Ecoterrorist Groups in the United States Essay

Terrorism, in any form, is frowned upon by many people. However, when it is related to taking care of our environment, it could be quite controversial because environmentalism is embraced across all political spectrums. Like the right wing or left wing extremists, violent ecologists and animal rights advocates have caused some scare among people in the United States. This called ecoterrorism and some of these groups often destroy properties that they perceive beneficial to the environment and animals. As Laquer (1999) informed, the word ecoterrorism has been coined to name violent environmentalists (also called â€Å"greens† and other names) that push their ideologies and beliefs to the extreme. Their complaints are as just as those of Christians, Muslims, Jews, Socialists, Anarchists, and indeed most other ideologies and religions of our time, who cannot possibly be made responsible for the actions of the extremists within their ranks. However, in all these value systems, there are beliefs that, if carried to an extreme, may provide inspiration for acts of violence (p. 99). William Dyson (2000), a retired FBI agent who spent nearly 30 years working on domestic terrorism, says it is necessary to look at the way police officers classify crimes and the economic impact of violent ecological extremism to understand the full scope of ecoterrorism. Dyson contends most of the crimes are reported as localized vandalism. The significance of the total destruction is missed. Dyson says when the total economic impact of ecoterrorism is calculated, it demonstrates that the United States has been victimized by a long term terrorist campaign. In fact, in the testimony of FBI Director Louis Freeh (10 May 2001) about the terrorist threats in the United States, he classified ecoterrorism as â€Å"special interest terrorism†. He reasoned out that this is different â€Å"from traditional right-wing and left-wing terrorism in that extremist special interest groups seek to resolve specific issues, rather than effect more widespread political change. Special interest extremists continue to conduct acts of politically motivated violence to force segments of society, including, the general public, to change attitudes about issues considered important to their causes†. These â€Å"special interest† terrorist groups could support their belief in â€Å"extreme fringes of animal rights, pro-life, environmental, anti-nuclear, and other political and social movements†. Moreover, these groups can belong animal rights and environmental movements and â€Å"they have turned increasingly toward vandalism and terrorist activity in attempts to further their causes†. Bryan Denson and James Long (1999) have conducted a detailed study of ecological violence. They found that damage from ecoterrorism have already reached millions of dollars. They conducted a 10-month review and considered crime only in excess of $50,000. Cases that could not be linked to environmental groups were eliminated. They found 100 cases with very few successful law enforcement investigations. According to Denson and Long (1999), most violence has taken place in the American West. From 1995 to 1999, damages totaled $28. 8 million. Crimes included raids against farms; destruction of animal research laboratories at the University of California in Davis and Michigan State University, threats to individuals, sabotage against industrial equipment and even arson. History of Ecoterrorism in the United States The history of radical ecoterrorism goes back to 1980 when a group of five militants belonging to mainstream organizations such as the Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth decided, at the end of a hike, that far more drastic action was needed in view of the imminent destruction of nature, or what remained of it. To them it seemed pointless to work within the system, and thus Earth First was born (Laquer, 1999). Many Earth First activists argue that ecotage (ecologic sabotage) â€Å"can actually prevent destructive activity underway—driving the worst Earth destroyers right out of business— erasing their profits by slowing their work and destroying their tools† (Taylor 1991, p. 263). Despite the fact that ecoterrorism in the US sparked in the 1980s,, two of the most influential books for ecoterrorists were published in the 1970s. These books are Robert Townsend’s Ecotage (1972) and Edward Abbey’s The Monkey Wrench Gang (1975). Edward Abbey’s novel told the story of a group of ecologists who were fed up with industrial development in the West. Abbey is an environmental activist and not a hate-filled ideologue like William Pierce. His novel is a fictional account that has inspired others. In The Monkey Wrench Gang, the heroes drive through the Western states sabotaging bulldozers, burning billboards, and damaging the property of people they deem to be destroying the environment. Incidentally, this is the same type of low-level terrorism German leftists used in the mid-1990s. ) The term â€Å"monkey wrenching† has since became synonymous to ecoterrorism. Laquer (1999) thought that environment radicalism in the United States might have been connected with general political developments. The Carter administration in the 1970s initially was thought to sympathize with the aims of the ecologists, but these hopes proved false. The government neglected more forests to be put at the disposal of the timber industry. Environmentalists reacted in anger, which only increased as more deregulation occurred under President Reagan in the 1980s. The language of the radicals became more violent, as did the character of their actions. As one of the more radical thinkers maintained, the salvation of the earth required an end to civilization and to the vast majority of mankind. They saw human beings as no more important than any other member of the biological community, and with no more rights than animals–or, indeed, than inanimate objects such as forests, rivers, and mountains. Seen in this light, they felt it had been wrong for modern medicine to combat infectious diseases, for bacteria and viruses also had rights–as one of the ecological thinkers put it, eradicating smallpox had been immoral inasmuch as it had been an unwarranted interference with the balance of the ecosystem. Ecoterrorist Groups in the United States In the United States, the most prominent ecoterrorist groups are the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), Earth First, and the Justice Department are interested in environmental preservation. The Animal Liberation Front (ALF), Animal Rights Militia, Band of Mercy, and Paint Panthers champion animal rights. However, it is the violent groups like the ELF and ALF that advocate and engage in economic damage. The rhetorical groups, such as the Church of Euthanasia, simply border on the bizarre, advocating suicide, sodomy, and cannibalism to voluntarily eliminate the earth’s human population (White, 2003). In fact, FBI now ranks both ALF and ELF as the leading domestic terrorism groups that threaten United States, surpassing the Timothy McVeigh-style militia extremists who dominated the terrorism scene during much of the 1990s. James Jarboe, FBI domestic-terrorism section chief said that they estimated that the ALF/ ELF have committed more than 600 criminal acts in the United States since 1996, resulting in damages in excess of $43 million. Worse, the threat is growing because animal and environmental activists are turning increasingly toward vandalism and terrorism to further their causes (Richardson, 2002). According to Atkins (2004), ELF was originally formed by the dissident members of Earth First! in Great Britain in the early 1990s, an American version started operation in 1996 and allied with the Animal Liberation Front (ALF). The group took aim at targets it perceived as causing or promoting harm to the environment, from biotechnology research laboratories to automobile dealerships. In the US, they first made the national news with the arson of five buildings and four ski lifts in Vail, Colorado, on October 17, 1998. Environmentalists had been fighting the Vail Resorts over an area that was wintering grounds for elk and a habitat for the endangered lynx. Since 1997 the Southern Poverty Law Center has attributed ELF with dozens of terrorist attacks and $30 million in damages (p. 91). The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) said the group had claimed credit for bombings and arson that had caused some $40 million in damage since the mid-1990s, when the group began its campaign in North America. Although no one had been injured in any of the bombings and fires, the FBI considered the ELF one of the most dangerous organizations in the country. Among the acts of vandalism and arson that the group had claimed responsibility for in 2001 were: †¢ An August 21 vandalism attack on a Long Island, New York cancer research laboratory. †¢ Coordinated June 12 vandalism attacks on five Bank of New York branches in Suffolk County, New York. †¢ A June 10 vandalism attack on the University of Idaho’s biotechnology building. †¢ A June 1 fire in Eagle Creek, Oregon, near a timber sale site in a federal forest. Two separate May 21 arson attacks, the first at a poplar tree farm in Clatskanie, Oregon, the second at the Center for Urban Horticulture at the University of Washington in Seattle. †¢ A March 30 fire at an auto dealership in Eugene. †¢ A January 2 fire at the offices of a lumber company in Glendale, Oregon (â€Å"Law Catches Up to,† 2002, p. A01). Because of ELF’s decentralized structure, this allowed separate cells to act independently of each other and its reliance on the Internet computer network to communicate, made it difficult to capture culprits. Typically, the group would claim responsibility for an act through its press office in Portland, Oregon Despite probes of the press office and the people who ran it, authorities had made little progress in seizing members guilty of sabotage. Knickerbocker (2005) presented salient proof that ELF has â€Å"guidelines† that prove their ecoterroristic activities. These include taking â€Å"all necessary precautions against harming any animal, human and non-human. † But they also include a call to â€Å"inflict economic damage on those profiting from the destruction and exploitation of the natural environment. An ELF â€Å"communique† taking responsibility for a 2002 firebombing of a US Forest Service research station in Pennsylvania declared: â€Å"While innocent life will never be harmed in any action we undertake, where it is necessary, we will no longer hesitate to pick up the gun to implement justice, and provide the needed protection for our planet that decades of legal battles, pleading, protest, and economic sabotage have failed †¦ to achieve. † Moreover, the group’s website includes a 37-page how-to manual titled â€Å"Setting Fires With Electrical Timers. † As a cousin of ELF, the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) has been described as the most militant of the American animal rights groups. It has its roots in Great Britain where a small body of activists, the Hunt Saboteurs, opposed hunting and hunters by resorting to disruptive tactics. Two activists, Ronald Lee and Clifford Goodman, decided in 1972 to resurrect a nineteenth-century antivivisection group, the Band of Mercy. After a series of anti-hunting incidents, this group changed its tactics to direct action on animal rights issues and renamed itself the Animal Liberation Front. When the group used violence against animal research facilities, furriers, and farming, Scotland Yard classified the ALF as a terrorist organization. The ALF is organized into two segments—a public organization for publicity, fund-raising, and propaganda, and a covert wing of tightly organized cells of activists willing to carry out attacks on property and rescue animals. The British group has around 2,500 active members, but only about 50 members are radical enough to carry out violent attacks. Because of the success of the British ALF operations, American animal rights supporters formed a branch in the United States (Atkins, 2004, p. 0). According to ALF’s website, animal rights criminals have a system to publicize their activities. Like all terrorists, ecoterrorists try to create an aura of power through publicity. ALF takes it further, using the Web site as a training device. For example, tactics for raiding mink farms are given in great detail. Utilizing a four-part series, an ALF member tells readers the methods for establishing and operating a cell, procedures for obtaining funds, and directions for planning and carrying out operations. However, like all extremists, their positions are full of contradictions and virtual absurdities. For example, the Web site for the â€Å"we-use-no-animal-products† ALF tells people to use leather gloves when raiding a mink farm. It also compares people who eat meat with Nazis and describes farms as concentration camps. Apparently, ALF members are unaware that Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian. Atkins (2004) reported the firebombing of the unfinished Animal Diagnostic Laboratory at the University of California at Davis on April 16, 1987, which resulted in 4. million in damages, was the most destructive operation of ALF. Representatives of the ALF never claimed responsibility for this act, but police officials have been able to uncover evidence of its involvement. Despite numerous violent operations, only two individuals, Roger Thoen and Virginia Bollinger, have been arrested and convicted for activities involving the ALF. Conclusion Ecoterrorists are uncompromising, illogical extremists just like their right-wing counterparts. A review of their ideological literature shows they use ecology as a surrogate religion (White, 2000). While not one action of ELF or ALF so far comes close to the magnitude of the attacks on the World Trade Center, the government should not ignore the threats posed by these groups. With few arrests or prosecutions have followed from the violent actions of environmentalists or animal-rights advocates, these groups may become more violent and bolder in the future. Thus, it is recommended that the US government should monitor the activities of these ecoterrorist groups and apply harsher sanctions for offenders.