L- Extinction – their calls to prevent extinction is a self fulfilling prophecy used to justify the extermination of “the other” which is always racialized

For, it is not Zerzan who has invented the Machine with its terminology and the technological solution that made the atomic bomb possible as THE option, leaving no possibility for life outside of the “Atomic way of life” under the constant threat of obliteration (and, actual death; let us not forget Baghdad, Serbia, Hiroshima, Nagasaki). And it is not Zerzan who has welcomed the extermination of millions of people around the world under the aegis of the defence of the Civilised way of life (slavery, colonialism, the war of terror on terror, etc.). Those who are worried about the collapse of their system, close their eyes on, and hence participate in, the continuing extinction of human and, what Zerzan calls, plant and animal communities around the world whose collapse this civilisation has impelled. Perhaps, the speakers, still fail to perceive the millions of already dead and still dying as “people” or as complex entities of a complex system that exists for its own right and not for the sake of being domesticated (appropriated and exploited) by some humans. Instead, in fearing the onslaught of their own collapse, these people see the “other” victims of civilisation as “resources”, the necessary collateral damage needed to regulate the smooth flow of food to the fridges, restaurants and cafés of the speakers – what Malthus called the disasters necessary to regulate “their” (the brown people’s) “overpopulation” and not “our” (civilised) voracious appetites. Being a white male, Zerzan has renounced the privileges of the white male system and his biography is a witness to that fact. While, of course, there is a difference between someone renouncing having had a choice in the first place and someone not having a chance to renounce because the System never extended an invitation to the Bacchanalia of Civilisation, it is still an excellent example for those in the position of privilege to follow. Which, of course, hardly ever the privileged do, since they greatly fear their own demise even though for others this collapse has long occured. But then, Zerzan warns us that the symbolic alienates people from the suffering of others and replaces our ability for empathy and experience with concentration on personal salvation. In its imposition of a virtual reality, Civilisation estranges us from our own pain and, ultimately, by killing the Other the civilised kill the Self. The other side of the question, though, is that many of those who do not even have a chance at privilege, gobble up the whole value system and ensure that by their simple desire to “one day get there” (“there” is of course the ultimate abstraction) run the system to its logical end: the Total Collapse, the Apocalypse – that elitist knowledge and desire that will blow up the rest of the world. Some of the so-called “anarchists” at the fair seem to fall in this category: they do not associate themselves with the capitalist elites, they identify themselves as anarchists and yet scream in fear that it is Zerzan – and not those who order and finance Knowledge and technologies – who is going to take away their cosy computers, tasty bakeries, black uniforms, contraceptives and the medical establishment that makes their abortions and sex change operations, and the like. In other words, they are deaf to the fact that it is this Knowledge with its implicit and inherent logic that has killed off thousands of varieties of animal, plant, and human cultures around the world. When they scream that the collapse will kill millions of people, they obviously exclude all the Africans, Asians, Aborigines who have already been killed and continue to perish around the world. This logic, obviously, excludes these people from the category itself of “people” and we find ourselves facing the elitist eugenicist rhetoric, once again.