Atassa: Readings in Eco-Extremism

For many readers the first question they may ask upon picking up Atassa is "Where is the anarchy in this?" This is not the anarchism of an evolutionary (or revolutionary) transformation of this cold, bureaucratic world into a nicer, better world. It isn't about ideas. It is about something a lot more uncomfortable. It begins in the moment when Industrial Society and Its Future was translated into Spanish. The premise of that writing, much like the eco-extremist movement that Atassa journals, is that Civilization should be fought. The example of Ted Kaczynski is of what that fighting looks like: it isn't social, it isn't popular. It will probably end in failure and imprisonment. ITS and other eco-extremists have denounced anarchism. But they have denounced it FROM within and not from the outside of anarchism. Their Wild Nature is similar to most other expressions of anti-civilization perspectives. Their anti-anarchism is an attempt to do what they did as anarchists better. Their anti-anarchism is similar to what post-left, second wave, and anti-state communists, are trying to say when they complain that anarchists often act as moralist, failure-as-a-form-of-life, close minded, parochial position. Often the position is the enemy of the goal and this is especially true as the failures of old strategies meet new (uncomfortable) approaches. These days there are people who are unapologetically doing violence against people in the name of wildness. This journal is a collection of writings by people who agree with them. Poetry and essays that celebrate anti-humanist action for the wild. Atassa is the Muskogee word for "war club." The atassa was the symbol of the Red Sticks, a faction with in the Muskogee or Creek nation that from 1813 to 1814 fought against the encroachment of white settlers on their lands in what is now the states of Georgia and Alabama in the present-day United States. For us, it is a symbol of a war that came too late, too late to save their sacred ground and rhythm of life, too late to fight the mass of invaders who would transform the land into something unrecognizable. Nevertheless. the war was fought, because their instincts, and arguably the land itself, demanded it. Eco-extremism has no presence in the United States or in the English-speaking world. I t started in Mexico as an illegalist tendency, not at all concerned with proselytism or popularity, and has since spread to other countries to the South and in a certain form to Europe. Those involved in this journal are thus not eco-extremists, and we don't advocate that anyone consider this journal an exhortation to action or advocacy for illegality. Like the corridos (ballads) also coming from the South celebrating the actions of figures of the drug trade, we are here to "tell it like it is," not changing anything or condemning any of these actions since we don't find that attitude particularly helpful. Like the narcocorrido, our only message is: "This exists, and you have to think about it, whether you like it or not." We hope that our little labor will serve to inform and inspire a different perspective in the Anglophone reader. With Wild Nature on our side.