Showtrials and Scarecrows: “Ecoterrorism” and the War on Dissent

“We are committed to working with our partners to disrupt and dismantle these movements, and to bring to justice those who commit crime in the name of animal or environmental rights.” John Lewis, Deputy Assistant Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation

On May 18 2005, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee met to discuss the burning topic of “ecoterrorism.” This hearing was prompted by the fact that direct action groups such as the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), and Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) are increasingly active and effective in their efforts to attack the property and profits of corporations who exploit animals and the earth. Without harming individuals, the ALF and ELF have inflicted millions of dollars of property damage on animal and earth exploitation industries, whereas the aboveground organization SHAC poses an even greater economic threat to corporate profits through its ability to impede the global pharmaceutical-biotechnology-biomedical research complex that relies heavily on animal experimentation. The Committee assembled also to discuss the alleged relations between the illegal underground activities of the ALF and ELF and legal aboveground organizations such as the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), and the Physician's Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM). It met, in other words, as one offensive in the war waged by the corporate-state complex on any and all facets of resistance to its pogrom on the natural world, whether these forces operate through illegal or legal means, with Molotov cocktails or mass mailing campaigns.

John Lewis, Deputy Assistant Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Dr. David Skorton, President of the University of Iowa, and David Martosko, director of research for the Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF) were among the “witnesses” called to testify and advise the Committee on the growing dangers of “extremism” in the animal and environmental activist movements. I myself was “invited” to “submit” to an interview by the Committee -- coercive requests they punitively forwarded to the President of my university and to the entire University of Texas Board of Regents -- but I impolitely declined, repeatedly.

With some irony, I listened to the live broadcast of the hearings from an Internet cafe in Prague, the city that spawned Franz Kafka's bureaucratic nightmare visions. Expecting to be an object rather than subject of the digital transmission, I was astounded to hear myself demonized as a champion of the “terrorist” actions of the ALF and accused of using my academic position to recruit students into the criminal underground of animal liberationists. Suddenly, McCarthyism, persecutorial spectacles, political lynching, and “naming names” hit home in a sickeningly concrete manner.

The Trial
”Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy.” Franz Kafka

Prague has nothing on the US when it comes to the "Kafkaesque," for, tragically, within the dark reign of Bush II, our nation has reverted to the witch hunts of the 1950s. Once again, the U-SS-A is in the frenzied throes of McCarthyism. The chilling atmosphere of the House Un-American Activities Committee (where citizens who expressed or were alleged to express dissenting or liberal views were vilified as “communists") has been revived in the Environment and Public Works Committee. Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.) presides in place of Senator Joseph McCarthy, The bogeyman of "communism" has become that of "terrorism." The Red Scare has morphed into a "Green Scare" where bands of radical environmental and animal rights activists, allegedly propped up by mainstream “front groups, allegedly threaten the security of the nation.

John Lewis of the FBI made clear the institution's intentions to destroy the animal rights and environmental direct action movements. While ignoring the real threats of violence that stem from right-wing hate groups, he boasted of the resources the FBI has committed in its priority war on ecoterrorism: “Currently, 35 FBI offices have over 150 pending investigations associated with animal rights/eco-terrorist activities.” In lockstep with animal exploitation industries, he also complained that existing laws against animal rights activists – such as the 1992 Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act – are inadequate to stop groups like SHAC who are legally savvy and know how to play hard ball politics in the Age of the Internet. As Lewis told the Committee:

On the legislative front, we are interested in working with you to examine federal criminal statutes, specifically 18 USC 43, `Animal Enterprise Terrorism.' The statute provides a framework for the prosecution of animal rights extremists, but in practice, it does not cover many of the criminal acts that extremists have committed. Additionally, the statute only applies to criminal acts committed by animal rights extremists, but does not address criminal activity related to eco-terrorism. Therefore, the existing statutes may need refinements to make them more applicable to current animal rights/eco-extremist actions and to give law enforcement more effective means to bring criminals to justice.

Martosko of the CCF, however, took the state reaction to direct action militancy a quantum leap further in his conflation of underground and aboveground organizations and his call for a blitzkrieg on any form of dissent against the industries he represents, including the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA):

Mr. Chairman, I urge this Committee to fully investigate the connections between individuals who commit crimes in the name of the ALF, ELF, or similar phantom groups, and the above-ground individuals and organizations that give them aid and comfort. I would also urge members of this Committee to prevail upon their colleagues to re-examine the tax-exempt status of groups that have helped to fund—directly or indirectly—these domestic terrorists …. HSUS, PETA, and PETA's quasi-medical affiliate, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), are troubling examples of animal-rights charities which have connections to their movement's militant underbelly. In some cases, the line between the direct-action underground and more `mainstream' protest groups is quite blurry.

This is paranoiac, ghost-chasing, persecutorial McCarthyism at its best/worst, based on a McCarthyesque illogic of guilt-by-association. Matosko collapses all distinctions, sees evil and conspiracy schemes everywhere, and demonizes all forms of dissent, as he promotes a fundamentalist lassie-faire policy that demands industries be able to operate without government regulation. The sad but predictable response of many mainstream animal advocacy and environmental organizations was to dance to the tune of the State. They scrambled to send the Senate Committee letters that repudiate all acts of “violence,” including those committed in the name of animal and environmental advocacy, while saying nothing against McCarthyesque tactics themselves.

Shreds of Sanity
“In our time political speech and writing are largely defense of the indefensible.” – George Orwell

There was some notable opposition both to Lewis' efforts to prioritize “ecoterrorism” over right-wing extremist groups and to Martosko's fanatical attempt to blur the differences between illegal and legal forms of animal activism.

Dr. David Skorton, President of the University of Iowa whose Psychology Department animal laboratories were targeted by the ALF in a daring November 2004 raid, resisted Herr Inhofe's bullying attempts to characterize the strike as “terrorism.” But Skorton resisted and held his semantic ground: “I called this a criminal act and I am always careful with the words I choose. It is criminal because it broke laws.” It is unarguable that the ALF is a “criminal” organization in the strict legal sense that it breaks laws, but not in an ethical sense that entails moral wrongness and dishonor. Harriet Tubman, the suffragettes, Mohandas Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Rosa Parks, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. were also “criminals. Skorton refuses to “dignify” the ALF by putting it in such esteemed company, but he is to be commended for using a legally accurate and sufficient term to characterize ALF actions and refusing the vague, vacuous, and politically charged discourse of “terrorism” that says more about the accusers than the accused.

Upon expressing agreement that ALF and ELF activists are “criminals” who must be stopped, for example, Senator Barack Obama (D-Ill.) expressed some important reservations and raised potential dangers with a witch hunt on animal and environmental activism. “ In our quest to apprehend these criminals,” Obama said,

I hope we are not headed down the path of infringing on the ability of legitimate advocacy organizations to express their opinions and to raise funds in order to do so. I do not want Americans to equate groups that advocate violence with mainstream environmental organizations.

We also need to put these violent acts into context. The FBI has indicated a downward trend in the number of crimes committed by these groups – approximately 60 in 2004. While I want these crimes stopped, I do not want people to think that the threat from these organizations is equivalent to other crimes faced by Americans every day. According to the FBI, there were over 7,400 hate crimes committed in 2003 – half of which racially motivated. More directly relevant to this committee, the FBI reports 450 pending environmental crimes cases involving worker endangerment or threats to public health or the environment.

So, while I appreciate the Chairman's interest in these fringe groups, I urge the Committee to focus its attention on larger environmental threats, such as the dangerously high blood lead levels in hundreds of thousands of children. With all due respect, Mr. Chairman, I believe the Committee's time would be better spent learning why EPA has not promulgated regulations to deal with lead paint in remodeled homes. Such an oversight hearing could have a significant impact on improving the lives of children all over the country.

Obama cogently questions the rationality of prioritizing an assault on activists who threaten some corporate interests and have never committed violent attacks against anyone over menacing groups armed to the teeth and with a proven track record of violence, while neglecting and endless array of urgent social problems such as the well-being of children needlessly poisoned due to government negligence. Martosko's priorities, in contradiction, are not with human health and happiness but rather with corporate profits, such that his misnamed organization is far better characterized as the Center for Corporate Freedom. It is with some irony, therefore, that Martosko and the CCF accuse animal rights activists of being anti-human.

Similarly, upon condemning those who seek change outside of the legal system, Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) argued that:

W e need to keep things in perspective. … the Oklahoma City bombing killed 168 people. The attacks of 9/11 killed 3,000. Since 1993, there have been at least five fatal attacks on doctors who performed legal abortions. Eric Rudolph recently pleaded guilty to placing a bomb in a public area during the Olympic Games in 1996, as well as bombing a Birmingham women's clinic and a gay nightclub.

All of these cases involved the loss of human life. To date, not a single incident of so-called environmental terrorism has killed anyone. It's wrong to destroy property and intimidate people who are doing their jobs – and those who commit these crimes must be brought to justice.

Lautenberg thereby questioned the sanity of targeting animal rights and environmental militants who have never harmed anyone rather than right-wing extremists – from militia men and neo-Nazis to Christian extremists of all disgusting flavors -- who spew bigotry and hatred and implement their values with guns, knives, and bombs.

Given the priorities of the corporate-state complex, to which property is sacred and life is profane, it is a more serious crime in this nation to threaten the profits of a corporation than to: blow up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City (killing 168 people and wounding more than 500); set off a bomb at the Atlanta Olympics (killing one person and injuring 100); to assassinate doctors who perform abortions; murder blacks, Jews, and immigrants; and possess weapons of mass destruction such as anthrax, sodium cyanide bombs, machine guns, several hundred thousand rounds of ammunition, and remote-control explosive devices. Jeff Leurs got a 22 year prison sentence for torching a few SUVs, whereas one can murder and rape in this country and receive far lighter penalties.

This crazed illogic is comprehensible only when we consider two factors. First, Bush and the republican lawmakers who control the game are themselves overwhelmingly extreme right-wing in their political orientation, and naturally relate far more to those preaching fundamentalism, racism, and homophobia than anarchism and philosophies of liberation. Second, since corporate forces such as animal and earth exploitation industries control Congress and the legal system and bend it to serve their profits and priorities, politicians and judges enforce their agendas, whatever they may be. Besides the influence demonstrated at the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearings I am describing, this phenomenon was also clearly at work in May 2004 when John Lewis of the FBI, a giant fast food industry (Yum! Brands Inc.), Chiron Corporation (aligned with notorious animal testing company Huntingdon Life Sciences under attack by SHAC), and the Yerkes Primate Center held sway over a Senate Committee on the Judiciary hearing to demand new laws be passed against militant animal rights and environmental activists.

One would think that given the catastrophic “intelligence” failures of the FBI that allowed the tragedy of 9/11 to happen despite screaming warning signals, as well as the plethora of existing vulnerabilities in the nation's security from additional foreign terrorist attacks (on our ports, airlines, nuclear power plants, chemical storage facilities, and so on), that the FBI would not dare to squander a minute, person, or dollar hounding the animal rights and environmental movements.

It is pathetic and tragic that the government is wasting precious resources on persecuting activists like me, while leaving our nation unprotected from real foreign and domestic terror threats, none any greater than the U-SS state itself. Let no one forget these warped, corporate-driven priorities when the next skyscraper on American soil crashes to the ground in a fiery heap

May I Reproach the Bench?
“Bush's War on Terrorism is no longer limited to Al Qaeda or Osama Bin Laden… The rounding up of activists should set off alarms heard by every social movement in the United States: This `war' is about protecting corporate and political interests under the guise of fighting terrorism.” – Will Potter

For years, despite the punitive consequences, I have openly expressed support for the courageous and just actions of the ALF. Similar to the Underground Railroad of the 19th century abolitionist movement, the ALF -- our own 21st century abolitionist movement -- breaks into laboratories, frees captive animals, and provides them with much-needed veterinary care, and provides them with loving homes. Unlike those who torture, exploit, and kill animals for profit and dubious "research" purposes, the ALF does not fit any viable definition of terrorism. They seek to destroy the property of those who exploit animals, but in over three decades of actions in twenty countries, they have never harmed a living being.

After 9/11, President Bush said that, "A nation has a right to defend itself against terror" I believe this is true of the animal nations too. But since they cannot defend themselves, animal rights activists come to their aid. I call this concept extensional self defense . Whereas legal approaches can reduce the suffering of animals, they can never by themselves eliminate it as the state is controlled by powerful corporate interests, including the animal exploitation industries.

I understand that my views are controversial and unpopular, but they are protected by the Constitution, a document that theoretically still guides government and social life. The very essence of what the First Amendment protects is neither banal exchanges at the bus stop, nor sycophantic praise for the status quo, but rather challenging, critical, and controversial speech acts. In the U-SS-A, however, it is increasingly the case that the Constitution is little but a historical document, a political simulacrum eclipsed by the fascist policies of the Corporate Panopticon Police State regulated by the Patriot Act and its sundry supplements. As I write, Bush is pounding the pulpit throughout the nation, working to ensure that the “sunset provisions” of the Patriot Act – passed as emergency measures after 9/11 to temporarily increase state powers of surveillance – are permanently retained as vital elements of the perversely named doctrine that presides as authoritarian fact over the “democratic” fiction.

Nothing I do on behalf of animals is illegal, and yet before Congress and the national media I have been misrepresented, slandered, and vilified by the obtuse David Martosko. For the record, Herr Martosko, Herr Inhofe, and other Brown Shirt agents of persecution: I defend the ALF only in words, never deeds. I work for animal rights only in legal ways, never illegal ways, and I operate openly in the aboveground movement and never clandestinely in the underground movement. Despite your paranoid fantasies that put HSUS on par with Al Qaeda, I am not a member of the ALF, nor do I know or communicate with anyone in the ALF. And although I commend and support the just and courageous actions of the ALF, I have certainly never recruited students into its ranks.

In a sane and humane Washington, the legislative branch of government would be holding hearings on how to eradicate animal suffering and exploitation and deal with the catastrophic threat of global warming, rather than scheming how to perpetuate agony and destruction on this planet. It would give its utmost respect and attention to advocates of animal rights, veganism, and ecology and throw corporate exploiters and their puppet propagandists in the same pen with other criminals who violate ethics and life. It would attend to the real domestic terrorist threat -- that posed by extreme right wing hate groups -- not the ALF, ELF, or SHAC. In a sane and humane world, the ALF, ELF, and SHAC would not even be necessary.