ELF (earth liberation)

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anon (not verified)
ELF (earth liberation)

Does the Earth Liberation Front still exist in any capacity?

Luke from DC (not verified)
ALF and ELF exist whenever actions are claimed in their name

ALF and ELF are things you DO, not something you join. They will always exist, as proven by a recent mink release in the Northeast. Some other things work this way too.

I was once approached at a protest by someone (90% they were a cop) who asked me "how do you join Jane's Revenge," I replied "You do not join Jane's Revenge, you become Jane's revenge!" The cops surely fear unstoppable decentralized resistance.

anon (not verified)
I feel like a lot of anarcho

I feel like a lot of anarcho projects have gone through this sort of thing. “Yes, we have an organizational name, symbol, branding, and undersigned texts - but we’re not really a THING!” Ok, try to have it both ways, but the claiming of actions by ELF or any other name has been used by the state to portray captured militants as part of a “terrorist organization” (of course, where the organization doesn’t exist they will fabulate one, but why do it for them?) Cleary there is a reason for the existence of a “brand name” that puts across certain ideas related to actions; it gets the message out while also runs the risk of creating specialists and martyrs and alienating participants’ activity and militancy from broader, living struggles. The use of organizational names in repression is one of the reasons for the anti-organizational turn in post-2008 anarchism.

anon (not verified)
…in other words, no. Not

…in other words, no. Not really.

Go back to 2006 and the Green Scare to find out why. See also: Deep Green Resistance.

Green anarchists have tended since then to affiliate more with broader social-ecological struggles like Indigenous solidarity. Or they’ve become back-to-the-land quietistic secessionists or individualist “anarch” creeps.

I think the whole eco-radicalism thing is declining within anarchism for various reasons. Its height was 1991-2007 when its romantic, mystical slant was symptomatic of an era of western societies not experiencing much internal social conflict. idealist dropouts went in search of “the primeval”. (See also: militant vegans). It’s come back with fascists and liberals now who also want to disregard social struggles for reasons of their own, in favor of nature mysticism and woke technocracy. So I think its theoretical bankruptcy has been exposed by the changing tides and it’s not as appealing for this and other reasons. Not to mention the very ugly consequences of quixotic clandestine eco-jihadism for the anarchist milieu, as mentioned at top. When people you know are getting sent away for decades for goofy arson plots you know something has gone wrong.

lumpy (not verified)
your summary at the end is a

your summary at the end is a bit skewed, no?

the issue with the "plot" was they included somebody with a big mouth and a drug problem who was flipped when the pigs leaned on him, otherwise they sacked rome with the best of the vandals

anon (not verified)
Again- no, not really! They

Again- no, not really! They pulled off a few minor sabotages which did little to change anything, even to spread their own ideas. In other words, actions as uninspiring and pointlessly fanatical as the primitivist ideology behind them. I’m not sure which plot you mean but if “one bad apple” is your entire answer that’s amazing cope. I’m a Luddite but elf tactics are not the way and there’s plenty of material for a post Mortem to explain why.

lumpy (not verified)
i was referring to the ski

i was referring to the ski resort arson, which I assumed you were too. am i wrong?

i don't need to "cope" in regards to whether militant tactics "work" because every military in the world is out there proving it every day, there's only competent militancy and incompetent. as for the theory, you and i probably agree about more of that

SirEinzige
There goes LOLpy again

LOLpy’s example of militancy working is…LOL, the leviathanic military model. LOLpy, we’re talking about things that work for anarchy. Did you not even bother to read the situationists and their critique of militancy?

It’s all under par for the course from you as usual.

anon (not verified)
Yes, you were wrong. Arson

Yes, you were wrong. Arson was used or plotted more than once by green anarchist militants, so I was just using it as an example.

You also misunderstood the cope line, which was about how you seemingly chalked up the failure of that movement to one drug addict.

I don’t think I said anything like “militant tactics don’t work” (because you’re right as far as what does that even mean), but if you want to talk efficacy, no I don’t think pulling off a handful of sabotages and then a bunch of people catch major terrorist charges and their movement disappears, counts as efficacy, except in the sense that participants might have felt personal satisfaction. Effective militancy is about context. I don’t doubt the good intentions and defensible beliefs of many who went down that road. But look what happened. Have they had any impact or influence since then? Beside ITS I suppose. There’s a lesson here about militancy as adventurism that’s meant to spread among true believers. They misjudged many things about their movement and now it’s basically gone.

lumpy (not verified)
SIGH yes, i know there were

SIGH yes, i know there were other examples. it's just that you mentioned arson and there was The Big One at the centre of the green scare story. my bad.

i also didn't "blame one drug addict", that's just a detail specific to the high profile incident i was referring to. the state flips people that they can lean on, real talk only. not a disrespect thing.

i did look at what happened: a relatively large scale counter-insurgency campaign by the state, now famously referred to as The Green Scare. yes, they (the eco saboteurs) had a massive impact and a great deal of influence for an extremely small political margin. apparently you and i have drawn opposite conclusions about all of this? one of us must suck at analysis, i suppose?

ITS isn't even a US context thing, unless you count the handful of weirdos who jerked themselves off about it a lot.

anon (not verified)
I don’t totally disagree with

I don’t totally disagree with you but I think their influence went toward the environmental movement which has shown itself in recent years to be increasingly and irredeemably liberal and colonial.

I’m tough on you lumpy but you’re one of the few people here I actually like. <3

I’m tough on green anarchists because I used to be one.

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