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US domestic terror organizations are causing alarm in the press. As is the End of the World.
So I’d like to tell a story about how white nationalist groups have grown, while ecoterrorists have all but disappeared. What brought us here?
Where have all the ecoterrorists gone?
So I’d like to tell a story about how white nationalist groups have grown, while ecoterrorists have all but disappeared. What brought us here?
Where have all the ecoterrorists gone?
The peaceful ethos of groups like Sunrise Movement and Extinction Rebellion (whose cofounder Roger Hallam gave his manifesto the subtitle, “Only Nonviolent Rebellion Can Now Stop Climate Breakdown and Social Collapse”) stands in contrast to the extremist approaches of the ’90s.
’90s organizations like the Earth Liberation Front were not so peaceful. In her 2006 Rolling Stone essay “The Rise and Fall of the Eco-Radical Underground”, Vanessa Grigoriadis tells the story of a young man by the name of “Avalon” ... https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-eco-radical-underground-245345/
Avalon dreams of “targeting Monsanto CEOs in motorcycle drive-by assassinations; he had even gone to a gun range a couple of times for target practice with a pair of teenage dub DJs he recruited code-named ‘Exile and Sheba’.”
But radical environmentalists like Avalon, and Exile and Sheba, were a particularly ’90s phenomenon.
Today, with the climate collapsing, and ecosystems falling into death spirals, we rarely see any action taken against those responsible.
What changed between then and now?
Today, with the climate collapsing, and ecosystems falling into death spirals, we rarely see any action taken against those responsible.
What changed between then and now?
Let’s go back to the ’70s.
In 1977, a group calling themselves the Undersea Railroad freed two dolphins from a marine laboratory at the University of Hawaii. This was the first recorded animal liberation in US history.
In 1977, a group calling themselves the Undersea Railroad freed two dolphins from a marine laboratory at the University of Hawaii. This was the first recorded animal liberation in US history.
Also in 1977, at Exxon Corporation’s Houston headquarters, company scientist James F. Black gave an address warning his bosses and coworkers that carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels would warm the Earth and eventually endanger humanity. https://insideclimatenews.org/news/15092015/Exxons-own-research-confirmed-fossil-fuels-role-in-global-warming
Since then, more than half of the carbon released into the atmosphere by humans in our entire existence has been burnt.
So the story of global warming is really the story of a single lifetime.
It happened while Millennials were growing up, while our parents were raising us.
So the story of global warming is really the story of a single lifetime.
It happened while Millennials were growing up, while our parents were raising us.
Back in fall 1971, Woodsy Owl had been introduced to America by the United States Forest Service.
Children loved Woodsy. He was America’s favorite owl, and his motto, “Give a hoot—don’t pollute!” was famous.
Then the ’80s arrived,
“Bam! Ronald Reagan was in, Woodsy Owl was out, John-Boy Walton and John Denver gave way to Gordon ‘Greed is Good’ Gekko and ‘Material Girl’ Madonna, and Friends of the Earth had corporate executives on their boards of directors.” https://www.ecosophia.net/the-next-twilight-of-environmentalism/
“Bam! Ronald Reagan was in, Woodsy Owl was out, John-Boy Walton and John Denver gave way to Gordon ‘Greed is Good’ Gekko and ‘Material Girl’ Madonna, and Friends of the Earth had corporate executives on their boards of directors.” https://www.ecosophia.net/the-next-twilight-of-environmentalism/
But our story really begins in Merry Old England, in the ’90s ...
1992 was a landmark year for both Young British Artists and the green radical underground. Damien Hirst debuted his famous shark in formaldehyde, “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living”, at the old Saatchi Gallery in St John’s Wood,
Close by, in the rolling sylvan hills separating London from the South Coast, 20 young Dongas were protesting an M3 motorway extension that would cut through Twyford Down and ruin one of the last remaining habitats of the Chalkhill Blue butterfly, and half a dozen rare orchids.
The Dongas comprised of road protestors and Breton folk musicians. “We would weave spells, use chants, incantations, and rituals,” they say. They ran around naked at dawn to distract the security guards, stoned on the South Downs in summer.
So Twyford Down was a simple, and unsuccessful, protest, but led that same year, a short way down the coast in the seaside resort of Brighton, to the genesis of the Earth Liberation Front (ELF):
a headless collection of autonomous direct-action cells with plans to save the world.
a headless collection of autonomous direct-action cells with plans to save the world.
ELF grew quickly across Europe and the States, making national headlines in the latter when, on 19 October, 1998, the Two Elk Lodge restaurant at Vail Ski Resort, high up among the pines in the Colorado Rockies, was set on fire, causing $12 million in damages.
The Vail fires were a protest against the resort’s planned Blue Sky Basin runs, which would destroy virgin, untouched snowy mountain forests into which there were plans to reintroduce the lynx. The ELF put out a lyrical communiqué:
“On behalf of the lynx, five buildings and four ski lifts at Vail were reduced to ashes.
Putting profits ahead of Colorado’s wildlife will not be tolerated. This action is just a warning.”
And a curious detail of this attack, which brought ELF and ecoterrorists notoriety and placed authorities on high alert, is that it was on behalf of an animal that probably wasn’t there, that was more of an idea than a reality.
A shadow cat,
a phantom,
a Rocky Mountain ghost.
A shadow cat,
a phantom,
a Rocky Mountain ghost.
But the golden age of American ecoterrorism came to an end after 2001.
A high of 163 ecoterrorist incidents were reported in 2001, and in March that year ELF was classified as the number one “domestic terror” threat by the FBI; by which point 9/11 hijackers were already training at flight schools across the country.
Also going on in the ’90s:
“Baker recalled that one of the FBI’s top agents, known as the ‘human lie-detector,’ interrogated him, and added that if the FBI had focused on surveilling terrorists and not McDonald’s winners, 9/11 might never have happened.” https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-an-ex-cop-rigged-mcdonalds-monopoly-game-and-stole-millions
“Baker recalled that one of the FBI’s top agents, known as the ‘human lie-detector,’ interrogated him, and added that if the FBI had focused on surveilling terrorists and not McDonald’s winners, 9/11 might never have happened.” https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-an-ex-cop-rigged-mcdonalds-monopoly-game-and-stole-millions
On August 1, 2003, arsonists torched an apartment complex construction site in La Jolla, San Diego, causing $50 million of damage. They left behind a massive banner reading, “IF YOU BUILD IT – WE WILL BURN IT THE ELF’S ARE MAD.” It remains the costliest ecoterrorist attack ever.
Later that August, Hummer dealerships across Los Angeles were fire-bombed. SUVs were daubed with “FAT, LAZY AMERICANS” and “ELF” then set on fire.
An elusive troupe of New Age arsonists and mystic CalTech graduate students were roaming the San Fernando Valley attacking modernity.
An elusive troupe of New Age arsonists and mystic CalTech graduate students were roaming the San Fernando Valley attacking modernity.
However their moment in the Los Angeles sun wasn’t to last ...
Today there are:
So, in late summer 2003, FBI Director Robert Mueller assigned Los Angeles’s entire terrorism task force to hunt down ELF (the Earth Liberation Front) and personally briefed President George W. Bush about the case.
Mueller was appointed Director of the FBI on September 4, 2001, a week before 9/11.
After the towers fell, he pivoted the bureau’s attention from crime to terrorism. He needed terrorists of any stripe, whatever terror he could lay his hands on.
After the towers fell, he pivoted the bureau’s attention from crime to terrorism. He needed terrorists of any stripe, whatever terror he could lay his hands on.
Although there were zero records of any deaths or injuries from ecoterrorist activity, from 2004 until 2006 Robert Mueller put all of his FBI’s might into hunting down ELF and ALF and repressing radical environmental groups above all others.
This was named “Operation Backfire”.
This was named “Operation Backfire”.
And that’s how the Green Scare began. The FBI needed whatever terror they could reach, and ecoterrorists were the lowest-hanging fruit.
And there was another reason why green radicals were targeted above others too ...
And there was another reason why green radicals were targeted above others too ...
ELF’s stated mission was to inflict “economic damage on those profiting from the destruction and exploitation of the natural environment”. Its methods revolved around harming property not people. And this anti-capitalist bent placed a massive, glowing target on its back.
Throughout the 2000s, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was aware of the growing threat of violence from white supremacists, right-wing militias, anti-abortion groups and the like; the same groups that are all over the press this week.
But these groups were pursued far less aggressively than green extremists because, as former DHS analyst Daryl Johnson has noted, “You don’t have a bunch of companies coming forward saying ‘I wish you’d do something about these right-wing extremists.’” https://theintercept.com/2019/03/23/ecoterrorism-fbi-animal-rights/
The biomedical and fur industries, on the other hand, were losing millions because of environmental and animal rights activists, and heavily lobbied the Justice Department to go after them, which they did.
By the time Robert Swan Mueller III retired as Director of the FBI in 2013, ecoterrorist attacks had fallen to almost zero, and ELF was as good as dead.
