The Rhetoric of Eco-Revolutionary Activism: Constructing the Earth Liberation Front
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Abstract
In the mid-1990s, a new voice of environmental protest emerged in the United
States. Frustrated by the failures of both mainstream and radical environmental activism
to protect the Earth from the catastrophic effects of industrial capitalism, a small group of
clandestine activists identifying as the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) utilized vandalism,
arson, and other means of property destruction to articulate a rhetoric of revolutionary
environmental resistance. An unlikely coalition of voices from industry, government, and
the established environmental movement emerged to oppose ELF, painting the activists
as dangerous eco-terrorists.
This study examines the dialectical contest to provide the dominant public
account of ELF’s enigmatic protest rhetoric. This rhetoric is referred to in the study as
eco-revolutionary activism, for it rejected even the radical discourses of its ideological
predecessors such as Earth First!, embracing instead a holistic critique of capitalism, the
state, and contemporary civilization. The study traces the dialectic that unfolded through
a series of key moments in the rise and fall of ELF in the public imaginary.
ELF made national headlines in 1998 when affiliated activists set fire to seven
buildings at a Colorado ski resort as a protest against the resort’s planned expansion into
ecologically fragile habitat. In the years that followed, ELF activists went on to commit
more than 100 protest actions, causing millions of dollars in economic damage and
prompting foundational questions about the meaning of violence, the limits of protest,
and the responsibility of individuals to combat harmful systems. Anti-ELF rhetors
publicly condemned ELF activists as eco-terrorists, taking advantage of cultural anxieties
about terrorism that emerged in the wake of events such as the Oklahoma City bombing
in 1995 and the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. By early 2006, the rhetoric of terror
had successfully trumped ELF’s eco-revolutionary rhetoric, functionally ending the
public dialectic on ELF. The study finds that, while ELF’s eco-revolutionary voice was
compelling and innovative, its flaws made it susceptible to the more powerful rhetoric of
terror.