Cautious Anonymous – Public critique of Individualists Tending toward the Wild

from feartosleep, transl by wos:

“… the existing movement [against the techno-industrial system] is of low effectiveness because too many of the people in the movement are there for the wrong reasons. […] For [some], revolution is only a kind of game that they play as an outlet for rebellious impulses. For still others, participation in the movement is an ego-trip. They compete for status, or they write “analyses”and “critiques” that serve more to feed their own vanity than to advance the revolutionary cause.” [2]

Cautious Anonymous (Anónimos con Cautela) (AC) have read the four communiques from Individualidades Tendiendo a lo Salvaje (ITS), published on the web page “liberación total,” dated April 27, May 22, August 9 and September 21, all four from 2011. Now it is time for someone to publicly respond to their arguments.

This text was at first prepared in order to respond to the four communiques, but a few days later, AC found out that ITS again published another communique on the same page, dated December 19, 2011; in it they again expressed their rejection of leftism; on reading it, AC decided to modify our original reply and to focus on this more important aspect: ITS’ relationship with leftism.

It is worth mentioning that even though it would have been better to expound a critique of each of their communiques and of all the topics they deal with in them, because AC do not entirely share some of ITS’ ideas and think there are many things to say in reference to their actions, discourse and ideology, to deepen and focus on an ideological discussion would have lengthened this article too much and would have spent too much time on matters that are, in a certain way, inconsequential. [3]

The ITS and leftism

The way the ITS behaves, even though it is not one hundred percent leftist, does share some similarities with the “leftism” of the apparently most radical kind (the leftism of the self-proclaimed “oppositional,” “autonomous,” and “counter-cultural” groups). [4]

There are various sorts of similarities with leftism that one finds in ITS’ discourse, but we will just mention two here:

– The attempt to eliminate the common gender of nouns (in this case using ‘x’ for ‘a’ or ‘o’), an action of progressive individuals who pursue gender equality by means of political correctness [5], quite an insignificant matter but, as already mentioned, part of present-day leftist conduct.

– the kind of tactics used to spread their ideology, tactics that are also akin to those of  traditional leftism, those used by the struggle for the poorly-named “animal liberation”, for example, and that have served as an outlet for their activists’ hostility, as well as a way to show the system where its failures are, creating a series of positive feedback between leftists and the system.

On first glance, the sort of tactics used by ITS appear to be the most radical and therefore the correct ones, but by thoroughly analyzing them, one can discover that they are not so good. For example, what kind of tactic is it to tell your enemy of your plans to fight him? With their tactics, it is likely that ITS have, in spite their good intentions to do something useful (or precisely because of these), created a major obstacle for ideas truly against industrial society and have only ended up helping the system they intended to harm. Because what ideas really against the techno-industrial society least need now is to be related primarily or exclusively with such tactics.

We have to be clear that this is not say that the public diffusion of ideas against the technoindustrial system should be renounced, only that those who decide to do this should be capable of identifying leftism in any of its forms, assuming an attitude of total rejection toward it and trying to not act or express themselves like leftists in order to not attract pseudo-radicals who later convert such ideas into leftism.

On the other hand, AC also want to ask ITS, what do you intend to fight: technological progress, the techno-industrial system, modern civilization, or “Domination”?

We have already mentioned that their discourse is anything but clear, but even so one can confirm that ITS are more bothered by “domination” and more interested in trying to combat it than they are about human Freedom and even the self-regulation mechanisms of non-artificial systems (Wild Natural in general).

At present one finds a variety of people in the so-called “anti-domination” current, some really critical and rational, from non-leftist psychological tendencies, and potentially useful for effectively combatting the techno-industrial system, though still with more or less progressive and humanist contamination coming from hippie and leftist subculture, and others (the majority) of an irrational and/or leftist psychological tendency, entrenched in the subculture and totally ruined by the idealist, humanist, progressive, etc. ideological influences typical of these extravagant and/or antagonistic scenes. “Anti-domination” is, in the best case (of those “anti-dominators” of non-leftist, non-hippie psychology and potentially critical and useful), an immature phase in the development of a non-leftist current truly against the techno-industrial system. And in the worst case (of the “anti-dominators” who, by their nature, never break with the hippie, leftist and/or humanist contamination and therefore do not evolve), an incorrect road condemned to failure.

ITS should have thought about this before expressing their tendency to attempt to combat acts of domination, and therefore, before again favoring things related to that current.

AC think that the best thing is to give a higher priority to a unique, clear, feasible and more important objective: the destruction of the techno-industrial system.[6] Because if another objective is chosen (for example, to combat all forms of domination), the energies and resources of those pursuing those objectives will dissipate in trivial or impossible struggles and the techno-industrial system will end up completely eliminating true human Freedom and Autonomy and suppressing wild Nature.

What has been said so far are only a few general lines, but AC hope that this critique and all its conclusions make ITS (and not only them) reflect and see that in reality their discourse, their behavior and part of their ideology are incorrect and that their poorly-executed actions and critiques have greatly served to attract more of the leftist sort of individuals to the struggle against the techno-industrial system.

_______________________________

Notes:

1) Important clarification: Anónimos con Cautela decided to publish our critique on the web page liberaciontotal.lahaine.org, not because we feel some affinity with the ideas that are published on it (nor with the people who use it). We did it solely as a means so that it could be analyzed and also be applied to those individuals who declare themselves in affinity with Individualists Tending toward the Wild, who like them supposedly “critique” and reject leftism and say they are not part of it but who, by a lack of reflection or naivety, copy and perpetuate a series of dynamics of thinking that really are leftist, thus also helping the technoindustrial system grow and develop more easily and efficiently.

It is at the same time, also so that those who seek to lucidly finish with the techno-industrial system and who feel a legitimate rejection of leftism can act prudently and not turn into apathetic people or derive their discourses and ideas from erroneous positions like those of the Individualists Tending toward the Wild and similar groups.

2) J. Kaczynski, “Technological Slavery,” Chapter 6, The Road to Revolution, Ed. Feral House, 2010, Page 230.

3) Like for example:

– that their four communiques are full of digressions, are excessively redundant and some of their arguments even turn out to be pointless (such as the vindication of dead people or support of martyred activists from other countries).

– that their communiques are compounded and mixed in with other people’s ideas and discourses, unfortunately poorly understood and therefore distorted (to mention just two examples, the ideas of the extinct Working Group of the Anarchist Space for Debate of Bilbao, author of the text “Dominating Technology Against Freedom and Autonomy,” and those of FC, authors of Industrial Society and Its Future).

– failing to clarify in their own words an endless array of terms they use, some of which are very important to think about before saying (eg: “individual autonomy”, “human freedom”, “Wild Nature”, “technology”, “progress”, “civilization”, “techno-industrial system”, “system of domination”, “leftism”, “primitivism”, etc). A very usual behavior in the discourses and critiques (though not all) against modern technology or the techno-industrial system, in which the individual writers prefer not to define the aforementioned terms, whether because they are not at all clear on what they are talking about or because what they intend is to artfully deceive the readers, manipulating other people’s discourses and terminology in order to hint at nonexistent affinities, which is much worse.

– the lack of respect toward their readers, something which AC considers a subject of no little importance and which ITS on the other hand takes lightly. From there, the tone of their invectives, which corroborate that ITS’ most significant aim and motivation are their pyschological necessities, since they apparently base their judgment and actions on feelings of hostility.

In their communique from September 21, in paragraph 12, ITS say that this is not so, and they use some tricks to refute this argument: for example, they say that aggressiveness and violence are instincts. Not to say that they aren’t, but to say that actions and an ideology are rational because they are based on instincts and because the System is peaceful, is to not realize that the System also uses feelings of revenge, frustration, desperation, excessive hatred, etc, in order to create sophisticated forms of keeping people entertained and appeased and in order to inoffensively give an outlet to their aggressive impulses so that they will not be slowed down and will be able to keep functioning.

Not to mention the lack of clarity, the exacerbated language and the poor grammar that invade their discourse, among many other defects.

4) It is true that there is not a total and concise definition of modern “leftism” (of its psychology and its behavior), and when one appears it usually does not cover all of the forms of leftism, due to the existence of a great variety of leftist ideological movements and of individuals who make them up. This creates a problem that makes the interpretation of the notion of leftism by some of its supposed critiques incomplete and confused (as in the case of ITS and similar groups).

Nevertheless, AC believe that there is a set of useful characteristics for identifying and calling a person and/or movement as leftist, therefore it is necessary to pay attention to their basic values and objectives: “collectivism,” “cooperation,” “unconditional help,” “equality” (social, racial, of gender or of species), “political correctness,” “over-expression of emotions,” “multi-culturalism,” etc.

Leftists also tend to sympathize with other activist movements or individuals who consider themselves victims of supposed “injustices” (“racism,” “homophobia,” “police brutality,” “patriarchy,” “speciesism,” “capitalism,” “totalitarianism,” etc.). Likewise, they work so that the techno-industrial society will correct these problems and comply with encouraging and strengthening these values. In summary, they favor so-called “social improvements” and “progress.”

In the same way, AC uses this concept when we refer to those people who apparently critique leftism and/or say they are not leftists, but who in reality are, since their actions and discourses express a certain influence very close to leftism, it is only that they call the same things by other terms like “counter-cultural,” “alternative,” “libertarian,” “insurrectionary,” some supposed “anti-industrial,” “radical,” etc. These individuals and groups most of the time transform, adulterate and adopt as their own, as they see fit and consciously or unconsciously, truly radical discourses or critiques in order to seem like and believe they aren’t what they truly are: leftists.

For a better understanding and deepening on the topic, we recommend reading the text Industrial Society and Its Future, Freedom Club, Ediciones Isamatag, 2011. Also see Último Reducto, IZQUIERDISMO: Función de la pseudocrítica y la pseudorrevolución en la sociedad tecnoindustrial, Ediciones Anónimos con Cautela, 2011.

5) AC does not pursue, much less support or defend, either “political correctness” or the use of a “politically incorrect” language, above all we assume a neutral position toward the subject, that is, AC do not place our attention on political correctness, something which ITS cannot say.

6) Unlike ITS, AC do believe that there could be a possibility of managing to destroy the techno-industrial system, under certain circumstances.