Anarcho-Primitivist Electoralism

reforesting and rewilding projects

My guest this week is a 16 year old extreme climate pessimist. They also happen to be one of my all time favorite posters whose meme account has inspired me for years. Primitivism grew in popularity on both the Left and Right and has since rippled outward into Gen Z memetic culture at large. Today it takes shape as a broad skepticism towards mass society and modernity, backed up by fantasies of apocalyptic climate catastrophe.

Southern.Anti.Civ
age 16
Tennessee
Instagram, Discord, Twitter, Reddit

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Philosophically i’m vaguely aligned with anarcho-primitivism, but unlike pretty much every other anprim i think there’s a good amount of value in using electoralism to alleviate social and economic suffering.

Who are your biggest influences?

Henry David Thoreau, Guy Debord and the Situationists, Fredy Perlman, Kevin Tucker/Green and Black Journal, Slavoj Žižek (his linguistic-political theory especially), Marx, and Jacques Camatte.

I tend to think alienated labor boosts technology which in turn boosts alienated activities like overuse of tech and social media and such. i try to distance myself from Kaczynski, but his idea of surrogate activities fits in nicely here and offers great insight: we do things like go on social media because we lack genuinely productive ways to use our time in general. we mostly feel we’re not doing anything with our labor because of the alienation from the product, and because of civilization it becomes much harder to do physical tasks like go out and build a cabin, so instead we seek out things like Twitter or Instagram because it acts as such a good coping and venting mechanism while only furthering alienation.

When did you first learn about or start visiting online political communities?

When i was around 9 or 10, by way of discovering reddit and 4chan from my brother who’s 5 years older than i am.

What was your ideology before entering these spaces? Or how have your views evolved since you started participating?

I was basically what someone like Pete Buttigieg is right now: vaguely progressive, mostly just platitudes, lack of serious suggestions or policy on most issues. my main focus was on social stuff, especially LGBT+ rights, as i began to accept my sexuality and gender struggle around this time. however, i first got into radical political communities online around 2015, when i was about 12-13. i found the fullcommunism sub on reddit and immediately began devouring everything i could find online about socialism and within a day of doing that i described myself as a Trotskyist. however, about a month later, i learned more about anarchism and became an egoist and ancom. i remained like that or a while, though still involved with electoral movements, until the 2016 election. after that, i completely lost faith. the day after the results were counted i distinctly remember losing all faith in electoralism and making my first political Instagram account.

What changes do you think we are likely to see in the next 10 years?

likely depends on the election. i think that a progressive has a good shot at at least the nomination and if one gets the nomination i think with the right charisma ascension to the presidency is likely, so that’s the first thing. along with that, i think by the end of a decade we’ll have many more socialist politicians calling openly for things like worker control, but this won’t be enough to combat the major threat of climate change. i have no hope that we will do anything to stop climate change even if a progressive gets elected, not enough anyways.

What changes do you think we are likely to see in the next 40 years?

the degeneration of the political system worldwide into chaos will probably be evident if my former predictions about climate change are wrong. to a degree, we sort of realize even right now we’re in the most dire straits and have been for 30 years, but 40 years from now there will he no hope, because right now we’re holding onto hope purely because it makes us feel better without using it. in 40 years, that will be gone, and the effects will have arrived in a very uncourteous manner. politics will become a game of figureheads

What changes do you want to see in the next 10 years?

election of genuinely socialist leaders, an immediate withdrawal from all nations and a reparations program, completely free healthcare, moves towards sustainable open borders, very heavy restrictions on private corporations, encouraging of co-ops, free public college and the abolition of private universities, and most importantly an enactment of policy even stronger than the Green New Deal to combat climate change, overpopulation, and income inequality

What changes do you want to see in the next 40 years?

major moves away from civilization and technology, complete closure of timber companies, urban development companies, evacuation of cities, survival skills being taught en masse, rapid dissolution of government as fast as people can transition, all encouraged by huge reforesting and rewilding projects

What tools, technologies or tactics are most important to achieve this?

i think rewilding can be important here, but it’s funny because to a degree i think we’re almost headed in a good direction if we get a sort of collapse like i expect. we need to have political collapse to be able to move forward into hunter-gatherer life as devastating as it may be to portions of the population. i think it’s important to also be able to aggregate social discontent — let’s take for example the Unabomber Manifesto. when that was published, a lot of people read the first part and dismissed it, but a lot of average, genuine people read the full thing and found it made a lot of sense. i think there’s a lot of power in that for feral anarchist ideology and i think that a pretty good portion of the population would be open to those ideas or already has sympathies and given enough support would be willing to act radically to achieve that sort of society.

What are the most common jobs in this future society?

aha hunters and gatherers if you want to call them “jobs” (i wouldn’t)

Where do most people live?

to put it vaguely, with nature and in forests and such, but to get into specifics the most popular spots would probably be in valleys, near rivers/streams/lakes, near coastal areas, or in places with very temperate and steady climates. very few indoor facilities and almost none of those have proper entryways with things like doors unless the weather gets cold in the area.

What modes of transportation do people use?

pretty much they’d just follow animals around, so by foot

How are goods and food produced?

not many [goods] are produced to begin with, but any that are would be by hand. hunting and gathering, of course, though i’m not totally opposed to the idea of very small-scale agriculture

How do these goods and food reach consumers?

goods and food are considered as belonging to the small community that it was made in — in terms of actual physicality and geography, it wouldn’t have to travel hardly at all, literally maybe a few yards at most

How much leisure time do people have?

about as much as they do today but it isn’t needed. productive activity like gathering or hunting things for food or caring for children or something like that will lead to fulfillment on its own and maybe, as people like Perlman and Bob Black argue, be considered fun and leisurely themselves. People rest, talk with one another, care for children and the elderly, maybe explore the region

What kind of energy does this society use?

ideally none

Where is this society located?

all throughout the world on every continent and most areas

Who are *you* in this society?

another face in the crowd, hopefully

What items do you have in your future home?

i can think of none i would want

Where are most people in this society from?

there is no one from as ideally the communities would represent a great amount of diversity in terms of racial, ethnic, and national identity and also carrying over into things like gender + sexuality and interests

How are laws created?

they aren’t

Does this society run up against any natural limits?

by design it is made to adapt to the needs of the planet, not be at odds with them

What language do people speak?

language is complicated. first thing i know is that i don’t think there should be written language as it would serve no point but to civilize (some anthropologists have done great work on this). i think that language has an inherent stranglehold on us to begin with and places limitation on our thought so in a sense i’m against language itself. i wonder if instead of language there could be an alternative way of semiotically signing things physically without using verbal communication, and if there is that would it.

What are the biggest religious or spiritual organizations, if any?

folk and individual spirituality

What state is nature in compared to today?

in recovery — not great but much, much better. within a 100 years the change would very noticeable.