Environmental Terrorism.pdf

Terrorism and Political Violence, Vol.15, No.4 (Winter 2003), pp.173 182

DOI: 10.1080 = 09546550390449962

THREAT ASSESSMENTS AND RADICAL

ENVIRONMENTALISM

Bron Taylor

University of Florida

Recent claims that Radical Environmentalists are becoming

increasingly likely to deploy weapons of mass death are charac-

terized by a selective reading of the facts, a failure to apprehend

significant differences among radical groups, and injudicious

speculation. A more careful analysis of the likelihood of violence

emerging from radical environmentalist, animal rights, and green

anarchist groups requires an analysis of the differences that

characterize these groups as well as their intersections. Such an

analysis suggests that among these three groups, only green

anarchism can provide a possible ideological rationale for the

use of weapons of mass death, but even in this case, there are

many reasons to doubt they will utilize such tactics.

Gary Ackerman’s ‘Beyond Arson?’ responds directly and indirectly

to my analysis in ‘Religion, Violence and Radical Environmentalism’,

published in these pages in 1998. 1 I had argued that a variety of vari-

ables internal and external to radical environmental subcultures make

it unlikely members will seek to kill or maim people as means to their

ends. If this occurs, I suggested, it would likely be an anomalous

event and due to psychological disturbance rather than result from

a shift in the character of such movements. I also indicated that the

use of arson and other sabotage tactics would increase, a prediction

that appears to have been accurate. I did not, either in this article

or a more recent one exploring radical environmentalist and kindred

movements within the ‘cultic milieu’ of North America and Europe, 2

address the possible use of WMD or Chemical or Biological Weapons

which is Ackerman’s chief focus in ‘Beyond Arson?’

Ackerman analyzes a variety of incidents and concludes that not

only is violence against the adversaries of these groups likely but

recent trends suggest their motivation and ability to cause mass casu-

alty incidents is ‘increasing’. A scary deduction from his argument

logically follows—since the motivation and capability of such groups

to commit such acts is ‘increasing’—unless something reverses this

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trend, eventually a violent threshold will be breached and such tactics

will be deployed. Ackerman concludes that prudence requires careful

surveillance of such groups.

The impression I have from talking to Ackerman and reading this

study (in several drafts) is that, on the one hand, he is trying to ana-

lyze these subcultures in a more judicious way than their avowed

adversaries. Such adversaries, politicians and law enforcement officials,

on the one hand, and partisans from industry-financed watchdog

groups on the other, often broadside radical environmental and related

groups with the ‘ecoterrorism’ label, regardless of whether they engage

in tactics that intend to cause physical harm or are indifferent to it.

Ackerman, in searching for evidence of violent acts or tendencies

emerging from such groups, has done a service for scholars interested

in violence and radical environmentalism, animal liberationist, and

green anarchist subcultures. His data provides an up-to-date review

of the evidence that can be assembled. But despite his willingness

to consider the views of fieldworkers who have conducted extensive

fieldwork within the subcultures in question, I do not think he has

provided a non-partisan analysis. His sources appear narrow and

interested in certain outcomes: media sources which profit from sen-

sationalistic stories and law enforcement, watchdog groups, and intelli-

gence agencies, all of whom have their own interest in finding danger.

Ackerman’s methodology—which appears to consist of searching for

evidence that supports the thesis that these groups are violent, or on

the verge of violence, and will eventually in frustration turn to

WMD—does not constitute good social science. Even when he cites

my work he does so selectively, drawing on those aspects of it which

best support what I surmise is an a priori agenda rather than a carefully

balanced empirical argument.

Those wishing to come to their own conclusions should not accept

uncritically my perception of Ackerman’s article, of course, but might

well benefit by comparing his perceptions with my ethnographically

grounded analyses. I cannot recapitulate this work here, and will

instead focus on specific aspects of Ackerman’s article that suggest

to me that biasing presuppositions may be shaping his conclusions.

THE VENEER OF SOCIAL SCIENCE VS. THREAT

ASSESSMENT AS GUESSWORK

What troubles me the most about Ackerman’s article is the social

scientific veneer he puts over his most important conclusions, which

are found toward the end in his charts. Charts and the language of

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probability implies a precision that does not inhere to the kind of

guess work that both he and I are engaged in; evaluating the pro-

spects that individuals or groups might engage in acts other than

those they have heretofore. The greater the intimacy one has with

the community or subjects one is venturing a guess about, the more

likely one is to get it right. A good ethnographer, like a good com-

munity police officer, has a distinct advantage over those reading

reports in offices in judging the character or proclivities (violent or

virtuous) of those with whom they are regularly engaged. Unfortu-

nately, writing from a distance, there is much that one cannot

perceive.

One concrete example is that, despite my cautions, Ackerman used

an inflammatory quote by Earth First! co-founder Michael Roselle as

evidence suggestive of an increasingly violent tendency within the

movement. The passage cited certainly sounds alarming, given that

Roselle likens the environmental struggle to a revolutionary jihad.

But Ackerman did not know that Roselle was responding to a parti-

cular claim by rival Earth First! co-founder Dave Foreman, with

whom he was engaged in a strident internal struggle, and who had

recently claimed that that there was nothing revolutionary about

Earth First!. Roselle, Ackerman did not know, was one of the Earth

First!-ers resisting the growing power of anarchists within the

movement, and was both buttressing his radical credentials with such

rhetoric in the face of this influx as well as stressing his belief, against

Foreman, that the entire structure of western civilization must be

restructured if environmental harmony is to ever be achieved. So

for Roselle, environmentalism is inherently revolutionary, but apart

from that violent-sounding rhetorical flourish in the Earth First!

journal, there is nothing in his career or overall worldview that would

suggest that he would countenance violent tactics, let alone the

deployment of WMD. Knowing where he sits in the movement, the

specific contexts in which he made his statement, knowing him

reasonably well as a person (both through discussions with him

and listening to many tales about him percolating within the move-

ment itself), provides an descriptive and intuitive basis to conclude

that he would be unlikely to endorse or participate in violence, at

least in America and non-totalitarian states with formal democratic

structures. Indeed, Roselle believes economic boycotts work and

corporations can be coerced through public pressure, so such tactics

should be a high movement priority. He has, moreover, periodically

worked for Greenpeace, which insists on strict adherence to non-

violence. In Roselle’s case as well as with regard to the movement

as a whole the analyst must be very careful not to assume that martial

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rhetoric signals a martial strategy or even a violent tendency.

Ackerman’s analysis does nothing to account for why, despite many

examples of strong martial rhetoric and verbal endorsements of the

permissibility of violence (at least as self-defense if earth defenders

are attacked) from the early 1980s onward, there is as yet no clear evi-

dence that radical environmentalists have unleashed lethal violence or

even caused great bodily harm to movement adversaries.

CONFLATING GROUPS AND ASSUMING FACTS NOT IN

EVIDENCE

One way that Ackerman arrives at his alarmist conclusions is by

conflating the radical environmental, animal liberationist, and green

anarchist movements. To be sure, and as I have discussed in depth

elsewhere, there is some overlap in personnel and these different

actors increasingly come into contact in activist venues. Not uncom-

monly, activists in one stream find certain ideas and tactics common

within the other streams plausible or compelling. But when push

comes to shove, the issues activists choose to prioritize, and the

tactics they select in the struggle, signal which subcultural axiology

and ideology has captured their primary allegiance. The Earth Liber-

ation Front resists environmental despoilers, the Animal Liberation

Front confronts those who they believe abuse sentient creatures,

and anarchists battle industrial civilization, both its rulers, infrastruc-

ture and symbols. Although Ackerman acknowledges that observers

ought not to conflate these groups, it seems to me that his alarmist

strategy benefits from doing so. This allows him to assemble a wider

range of violent incidents, blurring the line between animal libera-

tionists and anarchists who have used explosives (although arguably,

thus far, for intimidation and coercion not to commit murder) and

radical environmentalists who, perhaps with one exception, have

not. It is certainly appropriate to note that under what I would call

the ‘radical environmental milieu’ (playing off of Colin Campbell’s

‘cultic milieu’ trope 3 ), there is a cross-fertilization, but it is also

important to reflect critically on its limits. Doing so does not, how-

ever, serve an alarmist agenda. A few examples (of many more I

could cite) illustrate my point:

. Ackerman spends a great deal of time on two former ELF spokes-

people, Craig Rosebraugh and Leslie James Pickering, both of

whom felt so constrained by the ELF’s professed commitment to

nonviolence that they left behind these roles in order to foment

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an anarchist revolution. Ackerman concludes that ‘while the extent

to which Arissa [their new group] can be construed as an offshoot

of the ELF is debatable, Rosebraugh and Pickering’s close ties with

the environmental movement will likely remain and their explicit

rejection of non-violence could exert a strong influence on the main

body of the ELF’ (my italics). Ackerman here assumes facts for

which he provides no evidence and which I believe are untrue,

especially regarding their allegedly ‘close ties’ to the environmental

movement. This is an imprecise assertion. Both figures were not

significantly involved with the environmental movement before

they took on their self-designated roles as ELF spokespeople.

I think they were drawn to the ELF because as anarchists if not

anarcho-primitivists, they perceived fellow travelers behind the

anti-industrial rhetoric of some ELF statements. They left the

movement because their primary identity and motivation is located

in anarchism, not the environmental cause, although they believe if

human freedom = anarchy can be achieved, environmental well-being

will follow. But I wonder why, since these two figures would not be

embraced by and are generally unknown to most environmental-

ists, Ackerman claims they have ‘close ties’ to the environmental

movement?

. Another troubling example is Ackerman’s claim that the murder of

a politician in the Netherlands was perpetrated by an ‘environmen-

tal radical’. The accompanying end note, however, reveals the

problematic nature of this claim. The offender had been involved

in the formation of an environmental organization but his identity

may well have been primarily that of an animal rights activist. As

further evidence of the perpetrator’s environmentalism Ackerman

states that ‘a search of his home revealed environmentalist

material’, yet Ackerman acknowledges that that the perpetrator’s

‘motivation for the shooting has not been confirmed’. Although

the murdered politician was best known for right-wing, anti-

immigration demagoguery, Ackerman does not entertain the possi-

bility that this was what offended the murderer, nor does he

consider the possibility that mental instability had been involved.

From the absence of clear evidence of an environmental, animal

liberationist, or even green anarchy-related motive, why cite this

terrible incident at all? This is another example where Ackerman

assumes facts not in evidence, in this case, that this was an environ-

ment-related crime. And this example begs a question, if after

nearly a quarter century of radical environmental activism this is

the kind of flimsy evidence Ackerman must rely on to make his

case, one can only wonder, How strong is it?

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