Monkey Cage: Ecoterrorism: threat or political ploy?

By Sivan Hirsch-Hoefler and Cas Mudde December 19 at 12:00 PM

A contractor walked in August 2003 through Clippinger Chevrolet in West Covina, Calif., where Earth Liberation Front members allegedly vandalized more than 120 sport utility vehicles. (AP File Photo)

In 2004, John Lewis, deputy assistant director of the FBI Counterterrorism Division, declared in testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee: the FBIs investigation of animal rights extremists and ecoterrorism matters is our highest domestic terrorism investigative priority. To most Americans this statement, if it had been given serious attention by the U.S. media, would have come as a surprise. Having been bombarded with articles and public warnings about jihadist terrorism ever since 9/11, the average American would not have expected the primary domestic terrorist threat to come fromgroups such as the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and Earth Liberation Front (ELF), which are largely unknown to the broader public. In fact, the statement would have likely stunned most academic scholars of political violence and terrorism, who until recently have devoted little attention to the phenomenon of ecoterrorism.

In a recent article in Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, we assessed the phenomenon of ecoterrorism, both in the United States and globally, by categorizing the types of the actions of the Radical Environmentalist and Animal Rights (REAR) movement, assessing their relative importance within the broader arsenal of actions of the whole movement, and evaluating them on the basis of a clear definition of ecoterrorism.

The REAR movement is a highly diverse, international network with an unknown number of activists and supporters worldwide. Cells can be found in at least 25 (mostly Western) countries. While radical environmentalists such as the ELF and Earth First! are more broadly focused on the entire ecosystem, radical animal rightists like the ALF and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) are concerned more narrowly with sentient beings. Still, they regularly collaborate and claim joint responsibility for actions. Despite the diversity of ideas and ideologies, there are three main characteristics that all activists and groups share: an uncompromising position, status as a grassroots organization and direct action. In many ways, the REAR movement is best described as an idea; it is a collectivity in the most limited and virtual sense.

A recent publication shows that radical environmentalists and animal rights activists have been responsible for 1,069 criminal acts in the United States between 1970 and 2007 (see below). The authors categorize three actions as assassinations (0.3%), 44 as armed assaults (4.1%), 55 as bombings/explosions (5.1%), 933 as facility attacks (87.3%), 30 as unarmed assaults (2.8%) and four as unknown (0.4%).

As no cross-national dataset for criminal acts of the whole REAR movement exists, and even national dataset are lacking in most countries, we developed an original global dataset of criminal acts of the radical animal rights movement in the period 2003-2010. Given that animal rights activists are responsible for the vast majority of criminal acts of the broader REAR movement, and have a roughly similar pattern of activities as environmentalist activists, the findings should be largely representative of the broader REAR movement.

Following previous research, the dataset was constructed on the basis of the information posted on the website of Bite Back magazine, which is both internally and externally seen as the news magazine about the radical animal rights movement worldwide. The information on the website is mostly provided directly by activists themselves. Given that the media are highly selective in their coverage of these kind of actions, and law enforcement does not systematically collect data in most countries, this imperfect dataset is the best available to date.

We counted a total of 5,578 criminal actions by radical animal rights activists worldwide. Most actions took place in the United Kingdom (994), Sweden (769), Italy (458), the United States (446), and Germany (379). Using a slightly elaborated categorization, we counted 247 acts of arsons (4.4%), 0 assassinations (0%), 3,695 of vandalism (66.2%), 808 house visits (14.5%), 690 animal liberations (12.4%), 80 bombs (1.4%), and 58 cyber crimes (1%).

The question which of these actions constitutes terrorism obviously depends upon the definition used. There has been much discussion among scholars about a working definition of terrorism, and many different ones have been offered. We argue that terrorism goes beyond mere political violence; terrorists terrorize. Essential to terrorism is a psychological process based on the power of fear, more specifically fear for the physical wellbeing of (a subset of) the population. Consequently, we define terrorism as a strategy that employs the threat or use of force or violence to instill fear in (a subset of) the population with the ultimate aim of achieving political goals. In the case of ecoterrorism, these political goals are the ending of environmental destruction and animal rights abuse.

Continued here:
Monkey Cage: Ecoterrorism: threat or political ploy?