Eugene police detectives have announced they are investigating three suspects they believe are connected to two local arsons that have been tied to the Earth Liberation Front. The local arsons in question include firebomb attacks on the West University Police Substation and a Romania Chevrolet dealership.
The group has already claimed responsibility for millions of dollars’ worth of damage from sabotage that it claims helps achieve its goal of defending the environment from capitalist-driven exploitation.
In the national environment debate, the ELF is the extreme edge of the projectionist viewpoint. Its members are several steps past the activists chained to trees behind roadblocks who attempt to halt timber sales. But it is too easy to categorize individuals from a portrayal through their actions. The individuals who created the firebombs that scorched dozens of sport utility vehicles here in Eugene must have thought what they were doing was morally right, or they would not have gone to such an extreme.
In this country, our popular culture praises people who act outside the law to achieve their own moral victories. Perhaps this is because this nation has a tradition of civil disobedience. The average hero from any discount action movie usually breaks the law to put the criminals in jail. And in the case of the ELF, its members must believe their sabotage is necessary to stop what they perceive as the criminal abuse of the natural world. But the ELF is not justified in pursuing such a course of action, despite the glamorization of the renegade with justice on his or her side, because that image has no basis in any real political truth.
Looking at their actions in this light, it is not so difficult to understand these home-grown terrorists. They likely do not think of themselves as terrorists, but as moral crusaders. Yet this concept does not appear to have been accepted by anyone because the ELF continues to be lambasted for its violent means by most logical folks who have an opinion on the matter.
Fortunately, this is true because most logical people understand that when individuals reach a point where they believe anything they do, including violence, is justified because of their faith in the moral standing of their political agenda, they have crossed a line in our society.
The attacks connected to groups within the ELF are un-American not because they target capitalism, SUVs or police officers. There is no glamor in violence when it comes to changing public policy because history shows that most political change came through nonviolent means. Martin Luther King Jr. isn’t a national hero because he torched buses in Montgomery, Ala.
We have become a civilized, rational society, with rules to follow when enacting public-policy change. The ELF may desire change, but people who adhere to its philosophy and have chosen violence also chose to separate themselves from the American public. At one time, this country’s citizens did have to resort to violent means to pursue their agenda, but that time, thankfully, is behind us.
Environmental terrorists do not draw fire from rational individuals because of their beliefs, but because of their actions. Saving the environment is a noble pursuit, and one that has been taken up quite effectively by more sensible organizations. Political violence just hurts the work done by non-violent activists and gives a bad name to the environmental cause.