Originally posted by Red Marxist
[email protected] 30 2006, 02:48 PM
an extreme form of environmentalism basically the people who hold that "placing bombs or engaging in sabotage of corporations who destroy the environment is valid" One of those fanatics stuck foot long sharpened razor blades inside of trees and when a mill worker put it through the machine to make the tree into planks the blade flew out and decapitated him
When have enviromentalists planted bombs? Fire "bombs" (consisting of a plastic jug filled with gas and a slow burning wick) sure, but actual "ka-boom" bombs?
Foot long sharpened razors????
I don't believe this at all. Could you please provide a link or source.
It sounds like outrageous fantasy to me.
Here is an detailed explanation of what "Eco fascism" really is, from a Left-Biocentric perspective:
(Link to source at bottom)
-------------------------------------------------------------
Ecofascism: What is It?
A Left Biocentric Analysis
By David Orton
Many supporters of the deep ecology movement have been uncomfortable and on the
defensive concerning the question of ecofascism, because of criticism levelled against them,
such as for example from some supporters of social ecology, who present themselves as
more knowledgeable on social matters. (The term “social ecology” implies this.) This bulletin
is meant to change this situation. I will try to show why I have arrived at the conclusion,
after investigation, that “ecofascism” has come to be used mainly as an attack term, with
social ecology roots, against the deep ecology movement and its supporters plus, more
generally, the environmental movement. Thus, “ecofascist” and “ecofascism”, are used not
to enlighten but to smear.
I will also argue that the social ecology-derived use of “ecofascist” against deep ecology
should be criticized and discarded as sectarian, human-centered, self-serving dogmatism,
and moreover, even from an anarchist perspective, totally in opposition to the open-minded
spirit say of anarchist Emma Goldman. (See her autobiography Living My Life and in it,
the account of the magazine she founded, Mother Earth.)
What seems to have happened with “ecofascism”, is that a term whose origins and use
reflect a particular form of human social, political and economic organization, now, with a
prefix “eco”, becomes used against environmentalists who generally are sympathetic to a
particular non-human centered and Nature-based radical environmental philosophy -
deep ecology. Yet supporters of deep ecology, if they think about the concept of ecofascism,
see the ongoing violent onslaught against Nature and its non-human life forms (plant life,
insects, birds, mammals, etc.) plus indigenous cultures, which is justified as economic
“progress”, as ecofascist destruction!
Since the mid 80's, some writers linked with the human-centered theory of social ecology,
for example Murray Bookchin, have attempted to associate deep ecology with “ecofascism”
and Hitler's “national socialist” movement. See his 1987 essay “Social Ecology Versus
‘Deep Ecology’” based on his divisive, anti-communist and sectarian speech to the
National Gathering of the US Greens in Amherst Massachusetts (e.g. the folk singer Woody
Guthrie was dismissed by Bookchin as “a Communist Party centralist”). There are several
references by Bookchin in this essay, promoting the association of deep ecology with Hitler
and ecofascism. More generally for Bookchin in this article, deep ecology is “an ideological
toxic dump.”
Bookchin’s essay presented the view that deep ecology is a reactionary movement. With
its bitter and self-serving tone, it helped to poison needed intellectual exchanges between
deep ecology and social ecology supporters. This essay also outlined, in fundamental
opposition to deep ecology, that in Bookchin’s social ecology there is a special role for
humans. Human thought is “nature rendered self-conscious.” The necessary human purpose
is to consciously change nature and, arrogantly, “to consciously increase biotic diversity.”
According to Bookchin, social arrangements are crucial in whether or not the human purpose
(as seen by social ecology) can be carried out. These social arrangements include a non-
hierarchical society, mutual aid, local autonomy, communalism, etc. - all seen as part of the
anarchist tradition. For social ecology, there do not seem to be natural laws to which humans
and their civilizations must conform or perish. The basic social ecology perspective is human
interventionist. Nature can be moulded to human interests.
Another ‘argument’ is to refer to some extreme or reactionary statement by somebody of
prominence who supports deep ecology. For example, Bookchin calls Dave Foreman an
“ecobrutalist”, and uses this to smear by association all deep ecology supporters - and to
further negate the worth of the particular individual, denying the validity of their overall life's
work. Foreman was one of the key figures in founding Earth First! He went on to do and
promote crucial restoration ecology work in the magazine Wild Earth, which he helped found,
and on the Wildlands Project. Overall he has, and continues to make, a substantial
contribution. He has never made any secret of his right-of-center original political views and
often showered these rightist views in uninformed comments in print, on what he saw as
“leftists” in the movement. The environmental movement recruits from across class, although
there is a class component to environmental struggles.
Bookchin’s comments about Foreman (of course social ecology is without blemish and has
no need for self criticism!), are equivalent to picking up some backward and reactionary
action or statement of someone like Gandhi, and using this to dismiss his enormous
contribution and moral authority. Gandhi for example recruited Indians for the British side
in the Zulu rebellion and the Boer War in South Africa; and in the Second World War in
1940, Gandhi wrote an astonishing appeal “To every Briton” counselling them to give up
and accept whatever fate Hitler had for them, but not to give up their souls or their minds!
But Gandhi's influence remains substantial within the deep ecology movement, and
particularly for someone like Arne Naess, the original and a continuing philosophical
inspiration. Naess is dismissed by Bookchin as “grand Pontiff” in his essay
http://home.ca.inter.net/~greenweb/Ecofascism.html