* * *

This discussion gives way to another, namely, the question of what a climate changed world might actually look like. On this topic, the book Desert (2011) – a key source of inspiration for this chapter – offers some important suggestions. Presuming anything approaching a 4°C temperature rise occurs this century, the planet would be left unrecognizable compared to today. Such a high level of heating – which could well be exceeded, given current trajectories – would mean hot deserts expanding massively beyond the Equator, possibly seeping deep into Europe. It would also mean sea levels rising as high as 10 meters, inundating vast swathes of dry land, including many of those regions most densely inhabited by humans. Faced with a combination of warming, acidification, and pollution, the oceans will become increasingly incapable of supporting complex life. Across the globe, moreover, millions of species of plants and animals stand to be wiped out by the relatively sudden destabilization of long-standing ecological conditions. Finally, as human refugees amass in vast numbers, in countless locations trampling borders in search of safety, the toll on our own species will likely be unprecedented. It seems surreal to even write it, but here it is: faced with a combination of extreme weather, famine, flooding, war, and disease, the loss of human life could well climb into the region of billions.

It goes without saying that an extremely volatile (and also massively diverse) social situation would result from these changes. Already today, many equatorial regions house regimes which are failing to provide local populations with basic material needs, including sufficient food and clean water. Climate change will multiply numerous preexisting threats in many places – much of Africa and the Middle East, for example – beyond the capacity for effective governance to be maintained. As the viable borders of global civilization shrink, much of the loss of human life will be suffered by those who, having been forcibly incorporated into an inherently unsustainable economic system, will be hung out to dry once they can no longer be supported. In many cases, “anarchy” will ensue, but not at all in the sense we mean it: local warlords and religious extremists will rush in to exploit the situation, merely replacing the state and capital rather than dismantling them – something looking much more like Somalia than Catalonia.

In other cases, however, the destabilization of various regions will likely favor a more peaceable outcome. The collapse of a civilization doesn’t need to mean the end of the world: with many cities failing to support their inhabitants, one of the surest means of survival will be to retreat to communal, decentralized setups that avoid the unstable reliance on imported resources and heavily concentrated populations. Even today, the inhabitants of many rural regions – think sub-Saharan Africa, Central America, and Southeast Asia – continue to rely on robust subsistence economies that could well act as an effective buffer for many. In areas of reduced agricultural viability, moreover, various forms of 21^st century gatherer-hunting are likely to emerge, interspersed with a strange brew of dropouts from mainstream society, including hippies, pirates, cults, and hillbillies. Even if stateless societies aren’t the most inevitable of social arrangements, they nonetheless remain the most natural – that is, the least reliant on complex social relations. This will offer a strategic advantage, depending on the extent to which we’re capable of appreciating these often accidental anarchic flowerings, most of which will fall far short of our idealized standards.

Amid such unprecedented conditions, libertarian revolution may also become possible in many places. Social hierarchy – especially class – is a constant balancing act between oppressing the excluded enough to maximize the privileges received, but not doing so to the extent they rise up and kill you. Climate change will make that tightrope immensely harder to walk. As the mountain glaciers melt into nothing, many heavily populated regions will suffer severe water shortages, but you can hardly expect people to die quietly whilst the rich keep their mansion fountains running. Given the realization that the least responsible for the crisis stand to suffer the most, insurrection will spark off in locations currently unthinkable. That won’t always be a pretty picture, especially given that many rebel movements will undoubtedly be nationalist in nature. But there’s also a solid chance the rage can be pushed in a more hopeful, liberatory direction, depending on the extent we find ourselves ready to intervene. Some good could well come of this mess: anarchism will enjoy a growing demand for a radically different vision of what the world could look like, one that gets to the root of the problem rather than just blaming the victims. In terms of the necessary external conditions, certainly, it’s possible the golden age of insurrection and revolution lived out by anarchists a century ago will be exceeded.

At given moments, it will be tempting to overstate the nature of the destabilization, but let’s not get carried away. This won’t be the end of hierarchy, nor of the struggle against it, only a transformation of the conditions within which this eternal tension manifests itself. Whilst no doubt including fits of intensity here and there, the process of disintegration will be both limited and gradual, defying our Hollywood-induced expectations of a sudden, all out collapse. This will surely be the end of that totalizing, globalized form of capitalism known to some as “Empire,” but not of capitalism itself, nor of civilization altogether. As for the next decades, more temperate regions – especially island nations such as New Zealand and the UK – are likely to remain somewhat insulated from the destabilization, at least relative to what will be going on closer to the Equator.

Moreover, it’s even possible that, whilst civilization and its borders will retract in many places, in others these will actually expand. Another theme for the 21^st century will be the continued thawing of cold deserts, such as those found in Siberia, Scandinavia, Canada, Greenland, and Alaska. This will open up new possibilities for capitalist expansion in the form of yet more trade, settlement, and resource extraction. In fact, the process already started some years ago, and is likely to pick up the pace throughout the century, perhaps even including the forgotten continent of Antarctica. As the once uninhabitable recesses of the planet become prime lands for colonization, many stronger, more imperialistic countries – including those with nuclear weapons, such as the US, Russia, and China – stand to be drawn into further geopolitical conflicts. For the time being, as well as the foreseeable future, Leviathan is far from being dealt its deathblow.

The relative stability of many temperate regions, however, hardly suggests that life will continue as normal there. For one, the threats destabilizing equatorial regions – drought, flooding, water shortages – will increase markedly everywhere, even though regimes in the Global North have a better initial chance of holding down effective governance. Considering current trajectories, no less, it’s only a matter of time – a few extra decades, maybe less – before temperate regions are hit much harder by the social and ecological effects of climate change, especially with cities like New York, Amsterdam, and London already at risk from flooding. Even before then, a major portion of international trade will crash once equatorial regions start to fold, pulling the heavily externalized economies of the Global North into unprecedented recession. With many centrist regimes failing to keep a lid on their ever multiplying crises, many moderates will find themselves looking for radical alternatives. All the destabilizing factors that prefaced the revolutions of the past will be there (if anything, they’ll be immensely greater). Just remember that these are the very conditions that gave rise to fascism in the 20^th century, only this time with staggering numbers of climate refugees thrown into the mix. As always, the inevitability of crises within hierarchical systems is both our greatest enemy and friend.

Some will respond, no doubt, that such predictions are over the top. Perhaps climate change will turn out to be less severe than the current evidence suggests, or even significantly mitigated. But really no one knows. Presuming things do begin to majorly disintegrate in one sense or another – be it through climate change, the potential crises mentioned in the last chapter, or something else entirely – an outcome resembling the picture outlined here seems probable. Comrades would thus do well to consider how their local terrain of struggle could change over the next decades. That isn’t to say we should get too caught up in the game of making predictions, especially given that history is typically defined by the events no one saw coming. Yet by preparing well for the future – that is, by struggling hard now, in combination with a little forethought – we can maximize our potential to convert even the most abysmal conditions into solid opportunities for growth.

A thousand Syrias

Only with the help of historical hindsight do you really know what period you’re living in. It’s unlikely there will be a distinguishable ground zero marking out the new epoch, only a blurry line separating the previous era from something altogether different. Perhaps future generations will even consider the current historical moment to fall within the boundaries of the new era, given that arguably the first major geopolitical conflict triggered by climate change – the Syrian Civil War – began some years ago. This conflict might well bear an image from the future, suggesting what’s likely to be reproduced on an ever greater scale over the coming decades.

It’s hard to imagine now, but not long ago Syria was one of the most politically stable Arab regimes. Chief among the factors that altered this picture so dramatically, however, was the worst drought ever recorded in the region. Lasting from 2006 to 2011, this period of severe dryness – near impossible to explain without reference to anthropogenic climate change – led to major crop failures, livestock collapse, and water shortages in many rural areas. Up to 1.5 million locals were forced to migrate from the countryside into the cities, combined with an influx of similar numbers of refugees from the war in Iraq. The result was a significantly diminished capacity for urban facilities to provide for such sharply growing populations, thereby intensifying certain social tensions – unemployment, corruption, inequality – that would otherwise have been far less noticeable. An autocratic regime is one thing, but something entirely different is one that can no longer ensure the basic material needs of most of its citizens. Inspired by numerous uprisings in other Arab states, the first protests and insurgencies against the Assad regime began in 2011, escalating decisively into a civil war by 2012.

The basic dynamic here is clear: rather than single-handedly causing the conflict, extreme weather conditions stressed preexisting social tensions beyond the capacity of the local regime to cope. Without climate change, control would likely have been maintained; combined with such volatile ecological conditions, however, Syrian society has been permanently altered beyond recognition.

It’s worth noting that this conflict, which began exactly around the time Desert was published, validates some of the key predictions the text offers. In particular, the Syrian Civil War supports the expectation that climate change will leave many regions “engulfed in civil war, revolution, and inner-state conflict,” offering “much horror but also much potential for constructing free lives.” The horrible aspects of the war are all too obvious, having been broadcast almost constantly for years now. Faced with brutal repression at the hands of the Assad regime, many were convinced to join the Free Syrian Army just for a chance to fight back. However, the choice was ultimately between the less authoritarian of two statist groups, both of which remain committed to controlling the entirety of Syria. Not only that, this power-play also provided the destabilization necessary for ISIS – an Islamist statist group, fascist in all but name – to gain control of much of Syria and Iraq by 2014, bringing yet more barbarism to the fray. Responding to this volatile situation, many foreign powers – the US, Russia, France, Iran, Turkey – became increasingly involved, exploiting Syria as yet another theater in which to further their geopolitical interests. All of which soon left millions of refugees with no choice but to flee for their lives, only to reveal the true colors of many EU states, who in most cases simply favored raising the drawbridge. These are exactly the characteristics you can expect to see reoccurring across the globe this century; if anything, the author of Desert was mistaken only in suspecting it would take much longer for the process to begin.

That’ll do for the horrible aspects of the war, but what of the potential for constructing free lives? Far from merely generating bloodshed and authoritarianism, the Syrian Civil War also proves that “In some places peoples, anarchists among them, could transform climate wars into successful libertarian insurrections.” It’s immensely reassuring that all this destabilization gave birth to the first libertarian socialist revolution since 1936. For years prior to the war, the Kurds of Syria had been organizing themselves clandestinely, forming the People’s Protection Units (YPG) in response to the 2004 Qamishli riots – surely an insurrection. In 2012, with Assad’s forces drawn elsewhere, the Kurds seized their opportunity to throw off the Syrian state, thereby initiating the Rojava Revolution. This struggle has always been about much more than Kurdish independence. Having demonstrated a profoundly libertarian and anti-capitalist character, taking the autonomous commune as the nucleus of its social transformation, it could hardly contrast more starkly with anything else happening around Syria right now – even the planet as a whole. It’s quite something to be witnessing the first feminist revolution in human history, the only in which women’s liberation is at least as important as any of its other aspects. The combined emphasis on ecology, moreover, places it closer to a total liberation ethic than probably any explicitly anarchist revolution there’s been. Already today, the Rojava Revolution has lasted far longer than the Spanish Revolution, achieving astonishing gains against ISIS, whilst refusing to be broken by an invasion launched by Turkey at the beginning of 2018.

It can be a curious thing, how history often works. For decades, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) had been facing off against the Turkish state in a long and bloody civil war, all the while sternly promoting Marxism-Leninism. After being captured in 1999, however, the leader of the PKK – Abdullah Öcalan – became the sole inmate of the prison island of Imrali, where he somehow came across the writings of one Murray Bookchin. And what an elegant twist of fate that was: this is exactly what initiated the shift in Öcalan’s thinking away from Marxism, with its fixation on statecraft, towards a new proposal for Kurdish liberation that he called “democratic confederalism.” This theory is defined by a broad application of Bookchin’s libertarian municipalism to Middle Eastern conditions, taking feminism, ecology, and multiculturalism as its central pillars. Given the strong influence of Öcalan over the Kurdish liberation struggles in Syria and Turkey, the majority of those involved eventually adopted democratic confederalism in full, swapping their ambition for a new nation state for the goal of achieving autonomy from states altogether. The Syrian Civil War was merely the opportunity needed to put theory into practice on a large scale. In doing so, the Kurds have proven that democratic confederalism offers the most realistic hope of achieving lasting peace not only in Syria, but also the Middle East more generally. The future is no done deal: the Rojava Revolution offers much needed hope for the ever darker times ahead.

On the other hand, Rojava doesn’t offer an obvious picture of an anarchist society, certainly not yet. Whether or not the state continues to exist there is a matter of debate, whilst the economy remains split between private and communal ownership. Some level of a police force exists, even though its operations are difficult to distinguish from communal self-defense; prisons remain as well, although their application nowadays – primarily a matter of detaining members of ISIS – is a shadow of what it was under Assad. It goes without saying that Rojava isn’t perfect, not least because of its fragility. But none of this should detract from what’s been achieved by this heroic experiment amid the most trying of circumstances. Maybe the Left has become a little too accustomed to losing to know what a victory looks like. This isn’t fiction, nor is it history: this is real, and it’s growing in this very minute.

What’s more, any doubts as to the revolutionary content at the core of Rojava – usually voiced by those sitting in another continent – are soon dispelled by the testimonies of the innumerable international anarchists who’ve fought (and fallen) in this ongoing struggle. Of the more dramatic examples, Anna Campbell (Hêlîn Qereçox) – already long since engaged in hunt sabotage, eco-defense, prison abolition, and migrant solidarity – traveled from the UK to Rojava in 2017, enlisting with the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ). After taking part in the fight against ISIS at Deir ez-Zor, she defied the advice of her commanders by joining the defense of Afrin against invasion by Turkey. It was there that Campbell lost her life to a Turkish airstrike, in March, 2018. Yet her readiness to give everything for Rojava continues to resound, as in the words to a comrade (grounded in almost a year of living and fighting there) that “I’m not looking to die, but if it’s necessary to die in this struggle then I’m ready.” Also the more detailed clarification:

I joined because I wanted to support the revolution, and because I wanted to participate in the revolution of women that is being built up here. And join also the weaponised fight against the forces of fascism and the enemies of the revolution. So now I’m very happy and proud to be going to Afrin to be able to do this. (From a video posted online by the YPJ, 2018)

Besides affirming the prior achievements of Rojava, finally, this kind of international solidarity has helped bring the ongoing social revolution to uncharted terrain. Green anarchist group Social Insurrection (formed in 2015) offer an emphasis not only on ecology, but also vegetarianism. Just as the International Revolutionary People’s Guerrilla Forces (IRPGF, formed in 2017) announced in their opening statement: “We are committed anti-fascists, anti-capitalists, anti-imperialists and against all forms of patriarchy and kyriarchy,” even going on to affirm that “We fight in defense of life and we struggle for total liberation.” Perhaps the icing on the cake was then provided by The Queer Insurrection and Liberation Army (TQILA, formed later in 2017), themselves claiming that “the oppressive structures that seek to erase Queers are also simultaneously the ones that oppress women, workers, peasants, ethnic minorities et al. Our fight for liberation is tied with every oppressed group’s fight for liberation. If one is in chains, all are in chains.”

Society is a complex problem, never moving towards any single end. If the Syrian Civil War offers a microcosm for the future (and there’s good reason to believe it does), it’s fair to locate both intense horror and beauty on the horizon. Within the next decades, such destabilization will begin exploding around the world, offering major opportunities both to our enemies and ourselves. Moreover, if climate change continues unabated, it’s only a matter of time before something resembling Syria begins to engulf the entire planet. No longer can we hope to stop climate change altogether; whether that situation might offer its fair share of fruitful outcomes, however, remains entirely down to us.

Choosing sides in a dying world

Only three decades ago, the Berlin Wall fell, revealing a mess of broken dreams and genocide on the other side. The revolutionary movements of the 1970s and ‘80s had subsided, whilst the anti-globalization movement hadn’t yet begun to fill the void. This moment of respite allowed the ideologues of modernity to calmly scan the globe, confident there was no viable alternative to the rule of liberal democracy. So severe was their sense of certainty, that “the end of history” itself – the supposed culmination of humanity’s social evolution – was proudly declared. Yet the arrogance underpinning that little claim is exactly what continues to blind power to the imminence of its own implosion. The honeymoon is over: for the first time in history, the viability not of this or that civilization has been called into question, but of civilization as such. Perhaps the end of history really is upon us? Yet not at all in the sense Fukuyama meant it.

The ecological changes ahead are likely to put serious strain on the viability of liberal democracies the world over. Resources will dwindle, re-exposing deep class divisions that decades of economic growth merely covered up; meanwhile, the guarantee of a decent living standard even for the middle class will begin to lose its credibility. With the social fabric starting to unravel completely, centrist regimes will find themselves employing ever more repressive measures in order to maintain control. The boundaries of the surveillance state will continue to be expanded, aiming for a take on omniscience beyond the wildest dreams of any Stasi agent. Rising levels of immigration will be used not only as an excuse to fortify borders even more, but also to keep ever greater tabs on those inside the walls. Climate change will be rolled out as the latest frontier of that already pervasive social war – other aspects of which include the war on terror and war on drugs – waged against the population in the name of our protection. Ever more peculiar laws will be sought, and states of emergency will be utilized much more frequently. At every turn, the state will fight tooth and nail for its ambition of total control, gaining as much ground as we’re willing to give it.

Especially once tensions get really high, any democratic government will prove itself willing to take ever greater risks. The assassination of Ferd Hampton and other Black Panthers during the COINTELPRO era gives a taste of what the US state has perpetrated when necessary; no less, look at the 1969 Piazza Fontana bombing in Italy, in which a fascist terrorist attack – perhaps even facilitated by NATO – was used as an excuse to persecute and murder local anarchists. These kinds of underhanded tactics are only likely to be outdone in the years ahead.

Just as the right to choose your master doesn’t stop you being a slave, neither does the right to vote for your government stop you living in a dictatorship. The death of liberal democracy – something many nations will endure this century – is guaranteed by that lurking contradiction so fundamental to its existence: whilst such regimes prize progressive, egalitarian ends in theory, they’re defined in practice by almost as hierarchical a setup as any other. These inconsistencies are less noticeable during times of relative social peace, but all it takes is a bit of turbulence to tease them out, revealing the basic mismatch between saying one thing and doing another. As the material benefits offered by liberalism run dry, citizens will find themselves less willing to entertain the democratic myth. The authoritarianism at the core of any state will steadily become undeniable. That will leave many centrists confronted with a choice between following the democratic ethos to its logical, anarchic conclusion, or else rejecting it outright in favor of a more honest dictatorship. In many cases, opinion will polarize around the only two coherent options on offer: anarchism, with its rejection of hierarchy in any form, and fascism, which wears the affirmation of hierarchy on its sleeve.

This warning of the likely reemergence of fascism is hardly alarmist. The social contract has always been a tradeoff between freedom and security; as the insecurity posed by climate change really gets scary, however, the degree of freedom many of us will opt to surrender is going to increase dramatically. Whether explicit or implicit, gradual or sudden, fascistic logic will continue to infiltrate the sphere of mainstream politics, as has already begun in recent years. Especially once it becomes undeniable that economic growth is at the heart of the environmental crisis, it’s hard to imagine the sludgy center of neoliberal discourse continuing to hold sway. Either the killing machine that is the economy will be torn down completely, or else an even greater monster – the omnipotent state – will need to arise just to keep it in check. The fascist option, defined not only by its nationalism, but also the rejection of free markets, will seem like an increasingly logical choice for many.

In particular, the 21^st century is likely to witness the widespread reinvention of fascism in ecological form. Pentti Linkola, exposing the dark side of deep ecology, summarizes the authoritarian take on environmentalism as such: “the survival of man – when nature can take no more – is possible only when the discipline, prohibition, enforcement and oppression meted out by another clear-sighted human prevents him from indulging in his destructive impulses and committing suicide.” Don’t forget that Nazism was at times strangely sympathetic to the plight of nonhuman animals and the environment. Hitler’s regime endorsed organic farming and banned vivisection, whilst Savitri Devi – among the most influential Nazi writers since the Second World War – attempted to combine fascism and the occult with animal rights and biocentrism. Much of the appeal of contemporary fascists such as the Alt-right lies in their promise to restore, along racial lines, the sense of community neoliberal capitalism has so meticulously destroyed; yet it’s eco-fascism – the fixation with blood and soil – that will offer a return to unity with Nature as well. Just as Hitler and Mussolini legitimized themselves with workerist overtones, exploiting one of the leading moral forces of the early 20^th century, the need to protect an increasingly uninhabitable planet will be taken as the latest excuse to pulverize the most vulnerable among us.

The attempt to combine fascism with ecology is, of course, seriously confused. This synthesis should be granted about as much durability as Hitler’s appraisal of workers’ power, which was inevitably swapped for outright annihilation of the trade unions the moment he gained power. Particularly given that, far from abolishing the growth-imperative that defines capitalist production, fascism merely seeks to centralize it under state control. All the while fortifying the very hierarchies – the state, class, and gender, if not civilization itself – that lie at the root of the environmental crisis. Having said that, however, the inevitability of a political quick-fix merely compounding the horror down the line has never been a guarantee it won’t still be tried.

This confirms the urgency of engaging in effective anti-fascism now. Whilst confrontation remains essential, though, any long-term anti-fascist strategy must also take care to offer more attractive, libertarian alternatives to the decomposition of mainstream politics. The status quo is failing – something which, in a weird way, both Trump and Brexit already begin to indicate – and more of the same isn’t going to save us. There’s a growing need for a resistance movement against all forms of hierarchy, one that affirms ecological balance as one and the same with the construction of horizontal social relations. In these increasingly intense times, the emergence of a bold movement for total liberation – immediate in its impact, yet forever with its gaze on the revolutionary horizon – will become less of a luxury, much more a matter of everyday survival in an increasingly hostile terrain. There can be no pretensions of neutrality in this dying world.