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Green Anarchist website update

Steve Booth | 02.08.2002 18:40

More articles have been added to the Green Anarchist website

Over 30 more articles from the very first 10 issues of Green Anarchist magzine have now been put on this website. Included are articles about the Molesworth Peace Camp eviction and the Battle of the Beanfield. 'Where We Stand' by the first editors, particularly the piece by Alan Albon, shows that the original Green Anarchist magazine was not Primitivist.

Steve Booth
- e-mail: grandlaf@lineone.net
- Homepage: http://www.greenanarchist.org.uk/Lst2.htm

Comments

Hide the following 8 comments

GREEN ANARCHIST LITE

04.08.2002 08:45

I'll stick to the original and best Green Anarchist. Steve Booth's effort at a takeover was limp, at best. Fuck the Green Party and all that middle class tree hugging shite Booth represents. Here is a much better site:-
 http://www.greenanarchist.org/

MrDonk


The dog returns to its vomit

04.08.2002 20:59

'Mr Donk' proves the poverty of the Primitivist line.
'Anti globalisation - almost as bad as globalisation itself.'
The John Conner newspaper is bonkrupt. Lost the plot...

Lewis


Green Anarchy/ism = shit

05.08.2002 16:54

I wipe my arse on Green Anarchy AND Green Anarchism!

S. Home


Original Green Anarchist Was Not Primitivist

07.08.2002 19:57

THE ORIGINAL GREEN ANARCHIST WAS NOT PRIMITIVIST
The 'S. Home' posting is an understandable reaction, as a piece of anti Green Anarchist malignancy, but offers nothing positive to advance matters.

On the other hand, it is clear that 'Mr Donk' has not read 'Green Anarchist' issues 63 and 64. His comments flow from a pure knee-jerk hostility and are based on Paul Rogers' misrepresentations.

Mr Donk's argument is essentially an appeal to the herd instinct. Through this gate into the sheepfold. Safety in the herd. Baaah Baaah Baaah!

'Mr Donk' (hardly a pseudonym to inspire confidence - yet another way in which the Primitivists are tripping over themselves) does not deal with the point made in my posting, that the original Green Anarchist was not Primitivist.

Three points need to be made here:
(1) The original Green Anarchist had a William Morris / Peter Kropotkin type vision about appropriate technology being used to free people for creative activities.
(2) The original Green Anarchist had a vision of sustainable agriculture being used to meet peoples' real needs - it did not share the Zerzanian view that agriculture ought to be completely rejected.
(3) The original Green Anarchist could include technology, housing, towns and such things as transport and communications within its vision.

Don't be conned by 'Conner'. Paul Rogers' propaganda, in his talk about 'Original And Best' and in Rogers' previous propaganda against Saxon Wood, claims that GA always was Primitivist. This is not true. It is a matter of historical record that the original GA was not Primitivist. This can be seen from the Alan Albon (the first editor of GA) editorial position piece 'Where We Stand', from issue 2:

'Economic units have to be small enough to enable all to decide with others the relatively simple questions of securing the necessities of life. In a situation where technical knowledge can free the whole population. Instead of overwork, insecurity and poverty for many and wealth and power for the few.

With the market place mentality taken out of agriculture, transport, art, sport and the many activities that people partake in, self-expression can be universal in work and play. We can create workshops where people cease to be mere units of production, towns that are a pleasure to everyone to live in, agriculture that does not create mountains of ecologically expensive food, where it becomes an art once again and not run by accountants and businessmen with their erroneous values.

People will be able to work the land in their diverse ways, and the land itself will become a common resource, not the field for speculators and other state supported parasites that infest society. We can create a transport and communication system that does not clog cities with fumes and waste energy, housing and infrastructures that people want, not what architects, planners and politicians think they ought to have.'

Alan Albon, 'Where We Stand' Green Anarchist issue 2

 http://www.greenanarchist.org.uk/Where.htm

I leave you to draw your own conclusions from this. In order for Green Anarchist magazine to move on it is necessary to first cast off this millstone of Primitivism, and secondly to re-examine that early vision held in such passages as the one quoted here....
Stephen Booth

Steve Booth
mail e-mail: grandlaf@lineone.net
- Homepage: http://www.greenanarchist.org.uk/Where.htm


The Original Primitive

08.08.2002 01:00

Well, sorry if my name doesn't inspire confidence! I've read Booth's Green Anarchist Lite *AND* the original and best Green Anarchist - Don't tell me I have not when you know nothing about me.

Who gives a damn whether Alan Albon or Richard Hunt were primitivists? Hunt is neither green nor anarchist lately.

S Home is a troll, and not worthy of any reply.

And if Lewis thinks GA is "bonkrupt", maybe she should read Booth's touchy feely version of GA instead.

MrDonk


Primitivist indifference to facts

08.08.2002 22:21

THE PRIMITIVIST INDIFFERENCE TO FACTS
Here we see the Primitivist indifference to facts. Paul Rogers makes claims that his magazine represents the 'original and best'. Therefore an examination of what the original GA was like is in order.

We find that it is not primitivist. Therefore Rogers' version does not resemble the original Green Anarchist and his claim is false.

Obviously 'Mr Donk' has not read the GA. 'Middle class tree hugging shite' 'touchy feely' 'Fuck the Green Party' etc

These are prejudicial misrepresentations of what the new post-Rogers Green Anarchist magazine is about. They are not about reason, or an objective description of things.
I do not think that 'Mr Donk' can honestly produce quotations to back up his comments, but we shall see eh?

It will be interesting to see how he twists things, if he tries.

'GA Lite' is also a Rogers-ism.

Steve Booth
mail e-mail: grandlaf@lineone.net


Reply to Booth

09.08.2002 21:02

You are obsessed with this "primitivist" tag. It seems to me you are just sore because Rogers got control of GA and you did not. His version of GA is like what we have been used to reading for many years now. Of course it has changed since the 1980s! I'm sure Rogers/Connor calls his version "the original and best" because his version reflects what we have become used to, primitivist tag or otherwise. The 'GA lite' that you publish in parallel is an embarrasing break-away from what GA was. I'm sorry if you don't like my opinion on this, but this is what I think after reading both yours and Rogers/Connor's versions. I don't see why I should provide quotes for some bullshit psuedo intellectual style debate when all I'm here to do is give you my honest opinion on the problem of there being two GAs. I don't care if the original and best GA is primitivist or not - it's still a good read, and is true to it's usual spirit. And GA lite is not primitivist - so what? It's dull as ditch water, and not a patch on the 1980's GA either. Sad.

MrDonk


Thought not

12.08.2002 20:20

So you have nothing to back up your assertions with. I didn't think you would.

Steve Booth
mail e-mail: grandlaf@lineone.net