Anarcho-Primitivism, or Anprim, is an ideology that draws very heavily from the colonialist’s ahistorical view of “savages”. At the ideology’s very core lives a continuation of colonial racism, every aspect of the ideology is drenched in colonialism.
I’ll start by explaining that the term “primitive” being pointed towards people is derogatory, that was (and still is) done to seperate the colonizers from the colonised. To put it another way, the “civilized” white men, from the “uncivilized” dark men. Further, “Primitive” Anti-Civ ideology was named by its detractors. Believers in the ideology referred to it as “Anti-Civilization”, “Pre-Civilization”, and “Post-Civilization”, and the critics - being colonialists themselves - called it “Primitivism”. If you use “Prim” for Anprim, you might as well be calling the natives of America “red beasts”, or the blacks of Africa “apes”.
Which brings us to the next issue of the ideology, the meme-y desire to treat Anarcho-Primitism as a monkey collective, or more directly, wanting to treat Anti-Civists like apes. Which, comes directly from the aforementioned colonial racism affixed to the ideology. Anti-Civ is a very wide ideology, based widely on technophobia and sentiments around the “failures of civilization”, often citing the rise of capitalism as a mistake that could have been routed if civilization had been built differently, or if it had not been built at all. They’re not “oh haha cities bad throws poop”, as many mistake them as being, they’re a structured ideology based on theories and observable wrongdoings.
The third thing I want to bring up about Anti-Civ - if I may use its proper name - is that it is very often filled with ecofascists, and right-wing chuds. Though there are leftists within the umbrella, if you take the time to visit Anti-Civ communities, you’ll find very quickly that they’re filled with hateful people. You’ll find rampant homophobia, terrible transphobia, and boatloads of racism. That makes it a predominately vile ideology, and not a community I want here on Lemmy.
Of course, I write this because /c/anprim has been made, and I dreaded the day I would have to write this out to protect - if you would - Lemmy from the terrible meme of it. And, of course, I don’t say this to be an asshole or a party pooper, but I can’t allow such a disgusting disgrace of a meme’d ideology to taint our communities. People who are aware of me would know I’m Pagan, and that I specialize - for my career - in guns from the 1800s. Those are two communities that constantly get flooded with Anti-Civ assholes, I’ve seen what happens when they become tolerated, and I don’t want that to happen here.
Just some answers from my own reading and personal experience.
Then when they violate the rules it will be, what do the liberals call it, a teachable moment for them. How they handle being respectfully but firmly challenged about it will give a good indicator how good a fit they are for the instance.
I’ve dealt with anti-civ types online and offline. The milieu is definitely dominated by racist, often ableist, often transphobic thinking. They take bourgeois ideology about nature and natural selection and mistake it for an actual understanding of ecology. This always has social implications because we come from nature. What is supposed to be “natural” for people then becomes a political question.
A lot of anti-civ types do literally embrace the idea of survival of the fittest as a valid way of determining who deserves to live and die. It’s social darwinism with a green twist, basically.
Many explicitly reject the entire concept of mass politics because they believe any commitment to working-class politics perpetuates industrialism which is an evil in their eyes. They accept their ideas have no merit for most people, especially workers and just sort of write off most of humanity. In this sense it is explicitly an elitist ideology.
Sort of reminds me of certain toxic strains of Christianity – everybody except the true believers are just scum who deserve to burn in hell, or at least can have their literal lives just written off.
There is variation, of course, this is a generalization, some individuals are less problematic about it than others.
But by and large the milieu is reactionary and counter-revolutionary. They’d rather let the working-class die off en masse than give us a chance to build a genuinely sustainable and equitable civilization for the first time in history.
well said, comrades @calmlamp@lemmygrad.ml @Farmer_Heck@lemmygrad.ml . You two have a lot more experience with these types than I do, and I appreciate your insight.