anarcho-animism

[anarcho-animism]

Anarcho-Animist Manifesto

I have been nurturing and sitting on this for a long time – it was first penned in 2021 and revised every so often since then. I’ve not posted it sooner out of the desire to make sure it stood the test of time for myself. I wrote it at 23, and now I am 26 and a very different (and more well-read) person…but the core of this manifesto remains strong and something that I am proud of. So I’m releasing it into the big wide world. Any updates or edits to wording past this point will (hopefully) be just spelling and grammer. In Love & Rage, Wolverine. Originally posted on Wordpress. “Anarchy is a society being freely constituted without authorities or a governing body. It may also refer to a society or group of people that entirely rejects a set hierarchy.” Wikipedia entry on anarchy “Potentially, animism perceives all things—animals, plants, rocks, rivers, weather systems, human handiwork, and perhaps even words—as animated and alive” Wikipedia entry on anarchism

Anarcho-animism is the intersection of spirituality and eco-anarchism. It seeks to protect the environment for the environment’s sake. It recognises the world as a living, breathing, system. It abhors the abuse and destruction profit incentives cause.

Animism is the belief that all things – all beings, plants, rocks, animals, rivers, weather systems, the whole world – is animated and alive with a living soul. From me, to you, to a barking dog, to a field mouse, to a bird, to a lizard, to an ant, to the ground beneath us and the plants that give us oxygen: it all has its own unique soul.

Even if the animist concept of all beings and entities having souls does not ring true, all beings and entities have inherent worth and should be treated with care, kindness and respect. Just because we do not understand the language of plants and other beings, does not mean that language somehow doesn’t exist.

It rejects the idea of humans as the centre and paramount of existence. It embraces all experiences of the world across the diverse family of beings as important.

Reject capitalism

Anarcho-animism rejects an unnatural hierarchy of governing bodies within animist practice.

Anarcho-animism rejects capitalism and the state as they are the architects of ecocide (defined as “unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts” – theecologist.org).

All power gained by capitalists, states and their puppets is power that they have gained unjustly. They have exploited and continue to exploit the world and its inhabitants.

Anarcho-animism and capitalist consumerism cannot coexist. Capitalist consumerism demands no end to consumption of resources, products and more that is draining the world only to make the select few richer. It is endangering the lives of living beings everywhere, forcing them to work and live under cruel conditions.

It rejects petrochemical companies who have a stranglehold on the energy sector. It embraces sustainable and accessible living for all people and animals, the world over. It embraces the collected differences and seeks to make an accessible world where all can live in freedom and togetherness.

It rejects all borders, states, nations and invisible lines that divide beings on earth and sections land away. Anarcho-animism demands total freedom of movement for ALL, free of the states and nations that fueled capitalism.

Embrace spirituality and animism

Spiritual practice should not be commercialised. Every being should be free to adopt the traditions of their kin and the traditions of those that share with them. It should not be dependent on mass market goods.

Anarcho-animism recognises humans as intrinsic to nature. It explicitly rejects the separation of human and non-human animals as distinct categories & the ideological elevation of humans over all other living beings.

Even though it can be hard to break hierarchical styles of thinking, it is something that can always be worked towards and is an admirable goal for all beings.

Anarcho-animism recognises that everything in the world has a spirit/soul/essential essence tied to it, that cannot be revoked or infringed upon by anything or anyone without deep disrespect.

As an extension, the world is an interdependent web of living things, the environment and the earth’s spirit.

It is anti-racist, anti-fascist and embraces marginalised beings

Nature is inherently a place of diversity.

Anarcho-animism is anti racist and anti-fascist. There is no room for volkish neo-nazis in anarcho-animism. There is no room for eco-fascism, and those ideologies must not be allowed to flourish for they bring unspeakable harm to the most marginalised beings.

Anarcho-animism welcomes and celebrates queer & trans people.

It demands for the world’s colonised land to be returned to indigenous people with no conditions attached.

It demands land back to the public of countries and nations who face increasingly little access to the wild. Take the land from landowners that seek to exploit it for profit, make it free, let all beings roam again. Destroy the state.

Anarcho-animism respects the right to roam of all communities and beings. It stands in solidarity with Gypsy, Roma & Traveller communities against anti-trespass laws.

Care for the environment

Anarcho-animism embraces politics such as rewilding & indigenous land stewardship. It seeks to restore balance to depleted habitats, to allow all to flourish again. It supports the reintroduction of predator species such as the wolves in Yellowstone and the lynx in europe.

Anarcho-animism seeks to stop monocultures of crops eating up the land and draining the water away. Food forests and alternate gardening techniques will help all thrive. It embraces foraging, food for free, folk knowledge of edible plants and mushrooms, and sustainable hunting to feed communities.

Care for fellow beings

It abhors the treatment of beings under industrial meat production. All beings on the earth deserve a good death in whatever form it may come in. The meat industry does not give this mercy after a life of humiliation. All beings have an inherent spirit that deserves dignity and respect.

It seeks to remove the conditions that force other beings into traumatising slaughterhouse work – migrant status, economic status and “unemployability”. No being was made to work, especially under traumatising and unethical conditions.

Anarcho-animism rejoices in the inherent creativity of all the beings of the earth, and in the community found in creative pursuits. In dreams that all beings share.

It celebrates all beings’ milestones in life, it celebrates the seasons and the world changing in time with them.

It looks to nature for the purest form of joy – that found in play. In freedom to play, and learn, and grow, unfettered by capitalism, crushing expectations and the threat of working or death.

Care for the community

It places emphasis on community care and ritualised practices to mark cycles, celebrations, and seasons.

It places emphasis on the joy that exists as part of living, in building community with others by sharing good food, stories, art, love and most of all, it emphasises the joy found in connection with the rest of the living world.

It is a moral obligation to our fellow beings to build a world accessible to those with neurodivergence, sensitivities, disabilities of all types, to the elderly and the young, and for all of it to be done well and to the best of our abilities.

It recognises the interdependence of humans and the environment. Care for self, others and nature are all radical acts of love. It seeks to repair harm by centering those most hurt, and those most in need of healing. It looks to transformative and restorative justice, and imagines a world without punitive justice. There are no cops in nature.