Saturday, July 24, 2010

Andy Hurley is an idiot


Duh. But this is for a reason other than being in Fall Out Boy. I finished reading this really interesting book a few weeks back, Sober Living for the Revolution: Hardcore Punk, Straight Edge and Radical Politics. It's an anthology of interviews and writings, as the title says, on straight edge and the ways in which people have politicized it, through connections with such (not necessarily) disparate ideas as feminism, veganism, radical queer analysis, anarchism, and communism. The book is international in perspective, including people from Brazil, Israel, Poland, Sweden, Holland, the U.K. and of course the United States. Some of the interviews are great (Ian, the two people from Poland and one of the dudes from Point of No Return), some are really good and some are pathetic for what they reveal about the interviewees.

In the midst of all this is Andy Hurley, whose interview is entitled "Straight Edge, Anarcho-Primitivism and the Collapse." Yup. I guess it's to present the ideas of primitivism through the mouth of someone a bit more recognizable than anyone from Gather or Peregrine. Andy doesn't seem to be too into his own ideas and just kind of regurgitates stuff from Derrick Jensen and the great Klan sympathizer/apologist (he writes that "Nonetheless, the loathsome nature of the KKK of today should not blind us to what took place within the Klan 70 years ago, in various places and against the wishes and ideology of the Klan itself.), John Zerzan.

First, take a look at Andy's ultraprimitive 6,000+ square foot lakefront home, with its five bedrooms, four bathrooms and multiple BMWs in the driveway


Nice house. So in the interview, on page 254, he talks about how veganism is only relevant in our modern industrial world:

I always understood that in a better way of living, in the way of living that humanity is supposed to live [what the fuck does this mean?], I wouldn't be vegan. There is just a different connection, a different relationship. There's a relationship between predator and prey that has nothing to do with the relationship that civilization has to the animals it uses in the meat and dairy industry, in factory farming etc. So I definitely don't agree with the analysis that veganism saves the world. Not at all, because the whole question is still about civilization, and about farming and agriculture.

Of course veganism doesn't save the world. But it does more than you talking on your fucking iPhone and taking orders for your "Fuck City" shirts while fishing "naturally" on land you bought cause you're fucking rich. I'm super tired of this "relationship between predator and prey" bullshit that Derrick Jensen loves to propagate through his fetishized ideas of "the" Native American and how he/she honored the kill. Yeah, as though something is right because Native Americans did it. The Mayan people (in their civilization, which is really inconvenient for primitivists who idealize Native Americans, considering that they were Native Americans who built a pretty serious civilization long before they had most unfortunate contact with European death bringer parasites) performed human sacrifices, which seems like not a good idea. All that relationship shit is an excuse. Just admit that you are killing and that's it. The relationship is that you kill something and eat it. Whatever animal you are killing has no relationship with you, other than the one of great fear that you give it when you take its life. Like a deer is coming to offer itself to you, knowing that it's the right thing to do, living in this newly re-wilded natural world again.

So then why bother being vegan at all? Don't worry, Andy (by way of his friend Kevin Tucker) has got that one all figured out:

Besides, within civilization veganism is important to me because, again, I'm against oppression and this applies to the meat and dairy industry and all that, and so that's another thing I just can't support. But I've been planning on buying some land up north in Wisconsin, to at least have something that can never be clear-cut and used for timber, and to have a place that's wild, a place that I can utilize natural survival skills on. And then maybe one day I'll start looking for roadkill, start fishing in natural ways and stuff. I don't know when I'll get to that bridge and when I'll cross it, but I assume it will happen. As I said, I've been struggling with this for a while now and have had lots of talks with [Kevin] Tucker about it. It's become kind of a running joke.

There you have it, veganism and vegetarianism are merely protests against civilization. They don't deserve consideration once we switch back to living like we're "supposed to," as though anyone can know what that means. People have lived so differently over so many centuries, and here we see people claiming THE TRUTH, going back to that original moment, where everything was great. Then what happened, aliens came down and gave us bad ideas, or those creatures who live at the center of the earth crawled out and showed someone advanced technology? No. We happened. People. Or rather, we kept happening. The same fucking species, year after year, has continually fucked things up more and more. I'll write another post about this later.

What's the running joke? "LOL, I'm gonna eat meat soon!!" "Yeah right, non-primitivist, privileged industrialist!! LOL LOL LOL!" So funny right now.

Perhaps you wonder why I care. It's not really anything about Andy Hurley. Certainly, I do not look to him for ideas on anything. Before this interview and doing some subsequent perfunctory research (which turned up the episode of Cribs), I only knew that he played in Fall Out Boy and used to be in Racetraitor and Vegan Reich. Some people I know who think that anyone who is vegan and straight edge rules told me that he is a primitivist. So yeah, Andy Hurley is not an important part of my thoughts.

The issue is that his notion of veganism is just so offensive to my own. Sure, it's good that the dude is vegan for the time being (if he even still is at this point) and has (had?) been for a long time. It's way more than I could say for most people. I guess he promoted it, somehow. Maybe not, I don't know. Fall Out Boy is a pretty stupid, meaningless band, after all. But to just say that, "Hey, when it comes down to it, animals really are here for us to eat," that fucking SUCKS. What the fuck? Seriously. That is anthropocentrism at its core. It's like that food chain chart from the "Lisa the Vegetarian" episode of The Simpsons - we are the center, everything goes to us.

I've never viewed veganism as a relativist concept, that it's only desirable under industrial conditions. It's like saying that racism was only bad as long as black people were slaves or that dumping a little raw sewage in the ocean is ok, as long as too many people aren't doing it.

And what's up with this dichotomy that we either hunt animals or have industrialized agriculture? Why can't we plant for ourselves and work little plots of land? Sustenance is not exploitation. Stupid, shortsighted shit.

At the end of the day, I find it sad that Andy Hurley has this internal dissonance where he feels that he has to beat back his compassionate desires and kill. He refers to it as a "struggle." I would imagine it causes a good deal of anxiety. It's like he can't be a good primitivist if he doesn't eat meat. I guess that's what you get when your only thoughts on primitivism/how to live life come from reading Derrick Jensen, John Zerzan and hanging hard with Kevin Tucker. It's like he has to turn himself into some kind of robot, some idealized version of primitive man that is not likely based on much research. And he's choosing food as the primary method of that. I don't get it. If someone were of the opinion that hunting and killing is the absolute only method of survival post-collapse, and that person were also heavily disposed to veganism, why not train yourself to do the necessary killing and trapping and whatever and then leave it at that? It ain't like the collapse is imminent. Really. I don't see what the imperative is to abandon veganism at this point, if its something you still believe in.

We have obviously better ideas than killing to survive, but we're supposed to abandon them because we think that our ancestors behaved in certain ways. They also attacked one another with axes and lived in caves, wiping their asses with leaves at best. I wonder which "wild" version of humanity is most popular.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

while i am no fan of FOB or Hurley, and seeing as 90% of your 'arguments' could be easily shot full of holes by any intro to anthropology or ecology 101 remedial class, i think what you wrote here sums up it up EXACTLY: "Sustenance is not exploitation. Stupid, shortsighted shit" wow. lol. those who live in glass houses! oh the irony!

check out J.Godesky's 30 Thesis, it will do you a world of good to grapple with facts instead of your own baseless assumptions.

and a parting question...what primitivist 'idolizes' native Americans? where the hell have you seen that? as a matter of fact where the hell have you seen any of the other made up caricatures of 'primitivists' you spew here? oh, that's right, you haven't seen it anywhere. you've done no research, it's all just an ill thought out piece of unsubstantiated crap you barfed out. well done.

don't approve this comment if you like, but seriously, fact checking - try it out.

copious amounts of love and understanding,
-just another vegan AP

write back soon said...

Hello Anonymous. Thank you for taking the time to write. I'm sorry that my writing has evoked such hostility from you.
I'm not really sure to what "irony" refers in this case.
I never used any permutation of the word "idol" in the piece. I believe you mistook "idealize" for "idolize." I said that the primitivist literature I have read tends to idealize Native Americans and also tends to create an idealized iteration of primitive man, both of which I believe and will defend.
As for Mr. Godesky's Theses, the first one states that there is nothing inherently wrong with pedophilia. Come on. It's more of the same idea that whatever "primitive" people do/did means that it's ok, or at least deserving of respect. No. People are just fucked up creatures, regardless of level of civilization. I don't feel the need to find anything redeeming in humanity or search for some moment of original purity to which I can hearken back to make myself feel better about the mess we live now.
Regarding substantiation, I do not believe that I presented anything as "the facts," aside from quotes and a video to demonstrate the seemingly absurd dissonance that resonates from Mr. Hurley's claims of being a primitivist. That was substantiated rather well, and all through his words. I don't make any claims to "the truth" but instead provide my thoughts and ideas, which I do not need to substantiate at all. I thought that much was clear, that I am writing my ideas, but perhaps I need to make that more clear in the future.
Whether or not you agree with my positions is a completely different story, of course, and you clearly do not. That is fine and you are free and welcomed to do so.
I am not interested in reforming humanity, pursuing a "better" way of living after collapse. I do not believe it is achievable in the longer term or desirable overall. As I've stated, I firmly believe that we are biologically fucked, predisposed to ruin. If we (humans, Homo Sapien, regardless of ethnicity/tribe/race/location) got us where we are now, why would it be different in the future? The Earth will be better without us. We create no good.