INTRODUCTION TO GREEN APOCALYPSE by Richard Essex
"The Protocols of the Elders of Sion had thus become one of the holy books, the Apocalypse of the new Aryan faith. In this, Hitlerism only imitated bolshevism, which despite its materialism and atheism, had become, by way of totalitarian dictatorship, a religion with its ceremonies and rites, its dogmas and heresies, its inquisition and its in pace, its prophets, its evangelists and even its Apocalypse - wherein are found the signs which presage the catastrophe which precedes the world triumph of the chosen people the proletarians - and their accession to eternal well being." Henri Rollin, L'Apocalypse de Notre Temps, (1939)
The evolution of apocalyptical thought has continued since Henri Rollin presented this analysis on the eve of the Second World-War. In the post war years we were offered a nuclear holocaust as an apocalypse. However this has since been superseded by the Green Apocalypse. For a while this change was mediated by the nuclear winter scenario, whereby nuclear war ushered in ecological collapse.
Apocalyptical thinking involves placing the turning point of history, a final resolution of the struggle between good and evil, in the immanent future. Fear and an elitist desire to become part of a transcendental history are lures to draw the naive into this way of thinking. Bolstered by centuries of Christian propaganda, the apocalypse has become a recurrent emblem in European culture.
In Civilisation or Barbarism (1981), Cheikh Anta Diop has traced its origin to the volcanic eruption which took place in 1420 BC on the Island of Santorini in the Aegean. Diop compares this event to the Krakatoa eruption of 1883, which produced tidal waves 35 metre high. Diop describes the catastrophe: "The initial cloud composed of volcanic ash, dust, gas and fumes covered the entire south of the Aegean sea, probably resulting in total darkness for several consecutive days, during which time the tidal wave (tsunami) destroyed the coastline and extinguished lamps, setting fire to towns while the gas and fumes poisoned the population, causing illnesses such as conjunctivitis, angina, bronchitis and digestive disorders." (p. 71-2). Diop poses this real event as the spur to the development of monotheism under the Pharaoh Akhenaten, the cause of the collapse of the Minoan civilisation and the diffusion of Minoan culture in mainland Greece by refugees, the origins of the myth of Atlantis and possibly the so-called 'Aryan' migration to India.
This real natural catastrophe became a model for the Apocalypse, taken up by Jewish prophets influenced by Egyptian monotheism. The cultural legacy of this trauma has remained a feature of European and Islamic culture to this day. Its effect has always been reactionary, in that it burdens down any proposal for social change with the role of this transcendental resolution of conflict, which is posed as being eternal at one and the same time as being located in the immediate future - i.e. it provides a basis in fear and psychological intoxication whereby the practical resolution of real problems gets absorbed in a monocultural, monotheistic totalitarianism.
In the last decade of the second Christian millennium, ecological survival has been pushed forward as the apocalyptical question. Rooted in real concerns about the commodification of the environment, it distracts the process of developing a strategy against such depredation with a mythic green crusade based on moral elitism rooted in universal justification. In fact, closer attention to capitalist environmentalism reveals not that we are on the verge of ecological disaster, but that control over decent air to breath, water to drink, food to eat, will become another element of social control. For U.K. inhabitant: this can be seen in the way that falling standards in water treatment has led those that can afford it to drink bottled water. A science fiction future where breathable air is a commodity is starting to sound less odd to us, certainly less odd than the idea that the land could be carved up as private property sounded to the Amerindians.
In this pamphlet, two pieces submitted by the Neoist Alliance are accompanied by a book review and a collection of documents. They chronicle an ugly dispute between Green Anarchist and the Neoist Alliance. We hope that it serves to extend the debate beyond the tiresome level which GA and Larry O'Hara wish to keep it. They avoid developing an analysis of the state, but instead seek to reveal a new mole every three months. When pressed on their false accusation that Stewart Home had links with Skrewdriver, they refer to texts which do not mention him and then rhetorically ask whether he is an asset of the state. Such a bizarre suggestion can be readily understood by anyone who has taken the trouble to farniliarise themselves with Hitler's critique of the Schonerer's Austrian panGerman movement:
"It belongs to the great leader to make even adversaries far removed from one another seem to belong to a single category, because in weak and uncertain characters the knowledge of having different enemies can only too readily lead to the beginning of doubt in their own right.
"Once the wavering mass sees itself in a struggle against too many enemies, objectivity will put in an appearance, throwing open the question whether all the others are really in the wrong and only their own people or their own movement are in the right.
"And this brings about the first paralysis of their own power. hence a multiplicity of different adversaries must always be combined so that in the eyes of the masses of one's own supporters the struggle is directed against only one enemy. This strengthens their faith in their own right and enhances their bitterness against those who attack it." (Mein Kampf, p.108)
In response we can only repeat a watchword of the revolutionary movement: Belief is the Enemy.
Richard Essex
Green Apocalypse
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