Derrick Jensen

In March 2019, Jensen stated that his book, Anarchism and the Politics of Violation, had been pulled before publication because he "dared to critique queer theory", and that the publisher, Seven Stories Press, had referred to the book as "a misuse of truth".

Derrick Jensen is primarily an advocate for wild nature and an opponent of civilization, rejecting the notion that it can ever be an ethical or sustainable model for human society. He describes the linguistically and historically defensible definition of civilization as "a culture — that is, a complex of stories, institutions, and artifacts — that both leads to and emerges from the growth of cities (civilization, see civil: from civis, meaning citizen, from Latin civitatis, meaning state or city)," and the definition of city as a group of "people living more or less permanently in one place in densities high enough to require the routine importation of food and other necessities of life." He explains that, by such definitions, civilizations and cities are both unsustainable:

With respect to the question of human overpopulation, Jensen concedes that it is a social and environmental problem but only at a "tertiary" level, and that overconsumption—along with civilization and its ruthless, expansionist cultural mindset—is the primary problem faced by the world. Recurrent topics in his books and talks include critiques of cosmeticism (as e.g. defined by William Catton), lifestyleism, Gandhism, and other "bright green" or mainstream liberal schools of political thought.

Endgame is interspersed with what he describes as the inherent unsustainability of civilization. In this book he asks: "Do you believe that this culture will undergo a voluntary transformation to a sane and sustainable way of living?" Nearly everyone he talks to says no. His next question is: "How would this understanding — that this culture will not voluntarily stop destroying the natural world, eliminating indigenous cultures, exploiting the poor, and killing those who resist — shift our strategy and tactics? The answer? Nobody knows, because we never talk about it: we're too busy pretending the culture will undergo a magical transformation." Endgame, he says, is "about that shift in strategy, and in tactics."

Its members claim to be "critical of gender itself. We are not gender reformists—we are gender abolitionists." Earth First!, another radical environmental organization, has dissociated itself from and criticized Jensen and DGR, claiming that leaked private emails reveal Jensen's animosity towards trans people and anarchists.

After the publication of this book, the authors co-founded an organization by the same name. Aric McBay left the organization at the beginning of 2012, however, attributing his departure to the alleged cancellation of a transgender-inclusive policy by Derrick Jensen and Lierre Keith. Deep Green Resistance has disputed this account, saying that the decision to restrict women's spaces was made by the women of DGR and not by Derrick Jensen or Lierre Keith.

In 2011, Jensen also published Dreams, which draws on the mythologies of ancient cultures and the wisdom of contemporary thinkers like Jack Forbes, Waziyatawin (a Dakota activist), Paul Stamets, and Stanley Aronowitz and is Jensen's challenge to the view that there is no knowledge outside that gained by science, and Truths Among Us, a thought-provoking collection of interviews with 10 leading writers, philosophers, teachers, and activists who argue against society's belief that corporations and governments know what is best for the future.

Jensen convened the conferences "Earth at Risk", which were held in November 2010 and 2011 in San Francisco and Berkeley, CA, respectively, with presentations by D.J., Arundhati Roy, William Catton, Rikki Ott, Thomas Linzey, Gail Dines, Jane Caputi, Waziyatawin, Aric McBay, Stephanie McMillan, Lierre Keith, and Nora Barrows-Friedman, which were also published on DVD and as a book.

In 2008, Jensen wrote Thought to Exist in the Wild (with photographs by Karen Tweedy-Holmes), which discussed the keeping of animals in zoos on both a physical and philosophical level. Jensen wrote and Stephanie McMillan illustrated the graphic novels As the World Burns (2007) and Mischief in the Forest (2010).

Jensen was featured in the documentaries What a Way to Go: Life at the End of Empire (2007), Blind Spot (2008), First Earth: Uncompromising Ecological Architecture (2009), Call of Life (2010) and END:CIV (2011).

Jensen has rarely commented publicly on transgender politics, although in his 2006 book Endgame, Jensen does briefly mention transgender people, along with other marginalized groups, in a call for political solidarity. In 2015, CounterPunch published an article by Jensen in which he claims that trans activists were "liberals" who criticized him primarily because he believes women would be required "to share their most intimate spaces with men ... I believe that women have the right to bathe, sleep, gather, and organize free from the presence of men," in response to DGR members denying a transgender woman membership in a women's caucus space.

Resistance Against Empire consists of interviews with J. W. Smith (on poverty), Kevin Bales (on slavery), Anuradha Mittal (on hunger), Juliet Schor ('globalization' and environmental degradation), Ramsey Clark (on US 'defense'), Stephen Schwartz (editor of The Nonproliferation Review, on nukes), Alfred McCoy (politics and heroin), Christian Parenti (the US prison system), Katherine Albrecht (on RFID), and Robert McChesney (on (freedom of) the media) conducted between 1999 and 2004.

Derrick Jensen (born December 19, 1960) is an American author, ecophilosopher, radical environmentalist, and anti-civilization advocate. According to Democracy Now!, Jensen "has been called the poet-philosopher of the ecological movement."