Submitted by ziq_TNG in Anarchism (edited )

Most powerful hurricane in history of region, entire islands turned to rubble overnight, earthquakes, desertification, rising sea levels that are set to swallow entire islands and big tracts of Florida, chemical and nuclear power plants exploding and contaminating the land, water and air forever, a China that's too polluted to grow food to feed its people.

Shit is hitting the fan and fast. These natural and created disasters are just the beginning, things are gonna get a whole lot worse going forward into 2018. Scientists have been shitting themselves for years, saying there's no way civilization can survive what we've wrought on ourselves.

Canada about to massively increase its fossil fuel footprint. America pulling out of the Paris accord in favor of a return to coal. New Zealand's water bodies irreversibly polluted by the dairy industry.. The list of humanity's crimes against nature goes on and on.

So let's think about all this in terms of how it will affect:

a) Neoliberalism, globalization and NATO expansionism in a world where survivable land is at a minimum

b) Anarchism / communism / socialism / whatever the fuck label you apply to yourself (when the world is burning around us, semantics are meaningless and there will be no workers or 'rights' left to safeguard, and no state to seize/destroy).

c) Continued life on this planet, or not.

Environmental collapse will quickly lead to the collapse of the economy. This is a given, the markets are fragile as fuck to any kind of disruption, let alone worldwide chaos. With the economy, go the jobs, and then everyone from the middle class and down will be on equal footing; broke as fuck and desperate to keep their families alive.

Migration will be rampant. People will need to get away from the hurricanes, earthquakes, droughts and floods and they'll flood to northern lands in the masses.

As we're already seeing, these northern lands (the same ones that have caused the climate crisis, I should note) are scrambling to shut down immigration, those efforts will increase when climate refugees grow. Already 21.5 million people have been displaced due to global warming. That is set to surge to half a billion.

The nation states could make a mad rush to seize land that won't be as badly affected by climate change. Especially land that used to be covered in ice that has now melted. They may firebomb countries, or even their own states just to kill potential climate refugees off before they can migrate.

The rich will barricade themselves into the few lands that are predicted to survive climate change - they've already been busy buying up all that safe land e.g. San Francisco.

The panic to get to survivable land will see the biggest attempted migration in history, and you can expect the Western nations to meet these refugees that scamble to get into their countries with deadly force.

But with the economy in shambles and no taxes coming in (in countries already deeply in debt), the nation states are going to be coasting on their grain reserves. When the grain reserves are depleted and even the rich, the police and the national guard start to starve, the state will no longer serve any purpose and it will quietly go away.

Environment, capitalism, state, falling like legos in that order.

That's when we come in.

People are desperate, millions to billions have died because of neoliberal capitalist greed. Centrism will be a thing of the past - desperate people don't sit on the fence. They'll either go far right or far left.

No state, no capital, people depending on mutual aid to survive... We'll have worldwide anarchy, and we didn't even need to raise a finger to bring it.

But then the work starts...

Fascism will be everywhere. The reactionary preppers, the militias... The far right have been preparing for this chaos for decades. They will have more power than anyone, and they'll use it to build white armies, to grow food - likely using slave labor, and attempt to make their countries into white ethnostates. People will join up with them to survive. Racist attacks in the northern climates will surge. White militias will seize food, land and supplies from PoC.

The groups with the biggest armouries will control the food, and the groups with the food will control the people.

The fear of refugees will be 100 times worse than it is now when people are literally fighting for survival, so anyone even slightly foreign looking will be targeted.

So my question is, how do we as radical leftists or post leftists or whatever the fuck you call yourselves, come out of this whole mess still breathing? How do we convince these scared and desperate and murderous people to reject the powerful fascist militias that are handing out food to their children, and instead join us in building communities, because Kropotkin / Marx / whatever dead white guy wrote this book 100 years ago? How do we convince people that are suffering and dying under anarchy, that anarchy is the way forward if only we do it right?

And if we can't, and fascism takes over, and we learn nothing from the collapse of mega industrial civilization and turn the coal plants and oil rigs back on to aid in spreading fascism to whatever unscorched pockets of land are left for whites to conquer and scorch, does our species even deserve to survive?

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An_Old_Big_Tree wrote

A prescient essay/book on this topic from the nihilists is Desert - I read it in my early days of anarchy and it might interest some people here.

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Lenny wrote

If things get that bad, let's face it, we're not prepared, and as you noted, the far right is. We'd be constantly in retreat as they take over more and more of the habitable land and kill anyone that stands in their way. There are far fewer radical leftists in the West than there are reactionaries. One look at any comment section on any website is proof enough of that.

I'm going to think on this some more, but I'm honestly not coming up with any ideas so far. We don't have the guns, the land, the skills, or the numbers.

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ThePhoenix wrote (edited )

Maybe we should take a page out of their book and start digging holes in the ground, lining them with lead, and fill them with as much stuff as we can to survive.

Maybe we should start creating militia groups like they do so that we at least have groups of anarchists that train others to fight. Essentially, they will be the fascists in the cities and we can try to survive as the roving bandit hoards living in communes on the fringes. That is a little better than accepting their control.

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ziq wrote

That sounds like a lot of work with very little reward.

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Defasher wrote

I read this 4 times and every time you had added more paragraphs, lol.

Collapse is unavoidable now, it's really just a waiting game, but there are ways to prepare - learn to grow food, learn to gather wild plants. These are the only skills that will keep you alive. Forget about game, anything with 4 legs will be shot and eaten right after the collapse - learn about plants, find a remote secluded area that's fertile and near no roads and squat it. Bring your comrades. Build a village. Be self sufficient. You might lose it all when the state and then the fash come looking for farms to seize, but at least you'll have learned how to survive so you can pick up and do it somewhere else.

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Emeryael wrote

Industrial Civilization or Capitalism has only been able to stay afloat because, until recently, there were always new lands to expand to with resources to exploit. But now, we've effectively run out of places to expand to. Right now, Capitalism stays going by cannibalizing other Capitalist nations, but there are obvious flaws with that strategy.

Edward Abbey said that "Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of a cancer cell" and that's a fairly accurate summation of what's going on. Like a cancer, Capitalism has to keep moving and expanding, but in doing so, it will inevitably kill off its host.

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ziq_TNG OP wrote

Well said. Here's hoping it eats itself sooner rather than later so we can build a better world together.

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Raisins wrote

Things have to get a whole lot worse before they get better, huh?

I just hope enough of us survive this shit to get the chance to declare anarchy. Most of us are proles and city dwellers and not equipped to deal with this kind of crisis.

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PoisonDartFrog wrote

How many of you are on the front lines of climate change? I know our middle eastern and African comrades are struggling with desertification, and now everyone in the Caribbean is picking up the pieces from a mega hurricane. At some point enough people will be affected by the West's reckless destruction of the planet and will start to fight back.

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DeathToAmerica wrote (edited )

This is not something I need to be thinking about. If the world is going to collapse and fascism is going to rise from the ashes, I think I'd rather just enjoy whatever time I have left until everything becomes either desert or ocean or fash.

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Pop wrote (edited )

Lucky you still have anything to enjoy
mostly I'm just trying to keep the people I love from dying and failing miserably

(and the ones I love who aren't dying are part of the problem)

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DeathToAmerica wrote

mostly I'm just trying to keep the people I love from dying and failing miserably

Are they addicts?

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Pop wrote (edited )

they aren't, as it happens
Just people around the bottom of the capitalist food chain

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