294. Goleman, 177.
It’s Time to Get Out
295. Anderson Valley Advertiser, April 28, 2004, 12. I’m sorry about the masculine pronoun.
296. I am indebted to Becky Tarbotton for the previous several paragraphs.
297. Gruen, 62.
298. Brown, 273, 449.
299. Orwell, 210.
300. Weber, 156.
301. Mallat.
302. “Living in Reality,” 21. That same Indian gave his own answer as to what they could do: “We Aymara carry rebellion in our blood. Bolivia is totally corrupt, not just the mayor. All of them should be finished the same way, if not burnt then drowned or strangled or pulled apart by four tractors. . . . It’s the only way they are going to learn.”
303. Melançon.
Courage
304. I love the book enough that I published it myself, along with the extraordinary designer Tiiu Ruben.
305. As opposed to (this article would say if its author had a shred of integrity) the terrorism that characterizes those in power, and in fact is how they gain and maintain that power.
306. Wilson.
307. Fox, “Largest Arctic Ice Shelf.”
308. Perlman.
309. My sister’s got ovaries (the female equivalent of balls, I suppose).
310. I am indebted to my dreamgiver for these dreams and their interpretations.
311. Just last night I had dinner with a couple of mainstream environmentalists and a bunch of other people. My mom was there, too. The mainstreamers spent much of the dinner putting forward precisely these arguments. They said, and this is a direct quote, “Things will be all right if only we take back the Senate.” I don’t think they meant by storm, and by we I don’t think they meant normal human beings but Democrats, the left wing of the corporate party. They then said, “And it would be great if we could take over the White House, too.” My mom then said, “It doesn’t matter whether the Democrats or Republicans are in the White House. The government would still be run by the big corporations.” Wrinkled noses all around. Something stunk. What was that awful smell? Then lots of very fast sentences spilling from the mouths of the mainstream environmentalists, anything to make the moment disappear. Earlier in the evening they’d taken a different approach to someone Saying Something That Shouldn’t Be Said. I was giving a talk the next day, and someone asked what I would talk about. I said, “How to take down civilization.” The same awkward silence. The same wrinkling of noses. But this time the next thing that was said was, “Could you please hand me the hummus? It’s awfully good. And this soup is simply delightful.” Down the old memory hole.
Hope
312. Wheatley, 19.
313. There now, wasn’t that easy?
314. Actually, every time I get on a plane, I hope it doesn’t crash.
315. Well, a social life would be nice, but let’s leave that aside.
316. I’ve lost patience with those who use any excuse for inaction.
317. Kind of like a belief in a Christian God or a Christian heaven.
318. Goldsmith.
319. I mean by this both that the culture is killing the planet and killing us, and more specifically that to follow the morality generated by this culture contributes to the killing of the planet and to the killing of ourselves.
320. “Sardar Kartar Singh Saraba,” Gateway to Sikhism, http://allaboutsikhs.com/martyrs/sarabha.htm (accessed December 29, 2003). Cites Jagdev Singh Santokh, Sikh Martyrs (Birmingham, England: Sikh Missionary Resource Centre, 1995).
The Civilized Will Smile As They Tear You Limb From Limb
321. Cited in LeGuin, 45.
322. These poll results are of course jokes.
323. This person is a combination of several people I have known.
324. Doesn’t that feel good just to admit that? That realization was extraordinarily liberating for me! Now I can just get on with the work.
325. And don’t give me any shit about how the wants of most Americans aren’t in opposition to the needs of their landbase. That’s just crazy. Sure, we can talk about their deep-down desire for connection, but you and I both know that’s not what I’m talking about here.
326. Jensen, Culture, 105-6.
327. Ibid., 106-7.
328. And even that was a farce: using a rigid definition of slavery, there are more slaves in the world today than came across on the Middle Passage, and of course that number swells to even more unimaginable proportions when we include sweatshops, wage slavery, and dispossession. For a compelling examination of modern slavery, see Bales.
329. Jensen, Culture, 110-12.
330. Jefferson, 345.
Their Insanity Was Permanent
331. Forbes, 31-32, 135.
332. It’s hard to snare a fly when you’re six feet under.
333. I’ve never understood why more people don’t do protests. They don’t really accomplish anything, but they’re pretty darn fun.
334. Of course we can say the same thing about the Cleveland Indians and many other sports teams.
335. As complete and permanent as that of the vivisectors themselves.
336. Rape racks are most commonly used to impregnate factory sows.
337. It didn’t help to write them letters begging them to do the right thing. Nor did it help to hold signs and placards. Nor did it help to burn candles, say prayers, and send them lovingkindness™. It didn’t even work to send them faxes.
338. Planck.
339. My thanks to Gabrielle Benton.
340. Even more important than GNP. Even more important than the Dow. Even more important than jobs. Even more important than that really sexy man or woman who will be attracted to you if you buy the right toothpaste.
Romantic Nihilism
341. Nizza Thobi, “Chanah Senesh,” http://www.nizza-thobi.com/Senesh_engl/html (accessed December 3, 2004).
342. Did that former agent even read any of the book?
343. For an entertaining article about this phrase, see Shulman. Here’s what Emma Goldman actually wrote: “At the dances I was one of the most untiring and gayest. One evening a cousin of Sasha [Alexander Berkman], a young boy, took me aside. With a grave face, as if he were about to announce the death of a dear comrade, he whispered to me that it did not behoove an agitator to dance. Certainly not with such reckless abandon, anyway. It was undignified for one who was on the way to become a force in the anarchist movement. My frivolity would only hurt the Cause.
“I grew furious at the impudent interference of the boy. I told him to mind his own business, I was tired of having the Cause constantly thrown into my face. I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from conventions and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy. I insisted that our Cause could not expect me to become a nun and that the movement should not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it. ‘I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody’s right to beautiful, radiant things.’ Anarchism meant that to me, and I would live it in spite of the whole world—prisons, persecution, everything. Yes, even in spite of the condemnation of my own comrades I would live my beautiful ideal” (Goldman, 56).
Neck Deep in Denial
344. The Sun, March 2004, 48.
345. For a stirring and extraordinary description of this by two exceedingly amazing guys, see Jensen and Draffan, Machine.
346. Including “Fair Trade: Economic Justice in the Marketplace,” Global Exchange, http://www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/fairtrade/stores/fairtrade.html (accessed March 16, 2002).
347. Some sources say fifty.
348. My description of these four groups is from Jeannette Armstrong, by way of a personal communication with Zenobia Barlow, July 15, 2001.
349. Mumford, Technics, 186.
350. Apologies to Joseph Heller.
351. (in all the bad movies)
Making It Happen
352. Anderson Valley Advertiser, October 1, 20
03, 5.
353. U.S. et al. v. Goering et al.
354. Tokyo War Crimes Trial Decision.
355. We can know precisely what many of these tortures were, not only because many members of the Nazi “security” agencies were later recruited by other governments (notably the U.S.) to continue plying their trade for “freedom and democracy,”™ and not only because the Nazis sometimes recorded their atrocities in as compulsive detail as sometimes do the Americans, but also because at least one of the members of the resistance—Major Fabian von Schlabrendorff—survived through a miraculous string of events (just one part of which, to give you a taste, was that the Allies happened to bomb the court and kill the judge just as Schlabrendorff was about to be sentenced to death (the judge was found clutching Schlabrendorff’s file in his cold hands). In his monumental (and essential) The History of the German Resistance, 1933-1945, Peter Hoffmann describes it in horrifying detail:“In the first stage Schlabrendorff’s hands were tied behind his back and his fingers encased in a contraption in which spikes penetrated into the fingertips; with the turning of a screw they penetrated deeper. When this produced no answer the prisoner was strapped down on a sort of bedstead and his legs were encased in tubes covered on the inside with sharp metal spikes; the tubes were slowly drawn tighter so that the spikes gradually penetrated deeper into the flesh. During this process his head was pushed into a sort of metal hood and covered with a blanket to muffle his screams. Meanwhile he was belaboured with bamboo canes and leather switches. In the third stage, using the same bedstead, his body was stretched either violently and in jerks or gradually. If he lost consciousness he was revived with douches of cold water. These tortures had extracted no confession from Schlabrendorff and so another method was tried. He was trussed up, bent forwards so that he could move neither backwards nor forwards, and then beaten from behind with a heavy club; with each blow he fell forward on his face with his full weight. All these tortures were applied to Schlabrendorff on the same day but the only result was that he lost consciousness. The next day he had a heart attack and could not move for several days. As soon as he had recovered, however, the tortures were repeated. Finally Schlabrendorff decided to say something. . . . [He implicated only a dead man the Nazis already knew about. As Hoffmann says on a previous page, “In fact Fabian von Schlabrendorff was so severely tortured that he was ultimately forced to abandon his initial policy of total silence and make statements implicating himself and those already dead. Only in this way, he thought, could he avoid tortures during which he might lose control of himself and his tongue.”] This seemed to temporarily satisfy the Gestapo; it was enough to prove complicity” (Hoffmann, 522, 521).
Those in power will stop at nothing: torture is routinely used by those in power today, as is known by those who already experience it. Would that we could emulate the courage of those who already resist, knowing the potential consequences.
356. Although pagans take a lot of heat because of Hitler’s dabblings in pseudo-paganism, the truth is that Hitler, and his atrocities, owe infinitely more to the mainstream Christians who supported him than to any pagans.
357. Previous paragraph from Hoffmann, and Mulholland. The Tresckow quote is from Mulholland, 8, although you can find it in many places. There are of course many heroes and heroines who resisted. And for right now for obvious reasons I’ve confined my list to those who tried to bring down Germany from within. There were also countless partisans and others in the occupied countries, and there were famous (and unknown) uprisings among those at concentration camps and among those about to be sent to concentration camps.
358. Montgomery, 62.
359. A modified version of the first two paragraphs appears in my book A Language Older Than Words.
360. Churchill, Struggle for the Land, 73.
361. The following several paragraphs were also used in a different form elsewhere.
362. I have to note that there were many who saw from the get-go that Hitler had to be killed, and there were many who tried to do something about this.
363. Hoffmann, 251.
364. Ibid., 253. Mason, 62, gives Hitler’s next two lines: “There is no time to lose! War must come in my lifetime.”
365. Of course, had Hitler been killed, the German economy would have trundled on as well.
Fulcrums
366. The Sun, October 2003, 48.
367. Fulcra, for those Latin aficionados keeping score at home.
368. One common way is through amassing money, but this power seeking takes many forms.
369. Or even talk about fighting back.
370. Hoffmann, 258.
371. Formerly the Bürgerbräu restaurant.
372. Mason, 80. I want to emphasize, it was as easy as that.
373. Some accounts make this a 180 mm shell.
374. Mason, 81-82.
375. Mason’s account states he set it for 9:40, and the timer malfunctioned, going off twenty minutes early. In any case, Hitler survived.
376. Account put together from http://www.joric.com/Conspiracy/Center.html (a great site on the conspiracies to kill Hitler); Mason; and Hoffmann, 257-58.
377. Hastings, 227.
378. Ibid.
379. Keegan, 430.
380. Effects of Strategic Bombing, 13.
381. As were aviation fuel refineries: no aviation fuel, no airborne defenses (Dowling, 198).
382. Keegan, 430.
383. I’ve received a large number of letters, by the way, with cogent and radical analysis of the culture from people in the military.
384. And as I did in A Language Older Than Words.
385. I need to say something else here that doesn’t really fit in the book but is crucial to the discussion, and this is a good place to raise it. I’m often asked if I’m afraid of getting arrested or killed by feds because of my writing. I always answer, “Absolutely. But I’m far more afraid of what this culture is doing to the planet and to all of us. It’s as Robert E. Lee said, when asked why he so often attacked even when outnumbered, ‘We must decide between the risk of action versus the positive loss of inaction.’”I’ll tell you my fantasy, which is that as some fed reads this book, perhaps with an increasing sense of outrage, that instead of ordering me arrested or killed, he disproves me. I would like nothing more than to be shown conclusively that my premises are wrong and that we do not have as difficult a path ahead of us as I know we do.
Show me how a way of life based on the use of nonrenewable resources can be sustainable. Show me how a way of life based on perceiving those living beings around us (and often ourselves) as resources can be sustainable. Show me how civilization can and does benefit landbases. Show me how civilization isn’t based on systematic and widespread violence. (As Ursula K. LeGuin writes, “All civilization does is hide the blood and cover up hate with pretty words” [The Sun, March 2004, 48].) Convince me. I don’t think you can do it.
I mean, by the way, really convince me. I don’t mean throw at me your angry and absurd roadblocks to understanding, tossed at me simply because you are too afraid of the implications not only to allow yourself to examine them but to allow anyone else to examine them either (see R. D. Laing’s Jack and Jill above). I get enough of that already. For example, after a recent talk someone emailed me with this question: “If you don’t like civilization and all it brings, why don’t you and your liberal [sic] friends just move someplace else?” I mentioned this at a talk I did a couple of nights later, and a woman in the audience exclaimed, “By Christ, tell me where I can go! The fucking culture is everywhere. I can’t get away from it. The poisons are in my cells, and they’re in the cells of everyone everywhere. Civilization is killing the planet!”
That email is one example of what I’m talking about. Here’s another. Immediately after another show I did, an older man with a gray ponytail and loose-knit sweater rushed the stage. He demanded, “Do you have a bank account?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Because if y
ou do, I can discount everything you say.”
I stared at him, eyes wide, dumbstruck.
“All through your talk, I kept wondering whether you’re a hypocrite. If you participate in the system, you’re a hypocrite, and then nothing you say matters at all.”
I pointed to his sweater. “Where do you think this was made? And your pants? Your shoes? My shoes? My backpack? Just because we’re immersed in this culture that systematically eliminates alternatives doesn’t mean—”
He cut me off, looked smug. “Ah, ha! So you feel defensive. You do have a bank account then.”
I just shook my head and walked away.
Back to the feds and other cops reading this book. If you don’t like what I say, disprove me. I don’t think it can be done. And if you can’t disprove me, don’t simply act out your denial and kill or arrest me. Join me. Do the real work. Protect your landbase. I’m sure we could use your skills.
I want to be clear, by the way, that this is not a general invitation to debate my life or work in private. I do enough of that in public and have no interest in doing it in private. And frankly, more or less all of the “attempts to disprove me” I’ve seen have been nothing more than these roadblocks I mentioned or, even more often than that, plain old bursts of anger (and especially passive aggressiveness) because people are afraid, and so they lash out (never once, of course, admitting they’re lashing out). This paragraph is instead a very specific invitation for servants of power not to fall back on force to defend that power, but to try real discourse. And for them to seriously examine the premises of this book. If they honestly find errors in my premises or thinking, I’d be willing to reexamine everything I’m saying, on the condition that if they cannot find errors, they not only seriously examine their own role in the ongoing apocalypse that is industrial civilization, but help stop the apocalypse—help bring down civilization.
Endgame Vol.1 Page 53
