Brian Tokar

Platypus Review 125 | April 2020

Brian Tokar is an activist and author, a lecturer in Environmental Studies at the University of Vermont, and an active board member of 350Vermont as well as the Institute for Social Ecology (social-ecology.org), where he served as Director from 2008–2015. He has written and edited seven books on environmental issues and movements, including Toward Climate Justice: Perspectives on the Climate Crisis and Social Change (2010, Revised 2014) and a brand new collection, Climate Justice and Community Renewal: Resistance and Grassroots Solutions, to be published this spring by Routledge.

I APPROACHED PLATYPUS’ RECENT INTERVIEWS with John Zerzan and Derrick Jensen with much interest. I was especially curious to see if either had modified their views in any way given the recent appropriation of nihilistic environmental rhetoric by various white nationalists and self-proclaimed eco-fascists, including last year’s mass shooters in El Paso and New Zealand. It appears, however, that their basic positions have not changed at all.