then find that disillusionment itself a form of liberation. Like, the freeing nature of being free from this idea of revolution is that like no we are living our lives now don't live for a revolution live your life now and do things now because that's what you actually have so it's like that type of nihilistic absurdist discordian thing this is this is this is this is where i come back to having problems with it again because this this is literally just there is no alternative except it's it's it befills with the winner yeah and that's it's do anarchy but i mean i don't know but that's how i live like that's yeah but like i think i think this is a bad i think that's a bad plan and i think if you look if you look at what happens with because we you know this this was

the thing that was really big in the american anarchist movement like in you know from about 2017 like to roughly now and it's like a lot of people were in the 2020 anarchist movement like in you know from about 2017 like to roughly now and it's like a lot of people were in the 2020 uprising too yeah but also that didn't succeed like that like not really like like like this is like i think i think this is like like one of the reasons it didn't work like okay this is like the the thing that's important one of the things is important revolutions even when they don't succeed is that for a very brief window you actually can like it becomes it becomes possible to imagine another world yes and what what what this entire thing is saying is don't do that that's not that's not no no that's that's that's that is not what it's saying it is absolutely not

this is no no no okay can i can i finish this sentence yeah like yeah okay so what what what i'm saying here is that what what they abandoned, right, the thing that they're giving up when they give up revolution, when they're like, this is a progressive myth, this is like theology, what they've abandoned completely is our human capacity to actually shape a different world. What they're arguing is that, like the, the, the, you know, essentially the combination of, of ecological and social forces are strong enough that humans, humans no longer have the capacity to reshape the world into a way that is different than this.

And that this is now the eternal present. And, you know, and, and yeah, inside of the eternal present, they're saying you should be fighting for the same thing you should be fighting for like you know you should you should be in in your own sort of local domain you should be like i mean there are some of the recommendations

are wild like i i think i think their conservation stuff is sketchy given i mean it is it doesn't it doesn't apply to an eternal present though like they They lay out the world is changing a lot and will for the next 50 years. There will be massive changes in how things are set up in the next century. And we need to take advantage of that. We need to turn those liabilities into assets and start making those little anarchies. That is what it's trying to do. those little anarchies. That is what it's trying to do.

And I would add as well that, as it points out, the situations in Basik Stok and Bangladesh are different in the present and will be in the future. What I think is trying to be sort of drilled in here is that, at least in the text and how I read it,

is that yes, things will be different in different parts of the world and probably maybe they won't be this you know or as the what this is there won't be you know this one global revolution but at the end of the day um i think what it's trying to emphasize is that we don't have the structures and i think what part of what it's trying to emphasize is that we don't have the structures and i think what part of what it's trying to emphasize is that we don't have the structures in place right now to launch an interaction we can meaningfully defend and so that is the sort of thing we should be focusing on yeah but but they but they but this and this this is going back to my problem

with it going going back to the thing with the they go on the rant about how anarchists are like a permanent cultural majority and will never become a majority is that even even in situations where people had that capacity and did it they go back they project back onto it and go no no no no they couldn't have done that like it's it's not about it's it's it's they have a belief and this is something that they do explicitly say that that anarchist will always be a permanent minority right there will always be an active but permanent minority and that is the like like that specifically i think is just a an actual rejection of the belief that we collectively can make a better future because if if you think that our idea is that you know if being free right if if a society is mutually if you think that that

is permanently always going to be a minority you are you know you are condemning you're condemning the future to the people who don't believe that and and i i i understand why especially if you know if if if the only thing you've ever known is 50 years of when the neoliberals actually did the thing, right? They took over the entire world, restructured the entire world economy, seized every government. If that's what you lived through, I understand why you would think that. But I think the fact that it was possible to do it from the other direction is in some ways a sense that like, yeah, we could do it too. I don't know. Sorry, I will stop harping

on this one specific point. It just extremely annoys me. I think it's not giving up the idea that the world can be better. It's that like, we don't need to have the majority of people be anarchists to make the world better.

We can still spread our own anarchies and people don't need to self-subscribe as anarchists. But as long as we start building those systems in the places around us, people will start using them. And people might start, like, living them out, even if they don't call themselves anarchists, right?

Like, the majority of people will probably prefer some type of state or government, right? You can even look at Rojava and be like, yeah, it still is state-ish in some ways, but some ways not, right? It's going, we're not going to get an anarchist world. That's not going to happen, but we can make it better through the lens of anarchy. And I think that's what it's kind of trying to say. Yeah, I think it's worth acknowledging that, like, yeah, the majority

of people are never going to be what anarchists are right now, which is people who comprehensively reject the systems they live in. Most people are always going to think more like, well, I want to be comfortable. I support changes that fix this thing that I've noticed is a problem or that thing. Most people are never going to comprehensively reject the system. But I do have hope that in time and given space to build things and show people other ways and improve life for people you can get to a point where most people believe a lot of the things that i think are important yeah i think that's what's on time i think that's what they call themselves sorry i think that's what the as specifists um tend to advocate for in terms of through the process of social insertion in these

larger movements generalizing the ideas of anarchist ideas as a whole making them more common throughout the population it's not only trying to get each and every person in the world to self-identify as an anarchist communist or whatever it's more so that you're trying to or whatever it's more so that you're trying to spread these ideas to the point where they are i i suppose the the common sentiment the popular will yeah like i it's it's um that's like the point of culture jamming and and and shit like that like it's the the idea that like it doesn't so much matter like like what matters is inserting the things you think are important into the culture and getting people to identify with them and understand them the the terms that they specifically use aren't aren't as important like that that's not really

what matters well okay i i don't think they're arguing that though because i mean like they have lines like this uh we cannot however remake the entire world there are not enough of us there never will be but then you know like they they they specifically talk about the oh well they don't have to all be anarchists and you know i mean here's their line there is unfortunately little little evidence from history that the working class never mind anyone else is intrinsically predisposed to libertarian ecological revolution thousands of years of authoritarian socialization favor the jackboot neither we nor anyone else could create a libertarian or global or ecological global future by expanding social movements further there is no reason to think that in the absence of such a vast expanse a global transformation congruent to our desires will

ever happen i think i think i think the key word there is global like yeah that's they're trying to break with that and it's important like they're writing this specifically for anarchists who are kind of already nihilistic, kind of already anti-Sith, right? They are writing this for other anarchists. This isn't a book to radicalize a normie or a communist. This is written by anarchists for other anarchists to be like, hey, you already kind of think the world's kind of going to shit. Here's a way that we can still do things despite the world being shitty. Because once you're disillusioned, it's hard to be illusioned again. Like, once you give up on the idea of global revolution,

once you give up on the idea of global collapse, it's hard to reenter those, even if you see things happening. Like, there can still be uprisings and revolts, absolutely. But there is a distinction between uprisings and revolts and, like, a global revolution, right? And specifically, like, the Marxist-Leninist sense. And I'd also like to continue the paragraph you're reading from there. The paragraph you're reading from there. We had said that as anarchists, we... Or they had said that as anarchists, we are not the seed of the future society in the shell of the old, but merely one of many elements from which the future is forming.

That's okay. When faced with such scale and complexity, there is value in non-civil humility, even for insurgents. Yeah, but this is just giving up. This is the old, it's too complicated. It too like and like i think i don't know like it's it's it's giving up on it's giving up on trying to do any kind of of on on like humans as a whole trying to do any kind of large scale like you know like trying to do any large scale transformation of what the society i disagree to continue that that quote to give up hope for global anarchist revolution is not to resign oneself to anarchy

remaining an eternal protest seaweed puts it well revolution is not everywhere or nowhere any bioregion can be liberated through a succession of events and strategies based on the conditions unique to it mostly as the grip of in that area weakens through its own volition or through the efforts of its inhabitants. Civilization didn't succeed ever at once, and so its undoing might only occur to varying degrees in different places at different times. Even if an area is seemingly fully under the control of authority,

there are always places to go, to live in, to love in, and to resist from, and we can extend those spaces. The global situation may seem beyond us, but the local never is. And I think that's beautiful. I think that's like a, that's one of the things that keeps me alive

is ideas like that, honestly. And at the same time, I also hold the opinion that none of us, including this author, is a fortune teller you know the desert's picture of the future is not the only possibility you know and i think in a lot of ways in a lot of ways i believe that they can and have already been proven wrong you know like and there's an issue that i really take a lot of contention with the book

part of the book that really pisses me off is the sort of persistence of the overpopulation myth yeah that was i don't remember it being so consistent since i reread it um a couple of weeks ago yeah and also this sort of nonchalance the author seems to have about like mass die-offs and that kind of thing. I think that's very troubling to me. That's very specific to its type of anti-civ literature that's like, we view civilization as going to

progress towards genocide anyway and the way to actually avoid more deaths is to kind of help the collapse along because that'll end civilization quicker so therefore less people will be born so less people will have to die. So that's the type of thinking they have.

I don't necessarily agree with that. Necessarily. But, like, yeah, that is very typical of this type of literature. So, again, because it is written mostly for other anti-civ anarchists. But, like, yeah, it's not, like, pro-genocide. It's saying genocide will happen, so the way to

make less of it is to actually kind of slowly start kind of helping the crumbles along, essentially, while still, you know, making people's lives better in your immediate community, like, with that very local focus. So, again,

not saying I necessarily agree with that, but that's the type of thought it's like with that with that very local focus which so again not not saying i necessarily agree with that but that's the that's the type of thought it's engaging with i mean i i think that's true of some of it but there is definitely a lot of like panic about there's going to be nine billion people and like population growth yes all of that's like all the overpopulation stuff's a little iffy you know there is a discussion to have on carrying capacity but we are not there yet we right now we way overproduced for the amount of people we have yeah that and that i don't know that also frustrated me immensely they're like yeah we we have because they're talking about carrying capacity right but they're like oh we we have because they're talking about carrying capacity right but they're like oh we already can't we have a billion people going hungry and it's like yeah but that's

not about the carrying capacity that's just a distribution that's about it's about distribution which is literally distribution that and that idea gained more prevalence after desert was written we kind of more understood like like culturally that it is a distribution issue not necessarily a production issue now we do over produce right because and the amount of production we have contributes to stuff like climate change and that is bad so we should tone down production but we should make ways that it's more sustainable and ecological um yeah that i think that does point towards the dated nature of the text i think also my last like thing with it is i i think i think it it could have benefited a lot from like in an indigenous stewardship perspective because the way it thinks about

it's particularly like the way things about wildness versus conservation is just very messy and yeah it falls it falls it it does a better job of it than some other anti-civ things that I've seen, but it definitely falls into the, like, trap of, like, here is the wild, and then any attempt to manage it is, you know, is civilization, and you need to go back to the wild, and it's like, oh, this is already stewarded and managed. Yeah, yeah. this is already stewarded and managed yeah that is the one it does fall on that slope of nature being an other that is sacred which isn't necessarily a great idea nor is it really true very 2010

very 2010 yeah I think the book is critical of conservation in a sort of binary way, and I agree that an indigenous stewardship perspective was sorely needed. But at the same time, I do think that the way that the book criticizes, or rather just points out the issue of conservation may have been,

or may still be new for some people. You know, the idea that these sorts of government conservation projects, which sort of preside over this sort of static vision of nature and ecology and stuff, that is supposedly threatened by humanity. I think criticizing that approach to nature is good i mean this sort of romanticization of the wild that is very typical of antisive text and thought um is very much antisive but I do believe that people should look, or should rather resist the sort of conservation impulse. As I was rereading it a couple weeks ago, I wanted to know what you guys thought of the section of the book that speaks of the different modern different the the idea

of fourth and fifth generation war oh boy that's uh um i've heard that that has been um sort of a controversial approach to analyzing conflict so i figured figured I would, as you have been in, you know, actual war zones, Robert, that you might have a thing or two to say. I mean, it's the kind of thing that we should probably cover in detail on, because this is a lot of like William Lind stuff. I think he's the guy who came up with the idea

of like fourth generation war at least. And it's basically the idea that warfare today is conducted through a lot of stuff that's not conventional weaponry, right? networks together to like push social division through social media or carrying out cyber attacks on infrastructure, disinformation, all of that kind of stuff, which is I think accurate. I've been reporting on what you could call fifth generation warfare since 2014. I think it's – I think to the extent that it's relevant here, I think one thing that people on the left need to acknowledge is that they have been blindsided by the effectiveness that the far right has adapted to the key than social engineering and disinformation. And they've been much more successful at it over the last – really since 2015 in particular than the left has by basically everywhere. Every single – yeah. And by I think every single measure of success.

And I think this is something we should save in depth for another day. But I think that it is worth acknowledging. This is, and I also think that, and this is, again, part of a bigger conversation, we talk about the concept of, like, culture jamming, when we talk about, like, Operation Mindfuck, you know, which is a Discordian idea, all of which you can see as kind of predecessors to the concepts of fifth-generation warfare. I think there's a strong argument to be made that those efforts by leftists in the 80s and 90s in particular actually contributed to the substantial right-wing victories that we're seeing right now in this

space. And I think maybe it's, I think there's a number of reasons for that, including some, to some extent, the idea of arrogance that um that what that we were just too smart that they were never going to figure out how to utilize the same means we had or to kind of judo like take the momentum for that and spin it around on us but they were and they did and um yeah that'll that'll lead into another episode we'll have to talk about this in more detail that's something something Grant Morrison actually talks a lot about in regards to discordianism and this type of how, you know, he used to work for a company called Disinformation back when Disinformation was a job. Yeah. And now it's like one of the leading causes of mass death in the world, right?

Yeah. So that is something that Morrison talks about a lot in terms of how they did have that arrogance and now the same forces that they used in hopes of making the world better and now being used to regress the world and make it worse. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I had a big copy of disinformation on my coffee table when I was 19. I just ordered one. Oh, good. There's some fun essays in there, Garrison. There sure is. All right. That'll probably...

I mean, did you have more to say on that, Andrew? Yeah. I just wanted to say that, you know, regardless of the uncertain future, regardless of your stance on Desert's message, however flawed, here now, as the minor birds in aldous huxley's island so often repeat um we can and should pay attention to what we can do to support ourselves for whatever outcome you know through you know projects within the spaces we inhabit i believe that anarchism can be the seed of the new world.

I do believe that we have an impact, a huge impact on society and on politics. And I believe there are still many possibilities for liberty still. Yeah, I do as well. I think that acknowledging,, both of ideas and of methods, doesn't mean giving up hope or ignoring the successes of those same things, which are also present. Yeah, so I don't know. Stay optimistic. Read something.

Doesn't have to be a desert, but just go read a thing. Read the back of your shampoo bottle. Yeah, back of your shampoo bottle, especially if it's Dr. Bronner's. A lot of good stuff in there. All right. That's going to do it for us this week. Take care. Yeah.

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inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturno on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get real and dive straight into todo lo actual y viral. We're talking musica, los premios, el chisme, and all things trending in my culture. I'm bringing you all the latest happening in our entertainment world and some fun and impactful interviews with your favorite Latin artists, comedians, actors, and influencers. Each week, we get deep and raw life stories, combos on the issues that matter to us, and it's all packed with gems, fun, straight-up comedia,

and that's a song that only Nuestra Gente can sprinkle. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into Tex Elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google Search, Thank you. costs from. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, five-year-old Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez was found off the coast of Florida. And the question was, should the boy go back to his father in Cuba? Mr. Gonzalez wanted

to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or stay with his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.