I've always thought it was weird to have a debate with Carl Davidson, so I won't waste my time trying. As someone who has read enough of both Chomsky and Zerzan to have a pretty clear understanding of their respective ideas, I can say without any hesitation that Chomsky is a leftist and a statist, not an anarchist. Ask almost any Marxist or other leftist, and they will tell you that they favor the eventual disappearance of the state and the formation of a classless, non-hierarchical, egalitarian society - does that make them anarchists? Hardly. For them, the abolition of the State is a distant ideal, something to be achieved at the end of the millenium, maybe. In the meantime, they advocate whatever political strategy seems most practical to them - be it a two-state solution in Israel-Palestine, voting for John Kerry, or whatever. Chomsky is a forceful and lucid critic of American hegemony, one who may have some sympathy for anarcho-syndicalism (itself one of the most reactionary trends in the current anarchist scene), but he is firmly in the leftist/statist camp.

As for John Zerzan, the author of this piece shows an abysmal ignorance of his various writings, many of which are readily available on the Internet (see, for instance, Green Anarchy and Primitivism). It is clear that the author's goal is to smear Zerzan with inane pseudo-arguments, rather than thoughtfully engage with his ideas. The limits of our techno-industrial society are becoming more frightfully apparent all the time, and many people, by no means all anarchist, are weighing the costs and benefits of our dependence on modern technology.

Just as an aside, this author's views on anarchism and violence are ludicrous. Where did he ever get the idea that "to a traditional anarchist, violence is almost always wrong"? Was Alexander Berkman opposed to violence when he shot Henry Clay Frick in response to Frick's role in the deaths of striking steelworkers during the Homestead Steel Strike? Was Nestor Makhno opposed to violence when he and his comrades fought against both the Red and White armies in the Ukraine? Or the Spanish anarchists who fought during the Spanish Civil War? This author is not only ignorant of Zerzan's writings and anarchist history in general, but he has a very distorted view of the current anarchist movement if he associates all Black Bloc activity at protests with green anarchists. I have known many Black Bloc participants who have little or no sympathy for green anarchy.