Journalist Matthew Wolff joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and VV Ganesanthan to discuss his new book Fire in the Night: A Secret History of the Earth Liberation Front, the FBI, and Eco-Sabotage. Wolfe talks about the history of environmental activism, including its rarely discussed bipartisan past, and explains how the industry made climate change a Democratic and progressive issue. That meaning reflects the influence of the Earth Liberation Front, which originated in England and developed another home in Oregon. He also highlights their three guiding principles, including preventing harm to people, and considers law enforcement’s response to the radical group’s arson tactics. Wolfe analyzes post-9/11 changes in environmental activism and the importance of the term “eco-terrorism”, which ranges from describing damage done to the environment to those taking radical action in defense of the planet. he reads from Fire at night.
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Fire in the Night: A Secret History of the Earth Liberation Front, the FBI, and Eco-Sabotage
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silent spring by Rachel Carson
part of conversation with matthew wolfe
Whitney Terrell: They became known as eco-terrorists, and I want to talk about how they came to be known that way. But first, I want you to outline the principles of the ELF, because I think people will be interested to know whether it complies with what people consider terrorism.
Matthew Wolfe: So the whole philosophy with ELF was that they were a kind of unofficial tax on the industry. It was actually a very capitalist mentality in some ways, in the sense that “the only way we’re going to reform the industry is if at some point they realize that it’s going to cost them money to destroy the planet. So, by setting fires, by physically destroying things, we’ll literally make it more expensive for them to do business.” The ELF had three principles, and the first was economic sabotage. The whole goal was to cause maximum financial damage to those who profit from the destruction of the natural world. The second principle was public education, trying to bring attention to these atrocities happening on the planet. Fire is spectacular and gets a lot of attention, so this is a great way to do that.
And then the second goal was to damage property, but not people. The ELF was very against killing or even injuring anyone, so when they burned buildings they went to great lengths to make sure there was no one in them, to make sure the fire was not going to spread to other structures, or that no one would get hurt because of something they did. Vail seemed to have an opportunity to do all this: to cause significant damage to the entity they believed responsible for destroying nature; Given the amount of media attention it received, it always sparked discussion about why the arson had occurred, and made people think about the issues at stake to some extent; And third, they were very careful about making sure no one got hurt.
At one point, when Avalon was running from the fire, there was a structure he was going to burn, a type of outhouse or bathroom that was closed in on itself. He opened the door, and he actually found a hunter sleeping in this hot bathroom, because he was cold in his tent. So Avalon locked the door and did not burn down the structure, and was very careful not to hurt anyone. It is not foolproof. Arson is a very dangerous tool of political change, but the ELF never physically hurt anyone in their entire career, and there have been no deaths in their fires. So in that sense I think Weil was a good example of the three principles that he put forward as structural elements of his works.
WT: I think it’s important to say this, because when people call someone a terrorist, usually terrorists kill people. This is the primary method of terrorism you’ll hear about in the news.
MW: Eco-terrorism is a strange word. It was a term that came up in the early 80’s, and was initially used mostly to describe damage caused to the environment. The first President Bush described Sadam Hussein’s burning of oil fields as an act of eco-terrorism. But then, at some point, the term got distorted to actually refer to people who were using sabotage or vandalism in protecting the environment. A lot of it traces back to a guy named Ron Arnold. Ron Arnold was a member of the Sierra Club in the 1970s, and for unexplained reasons he became completely disaffected with environmentalism. I think they saw the Sierra Club as too radical. So he went in the exact opposite direction, and he became a lobbyist for the industry. He was initially working for the lumber industry, and then he expanded and he had one of those obscure right-wing think tanks that puts out junk science as a way of trying to push back against environmental regulation. He also did much to popularize the term “eco-terrorism” and he expanded its definition to mean not just situations where someone was killed, or violence in the way we sometimes think of terrorism, but also to refer to acts that destroyed property. They all kind of fell under this big meaningful umbrella of eco-terrorism.
In doing so, it did a few things. It outlawed radical activists who used vandalism or vandalism to push back corporate power. If you call someone a terrorist, it not only attracts the attention of law enforcement, but it also means that, within the realm of discourse, you don’t really have to listen to them. No one needs to care what a terrorist thinks. So, using the term eco-terrorism, which was adopted by the media and politicians, was actually a clever literal thing to try to delegitimize a group of people who were doing things that you didn’t like and that you wanted to stop.
VV Ganesanthan: It also seems to be a move to equate or blur the harm caused to people and destruction of property. I’m from Minneapolis, and in the wake of the George Floyd uprising, you may have heard a lot of discussion about protecting property, and very little about protecting people. It is interesting to think about how this use of this particular word and the terminology of terror makes this possible. Also, as you’re talking, I’m thinking about all the other activist groups I’ve studied where they didn’t succeed in harming anyone, like say Weather Underground. This is a really interesting comparison. And, of course, Weather Underground has had such a long lifespan. There’s a whole set of books about it. What is the lifetime of this group of workers? What happened to them? What was their fate? The 2018 arrest of one of them opens the book, but what different paths did their lives take?
MW: Thus the group continued until about September 11, but at that time the group was kind of falling apart. He was active in the United States for about five years. They started many fires. In his spare time, he also engaged in animal liberation where he freed horses or dogs from laboratories or slaughterhouses. There was some hope that this would lead to a lot of other groups forming, or ELF cells around the country, and they would all start setting fires, and really put some kind of pressure on the industry. This did not happen at all. The ELF kept to itself. It was not part of any larger social movement that gave it mainstream support.
So, by 2001, the group was really struggling. And then 9/11 happened, and at that time, whatever appetite the United States had for people running around, burning buildings as a tool of political change disappeared. This became a situation where all the elves understood that what they were doing would not be appreciated. This was also the moment when federal law enforcement, which had many different functions in that decade, turned almost entirely toward counterterrorism. The entire FBI was reorganized to basically become a counter-terrorism organization. This meant that anyone doing anything that could be called terrorism, including eco-terrorists, no matter how inappropriate the term, would be targeted. So, at that point ELF basically stopped. There were still some sporadic actions by various people claiming arson in the name of the ELF, but this, basically, disappeared over the next few years.
The FBI was still very interested in the ELF, perhaps even more so, given that it had a new priority within the bureau regarding capturing anyone they could call a terrorist. So the FBI kept up on them and eventually made several arrests. In late 2005–2006, a number of Dwarves were arrested and sent to prison. Many elves, knowing that these arrests were about to take place, fled the country. About half a dozen of them became fugitives, and the FBI has now spent several years trying to capture them. One activist, Joseph Dibbie, was captured while passing through Cuba. He was changing planes in Havana in 2018. He was picked up by the FBI and taken into custody by Cuban authorities and taken back for trial. I think all the elves are captured except Josephine Overacker, who was involved in that first ranger station fire. The FBI still considers him one of their most wanted fugitives, but everyone else is taken back to court to answer for their crimes.
Written by Otter.ai. Condensed and edited by Rebecca Kilroy. Matthew Wolff Photo by Nathan Fitch.
