Irish Anarchist talks about acceptance of Zerzan’s Primitivism in American Anarchist Scene in 2008

Irish Anarchist Andrew Flood speaking in 2008
Q. And on the other side of the coin, did anything stand out and/or depress you about it?

The acceptance of primitivism as a legtimite part of the anarchist movement and even the left in general. I was amazed for instance to discover that some union locals had sponsored the speaking tour of Derick Jensen whose primitivist writings amount to an argument for mass murder. He was charging in the region of 2000 dollars an appearance in Ontario, it was quite extraordinary to me that unions would spend their members money on such a huckster.

Q. What are the major tendencies in the American movement? Which ones seem to growing and which ones declining?

My tour coincided with and fed into a wave of anarchist communist organizing across many of the regions I was visiting which meant I got to play some role in the formation process of five or six new organizations. But I wouldn’t overstate this, as is true of the North America in general these organizations are tiny in comparison with the population of the areas they operate in. The positive news on the primitivist front is that apart from the couple of celebratry gurus who are very visible on the internet there is very little primitivist organization anywhere, even in Eugene, Oregan. I have the general impression that many of the people who might formly have been primmies had drifted into some form of insurrectional anarchism although again there are almost no organizations (formal or otherwise) outside of a couple of cities…

(Source: anarchism.pageabode.com)