By Robert Tracinski (Click here to download an image of this author for print publication.)
Over the past few months, several newly built Long Island homes have been burned to the ground, with graffiti left at the scene threatening future destruction. It has been a small-scale "eco-terrorism" campaign directed against the alleged evil of suburban real-estate development.
The culprits in a few of these attacks, it turns out, were four teen-age kids: Matthew Rammelkamp, 16; Jared MacIntyre and George Mashkow, both 17; and Connor Cash, 19. They are very young, relatively bright, and most of them are good students. Judging from press reports, they are not the kind of kids who normally get into trouble. Yet the three younger boys recently admitted setting fire to unoccupied homes in a campaign against "urban sprawl."
When idealistic children become terrorists, we are in big trouble. We are facing America's first real, home-grown terrorist movement.
The name of this terror network is ELF, the Earth Liberation Front. Their goal is to "defend what's sacred" -- the untouched earth, in their view -- against the intrusive presence of human beings.
So far, the ELF hasn't actually killed any humans, though it is only a matter of time. They have started by targeting human property, including McDonald's restaurants, test plots for genetically engineered foods, electrical transmission lines, and newly constructed homes. No, they don't want to kill people; they just want to make sure that we don't own anything, don't eat anything, don't use any power, and have no place to live.
The three Long Island arsonists admit to being "members" of ELF. But membership is self-designated in this anarchistic terror network; members receive ELF guidelines and advice over the Internet but claim to have no central leadership.
And that's what is so ominous. With no organization and no large-scale recruitment, many young idealists have signed up to commit serious crimes for the sake of their cause. The roots of terrorism have been planted much deeper in our culture than most of us suspected.
In an article written in the early 1980s, St. John's University Professor and Ayn Rand Institute writer M. Northrup Buechner asked what would be necessary for an active terrorist movement to take hold in America.
First, he wrote, the terrorists must have an ideology that demands the sacrifice of the individual to some alleged "greater good." That is the only way they can justify their destruction of property and lives and their reliance on fear as a weapon.
The environmental movement provides such an ideology in spades. The ELF's mission is to defend the "sacred" earth against humans; thus, the group seeks "to speed up the collapse of industry, to scare (read: "terrorize") the rich, and to undermine the foundations of the state." It is all part of the philosophy of "deep ecology."
The other requirement, Professor Buechner wrote, is that this ideology must be so thoroughly saturated in the culture that it attracts thousands willing to cooperate in terrorist crimes -- and millions who are unwilling to condemn them. The terrorist ideology, he writes, "cannot be only 'in the air'; it must be in the ground."
Or it must be in the schools. Today's students are bombarded with environmentalist propaganda. They are taught that humans are a blight on the earth -- that our technology and economic development lead to nothing but pollution, global warming, and the destruction of endangered species. It is no surprise that Rammelkamp, the 16-year-old eco-terrorist, is described by press reports as a "first-rate student" who "takes advanced placement biology," or that 17-year-old MacIntyre was a bright student working on a research project on "global warming" at Brookhaven National Laboratory. These students learned their lessons well.
And what about the adults who are called upon to evaluate the ELF's violent acts? A Chicago Tribune editorial is typical. Stopping "the spread of new construction" is "not an unworthy goal," it declares, "but eco-terrorists like those at ELF are running a serious risk at a sensitive time" because "environmentalists can't afford to lose any momentum . . . in Washington." In this view, eco-terrorism isn't evil; it's just a tactical mistake at this time.
When terrorism provokes this reaction from a culture's leaders, it is "in the ground." ELF's public mouthpiece, Craig Rosebraugh, understands this when he boasts that the ELF "operates under an ideology, not a physical membership," so "it is really impossible to dissolve that ideology."
An ideology cannot be dissolved -- but it can be exposed. This incident is a warning that we must understand and oppose the environmentalist's anti-human philosophy -- before the ELF's attacks escalate.
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