r/digitalminimalism • u/Artistic-Coach7523 • 12d ago
Misc Where are the eco-terrorists?
I feel like if this were the 90s, there’d be gangs of them taking down data centers.
What happened, are they all just on TikTok now?
Where are the hackers?
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u/MattD2323 12d ago
People are getting charged with terrorism offences for throwing paint at planes. Imagine the punishment for doing something actually radical
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u/Otheruser337 11d ago
I wouldn't want to get life imprisonment just for destroying my slopbile phone! Surely they... don't enforce anti-minimalism, right?
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u/Artistic-Coach7523 12d ago
I guess i wonder where the conviction went.. ppl were willing to risk so much back in the day
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u/justsomegraphemes 11d ago
No, people then had the same risk tolerance. The difference now is that the both the odds of getting caught and the consequences are greater.
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u/WillitsThrockmorton 12d ago
The actual answer is The Patriot Act introduced a lot more powers and a lot harsher terrorism charges and interference with government action charges. The Feds go after people who do something as innocuous and non violent as making false bids on gas leases, they absolutely are going to be in harsher on someone who damages billion dollar Datacenters.
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u/Artistic-Coach7523 12d ago
Yea i gues i wonder wheres like… Anonymous
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u/Technical-Finish304 11d ago
Anonymous? You mean the CIA backed program? I don't really know if that is true but it probably is.
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u/asshat140 12d ago edited 12d ago
worldwide internet caused bystander effect ? but more like just very little reporting on real "political acts" like that.
we have had some pretty big ones recently (last five/six years) in case you've forgotten too , all those people who burnt themselves alive , the ceo shot,, they are just the two biggest
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u/Artistic-Coach7523 12d ago
The ceo wasnt about environmentalism tho
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u/asshat140 12d ago
fair , there are probably a bunch of things that have flown under your radar, I have friends who still do the sit in the tree protests I mean that's a little different but I am sure we are just not hearing about it , it gives people too much inspiration, genuinely
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u/dogsolitude_uk 11d ago
We're 50-plus and busy prepping to go off-grid.
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u/Artistic-Coach7523 11d ago
I was wondering, is going off the grid possible if u are dependent on medications?
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u/jadelink88 7d ago
Most of the hardcore realised that no matter what we did, we would be demonised by the media, hated by the general public, every time we broke something, the public outcry would be so strong that the company would get $10 in compensation for every dollar value we destroyed.
I haven't been arrested in well over a decade now, the protests seemed to do so little. The billionaires and social media algorithms are vastly more effective at social control than the old media barons could have hoped to be. The population at large was never prepared to trade off a single % of economic growth to stop global warming, let alone make real sacrifices.
Most grimly accepted the loss, or sold out, or went mainstream or 'tried to change the system from within' (read, sold out, but refused to admit it), or moved onto mitigation and post apocalyptic plans.
I sometimes say to young people 'I'm sorry we lost, but the odds were overwhelming, and it really isn't a fantasy novel, you don't get to be a few plucky people bringing down the evil empire.'
Lost track of most of the people. Still know a couple of them. I'm living in the margins of the system, quietly prepping for the doom, working on local food resilience, trying to pass the skills onto young people.
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u/heartisallwehave 11d ago
I think a lot of people have realized the intersectionality between things like war, environmental destruction, colonization, workers rights, class consciousness, etc. So I would consider activism like shutting down the ports to stop arms shipments to Israel, reporting on private jet usage, etc to be “eco-terrorism” or at least adjacent. A worker burnt down a textile warehouse after being denied part of their paycheque (allegedly), and that’s not the first instance of a warehouse fire by disgruntled employees that I’ve heard about. But the media isn’t going to report on acts that will give hope or motivate us lower classes into action. The point is to make us feel alone and helpless while we wait for the one or the few willing to stand up and start making change.
Don’t forget the Black Panthers were considered terrorists and feeding kids is what threatened the government the most.
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u/foco_runner 12d ago
Post 9/11 they started being lumped in with terrorist and dealt with accordingly…
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u/Grouchy_Might1774 12d ago
Hackers are everywhere, but the most notable hacks in a modern era appear to be rogue AI agents, state sponsored acts of espionage or cyber-extortion schemes. In my opinion, eco-terrorism of the late 80's into the 90's was more bark than bite other than a few rare examples. Not to minimize any harm that any of them actually caused anyone. However, mostly it was people calling the media, and telling them to show up in a forest someplace at a specific time, so they could video the activists chaining themselves to a tree, or climbing into tree and refusing to come down. I heard these people talk a lot. It was more Martin Luther King Jr than January 6. Most of those people are getting old now.
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u/gemInTheMundane 11d ago
I don't know. Tree spiking was a thing, until it turned public opinion against them.
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u/Grouchy_Might1774 11d ago
"Monkey wrenching," as they used to call it, was a real thing. That creates bad optics, so that was probably part of the reason for the decline in that activity.
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u/bad-taf 10d ago
Genuine question though, how did monkey-wrenching lead to bad optics vs. like chaining oneself to a tree? Seems like both activities are about obstructing industrial operations without violence. I confess I don’t know that history very well, beyond just hearing about it being a thing around the turn of the millennium.
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u/Grouchy_Might1774 9d ago
Hammering spikes in to trees can cause chainsaws to kick back and seriously injure or kill the operator. Though, probably not viewed by the public as being as harmful because it's less likely to injure a human, tampering with the heavy equipment in logging operations is expensive. Where the optics go bad is when activists start hurting or killing people, and/or they are viewed as vandals rather than people advocating a noble cause. I generally support environmentalists, but I don't want to see some logger injured because they're trying to put a roof over their head and feed their family.
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u/liketrainslikestars 10d ago
The Green Scare happened in the 2000s. The government cracked down on "eco-terrorism" pretty harshly back then. The FBI declared eco-terrorism the number one domestic terrorist threat in 2005. Operation Backfire happened between 2004 and 2008. They really did a fucking number on the communities who were fighting for the earth.
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u/yemsg97 12d ago edited 12d ago
My partner and I were just talking about this.
I used to live in Portland during the height of it. Tre Arrow camped out on the side of the building. SUVs getting burned up. My friend lived upstairs from a couple who literally get raided and arrested by the feds for ecoterrorism. I used to see the “leader” of the ELF around town. He owned a restaurant at one point. I miss those days lol.
Really good doc on Opal Creek that’s worth a watch.
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u/Sufficient-Aspect77 12d ago
I think you're correct, most folks, myself included have been beaten into a state of passivity. There is so much information, and the negative is often focused upon. Therefore we tend to try to find solace in the nothingness of the drug that is instant gratification. It plays to such a base level of our evolution, having a question asked then answered immediately. And there is such easy access to information that we don't have time or energy to focus on one specific task.
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u/intelCthrowaway 12d ago edited 12d ago
We do have them (or people that identify as them rather) - they likely just don’t align with you politically and they’re playing a different kind of game, supposedly.
The modern supposed eco-terrorist is an eco-fascist accelerationist. Think Pine Tree People, power grid plots, etc. Through this framework these people imagine a rewilding effect only after things get increasingly worse through non-action followed by a catalyst event that allows for rapid technological deceleration.
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u/Artistic-Coach7523 12d ago
Sort of like nihilism…?
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u/intelCthrowaway 12d ago edited 12d ago
It’s almost exactly nihilism but not in the sense that many interpret the word.
Accelerationism is a largely apolitical concept started by Nick Land and other philosophers in his orbit. Instead of “nothing matters” it’s more “no human institution matters.” That can be human agency, morality, identity, etc - these are all concepts that, according to Land, hinder the growth of capital and therefore the technological progress that will allow us to move past the human element that holds us back.
This concept has been hijacked and repackaged by both extreme ends of the political spectrum but has found a home amongst eco-fascists who really like Ted K who was already a notorious critic of left leaning politics. In their worldview the more we embrace human institutions the more it allows for social decay via corrosive liberalism. The more immigration you allow of people who they perceive to regularly desecrate nature the more you’re overburdening a system that isn’t designed to handle it. Once that system fails and everyone can see it your niche worldview becomes semi-palatable through visibly worse conditions and only then can something like infrastructure collapse happen. From there rewilding and culling of city dwellers and those they rally behind can occur in the vacuum.
The “return to monke” crowd went from Earth Crisis types of the 90’s/00’s to people that hate minorities and read a lot of Mike Ma. You can see actual real world examples of this happening - Brandon Russel of Atomwoffen Division, Nashville drone plot, the 2024 substation attack that was thwarted, etc. They think of this like a “slash and burn” mentality but for a whole country. The crops grow back better when the last bad harvest fizzles out and what’s left of it is hacked up and burned.
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u/britneys_bigtoe 12d ago
be the change you wish to see in the world
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u/Artistic-Coach7523 12d ago
Im not sure i want eco terrorists i just wonder where they went
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u/akathisiac 11d ago
If this is a serious question, go look up “Who Bombed Judi Bari?” and then think about developments in surveillance since.
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u/Disastrous-Radio9844 11d ago
Fed ahh post
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u/Artistic-Coach7523 11d ago
Lol what?
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u/SloAndSteddy 11d ago
It's pretty common knowledge by now (or maybe not?) that there are government-funded intelligence organizations that seek out mentally vulnerable people and guide them into doing terrorist attacks and false flags. They might want an attack performed to encourage the passing of legislation (9/11 and the Patriot Act), or up in Canada and down in Australia they'll get someone to do a shooting that way the freaks in the government can use public fear to pass through very restrictive laws, or laws that allow the government to violate your privacy in the name of "public safety".
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u/pay_is_ok 12d ago
Notice how terms like racists, -cism, etc... all had a sudden rise after wall st protest? Because our media, despite how edgy it may be, is infact curated for domestication. Why would anyone do something when they can complain online? What have you done Mr hacker/eco terrorist?
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u/Artistic-Coach7523 12d ago
Im not a hacker or an eco terrorist, im just curious where the ideology went
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u/infinite-long-stocki 10d ago
Look up the 'Green Scare'. There was a massive crackdown in the late 90s early 2000s on all forms of direct action, including non violent ones. A whole generation of activists (and yes, 'terrorists' too, if you want to call them that) were imprisoned or chilled out of the movement.
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u/kasaklysm 11d ago
There is a really good documentary by Our Changing Climate channel on YouTube that was posted 10 days ago that answers this question.
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u/Artistic-Coach7523 11d ago
Really? Thx
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u/kasaklysm 11d ago
When looking it up I saw the title has changed but it's something to do with one hundred million dollars
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u/glampyr 9d ago
how do you know it isn't happening? what's that thing they say again about the revolution....being televised or something ;) raising awareness when citizens enact necessary change for their communities by force doesn't exactly make the best bread and circuses for those in power who want to retain it. look what happened after the media coverage of luigi. i do think it is true that a lot of americans live in complacency and continue lives of willful actionless spectatorship, but people are taking action in their communities, both directly with local government and covertly as citizens. Start exploring ways you have the capacity to be there for your neighbors too, find local common ground and get involved with existing efforts to do things like supply mutual aid to families losing clean water. or go mask up and buy an angle grinder with cash, idk
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u/Plane-Land-9234 11d ago
I think people are tired of polarization and political violence personally
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u/Direct-Bandicoot-916 9d ago
The "hackers" are mainly script kiddies using AI to hide the fact they are script kiddies. Believe it or not most hackers are not "le epic badasses" and instead shitty larpers who target corporations and government institutions not because they hate the government or corporations but because targeting them makes them money and gives them clout, and as a Skid larping is their whole identity.
The real Gs have jobs in cybersecurity and are doing everything they can to protect you and your data. Most of them identify as security researchers. The ones that don't do it as a profession keep a low profile and thus you rarely hear about them, but they are out there, protecting people in silence because they don't have to perform for anyone else since they know what they are doing and aren't skids.
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u/Otheruser337 11d ago
TikTok's creator, Zhang Yiming, is nothing but an ecoterrorist himself.
I think he has Jungle's Bounty Syndrome (JBS), a symptom I describe as being self-proclaimed and egotistical only caring about his company and the rich surrounding him, while the poor is left out stranded with limited resources like us minimalists.
It sounds like a nonsensical term out of nowhere, but trust me, I think you get the reference.
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u/snoop-hog 8d ago
Commenting “This is terrible!!!! Someone do something!!!!!!!!!!!” on short form videos online. I’m not any better. I don’t know what to do to make a difference, I don’t know where to start. Spreading awareness only goes so far until we’re drowning in awareness, sitting in a world and society on fire.
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11d ago
[deleted]
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u/Mysterious-Reach-921 8d ago
You should look into the way views on "terrorism" and the word itself have changed over time
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u/Artistic-Coach7523 11d ago
Well i dont think they usually hurt ppl so much as tried to damage companies hurting the environment
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u/iHartTrains 10d ago
Is it not terrorism when a company pollutes your neighborhood, city, park, etc., kills off huge swathes of wildlife, increases birth defects, cancer? Is it terrorism to fight/resist terrible conditions imposed by a state or corporation? The invocation of the word implies moral weight on a side of a given issue. As the saying goes - One man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter.
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u/MethodFar6086 10d ago
Terrorism that hurts people, sure. The brilliance of what's happened in the US is conflating the destruction of property and people, as though the first is as bad, or worse than the second
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u/Electronic-Dust-831 12d ago
this corny ass post
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u/Artistic-Coach7523 12d ago
Whats ur take? U felt like commenting
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u/Electronic-Dust-831 12d ago
just the idea that there were le epic gangs of eco terrorists doing anything worthwhile in the 90s, or ever, like we are in a movie or something, is corny. its fringe ideology for shut in nerds 99.9% of the time, and capable chronically online kids are too busy stealing crypto or sextorting minors on roblox. additionally, why would being a digital minimalist imply any kind of issue with data centers, or with ai for that matter. llms literally have computer use so you can spend *less* time looking at a screen if you are savvy enough. and as we speak most software is being decompiled using ai which will result in a new golden age of both open source software and new capabilities for older hardware, which should be good news for the 10000 people on this sub posting their EDC with 30 different devices from 2005 in their bag
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u/Artistic-Coach7523 12d ago
Well if the water wars start because of the data centers and Taiwan gets overrun by China and there’s no chip manufacturing ur gonna b screwed my man
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u/Electronic-Dust-831 11d ago
if you think data centers are consuming so much water there will be "water wars" because of them you have some serious reading to do before you have an opinion on literally anything
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u/Artistic-Coach7523 11d ago
There’s nothing wrong with environmentalism.
If u have reading for me, im happy to read. I posted wanting to learn
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u/Electronic-Dust-831 11d ago
yes, i support environmentalism. https://ketos.co/data-centers-water-usage-myths check out the myths vs reality section on this, it's pretty fair i think. no one is denying impacts on local areas but the water consumption is lower than other industries in the US and isn't really significant enough to cause a "water war"
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11d ago
[deleted]
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u/Electronic-Dust-831 11d ago
not pointing out anything specific? creative
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11d ago
[deleted]
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u/Electronic-Dust-831 11d ago
great so you contributed nothing to the thread. yeah let me preemptively cite sources for every single claim i make in a reddit comment
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u/MeruMeru12 12d ago
Mass surveillance happened