Explain the formation of the Earth Liberation Front

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

According to the FBI (Jarboe, 2002), supporters of terrorism related to ecology and animal rights joined opponents of genetic engineering in the United Kingdom in 1992 . The new group called itself the Earth Liberation Front (ELF). Composed of radicals from Earth First!, the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), and other disaffected environmentalists, the group migrated from Europe to the United States. Its tactics include sabotage, tree spiking, property damage, intimidation, and arson, and they resulted in tens of millions of dollars in damage. One ELF member recently called for violent action, though both ELF and ALF deny this. Both movements post their activities on websites and e-zines such as Bite Back (2015). The formation of ELF was prefigured when radical ecologists began to sabotage roadworking and construction machinery in the late 1970s. As was the case with the right wing, a novel inspired the ecoterrorists. The Monkey Wrench Gang, a 1975 novel by Edward Abbey, told the story of a group of ecologists who were fed up with industrial development in the West. "Monkey wrenching" referred to small acts of sabotage against companies undertaking projects in undeveloped areas. Abbey, however, was an environmental activist rather than a hate-filled ideologue like William Pierce. His novel is a fictional account that inspired others. In The Monkey Wrench Gang, the heroes drive through western U.S. states sabotaging bulldozers, burning billboards, and damaging the property of people they deem to be destroying the environment. (This is the same type of low-level terrorism German leftists used in the mid-1990s.) Such monkey wrenching has become
a key tactic of ecoterrorists.