Dr Bones
Egoism Vs. The Nazi Aztecs of Eco-Extremism
ES – EE. UU.: EGOISMO VS. LOS AZTECAS NAZIS DEL ECO-EXTREMISMO
From The Conjure House:
(This was originally a facebook post that was mass reported by meme pages like “Everything is Bad” and “Post-Left Rage,” as well as the fans of the “Anarchist” publisher Little Black Cart (who makes a living publishing eco-extremist as well as egoist texts). They wanted it off facebook and, essentially, for it to go unread.
True to my asshole nature, I not only published here but expanded it.
I invite you to read it and become aware of Eco-extremism, the journal Atassa, and what their “ideology” is. When you see people sharing their memes or talking about them, you’ll know what they really want to do)
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Many of you have asked me “what is ITS” over the past few days. Today I’d like to talk about it because I think its important you know.
ITS stands for “Individualists Tending Towards the Wild.” It is a (supposed) group of people living in Mexico who started out, or at least claimed to, in the egoist/nihilist tradition of Anarchism. This made them heroic figures for many on the Post-Left side of thinking, reeling from the failures of the 1990’s and very much looking beyond Green Anarchism. ITS puts out communiques that are discussed and fawned over by a journal called Atassa. Atassa also shares copies of their communiques online. Atassa is published by Little Black Cart, the largest publisher of Egoist and Nihilist literature.
ITS operates strictly within the “anti-civilization” line of thought. One of the very odd things is they seem to worship “wildness” and despise “civilization.” Both of these are abstract concepts, symbols really, the very thing Stirner wrote an entire book denouncing. For ITS however they are the two gods at war for their very souls, the prime motivators of all history and all human endeavours. To fight back against “civilization” and preserve their wildness they engaged in bomb attacks against scientists in Mexico.
These attacks and their communiques became the bedrock of a new ideology: eco-extremism.
Eco-extremism combines the worst aspects of Nihilism and Green Anarchy. They very much believe in human nature, and consider all humans as unnatural creatures that must be destroyed to return to “wildness.” Again, if that sounds like a laughable religious position that’s because IT IS, yet ITS and Atassa(the only journal that publishes their screeds) believe they are nihilists who believe in nothing.
Except of course all humanity is bad, all technology is bad, and “wildness” is sacred. People must die, for reasons never really explained, and who dies doesn’t really matter. The pursuit of a return to “savage” nature is the sole goal.
This elevation of “savageness”(itself a very weird, fetishistic view of native cultures) has overridden any other desires. So eager to return to Holy “Wildness” the following piece was published by Atassa advocating a “savage kingdom” rather than anarcho-primitivism.
Let me read you a quote. Please recall the editors of Atassa considered this “a turning point for eco-extremist theory” and a definite view to take forward. They are speaking of the very war-like, and almost Aztec-level hierarchical civilization known as The Calusa:
“It is a shame that they fell so shockingly short of the fully nomadic, immediate returns hunter-gatherer paradigm that is the apex of anarcho-primitivist sanctity, but we would hope that the priests of that ideology find it in their hearts to forgive them of their mortal sins of hierarchy and authority. . .
Eco-extremists may continue to draw their inspiration mostly from warlike
nomadic hunter-gatherers, but I would speculate that, given the choice between a Calusa ‘king’ obedient to his gods and nature, and a humanist green anarchist playing social engineer, they would choose the former as an ally…”
It may seem a shock that any Post-Leftist would speak joyously of royal hierarchy, that any Egoist would look upon unquestioned obedience to gods and “nature” as some glorious goal, yet Egoists and other Insurrectionists are told(by meme pages such as Everything is Bad and Post Left Rage) that these people are the most amazing thing to happen since Stirner himself. Eco-extremism, which places an undefined and abstract “nature” above the Unique, is in stark contrast to Egoism.
“Stirner himself, however, has no truck with ‘higher beings.’ Indeed, with the aim of concerning himself purely with his own interests, he attacks all ‘higher beings,’ regarding them as a variety of what he calls ‘spooks,’ or ideas to which individuals sacrifice themselves and by which they are dominated. First amongst these is the abstraction ‘Man’, into which all unique individuals are submerged and lost.”
In contrast to Stirner’s absolute rejection of any kind of authority, eco-extremists see nothing wrong with “natural” hierarchy or political institutions. In a text titled “Our response is like an earthquake: It comes sooner or later,” ITS writes:
“It’s true that ‘authority’ has existed in ancient ethnic groups before civilization, but it’s worth asking: Is the authority exercised by a leader of a Bushman tribe (for example), one that helps to feed them, something that is harmful? Is the authority of the Taromenane shaman, one which cures and alleviates illnesses in his band of wild humans, something harmful? Was the authority of the great Teochichimeca warriors, who were able to take revenge against the Spanish in their day, something harmful? If you say ‘yes’, you’re hopeless…”
That communique was shared on Anarchist News, a website run by the nihilist who calls himself “Aragorn!” He also runs Little Black Cart, a nihilist/egoist publisher.
Again, even from a nihilist position, why should any one respect “natural” hierarchy any more than “presidential” or “military” hierarchy?
Interestingly enough most of these people live online. Beyond meme pages and this small, niche journal eco-extremism doesn’t exist. It’s the “egoist”(and I use that term in jest) version of 4chan. The only people who carry out any “eco-extremist” actions are ITS, whom Atassa and other Eco-extremists laud as heroes carrying out a war against technology and “civilization.”
What does this war look like? Let’s look to an actual ITS communique to find out.
“In extreme misanthropic skepticism and experimentation, beyond any human notion, I claim nichilistically the following attacks:
-The arson of 2 mini buses transporting elder people.
Why? Why don’t you ask the guys from the books you read to tell you why? Oh shit! They’re dead? I’ll tell you why then! Because I hate old people! Hahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahhahahahahhahahahahahahaha!!!
-A package bomb left totally indiscriminately at a central location selectively.
Why do I not think of the ”innocent” people one might think… I answer with a question… Did my birth giver’s pussy think when it was fucked to be fertilized with microscopic semen that creates the vessels that I hate? Did anybody ask me to be born? Did anyone know what I would become? Do you know that some see consciousness as a curse? Fuck you, pathetic pricks, you don’t know shit then!”
Of course this is probably just bullshit. Let’s assume these attacks, which again may not even exist, are actually real.
This isn’t a “war against civilization,” it’s just a bunch of assholes “killing” people. Atassa and meme pages like Everything is Bad or Post Left Rage eat them up.
Atassa and the meme pages that celebrate them are basically just cheering on the death of random working people. Not rich people, not even the technology-researching scientists they claim to hate. Just random people. Eco-extremists claim this is due to their “misanthropy” which is somehow very different from Fascist hatred. After all, like the old Hot Topic t-shirt says “I don’t hate any one race, I hate them all!”
“All that surrounds me, every ‘normal’ humanoid, is performing a litany towards crushing determinism. One more time I seize the opportunity to act and unleash My Hatred. I get ready not to stray from the mechanistic ‘life-form’. I call upon Death and we enter in a maelstrom of the heartbeat of Chaos that transforms blood into a pumping engine in the libido of voidance that dissolves humanity attempting indiscriminate Destruction and Murder.”
Compare this to Stirner’s response when asked if Egoism should inspire people to misanthropy:
“…that would be a man who does not know and cannot appreciate any of the delights emanating from an interest taken in others, from the consideration shown to others. That would be a man bereft of innumerable pleasures, a wretched character . . . would he not be a wretched egoist, rather than a genuine Egoist? . . . The person who loves a human being is, by virtue of that love, a wealthier man that someone else who loves no one.”
If you criticize these practices Eco-extremists default to a Jordan Peterson-esque line of thinking: if you criticize them you are a “moralist” and misunderstand what they’re saying. If you criticize ITS, Atassa claims they are just one aspect of eco-extremism and that they don’t speak for everybody. They also claim that you haven’t “read enough.” And, if you get that far, they moan about how you’re “moralizing” or that somehow drinking a pepsi is the same thing as blowing up a bus of old people.
(Postscript: this is exactly what happened after publishing this material)
Go ahead and read that Calusa essay. I invite you to read anything else Atassa publishes. Recall, whether they support them or not, Atassa routinely publishes ITS communiques they believe to be real; recall also meme pages like Everything is Bad and Post Left Rage as well as Atassa freely admit ITS is the only one carrying out the eco-extremist mission.
Other insurrectionist cells across Mexico, ones who might rightly be claimed as Egoist in structure and methodology, want nothing to do with ITS or eco-extremism; they see in the sad behavior dressed up as ideology nothing more than the industrial society eco-extremists claim to be free from:
“That is the case of these disastrous ones. Axiomatic fruit of this pitiful civilization that they say they want to destroy. Only in the deepest entrails of this decay can such decaying behaviors manifest themselves. It is in the sewers of this society where these pathologies are nourished and the most delirious fascistoid rhetoric takes shape. That is where these deformations are formed and the irrepressible protagonistic anxieties throw them at the reflectors.
Its roots are none other than the nauseous dung of social dysfunction. After a sad childhood and a frustrated adolescence, harassed by bullying from the cradle and traumatised from their family, they begin to channel their frustrations and all the accumulated self-hatred and project it without ethical mediations. That is the Individualists Tending toward the Wild. His misogynist discourse and his authoritarian actions are the result.”
You can’t call them eco-fascists however! Oh no! Totally different! Why would they be featured by an anarchist publisher and by Anarchist News?
Says one apologist:
“In what sense do they resemble the fascism of Mussolini or Nazism? Fascism is a statist, nationalist, and (ultimately) pro-civ ideology – none of these labels apply to eco-extremists…their ideology is essentially all about continuity with pre/anti-colonial savagery of the indigenous warriors.”
The fans of Atassa, and by extension their publishers, prefer to ignore when Atassa compared themselves favorably to fascists, gleefully advocated genocide, and called people “degenerates.” I have trouble remembering the Aztecs complaining about degenerates. I seem to remember somebody in the 1930’s talking about it alot. Here’s the screenshots:
https://twitter.com/Ole_Bonsey/status/957487260538167296/photo/1
Of course they’ll tell you that post was a “mistake,” someone running the page yet having nothing to do with the journal. You still can’t call them eco-fascists. They’re totally different. They might advocate the same things but somehow they having nothing to do fascism.
Sure. Just look at the latest Atassa journal cover:
Atassa, meme pages like Everything is Bad and Post Left Rage, and increasingly the “Anarchist” website called Anarchist News are uplifting one of the most garbage ideologies I have ever had the misfortune of learning about. The idea that they are essentially trying to ship a green “nihilism” that worships “wildness” and advocates genocide into Egoism, an idea that posits human uniqueness as the most liberating concept, is a goddamn shame. There is nothing Egoist about Atassa, Eco-extremism, and by extension the meme pages that fawn over them.
But they sure do love to pull in as many Egoists as possible to buy their shit.
Egoism is changing. It isn’t 1995 anymore and Wolfi’s old ideas about making everything “play” and running off into the woods aren’t cutting it. Egoism is confronting a world where most Unique Ones can’t afford healthcare, don’t own any property, and have almost no time to develop their unique and individual selves. For some people the path to liberation involves seizing territory, enriching their lives, and destroying the forces that would seek to turn them into to a socially-obedient slave. Those people are Egoist-Communists.
For some people liberation involves leaving everything the way it is and cheering on a semi-fictitious band of assholes in Mexico who claim to kill random old people and women.
Those people aren’t Egoists. They’re eco-extremists and are fit only to be pissed on whenever possible.
Have a great night.
Dr Bones