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Deep Green Resistance
Deep Green Resistance
Deep Green Resistance
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Deep Green Resistance (DGR) is a radical environmental movement that perceives the existence of industrial civilization itself as the greatest threat to the natural environment and calls for its dismantlement and a return to a pre-agricultural level of technology. Although DGR operates as an aboveground group, it calls on others to use underground and violent tactics such as attacks on infrastructure or assassination. A repeated claim in DGR literature is that acts of sabotage could cause a cascading effect and lead to the end of civilization. DGR and far-right ecofascists use similar accelerationist and anti-majoritarian tactics, seeking systemic collapse.

Key Information

DGR is widely denounced by other radical environmentalists, even those who support sabotage, because of "the group's vanguardism, its disregard for billions of already-precarious human lives dependent on agriculture, its self-defeating attacks on anarchism and veganism, and the virulent transphobia of the group's leaders, Lierre Keith and Derrick Jensen".[1] Some Native American[2] and other environmental groups have refused to work with DGR because of its controversial stance on transgender issues.

Beliefs

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In the 2011 book Deep Green Resistance, the authors Lierre Keith, Derrick Jensen and Aric McBay state that civilization, particularly industrial civilization, is fundamentally unsustainable and must be actively and urgently dismantled in order to secure a future for all species on the planet.[3]

DGR calls for the dismantling of industrial civilization,[4][5] and the return to a pre-agricultural lifestyle.[4]: 1 [5]: 1 

Tactics

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DGR operates as an aboveground movement[6] and requires members to take a nonviolence pledge as of 2019,[7] calling on others to use underground and violent tactics such as attacks on infrastructure or assassination.[6] DGR is one of very few environmental groups to endorse lethal violence as sometimes justified.[8] A repeated claim in DGR literature is that acts of sabotage could cause a cascading effect and lead to the end of civilization.[6] Because the organization advocates sabotage and violence, which it views as necessary tactics to achieve its goal of dismantling industrialized society and capitalism, it can be classified as an apocalyptic or millenarian movement.[9] DGR and far-right ecofascist groups such as The Green Brigade share similar tactics and an anti-majoritarian and vanguardist approach to activism, and both are accelerationist, seeking systemic collapse.[10]

In 2017, DGR filed a lawsuit against the state of Colorado arguing that the Colorado River should be recognized as a legal person. The lawsuit was dismissed in 2019.[11][12]

An article in Journal of Strategic Security describes the group as a "worrying bioterrorism threat", citing its strategy and propensity towards violence.[13] Beginning in 2014, the FBI investigated Deep Green Resistance.[7][14]

Criticism

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Anarcho-primitivists John Zerzan, Kevin Tucker and others criticize DGR's promotion of hierarchy in organizing an underground resistance, the code of conduct, the historical understanding of revolution and radical history, and the cult of personality around Jensen and Keith.[15][16][17][18] Michelle Renée Matisons and Alexander Reid Ross of the Institute for Anarchist Studies have accused DGR of "emulating right-wing militia rhetoric, with the accompanying hierarchical vanguardism, personality cultism, and reactionary moralism."[19]

How to Blow Up a Pipeline author Andreas Malm—who argues that some forms of infrastructural sabotage are justified to advance the environmental movement—condemned DGR, arguing its proposals, if implemented, would spell disaster for the vast majority of people in the world.[20][21]

Anti-trans views

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DGR describes itself as a radical feminist organization, and has been described by critics as transphobic and TERF.[22][23][24] The organisation has described hormone therapy for transgender youth as eugenics and excludes transgender women from women's spaces,[25] while Keith has compared gender transitioning to mutilation.[26] In 2019, Jensen, Keith, as well as DGR activist Max Wilbert published an article in Feminist Current saying "Hands up everyone who predicted that when Big Brother arrived, he’d be wearing a dress, hauling anyone who refuses to wax his ladyballs before a human rights tribunal, and bellowing ‘It’s Ma’am!’"[25] Keith linked the group's views on transgender issues to the environment, claiming that trans women "want to violate the basic boundaries of women" and comparing that to "violating the boundaries of forests and rivers and prairies".[2] During the fight against the Thacker Pass lithium mine, some members of DGR formed another group called Protect Thacker Pass without disclosing their affiliation with DGR. They worked with local Native American group People of Red Mountain, which broke off the affiliation saying that DGR members had not been transparent about their anti-trans views.[2]

In 2012, founder McBay left the group, saying that it promoted transphobia.[9] Earth First! Journal repudiated DGR in 2013 and said that it would "no longer print or in any way promote DGR material" because of its leaders' anti-transgender stances.[27] In 2022, during the resistance to the Thacker Pass Lithium Mine, Indigenous group People of Red Mountain broke ties with attorney and DGR member Will Falk, citing transphobia as the reason.[28] Other environmental groups involved in opposing the Thacker Pass project have distanced themselves from DGR.[29] The organization has also faced criticism for its association with Jennifer Bilek, an investigative journalist, who has, with antisemitic connotations, argued that transgender rights are a transhumanist conspiracy.[25][30][31]

See also

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References

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Further reading

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[edit]
Revisions and contributorsEdit on WikipediaRead on Wikipedia

Deep Green Resistance

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Deep Green Resistance (DGR) is a radical environmental organization established by Derrick Jensen, , and Aric McBay, whose 2011 book Deep Green Resistance: Strategy to Save the Planet outlines its foundational analysis and framework for action. The group asserts that industrial civilization systematically destroys ecosystems through resource extraction, pollution, and habitat liquidation, rendering reformist measures like transitions or policy advocacy insufficient to avert planetary collapse. Instead, DGR advocates a multilevel strategy of organized resistance—encompassing aboveground education, mobilization, and legal efforts alongside underground sabotage and guerrilla operations against infrastructure—to dismantle the industrial system's capacity for exploitation and harm. This approach draws parallels to historical successful resistances against oppressive regimes, emphasizing security, target selection, and recruitment to achieve systemic breakdown. DGR's rejection of liberal and embrace of decisive confrontation have sparked debates over its feasibility and ethics, with critics questioning the risks of escalation while supporters highlight the urgency of defending non-human life against ongoing .

Origins and History

Founding and Key Publications

Deep Green Resistance was founded in spring 2011 by activists Derrick Jensen, , and Aric McBay as a response to the perceived existential threats posed by industrial civilization to global ecosystems. The organization's inception coincided with the release of their co-authored book, Deep Green Resistance: Strategy to Save the Planet, published on May 3, 2011, by . This 560-page volume serves as the foundational text, articulating a comprehensive analysis of environmental collapse and proposing organized resistance strategies modeled on historical insurgencies. The book delineates a dual-structure approach for the movement, encompassing aboveground for public and alongside clandestine underground operations aimed at disrupting industrial . It emphasizes prerequisites for effective action, such as rigorous protocols, target selection based on strategic impact, and scalability from small affinity groups to broader networks. Subsequent publications by the founders, including Jensen's ongoing series on resistance tactics and Keith's critiques of agricultural myths, have reinforced DGR's intellectual framework, though the 2011 book remains the cornerstone document. DGR's early dissemination efforts focused on chapters, online resources, and conferences to propagate the book's principles, positioning the organization as a radical alternative to reformist environmentalism. The text has been made freely available online through the official DGR website, facilitating widespread access to its arguments and plans.

Early Development and Expansion

Following the release of Deep Green Resistance: Strategy to Save the Planet by Lierre Keith, Aric McBay, and Derrick Jensen in May 2011, the movement transitioned from theoretical advocacy to organized action, emphasizing a dual structure of aboveground organizing for education, recruitment, and legal activism alongside conceptual frameworks for clandestine operations. The book served as the operational blueprint, detailing decentralized cells, security measures, and tactical escalation to dismantle industrial infrastructure, which prompted initial grassroots efforts to apply these principles in practice. Early organizational growth centered in , where founders conducted speaking tours, workshops, and trainings to build affinity groups and chapters focused on rather than . These activities prioritized small-scale, security-conscious units over broad membership drives, reflecting the authors' critique of ineffective reformist and their call for decisive resistance against systemic ecological collapse. By 2012, presentations at conferences helped disseminate the framework, attracting participants committed to non-electoral, direct-action approaches. International expansion began modestly in the ensuing years, with the first coordinated meeting for the EUMENA () chapter held in on December 14–15, 2013, involving eight members to adapt strategies to regional contexts. This marked an outreach beyond , fostering autonomous chapters in the UK, , and other areas through online resources and founder-led guidance, though growth remained limited by the movement's insistence on rigorous vetting and aversion to publicity-seeking tactics. By the mid-2010s, DGR operated a network of chapters emphasizing loyalty, material support, and hierarchical elements within cells to sustain long-term resistance amid anticipated state repression.

Ideology and Principles

Core Beliefs on Civilization and Ecology

Deep Green Resistance asserts that , defined as large-scale societies reliant on , surplus production, and hierarchical structures, is fundamentally unsustainable and driven by a culture of conquest that erodes both planetary and human communities. Proponents argue that these systems draw down finite resources—such as , freshwater, and —leading to ecological collapse, as evidenced by historical patterns of societal failure tied to in agrarian . Industrial intensifies this process through exponential resource extraction and , rendering reform impossible and necessitating deliberate dismantling to allow ecosystems recovery. Central to their ecological worldview is the recognition of ongoing mass extinction, with species disappearing at rates up to 1,000 times the natural background level due to habitat destruction from industrial activities like logging, mining, overfishing, and large-scale agriculture. DGR frames these crises as symptoms of a broader incompatibility between civilized expansion and life's preconditions, including intact watersheds, wild forests, and diverse biomes that sustain global oxygen production, carbon cycling, and food webs. Advocates, drawing from deep ecology principles, prioritize the intrinsic value of all living beings and ecosystems over anthropocentric utility, rejecting human exceptionalism that justifies domination of nature. This perspective critiques technological solutions as perpetuating drawdown, citing empirical data on phenomena like , , and rates exceeding natural regeneration capacities by orders of magnitude. For instance, has depleted global arable topsoil at an average rate of 1% per year since the mid-20th century, undermining long-term while converting wild lands into monocultures. DGR maintains that only ending of —embodied in civilization's —can halt these trajectories, informed by analyses of pre-civilized indigenous land practices that maintained ecological balance over millennia without systemic degradation.

Critique of Mainstream Environmentalism

Deep Green Resistance contends that mainstream environmentalism, encompassing organizations like the , , and the World Wildlife Fund, has proven ineffective over four decades of activism, as evidenced by ongoing ecological degradation such as the depletion of 90% of large ocean fish populations, the loss of 98% of old-growth forests in the continental , and the of 99% of prairies. Proponents argue that these groups prioritize reformist approaches—such as for policy changes, public awareness campaigns, and voluntary corporate partnerships—which fail to confront the structural imperatives of industrial civilization, including perpetual and resource extraction that inherently undermine planetary life-support systems. A core criticism targets "lifestyle environmentalism," where individual actions like , reducing personal consumption, or adopting reusable goods are promoted as sufficient responses, yet these measures merge with capitalist consumption cycles without challenging systemic drivers of destruction. Deep Green Resistance authors assert that such tactics delusionally assume voluntary behavioral shifts can override sociopathic power structures, ignoring that industrial economies prioritize profit over ; for instance, despite widespread adoption of energy-efficient technologies, global carbon emissions rose 60% from 1990 to 2020, correlating with accelerated habitat loss. They further dismiss reform timelines as untenable, noting that species like Pacific salmon cannot endure centuries-long institutional processes, such as the gradual removal of over 2 million U.S. dams, while ecosystems collapse in real time. Sustainable development and "bright green" technological fixes receive particular scorn, with Deep Green Resistance viewing them as extensions of industrial logic that perpetuate extraction rather than halt it. Renewables like solar photovoltaic panels and turbines are critiqued for requiring fuel-dependent manufacturing processes, including rare earths and producing and , yielding payback periods of 150–294 years in some cases—far exceeding their operational lifespans—and failing to sustain industrial-scale society without equivalent ecological costs to fuels. Biofuels exemplify this failure: provides no net gain and drives land conversion that emits 37 times more greenhouse gases than the fuels it ostensibly replaces, exacerbating and degradation. Electric vehicles, similarly, demand five times the production of conventional cars, entrenching rather than dismantling the of omnicide. Ultimately, Deep Green Resistance frames mainstream as complicit in delaying decisive action, fostering illusions of compatibility between industrial and ecological health while mainstream groups often reject militant strategies that could target directly, such as pipelines or power grids, thereby limiting resistance to symbolic gestures amid accelerating . This perspective holds that only organized, strategic dismantling of exploitative systems—beyond or technological substitution—can avert irreversible collapse, as voluntary transitions ignore the non-sustainable nature of civilization's premises.

Organizational Structure

Leadership and Key Figures

Deep Green Resistance (DGR) was co-founded in 2011 by Derrick Jensen, Lierre Keith, and Aric McBay, who collaboratively authored the organization's foundational text, Deep Green Resistance: Strategy to Save the Planet, published that year by Seven Stories Press. This 560-page work delineates the group's strategic framework, emphasizing resistance against industrial civilization through aboveground and potential underground actions. Jensen, a prolific essayist and speaker with over 20 books critiquing environmental collapse, serves as a primary intellectual driver, often delivering lectures and workshops aligned with DGR principles. Keith, a radical feminist writer and former 20-year vegan who renounced plant-based diets in favor of sustainable omnivory, contributes through her analyses of agriculture's ecological impacts, as detailed in her 2009 book The Vegetarian Myth. McBay, an organic farmer and mathematician, provided early tactical insights on sabotage and organizational security but exited the group in early 2012 amid disputes over transgender inclusion policies. The organization maintains a decentralized without a formal hierarchical , relying instead on affinity groups of 3–12 members for local actions, as prescribed in the to minimize risks of infiltration or compromise. Theoretical roles include "leaders" for inspiration and coordination, "cadres" as dedicated revolutionaries, and "combatants" for direct intervention, but no centralized executive or named successors to the founders are publicly designated. Ongoing key figures include Jensen and Keith, who remain active in DGR's aboveground efforts such as and litigation, alongside affiliates like attorney Will Falk, who has litigated environmental cases tied to DGR campaigns, including opposition to at Thacker Pass in 2021. Critics, including former members, have described Jensen's influence as exerting a de facto leadership that some view as authoritarian, citing instances of policy enforcement that led to internal fractures. DGR's official materials prioritize ideological fidelity to the book's blueprint over personality-driven governance, with chapters operating autonomously across the and internationally.

Above-Ground and Underground Components

Deep Green Resistance (DGR) delineates a dual organizational model comprising above-ground legal activism and underground militant operations, as outlined in its foundational text Deep Green Resistance: Strategy to Save the Planet published in 2011 by founders Derrick Jensen, Lierre Keith, and Aric McBay. The above-ground component, which constitutes DGR's own operational framework, emphasizes nonviolent, legal tactics to build public awareness, recruit participants, and sustain long-term resistance against industrial civilization. This includes activities such as educational outreach, protests, media campaigns, and community organizing aimed at mobilizing support and creating a culture conducive to broader ecological defense. In contrast, the underground component is theorized as autonomous, clandestine affinity groups disconnected from DGR's visible structure to execute high-risk, illegal actions necessary for "decisive ecological warfare." These proposed tactics encompass of —like pipelines, power grids, and operations— gathering, escape networks, and targeted against machinery or personnel enabling environmental destruction, justified by the authors as morally imperative to halt planetary collapse. DGR explicitly advocates forming such groups but maintains a strict "firewall" of non-communication and , ensuring above-ground activists lack knowledge of underground plans to evade legal repercussions and infiltration. DGR's above-ground operations adopt a hierarchical structure for efficiency in coordination and , while underground cells are recommended to function horizontally in small, trust-based units to enhance and adaptability. In practice, DGR chapters worldwide, including in and , restrict participation to legal actions only, with members required to forgo illegal involvement to preserve organizational integrity amid risks. This separation underscores DGR's strategy of indirect support for militancy—through ideological propagation and recruitment pipelines—without direct endorsement or facilitation of unlawful acts by the group itself.

Strategies and Tactics

Theoretical Framework for Resistance

Deep Green Resistance posits that industrial civilization constitutes an existential threat to global ecosystems, necessitating organized, strategic dismantling rather than reform or sustainable development within the system. This framework, detailed in the 2011 book Deep Green Resistance: Strategy to Save the Planet by Aric McBay, Lierre Keith, and Derrick Jensen, argues that incremental environmentalism has failed because the culture of civilization is inherently sociopathic and addictive, prioritizing short-term human gratification over long-term planetary health. Empirical evidence cited includes accelerating rates of species extinction—estimated at 200 species per day in the early 2010s—and irreversible biodiversity loss driven by habitat destruction, which mainstream reforms cannot halt without addressing root causes like fossil fuel dependency and overconsumption. The theoretical core is Decisive Ecological Warfare (DEW), a four-phase model inspired by historical successful resistances, such as partisan warfare against Nazi occupation during and protracted popular warfare in anti-colonial struggles like the Algerian War of Independence (1954–1962). DEW aims to accelerate beneficial aspects of —such as declining energy availability—while mitigating catastrophic harms like widespread famine, drawing on complexity theory from Joseph Tainter's The Collapse of Complex Societies (1988), which posits that overextended systems fail under maintenance costs. Unlike reformist approaches, DEW rejects lifestyle changes or technological fixes as insufficient, asserting that only targeted disruption of industrial infrastructure can restore ecological balance and enable sustainable, bioregional communities. DEW operates on a dual structure: aboveground activities for education, networking, and building parallel institutions (e.g., and energy systems), and underground operations for direct infrastructure using non-lethal, precise methods to minimize human harm. Phase 1 emphasizes networking and mobilization to recruit committed resisters and foster a culture of defiance. Phase 2 involves of key nodes like pipelines and power grids to erode industrial capacity. Phases 3 and 4 escalate to systemic disruption and full dismantling, prioritizing targets based on vulnerability and impact, such as energy extraction sites responsible for 80% of global carbon emissions from fossil fuels. Security protocols, including compartmentalized cells and operational discipline, are mandated to evade surveillance, modeled on insurgent groups like the , which conducted over 1,000 acts from 1940–1944. Underlying principles include recognizing civilization's insanity—defined as denial of ecological limits—and prioritizing land defense over human-centric rights frameworks that enable exploitation. Resistance is framed as a akin to or , where passivity equates to complicity in , supported by data on rates exceeding 10 million hectares annually in the 2000s. The framework critiques liberal environmentalism for co-optation by industrial interests, advocating instead for alliances with indigenous land defenders who have historically resisted encroachment through guerrilla tactics.

Proposed Methods of Action

Deep Green Resistance (DGR) proposes a framework called Decisive Ecological Warfare (DEW), outlined in its 2011 book by Derrick Jensen, , and Aric McBay, which emphasizes coordinated of industrial infrastructure to dismantle civilization's capacity for ecological destruction. DEW aims to reduce consumption by at least 90% through targeted disruptions, prioritizing attacks on energy systems such as pipelines, refineries, power grids, and transportation networks like railroads and ports, while explicitly prohibiting harm to humans or non-human animals. The strategy draws from historical resistance movements, arguing that incremental reforms and lifestyle changes are insufficient against systemic industrial power, necessitating both overt and covert operations to exploit vulnerabilities in centralized infrastructure. DGR delineates above-ground methods for building public support and legitimacy, including education campaigns to radicalize recruits, non-violent direct actions such as protests and , and cultural resistance through , , and community-building to foster a "culture of resistance." These efforts focus on legal avenues like for changes, tree-sits, and blockades to interrupt operations temporarily, alongside developing sustainable alternatives and resilience in local communities to withstand . Above-ground activists are tasked with mobilizing a mass base, providing logistical support to militants without direct involvement in illegal acts, and maintaining firewalls to protect underground operations from infiltration. Underground methods, conducted by clandestine affinity groups, center on militant sabotage to achieve decisive impacts, such as destroying industrial machinery, dams, or equipment like drift nets, with examples including coordinated strikes on electrical grids or bridges to halt resource extraction and transport. Tactics must meet criteria of feasibility, simplicity, timeliness, and high consequence-to-risk ratio, often involving asymmetric actions like opportunistic infrastructure takedowns or electromagnetic pulse devices to disable electronics, always calibrated to minimize human casualties. While DGR rejects blanket pacifism, it conditions any potential violence against humans—such as assassination of key perpetrators—as rare, justifiable only if it demonstrably advances ecological goals and aligns with justice, though infrastructure remains the primary target. DEW unfolds in four phases: initial networking and mobilization to recruit and train; opportunistic for early disruptions; systemic attacks on critical networks for cascading failures; and final dismantling to prevent reconstruction, exemplified by groups like Nigeria's MEND, which reduced output by one-third through targeted militancy. Success hinges on compartmentalized , with militants risking or , supported by auxiliaries for and supplies, underscoring DGR's view that half-measures perpetuate collapse while full resistance offers planetary salvage.

Activities and Campaigns

Notable Initiatives and Interventions

Deep Green Resistance's foundational initiative was the publication of the book Deep Green Resistance: Strategy to Save the Planet in spring 2011 by Derrick Jensen, , and Aric McBay, which detailed a framework for organized resistance against industrial infrastructure, including tactical analyses of nonviolent, legal, and potential militant actions. The book served as a and tool, emphasizing the need for coordinated aboveground education alongside calls for underground to disrupt systems like pipelines and electrical grids, though it explicitly positioned DGR as an aboveground organization maintaining separation from clandestine operations for security reasons. Following the book's release, DGR established a network of local chapters to implement aboveground activities, including resistance education workshops, community outreach on targeting industrial vulnerabilities, and mutual aid projects aimed at building alternative support structures independent of industrial systems. These chapters, operating in regions such as North America, Europe, and Australia, focused on nonviolent direct actions like legal demonstrations and civil disobedience against environmental threats, with an emphasis on fostering cultures of resistance rather than isolated protests. Specific interventions remain decentralized and low-profile to avoid compromising security, aligning with the group's strategy of inspiring broader militant responses without direct attribution. DGR has also supported interventions through its news service, which documents and amplifies ecosabotage examples—such as attacks on pipelines and GMO facilities—as models for effective resistance, while providing resources like underground action calendars to guide potential actors. In practice, affiliated individuals faced FBI scrutiny in investigations around 2012–2019, linked to planning against infrastructure, underscoring the group's influence on radical environmental tactics despite limited public claims of execution. Deep Green Resistance (DGR) conducts aboveground legal actions, including litigation aimed at granting rights to natural entities. In September 2017, DGR joined environmental groups in filing a federal lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of , seeking to recognize the as a with rights to exist, flourish, and sue for enforcement. The complaint argued that the state of had failed to protect the river from overuse and degradation, requesting judicial intervention to enforce protections. DGR also engages in civil disobedience and legal demonstrations as part of its nonviolent political strategy, while providing support for activists facing charges from such efforts. For instance, DGR's news service has covered and advocated for the legal defense of Wet'suwet'en land defenders, including Sleydo' (Molly Wickham), Shay, and , who faced criminal contempt sentencing in , in October 2025 for opposing pipeline construction on unceded territory. In direct actions, DGR focuses on nonviolent tactics such as protests, blockades, and disruptions permissible under aboveground operations, often participants in skills like setups and for lock-ons. These efforts aim to halt industrial projects, including and extraction, through public confrontation and solidarity with indigenous communities resisting encroachment. DGR explicitly maintains a "firewall" separating its legal activities from any underground sabotage, publicizing the latter via an international calendar to normalize militant resistance without direct involvement.

Controversies

Gender and Transgender Positions

Deep Green Resistance (DGR) espouses a radical feminist framework that posits as a socially constructed rooted in , distinct from biological sex, which it defines strictly in terms of reproductive dimorphism: males produce small gametes () and females produce large gametes (ova). The organization advocates for the abolition of roles entirely, arguing that these roles perpetuate male dominance and female subordination, rather than reforming them through recognition of identities. DGR rejects transgender ideology as incompatible with this analysis, viewing it as reinforcing rather than dismantling gender stereotypes by prioritizing subjective identity over material sex-based realities. The group maintains a policy excluding individuals born male from female-only spaces, organizations, and categories—such as women's shelters, prisons, and sports—regardless of self-identification or medical transition, citing risks to female safety and autonomy evidenced by documented cases of male-pattern violence in such settings. Co-founder Lierre Keith has articulated that medical interventions like hormone therapy for transgender youth resemble eugenics by altering bodies to conform to cultural sex roles, rather than addressing underlying patriarchal structures. This stance has provoked significant controversy within environmental and activist circles. In 2012, co-author Aric McBay departed DGR after leaders Derrick Jensen and revoked a proposed -inclusive , highlighting internal tensions over prioritizing biological sex protections versus broader inclusivity. Mainstream environmental organizations have distanced themselves from DGR, as seen in a 2022 Nevada lithium mining dispute where DGR's positions clashed with groups supporting rights, leading to accusations of transphobia and exclusion from coalitions. Critics, including some former allies, label DGR's views as bigoted, while DGR counters that yielding sex-based boundaries undermines women's hard-won protections against male violence, a claim supported by statistics on assaults in mixed-sex facilities but contested amid broader debates on identity rights.

Accusations of Violence and Extremism

Deep Green Resistance (DGR) has faced accusations of extremism primarily due to its advocacy for "decisive ecological warfare," a strategy outlined in its foundational book and website that includes sabotage of industrial infrastructure to precipitate civilizational collapse. Critics, including environmental scholars, argue this framework condones property destruction and asymmetric actions akin to eco-terrorism, potentially endangering public safety through cascading failures in critical systems like power grids or pipelines. DGR maintains that such tactics target machines and non-human elements exclusively, rejecting harm to individuals, but detractors contend the rhetoric normalizes militancy that could escalate uncontrollably. Federal investigations have amplified these claims, with FBI documents from 2019 identifying suspected members of DGR's "extremist wing" in probes targeting environmental activists. For instance, efforts linked DGR-inspired individuals to plots against energy infrastructure, such as a 2015 attempt to disrupt the U.S. power grid, though these were often deemed exaggerated threats by oversight reports. Intelligence analyses have described DGR as a crossover between eco-extremism and broader radicalism, citing its refusal to outright condemn violent resistance against perceived ecocidal systems. Co-founder Derrick Jensen has defended the necessity of forceful tactics, arguing in interviews and writings that industrial civilization's ongoing destruction of ecosystems constitutes the true violence, justifying retaliatory sabotage as a rather than . In the UK, government reviews of political disruption in 2023 highlighted DGR's tacit endorsement of such methods at events, framing it as a hallmark of the group's approach. Mainstream environmental organizations have rejected DGR's militancy, viewing its calls for underground operations as a departure from nonviolent traditions, potentially alienating broader coalitions. Despite these criticisms, DGR has not been documented as orchestrating physical attacks, positioning its role as strategic theorizing rather than direct execution.

Internal Divisions and External Rejections

In 2013, Deep Green Resistance adopted a formal policy affirming that biological sex is immutable and real, and that to sex-segregated spaces should be protected from male intrusion, regardless of identity claims; this stance, rooted in radical feminist principles, precipitated internal divisions as some members and chapters viewed it as exclusionary or incompatible with broader alliance-building. Several local chapters defected, citing over the policy's implications for inclusivity and organizational cohesion. While core leaders like defended the position as essential to defending women's sex-based rights amid what they described as a patriarchal erasure of biological reality, the rift highlighted tensions between DGR's uncompromising and feminist framework versus pragmatic efforts to expand membership. These internal fractures were compounded by strategic disagreements, including critiques that the group's emphasis on hierarchical, security-conscious structures alienated potential recruits accustomed to consensus-based models in other activist circles. Aric McBay, a co-author of DGR's foundational and early proponent of its decisive ecological warfare , reduced his involvement post-2011, shifting focus to less confrontational ecological projects, though he has not publicly detailed a formal split. Externally, DGR faced widespread rejection from mainstream and radical environmental organizations due to its advocacy for industrial sabotage and its gender positions, which many allies deemed incompatible with collaborative activism. In 2021–2022, DGR's participation in protests against the Thacker Pass lithium mine in led to the withdrawal of Indigenous and environmental allies, including the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony and Earthworks, who cited DGR's exclusionary policies on issues as undermining unified opposition to the project. Anarchist and Earth First! networks explicitly distanced themselves, labeling DGR's tactics as authoritarian and its anti-civilization blueprint as divorced from realities, resulting in from joint events and conferences. and climate justice groups have similarly shunned DGR, with public forums like communities warning against affiliation due to perceived misogyny in reverse—framed as anti-male bias—and promotion of violence without corresponding action. These rejections isolated DGR, limiting its influence despite shared critiques of greenwashed industrialism.

Reception and Impact

Achievements and Successes

Deep Green Resistance's most notable achievement is the 2011 publication of its seminal book, Deep Green Resistance: Strategy to Save the Planet by Derrick Jensen, , and Aric McBay, which outlines a framework for organized resistance against industrial and has functioned as an educational resource for radical environmental activists. The book emphasizes multilevel tactics, including aboveground education and potential underground sabotage, and remains available online for free reading to disseminate its principles. Local chapters have conducted targeted direct actions, such as participants affiliated with the chapter joining a that halted a for 12 hours, disrupting operations. This action exemplified DGR's advocacy for nonviolent but confrontational interventions against infrastructure, though it did not result in permanent cessation of the rail line. Chapters in other regions, including the and , have organized educational workshops and public outreach to build networks of resistance, fostering small-scale communities focused on skill-building for sustained opposition to . Through its Deep Green Resistance News Service, launched to document global resistance efforts, the organization has amplified reports of indigenous and activist victories, such as the 2015 shelving of the Baram Dam in and the 2017 African Court ruling in favor of the Ogiek people's land rights, indirectly supporting broader anti-extraction narratives without direct attribution to DGR-led campaigns. These efforts have contributed to awareness among niche environmental radicals, though quantifiable impacts on halting industrial expansion remain limited, with no verified instances of large-scale infrastructure dismantling attributable to DGR initiatives.

Criticisms and Failures

Critics of Deep Green Resistance (DGR) have argued that its core strategy of "Decisive Ecological Warfare"—envisaging small, elite underground cells conducting against industrial infrastructure to precipitate civilizational collapse—is fundamentally flawed and predisposed to failure due to the resilience of modern systems and the state's capacity for infiltration and repression. The approach dismisses the potential for mass movements, positing that most people are too apathetic or complicit to participate, thereby relying on a vanguardist minority to force systemic breakdown, which analysts contend ignores historical precedents where isolated militant actions were disrupted by arrests and surveillance before scaling. This elitism, critics note, alienates broader environmental and coalitions, as DGR's rhetoric frames the majority of humanity as impediments rather than potential allies, hindering recruitment and . Empirical evidence underscores DGR's operational ineffectiveness: despite launching in 2011 with a advocating phased escalation toward attacks, the has executed no verifiable direct actions of scale, remaining confined to theoretical and outreach without transitioning to the "armed resistance" it promotes. Unlike contemporaneous groups such as the (ELF), which inflicted over $110 million in damages between 1995 and 2005 and drew FBI designation as a top domestic threat, DGR has elicited no comparable state repression or media scrutiny of its principals, signaling negligible threat perception and impact. A 2013 attempt to attack the San Jose electrical substation—speculated by some as aligned with DGR-like tactics—failed to cause outages or replication, exemplifying the strategy's vulnerability to rapid recovery and adaptation by utilities. DGR's tactics have also been faulted for ethical and practical risks, including the endorsement of actions that could induce widespread blackouts or supply disruptions disproportionately affecting vulnerable populations, with strategists accepting mass die-offs as a tolerable outcome for ecological restoration. This has contributed to organizational stagnation, as the group's hierarchical structure and uncompromising stance have repelled collaborators; for instance, environmental networks like Rising Tide and Tar Sands Resistance have publicly condemned DGR, further isolating it from movement-building opportunities. By 2015, multiple chapters, including those in Portland and Austin, had dissolved amid disputes over inclusivity policies, reflecting broader recruitment and retention challenges that have kept DGR marginal despite over a decade of existence.

Broader Influence on Environmental Thought

Deep Green Resistance (DGR) has contributed to environmental discourse by formalizing a critique of industrial civilization as fundamentally incompatible with ecological health, advocating instead for organized resistance strategies that target systemic infrastructure rather than incremental reforms. This perspective, outlined in the organization's 2011 book Deep Green Resistance: Strategy to Save the Planet by Aric McBay, , and Derrick Jensen, posits that technological solutions and lifestyle changes within existing structures are insufficient, drawing on principles to argue for decisive actions including to halt resource extraction and . The framework's emphasis on "Decisive Ecological Warfare"—a phased approach from awareness-raising to revolutionary tactics—has been examined in scholarly analyses of as a call for paradigm-shifting militancy amid accelerating and climate disruption. DGR's ideas have intersected with primitivist and anti-civilization strains of thought, reinforcing arguments that modern society's scale and complexity preclude sustainable coexistence with natural systems, as evidenced by endorsements and debates within outlets like Earth First! Journal, where the strategy was both critiqued and acknowledged for challenging complacent activism. This has indirectly bolstered skepticism toward "bright green" optimism in renewables and green growth, themes expanded in subsequent works by DGR affiliates, such as the 2021 book Bright Green Lies, which cites empirical data on mining impacts and energy return on investment to question scalability of solar and wind technologies. Such contributions have prompted radical environmental thinkers to prioritize causal analyses of overconsumption and habitat destruction over policy advocacy, though adoption remains confined to fringe networks due to the strategy's perceived impracticality. The organization's rejection of reformist environmentalism as complicit in perpetuating collapse—citing historical failures like the inefficacy of treaties such as the 1992 in curbing rates, which rose 7.3% globally from 1990 to 2020—has influenced niche discussions on the ethics of resistance, including parallels to historical insurgencies against extractive empires. However, this influence is tempered by internal and external rejections, limiting mainstream penetration while sustaining a counter-narrative in underground ecological philosophy.

References

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