Deep Green Resistance: Strategy to Save the Planet

As with most books by this trio of authors, I disliked Deep Green Resistance. First, let me explain the layout of the book. The first section (mostly written by Lierre Keith) is centered on the philosophy and motivation behind the book. Section two (written by Aric McBay) is actually quite good and is all about building a movement -- and I would suggest these few chapters for those interested in doing so. The last section is just a quick wrap-up (again by Lierre Keith).

Now I will tell you the fundamental problem I have with this book, and with anything else written by Derrick Jensen or his buddies. The purpose of this book is to completely dismantle civilization, and to go back to pre-agricultural societies. Let that set in for a show more second. The authors think to themselves "where did this planet start going to hell?", they picked a date approximately 10,000 years ago, and went with that. Unfortunately, the authors do not provide their vision of an ideal future in this book. Actually, they sort of do, but it doesn't explain the part where BILLIONS of people die (population of the world pre-agriculture: way less than half of one billion, and the authors state that 20,000 humans would be a nice number), electricity and running water are things of the past, medications (not to mention birth control!) that we use today are no longer manufactured, and we all hunt and gather to eat. For some reason, the idea of going back to an age where a simple infected cut could kill me isn't too exciting. I also like taking hot showers and not freezing to death in the winter. I'm also not sure where humans can go to hunt and gather these days. Farms? But that would defeat the point!

The authors also make the somewhat ignorant conclusion that "civilization" and "indigenous societies" are mutually exclusive categories. They do not explain how a population reduction might occur (but state that it is necessary), except for one mention of the one-child policy (this stated by a so-called feminist), and mention that when "society inevitably collapses" the population reduction will occur anyway. If you think that through, you can imagine that the people that Jensen, et. al., would least like to remain on the planet will be those with the most resources to ensure that they aren't the ones to kick it when the planet goes to hell. That's not a great philosophy to live by if you're a member of the global poor. The authors also mention that "[o]ur goal is not to bring down the US government or any government," which is probably necessary to say to cover their asses, but is entirely antithetical to the idea of bringing down civilization as we know it.

Deep Green Resistance, and most of Jensen's books, employ many rhetorical devices without a lot of facts, relevant citations or follow-up. For example, I'm sure I heard the cutting-off-the-fingers anecdote in at least Endgame. And the authors certainly make sure to state that 200 species a day are kicking the bucket AS YOU READ THIS BOOK. So please go out and... blow something up? Maybe? The authors aren't really too specific about that. They are too busy being authors to start the resistance movement, hence this book -- to get you to do it instead!

Many of the issues I have with this book center around author Lierre Keith. I certainly hated the book The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability because of it's abundant lack of facts and absurd stereotypes and generalizations about vegans and vegetarians. Keith goes to great lengths in this book to discuss that she is a feminist. Now, I'm a feminist, and I completely agree that any movements that call themselves radical need to have a feminist/womanist perspective to avoid the numerous pitfalls of many previous movements in history. However, Keith is also adamantly anti-porn, is pro one-child policy (so much for choice!) and seems to believe in biological determinism (she mentions that the "starving boyfriends" of her stupid vegan female friends are always pining for some dead cow soup that she serves at potlucks). Also, when mentioning rapists in the counter-culture, she only mentioned black activists... I'm sure she could have mentioned that rapists come in all skin colors. She also uses a lot of ableist language which I find to be distinctly alienating, as at times she literally equates the term "insane" with "sociopath."

And honestly, I don't know why a book about environmental radical movements needs to be so vehemently anti-vegan. I have a hard time taking somebody who contributes to the slaughter of 25 BILLION animals per year (in the US alone) seriously when they say they're sad that animal species are going extinct, or that they wonder why overfishing occurs. I also can't take her seriously when I assume from The Vegetarian Myth that she only ever ate bread and lettuce while vegan when she says things like veganism causes "general lassitude" or that "[a] food ethic stripped of protein and fat may meet ideological needs, but it will not meet the biological needs of the human template." Dear Lierre Keith, vegans actually do eat enough protein and fat. See, for example, quinoa or avocados. It's not that hard. She also rails against industrial agriculture, global warming, and deforestation in the Amazon when vegans are hoping to help avoid those things by turning down animal products!! And I love her view of the future where "[p]eople who bring soy products to permaculture potlucks start getting funny looks." Technically, soybeans are a major ingredient in livestock feed so anybody who brings burgers should probably get funny looks too!

Another thing that seemed counter to Keith's feminism was the fat-shaming statements of people being obese when they eat "bad" food, as if refined carbohydrates are the only things leading to adiposity, and as if being fat is a horrible thing. "Fat people are probably the most exhausted humans on the planet, as minute to minute their bodies cannot access the energy they need to function." What? Please tell that to all of the athletic fat people, or non-athletic fat people who are not continuously exhausted. Finally, Keith wraps up this section stating that "[f]ood should be a nourishing and nurturing part of our culture" but clearly not when people are so afraid of being fat that they spend the better part of their lives dieting and hating their bodies.

Lierre Keith also had some kind of amazing time during the northeast blackouts of 2003, saying that she didn't see any drawbacks to it. I remember the blackout well because my family's house was out of power for over a week. We didn't go without electricity or using our cars as we had to eat, go to work, and do all sorts of other things that humans do. We did what many people did, and used a diesel powered generator to cook food, run the fridge so our food didn't spoil, and take showers. The fact that the power went out for a while in 2003 doesn't give us any indication of what a future without fossil fuels will look like. And considering that all of the authors of this book are against solar, wind and geothermal power, that future (according to them) will be completely lacking in electricity.

And to wrap up my thoughts about Lierre Keith, I wonder why she has such stupid (according to her) friends. Every anecdote about her friends inevitably leads to some stupid thing they did that made her feel like she was so much better than everyone else. I guess she just has an inferiority complex which leads her to hang out with vegans, new-agers and yoga aficionados.

This book criticizes nearly every radical and counter-cultural movement in the past, with a few exceptions. Lierre Keith made a progression something like teenager's brains aren't fully formed (according to some fishy MRI study), the 60s counter-culture was mostly made of young people, and Timothy Leary sucked, QED. I really wonder what they would say about Occupy, except I think they'd probably find a way to hate them too!

Finally, the authors of this book seem to hate fascism, but without any kind of clear road to the future, which by necessity has to include a political viewpoint, is going to lead in that direction. Especially when the future radicals are armed with ideas like the population has to be reduced by about 90%, vegans are braindead, and people are only allowed to have one child. Aric McBay also mentioned that people who commit environmental crimes should be executed. I certainly wouldn't want him to be in charge of deciding who gets hung in the future. (I'm certainly anti-death penalty, and I thought most true radicals were!) show less

This is an intensely frustrating book. I just concluded my 2nd attempt to get through it.

Let me say that I am passionately in agreement with the authors' contentions. I just think this book shoots itself in the foot.

The first time I tried reading it, I put it down because I was starting to feel hectored/harangued. The general tenor of my reaction was "look, I agree with you, I'm a member of the choir, why are you shouting at me?" And so based on that experience, my capsule review would have said the main problem with the book was one of tone.

But it has worse problems. I got through more of the book this time, but reached a point where I was thinking "okay -- there've been 150+ pages about why this or that approach is misguided or is show more not enough. I'm gonna make it to the next section and hope against hope there is some sort of specific instruction regarding what DOES work." And then I got to the next chapter, "Other Plans" ("'other' plans?" I thought -- "you haven't presented ANY plans yet"), and on page 195 author Keith started in on another list of three approaches that don't work. I put the book down.

The writing here is passionate and, in a surface sense, "good." There is not much wrong with it qua writing -- and I certainly nodded along vigorously, although I think I was told six times that 200 species died today (PLEASE don't take this as my saying that that fact is not catastrophic -- it is). But FFS, DGR friends, you can't just tell me that "we have to stop using fossil fuels NOW" without providing concrete HOWTOs for the kind of resistance you're envisioning. Yes, okay, "classical liberalism" is too personality-based ... but you keep telling us what DOESN'T work and haven't told us what DOES. Surely in the first 200 pages there should have been some hint. Maybe I missed it.

I hate to single out author Lierre Keith for the blame, here, but the bulk of those 195 pages are hers. It's shitty of me to say, but how many species died while I was trying to get to the part of this book that recommends specific actions? show less

This is the third Derrick Jensen book I've decided to inflict on myself, but probably not the last. They each start with great promise and by the end descend to infuriating illogical leaps, and this one was no different (it is the promise of each that lures me into trying again). However, the presence of two co-authors aided in readability.

Deep Green Resistance aims to motivate the formation of an underground army to carry out something they call Decisive Ecological Warfare. This is not a joke. Through reading guerrilla and resistance books and manuals from many historical periods, they put together a strategy for identifying the goal (destroy industrial civilization), developing a strategy, and identifying tactics (blowing things up, show more mostly). They helpfully include suggestions on things like minimizing security leaks and performing background checks on new recruits (again, not a joke). I can't speak to the practicality of any of this, never having run nor even participated in underground armies, but I can say that as I have no immediate nor long-term plans to assassinate anyone, I skipped that section altogether.

However, what the authors overlook in their very thorough review of global resistance movements past and present, is that this is not Nazi Germany, nor is it the Niger delta. That is: the very fact that they were able to write and publish this book through a mainstream publishing house, and that it is sold at large national bookstore chains, would seem to indicate that we live in a society where people have enough personal freedom that the extreme solutions they advocate are possibly not necessary, and almost certainly something most of us are not yet desperate enough to entertain. This is as kindly as I can put it. This would all point towards a 1/5 rating.

Also frustrating: the section on horizontal hostility (aka "infighting," where sub movements critique each other rather than their actual targets), then followed by approximately 100 pages of attacks on other kinds of environmentalists, and why their kind of environmentalism is inadequate. I don't know why this is necessary. Surely, even if you don't think they're using their time well by building wind farms, using cloth shopping bags and making community gardens, this does not make them the enemy and you don't need to call them names.

What bumps it up at a 3/5 is the analysis, which is spot on in many respects, and what they call the "aboveground" movement and tactics. In other words, if you can't go around blowing stuff up because you have other responsibilities, here are some things you can do that might actually help move this culture in a sustainable direction. And that's useful and, as with all of Jensen's books, beautifully written. Their passion for the natural world is unquestionable and their assessment of our straits is bang-on. But taking potshots at other environmentalists is totally unnecessary, their assessments of the other environmentalists' positions is inaccurate and unkind, and the comparison of industrial capitalism with nazi germany/nigeria renders much of their analysis and suggested solutions unuseable. I mean, for crying out loud, here I am, under my own name, writing a review of a book advocating the destruction of infrastructure and the assassination of capitalists, said book bought at Chapters, review published on a public website, and I have every expectation not to be arrested for it. Doesn't that say something? show less

This is hardly the first book to acknowledge the desperation of our current predicament. Many books have addressed the devastation of our planet's oceans, soil, and forests, have pointed out that we are living in the midst of an anthropogenic mass extinction of unprecedented speed and voracity. It's easy to find books discussing the ongoing genocide against indigenous peoples, and the ongoing devastation of their landbases and rivers for the profits of the rich, working under the malicious banner of "progress". We have many books about soil erosion turning farmland to desert, and pesticide effluents killing rivers and leaving dead zones in our oceans. Many books are available that acknowledge we live in a pornographic culture and a rape show more culture, a culture with little respect for women and children. For decades books have been telling us that toxic chemicals from factories have entered our bodies, that women can no longer even nurse without passing along dioxins to their children, toxins dangerous at even at a few parts per trillion. We have books that recognize that corporations, as persons, are genocidal maniacs who will profit from any atrocity they can possibly get away with, will leave our planet a barren husk so long as we do not stop them. Nor is this even the first book to argue that we must stop them.

What is different about Deep Green Resistance is that it is the first book that offers a solution that is scaled to the size of our predicament. In the past, books have usually suggested answers such as getting involved in your community, making better consumer choices, writing letters to the editor, planting gardens, donating to worthy charities, and spreading awareness of the problems we're facing. These are good moral decisions to make, but as political tools for change they are not effective, and it becomes an immense problem when these sort of actions become the backbone of our movement for a saner world. Self-improvement and token actions, although they might help us to relieve guilt, are not going to cut it. If we are going to save this sickly planet, we are going to need to organize ourselves squarely against systems of power, and fight them as hard as we can. The authors of this book have clearly thought long and hard about how we need to organize, how we need to strategize, and what sort of pitfalls we need to watch out for. If you love this planet as much as I do, I hope you read this book and take what it has to say to heart. We will need all the heart and courage that we can muster. show less

Anarcho primitivism. Resistance culture.

What is liberal? What is conservative? What is radical? What is moderate?

These are relative terms. What does that mean? They’re set by the poles. That means that the wild card here are the poles. What’s outside this box can’t be influential.

So what? Well, what’s “possible” influences both our beliefs and our actions, even if we don’t go all the way up to the edge.

For example: If you believe that growing your own garden is radical, you might sign a petition about the Farm Bill. But if you believe that taking down civilization is radical [DGR] - a greatly expanded spectrum from the former - then you might really dig into the Farm Bill, and create a permaculture garden while you’re at show more it. We could call this pushing the center.

This is the light in which I found Deep Green Resistance useful. I wouldn’t say my aim in life is to consciously bring about the end of civilization [although it’s unconsciously moving that direction], as would many DGR people. I’m more in alignment with the optimistic views presented by Charles Eisenstein. But knowing that there are people out there that use this view as there compass helps to for me to orient myself.

Also, in a culture where we’re surrounded by antiterrorist propaganda, where the incumbent way of thinking is the only way to think [not that this is ever uncommon], DGR is a breath of fresh air. I would highly recommend it to help expand your horizons, even if I don’t endorse the authors’ viewpoints. show less

Anything I could say, lemontwist has said better, but in short, this is a great book for angry people who know it all and demand change now. Once you are out of your late teens/ early twenties, however, it starts to just sound like mindless yelling.

Good ideas, but too long. Why not spend a little extra time editing this and have a really solid product?