We are publishing here the revised draft of a conference given in the summer of 2024, at the anarchist and antispeciesist summer universities in Mallouestan. As is often the case in such moments, the orality and the curious interventions of the audience created a discussion quite different from the one planned by the questions. An opportunity to come back in depth to these (eco-fascism, anarchism, anti-speciesism, strategic differences, etc.). This first part is mainly about theory.
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1 - What should we expect from states and technologies in order to meet current and future societal and ecological challenges?
a) At ATR, we never see technology as a solution. Rather, she is the problem.
Take the example of abundant electricity; it is also the ongoing risk of nuclear war. Medical imaging (MRI, scanners) is also about colonial extractivism, uranium mines in Niger, ravaged forests in Kazakhstan. Nothing very anti-speciesist.
There are good and bad uses of the Internet, but all depend on and generate extractivism, surveillance, and energy-intensive data centers. Whether right or left, capitalist or communist, digital infrastructure emits more than 4% of CO2 per year. Nothing very anti-speciesist.
And its manufacture is so complex that it requires a planned and centralized society (a state).
As you can see, technology is not neither democratic nor ecological.
It is not neutral. It imposes its use. It imposes its effects. It has serious social and environmental implications, at its production And to his utilizing.
Same thing for a solar panel. Is 400 km2 of our forests threatened by 2028 really antispeciesist?
Finally, the same goes for artificial intelligence (against which ATR has been campaigning for several months). The total consumption of ChatGPT-5 could reach the daily electricity demand of 1.5 million American homes. Not very antispeciesist.
In short, the technological system is not an à la carte menu. You take it all or you leave it all.
b) On the question of the State, let us be brief. I feel close to the libertarian spirit.
For us, the State is synonymous with dispossession, bureaucratization, repression; the State is the massacre of the Commune, Sainte-Soline and the Yellow Vests, it is a non-neutral tool and uncontrollable as the Bolshevik or Maoist experience proved.
To be clear, we are only waiting for the state to disappear.
Because the only thing we should really expect from the State is its radicalization, it is this return of the scheduling, this planning that we want everywhere on the left, even among the so-called decreasing.
Here I must remind you that “planned degrowth” by the State is another name for forced sterilizations in Africa. This is another name, in China, for the old one-child policy. It is the other name for eugenics. It is the other name of eco-fascism.
Eco-fascism, the real one, defined as early as the 70s by Gorz [1] and Charbonneau [2], it is a strong state, a controlled economy, reindustrialization, centralization, restrictions, privations, regulations, rationing, regulations, rationing, fines, fines, fines, fines, fines, taxes, taxes, carbon passes, carbon passes, techno-surveillance, techno-control, etc., and why not social credit (announced by La Quadrature du Net)).
Eco-fascism is a political regime dominated by a scientific elite, setting up an eco-state capable of controlling its population in the name of survival.
Eco-fascism (really existing) is the project that covers the whole chessboard, from Jean-Marc Jancovici to Jean-Luc Mélenchon, going through notorious neo-Nazis like Pentti Linkola [3] (or Savitri Devi).
Faced with this punitive ecology, the best solution is still the dismantling of the techno-industrial system.
2 - What should our expectations be from modern struggles in order to achieve the ideals discussed (taking into account material conditions)?
We expect the current struggles to become effective.
In October 2023, the Earth Uprisings cancelled the construction of 15 mega-basins. But in June 2024, 21 mega-basins were authorized.
It is time to stop thinking in defensive terms, but in offensive terms.
More in terms of wear and tear, but in terms of the domino effect.
We need to stop the symbolic gesticulations and hurt materially the system.
What are the organs neuralgic of the techno-system? That is the question to ask yourself. What should you target to finally create what strategists call a “cascading failure”?
It is necessary (legally) to target:
- The electrical industry. The system is totally dependent on this supply.
- The communications industry. The system is unable to survive without telephone, radio, television, email, etc.
- The computer industry. We all know that the system would quickly collapse without its computers.
- The biotechnological industry. The system will soon be dependent on it. Moreover, its laboratories experiment on thousands of animals every year; nothing very antispeciesist.
But to block where it hurts, you still need to have determined a purpose concrete...
3- What successes and limitations have been observed in recent social movements?
It all depends. We can welcome the return of the peasant question.
But, if the objective is to preserve life on Earth, I did not find no success.
Let's move on to limits:
- Objective nonexistent = failure. Objectives multiples = dispersion (See XR).
- Lack of strategy to reach the goal (when there is one). Think of the movement against pension reform.
- Horizontal hostility on issues of fixed militant identities [4].
- Confusion between legal action and illegal action, which undermines security.
- Confusions between organization and oppression, which hampers efficiency.
- Refusal of prioritizing the abolition of industrial capitalism (or even the desire to maintain certain aspects of it).
But the main limitation is the idealistic choice of targets.
To prevent a few basins from being built is to believe that we can Have the enemy wear down.
Marching against the law retires every 15 days, It's a war of usury. Of the war of attractition, of position.
Exhausting thousands of activists for 9 years to stop ONE airport project is a war of usury.
Burning down a ski resort like the ELF in 1998 is a war of usury.
The system is not affected by this attack. It's spectacular, it relieves, but it's not materially efficient.
Pushing hundreds of activists off to stop a Lafarge factory in just 3 short days is courageous, but it's a war of usury.
It's a defensive war. A war without initiative. A war with no choice of targets. A war lost in advance.
When will we understand What to attack slaughterhouses not targeting the system as a whole?
When will we learn to choose our targets strategically? (not ideological) When will it be too late?
Right now the Russians are attacking Ukrainian electricity; NATO is responding by targeting gas pipelines; and we We're attacking ski resorts!
I repeat, the emergency must make us switch to an offensive strategy, our cascading strategy of failure.
Let's face it.
Climate movement: gone. The pension movement: defeated.
Autodissolution of Last Renovation recently, without having achieved its objective. At the beginning of August, it was Last Generation, in Austria, who threw in the towel.
And Youth For Climate, what is the status?
And XR, which was supposed to stop CO2 emissions in 2025, what's the status?
When will we stop with the culture of defeat, the culture of usury? Avant total population control ? Avant carbon quotas ? Avant eugenic policies ?
Who here thinks in terms of flows, logistics nodes, supply chains, bottlenecks?
Obviously, only ATR wants to destroy the infrastructure that allows the extinction of wild animals.
