Title: Locating a Green and Pink Anarchy
Subtitle: Some notes and thoughts
Date: May 12, 2021
Source: https://medium.com/uncivilized/locating-a-green-and-pink-anarchy-2058deb8b54e

When I say Anarchy, I do not mean a programme seeking to establish anarchism, but a realization of anarchy-as-negation. I speak of Anarchism-as-negation as a continual process of struggle against all that afronts us as individuals and friends, by which I mean society / civilization / leviathan / mass society / class society. Others, who say Anarchism, mean anarchism-as-affirmation, a future of establishments, often a Left-Anarchism, so to speak.

This is where Green and Pink meet. Green anarchy, or more specifically, anarchy that stands against Civilization, looks upon mass society as a collection of life-denying systems and techniques to be conquered and demolished. Pink anarchy, the insurrectionary mode of Queer expression, finds itself as the embodiemnt of the “Other,” a victim of oppression and marginalization, as brought on by mass society.

Both are Pariahs of so-called Anarchism. For example, Green Anarchists have been characterized as those “who sidetracked true anarchist goals,” and object to organization in favor of self-reliance and so-called lifestylism.[1]

Pink Anarchists too do not escape criticism from the Left-anarchists, who shout that queer folks are creating divisions and they must simply fight capitalism and establish communism to affirm their own rights and liberties.

On the criticism of organization, it is true that Green Anarchists reject organizations such as the platformist model or revolutionary unions, seeing them as institutions that recreate Death. As Perlman says, “Institutions are impersonal and immortal. They share this immortality with no living beings under the sun. Of course they are not living beings. They are segments of a carcass. Institutions are not a part of Life but a part of Death. And Death cannot die.”[2] Green Anarchists, dedicated to life-affirmation must, on principle, reject such relations as life-denying. We find our success in our individual disgust to the Leviathan just as much as we do in our coordinated response in affinity groups, which are but mortal, temporary associations. However, not every Green Anarchist is against certain formal organizations just as long as they serve immediate purposes and reject bureaucracy. If the aim is free association, the organization itself must act in such a way — our means must represent our ends. Diversity of tactics and organization is a key aspect of resistance. That said, we need no Vanguard! As per the criticism of side-tracking anarchist goals, so be it. If the Anarchist Revolution came tomorrow, we would not stop our resistance to their Leviathan, even if its flags are Black and Red. We need no Communes!

Pink / Queer Anarchists and other Insurrectionists reject their own assailaints’ criticisms as assimilationist lies that would continue to foster new communities on the outskirts, new queer identities to be othered. While Queer Anarchists do not sow divisions, choose their existence, they often revel in “the anti-social turn,” as Baedan puts it. The existence of society deems the necessity of Others, just as Fascism necessitates its ow enemy Others, who just so happen to often be Queer people. We do not want Trans Rights, Gay representatives, or diverse conscription into the anarchist verymuchnotapoliceforce milita. This would only serve to remove our individuality and assimilate us into the Leviathan, as well as create new Others, new Queer folks, to be attacked, as stated above. An Anarchist society is not free from the ever-hungry institutions! Queerness demands life-affirmation as the only alternatives are renunciation or death, or both. From the piece, Anti-Left Anarchy: Hunting Leftism with Intent to Kill, there is a similiar analysis of Green Anarchy that I find in my own understanding of Pink / Queer Anarchy:

All ideologies are straight jackets to the Free Spirit, but ideologies that don’t reflect the chaos, nonsensical whimsy, and maniacal laughter of life—like Leftism—are particularly boring impediments to the unrestrained expression of autonomous and uncivilized rebellion. Green Anarchy—or the critique of civilization—is class analysis that doesn’t go halfway, that doesn’t remain trapped in capitalist logic (as communism does), and that attacks alienation, domestication, and division of labor at their roots...their civilized roots. The Left is solidly embedded in the civilized order and as we struggle against this poisoned, horrible darkness that is dragging us towards universal collapse, it would behoove us to struggle with open eyes.[3]

The intersection between Green and Pink anarchy is simply that: anarchy, not anarchism; absolute negation with no interests in positive affirmations. To be queer and to be wild are one in the same, as they stand in contrast with societies, constantly outside of them as constantly changing “Others.”

This realization has already been found by the likes of Baedan and others before me. I am not providing anything new with my writing, but showing a more simple understanding that Green and Pink Anarchy are one in the same, fundamentally. Where before, and even today, many Leftists call for the unity of Red and Black, of Communists and Left-Anarchists, Anarchists should call for the unity of Green and Pink, of Wildness and Queerness.

[1] Sheppard, Brian Oliver. “Anarchism vs. Primitivism.” The Anarchist Library, 2003, theanarchistlibrary.org/library/brian-oliver-sheppard-anarchism-vs-primitivism.

[2] Perlman, Fredy. Against His-Story, Against Leviathan , Red and Black, 1983, p. 33.

[3] Anonymous, Anti-Left Anarchy: Hunting Leftism with Intent to Kill, 2017.