What Can We Learn from the Earth Liberation Front?
When considering about how to grow and mature a movement, there is no purpose in reinventing the wheel. The Earth Liberation Front (ELF) provides an example of how a movement can use decentralized leadership and ideals and rhetoric from other movements to move towards fundamental change. Though virtually invisible now, ELF can teach us ways in which a small number of individuals can draw national and international attention to their cause. We must learn from the successes and failures of other movements for radical change to occur.
ELF is an international group of autonomous individuals or groups of people that participate in direct action to defend the planet. (1) Since 1996, ELF has taken part in direct action 1 throughout the U.S., Europe, and Canada against logging companies, genetic engineering research companies, Hummer dealerships, and developers. It is estimated that the damage caused by ELF actions against the companies and agencies is more than $43 million U.S. dollars. (2) ELF aims to improve national outcomes in a radically different way than most movements before it. At its conception, it was decided that the ELF would: 1) cause as much economic damage as possible to a given entity that is profiting off the destruction of the natural environment and life for greed and profit; 2) educate the public on the atrocities committed against the environment and life; and 3) take all precautions against harming life. (3) These are not fixed ideologies, but 3 adaptable and change based on what ELF members decide. This allows for ELF ideologies to encompass and adopt aspects from various movements. In doing so, ELF can engage in more than ecological protection, but also worker’s rights and other social justice issues. ELF’s concept of environmentalism is known as “revolutionary environmentalism,” encompassing three influential theories: deep ecology, social ecology, and green anarchism. (4) Each theory sees the path to restoration through a different lens.
Deep ecology as a theory considers nature to be fundamentally valuable, regardless of its value to humans. Proponents of deep ecology believes that humans have become disconnected from nature and such disconnection is the root of current destructive practices like capitalism. (5) Deep ecologists believe that small, decentralized communities are necessary to rebuild and foster a relationship and connection with the natural world and with each other. The land is included as an acknowledged member of the community. These decentralized communities would make decisions affecting local areas locally, sustaining a relationship with Mother Earth. All human beings experience freedom, liberty, and democracy within their communities and all are treated equally. Equality between community members and the communities are thought not only to foster a better relationship with the environment but also eliminate international wars and harmful policies.
Like deep ecology, social ecology focuses on relationships. But rather than the relationship between humans and the environment, social ecology theory focuses on human-to-human relations as the root cause of environmental devastation and social domination. To stop environmental destruction humans must mend “…social rifts caused by hierarchy and political domination.” (6) Hierarchical societies formed through history have taken over natural human relationships which has led to social and class tensions, and a detachment between. Social ecologists see the potential benefit of developing technology to better human life so long as it is not for profit. Such projects could include clean/green power, access to clean drinking water, and continuing to develop vaccines against life-threatening diseases.
Green anarchism theory contends that civilization and domestication are the root causes of human oppression and environmental degradation. (7) The civilization of people makes them unable to remain self-reliant as they must rely on the importation of goods to survive in the areas where they choose to live. Society must control individuals to safeguard social and political stability and to regulate resources. Through education, jobs, and class, the current social order “…domesticates and placates humanity” for its own benefit, leaving humans without liberty, freedom, or passion. (8) Because civilization and domestication are so deep-seated in society, green anarchism promotes undermining and ultimately the destroying modern civilizations in order to return to nature and natural living. Such a change would bring equality for all individuals who would break free of their domestication and dependence to live a free and equal life in the natural world.
By combining these three ideologies ELF demonstrated its fluidity and ability to encompasses various concepts. This is enhanced by ELF’s decentralized and leaderless structure. It means ELF can envision a world that abolishes capitalism, where workers and nature are not enemies but victims of capitalism, where environmentally destructive industries that were necessary for the state to maintain itself are abolished, where humans acknowledge they are animals and embrace it, where all are free of coercion, and where Earth, animal, and human liberation are a part of the same revolutionary struggle. (9)
Though controversial, ELF is willing to use violence to defend the Earth and humans — if the Earth is suffering from our violence, it can be defended by violence.The ecotage (sabotage aimed at destroyers of the environment) committed by ELF is meant to challenge social, political, and economic norms and highlights the problems they present. Because ELF looks to drastically alter society, it does not have to define legitimacy by any society’s standards. ELF’s envisioned world is legitimate because it is a world where all things (animals, humans, and the environment) are of equal importance and where destructive practices such as capitalism and coercion are abolished.
ELF uses the language and ideas of myriad other movements including civil rights, Marxism, the Weather Underground, Black Power, Transcendentalism, anarchism, and radical queer theory. ELF invokes Carmichael and Malcolm X in its justification for violence, King in its understanding of how movements are intertwined, Winthrop in the necessity of love of community, and Marx through the importance of workers’ rights and the abolishment of capitalism.
“The flexibility of the ELF ideology should allow their ideology to shift pragmatically according to the political climate and thereby allow them to remain politically influential…” (10) Looking to the realistic future is an aspect that many movements lack. ELF has the potential to recruit and gain membership from the movements they invoke in their ideologies. Unlike various other movements, it has the ability to attract individuals across all spectrums of life.
Although some may be apprehensive of the violent tactics used by ELF, we must remember the words of Malcolm X: “You should never be nonviolent unless you run into some nonviolence. I’m nonviolent with those who are nonviolent with me. But when you drop violence on me, then you’ve made me go insane, and I’m not responsible for what I do.” We should not deny aspects of other movements because they do not perfectly align with our vision. Change comes from community and encompassing successful aspects of other movements. ELF can serve as a model for a movement outside of current power structures that can include nuanced ideologies and fight white supremacist power structures that regulate life in the U.S. today.
(1)http://www.animalliberationfront.com/ALFront/ELF/ELFPressOffice.htm
(2) https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/news/testimony/the-threat-of-eco-terrorism
(3) Sean Parson, “Eco-Anarchism Rising: The Earth Liberation Front and the Formation of Revolutionary Environmentalism,” http://citation.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/1/9/8/5/2/pages 198528/p198528–1.php
(4) Sean Parson, “Understanding the Ideology of the Earth Liberation Front,” Green Theory & Praxis: The Journal of Ecopedagogy, p. 51.
(5) See more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_ecology
(6) Sean Parson, “Understanding the Ideology of the Earth Liberation Front,” p. 55.
(7) Sean Parson, “Understanding the Ideology of the Earth Liberation Front,” p. 55.
(8) Sean Parson, “Understanding the Ideology of the Earth Liberation Front,” p. 57.
(9) 9 Sean Parson, “Understanding the Ideology of the Earth Liberation Front,” p. 63.
(10) Sean Parson, “Understanding the Ideology of the Earth Liberation Front,” p. 63.
