[News] Extreme Confusion: Why Do Civil Rights Watchdog Groups Care About the Earth Liberation Front?

[Anti-Imperialist News]

This article was published in the Lughnasadh 
issue of the <http://www.earthfirstjournal.org/index.php>Earth First! Journal.

Earth First! Journal • PO Box 3023, Tucson, AZ 85702-3023
(520) 620-6900 • collective
@
earthfirstjournal.org • 
<http://www.earthfirstjournal.org>www.earthfirstjournal.org

Extreme Confusion
Why Do Civil Rights Watchdog Groups Care About the Earth Liberation Front?
By Josh


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artwork by Brian Bowes (brianbowesart.com)
When federal prosecutors recently likened the 
Operation Backfire defendants to the Ku Klux Klan 
(KKK), lawyers for the defense were quick to 
register their shock and disgust. Daniel 
McGowan’s attorney, Amanda Lee, appropriately 
condemned the comparison as “appalling,” 
“historically inaccurate” and “an insult to African-Americans.”

Although many animal rights and environmental 
activists seem startled by the prosecution’s 
analogy, it is merely the most visible and recent 
example of a growing tendency to conflate the 
Earth and animal liberation movements with racist 
hate groups. What’s most disturbing is that among 
the parties responsible for this trend are two of 
the nation’s largest and most prominent civil 
rights watchdog groups: the Anti-Defamation 
League (ADL) and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).

How did these organizations—which were founded 
with the express purpose of combating 
anti-Semitism and white supremacy, and which have 
enjoyed the strong support of liberals and 
progressives for decades—develop such a keen 
interest in the Earth and animal liberation 
movements? The answer lies in a disappointing, 
disturbing and largely unknown history of 
neoconservative political agendas, adherence to a 
centrist/extremist model of society, unethical 
and illegal intelligence-gathering activities, 
cooperation with law enforcement, poor journalism and fear-mongering.

The Anti-Defamation League

Founded in 1913, the ADL’s original mission of 
combating anti-Semitic slander and libel quickly 
expanded to include civil rights advocacy. During 
the 1930s, the ADL initiated the practice for 
which it has become best known: the monitoring of 
racist and fascist groups through research and covert intelligence gathering.

Previously a somewhat liberal organization, the 
ADL began to undergo a marked shift toward a 
neoconservative political orientation during the 
1970s, which resulted in new alliances with the 
religious and political right, as well as 
increased cooperation with law enforcement. 
Additionally, the ADL adopted centrist/extremist 
theory, a neoconservative social model that 
clumps together all dissidents from the political 
right and left—regardless of their diverse and 
often conflicting agendas—and dismisses them as 
psychologically unstable people deserving of marginalization and imprisonment.

The disturbing results of the ADL’s blind 
commitment to centrist/extremist theory came to 
light in 1993, when a police investigation 
revealed that the ADL had assembled (perhaps 
illegally) files on thousands of Arab-American, 
anti-war, anti-apartheid, civil rights, 
environmental, labor and social justice groups, 
including ACT UP, the American Civil Liberties 
Union, the American Indian Movement, Food Not 
Bombs, the National Association for the 
Advancement of Colored People, Greenpeace and the 
Simon Wiesenthal Center. Although criminal 
charges were (miraculously) never filed, the 
scandal harmed the ADL’s reputation and drew 
attention to its increasingly reactionary and 
paranoid suspicion of progressives and radicals.

Given this troubling history, it is not at all 
surprising that the “Extremism in America” 
section of the ADL’s website currently lists 
“ecoterrorism” alongside racist and fascist 
groups like the KKK, the National Socialist 
Movement and the World Church of the Creator. 
Moreover, the ADL’s profiles of Earth First!, the 
Earth Liberation Front (ELF), the Animal 
Liberation Front (ALF) and Stop Huntingdon Animal 
Cruelty (SHAC) are littered with unqualified 
references to “terrorism” and “extremism,” as 
well as assurances that these nonviolent 
movements will inevitably (and intentionally) begin taking lives.

The examples that the ADL offers to confirm this 
charge are problematic at best and deliberately 
misleading at worst. For instance, the ADL states 
that in 1999, “a British reporter who had 
infiltrated the ALF the year before with a hidden 
camera
 was abducted by a number of men. They 
branded the letters ‘ALF’ on his back.”

What the ADL doesn’t say is that, according to 
the British magazine Green Anarchist, this 
reporter had made similar claims before, like 
when he said that he’d been kidnapped and shot in 
the leg by EF!ers. The idea that two separate 
movements employed new, unprecedented and 
never-repeated tactics of kidnapping and torture 
against the same person is simply too far-fetched 
to be true. Apparently, the police found Hall’s 
story unconvincing and promptly abandoned their 
criminal investigation. In treating this highly 
suspicious incident as proven fact, the ADL has 
failed to uphold its mission of assembling 
“accurate, detailed, unassailable information” 
and disseminating its findings through responsible and ethical journalism.

The Southern Poverty Law Center

The SPLC has followed a similar path from 
legitimate anti-racist work to the demonization 
of radical dissent. The SPLC was founded by 
Morris Dees and Joe Levin in 1971, as a small law 
firm focusing on civil rights cases. During the 
1980s, the SPLC was catapulted into the national 
spotlight by a series of legal victories that 
bankrupted KKK and neo-Nazi groups. It quickly 
became one of the most visible and best funded 
anti-racist watchdog groups in the US.

Like the ADL, the SPLC has attracted significant 
controversy. In 2000, Harper’s Magazine published 
an article by Ken Silverstein—the magazine’s 
award-winning Washington Editor—alleging that the 
SPLC greatly overstates the threat posed by hate 
groups in order to raise more money.

“In 1986,” Silverstein wrote, “the SPLC’s entire 
legal staff quit in protest of Dees’ refusal to 
address issues—such as homelessness, voter 
registration and affirmative action—that they 
considered far more pertinent to poor minorities, 
if far less marketable to affluent benefactors, than fighting the KKK.”

Another similarity to the ADL is the SPLC’s 
Intelligence Project, which gathers information 
on a variety of “extremist” groups and publishes 
its findings in the quarterly Intelligence 
Report. While typically focused on white 
supremacists, the Report began covering the 
anti-globalization, animal rights and radical 
environmental movements following the 1999 World 
Trade Organization (WTO) protests in Seattle, 
Washington. Although the Report has generally 
avoided the “ecoterrorism” label in favor of 
“ecoradicalism,” it has undermined this sober 
restraint through a campaign of innuendo, 
conjecture, misinformation and fear-mongering 
that makes the ADL look amateurish by comparison.

In the Winter 2000 edition of the Report, for 
example, the SPLC concluded that the WTO protests 
signaled a coming alliance between right-wing and left-wing
opponents of globalization, including neo-Nazis, 
the Nation of Islam and Earth First!. This charge 
was repeated in the Summer 2001 Report, which 
flung numerous outlandish accusations at the ELF 
in the hope that one might stick. The SPLC 
charged that “the ELF’s use of underground 
violence strongly resembles ex-Klansman Louis 
Beam’s concept of ‘leaderless resistance,’” as if 
this shared organizational structure is proof of 
a common racist ideology. Never mind the fact 
that leaderless resistance was actually developed 
by a US intelligence officer as a strategy for 
combating communist “extremists.”

The same Report also stated that “the ELF 
recently set this year’s ‘International Day of 
Action’ for April 19—a mythic date for the 
anti-government right. It was that day in 1993, 
when about 80 Branch Davidian cult members died 
in a fire in Waco, Texas
. It is also the day 
that Timothy McVeigh blew up a federal building 
in Oklahoma City in 1995, killing 168.” The 
Report ignored that the ELF chose the date for 
its proximity to Earth Day (April 22, 2001), and 
it did not even consider the possibility that the 
relation to Waco and Oklahoma City was a 
coincidence. Maybe the ELF picked April 19 
because it’s the anniversary of the 1943 Warsaw 
Ghetto Uprising—a significant event in the 
history of Jewish liberation and the fight 
against fascism. This explanation is as likely as any other.

Dozens of similar articles in the Intelligence 
Report make it clear that the SPLC advances 
conjecture as fact and coincidence as conspiracy, 
while excluding any information that might 
undermine its desired conclusion that the ELF is 
on the verge of allying itself with violent racists.

Disturbing Implications

If the ADL and the SPLC were small organizations 
on the margins of popular discourse and public 
policy, there would be little need for concern. 
However, both groups are large, particularly the 
ADL, which has 30 regional and three 
international offices. The ADL and the SPLC are 
also incredibly well-funded, with total annual 
revenues of more than $50 million and $30 
million, respectively. Finally, and perhaps most 
disturbingly, both organizations enjoy 
significant influence with politicians, law 
enforcement and the public at large.

In 2002, a US congressional questionnaire sent to 
former ELF spokesperson Craig Rosebraugh quoted 
the SPLC’s charges of a growing alliance between 
the ELF and the racist, fascist right. It then 
asked, “How do you feel about the ELF being 
compared to the KKK? Is this an accurate 
comparison? Do you feel a kinship of cause with 
‘racists and fascists,’ as the SPLC contends?” 
(For the record, Rosebraugh brusquely answered, 
“A) That is ridiculous and insulting. I would 
expect the SPLC to have more intelligence than 
that. B) No. C) No.”) These and other absurd 
allegations are frequently adopted as fact by 
lawmakers and law enforcement, resulting in 
policies and investigations based on ADL and SPLC 
propaganda. It is entirely possible—even 
likely—that the federal prosecution’s recent 
comparison of the ELF to the KKK was inspired by these organizations’ reports.

Additionally, there is evidence to suggest that 
both the ADL and the SPLC have a history of 
conducting covert investigations using 
surveillance and infiltration tactics that law 
enforcement is generally barred from employing 
without a warrant. The organizations then provide 
this information to the police and the FBI, 
effectively circumventing constitutional rights 
of privacy and assembly. The result is that these 
private watchdog groups are increasingly 
complicit in classically fascist systems of 
government surveillance and control. Apparently, 
the ADL and the SPLC oppose fascism when it is 
promoted by private individuals but condone it 
when practiced by the state, which is precisely when it is most dangerous.

The general public is also susceptible to the 
assertions of the ADL and the SPLC. Media reports 
on the Earth and animal liberation movements 
frequently quote these esteemed watchdog groups, 
whose statements are uncritically presented as 
expert commentary. To a populace that knows very 
little about the radical environmental and animal 
rights movements, the fact that the ADL and the 
SPLC are being quoted would seem to imply that 
there is an anti-Semitic, racist or fascist component to these movements.

By advancing this kind of innuendo, the ADL and 
the SPLC cheapen oppression and transform it into 
a kind of rhetorical capital that can be wielded 
for political gain. By painting the radical 
environmental and animal rights movements as a 
bunch of Nordic youths waiting to be Nazified, 
these organizations effectively marginalize and 
delegitimize the radical Jews and people of color 
who are actively working for the liberation of 
animals and the Earth. Perhaps more than 
anything, this shows how low the ADL and the SPLC have sunk.

Conclusions

Obviously, the ADL’s and the SPLC’s focus on the 
Earth and animal liberation movements needs to be 
challenged, but this must be done carefully. 
Speaking and writing against the ADL and the SPLC 
is a delicate undertaking, especially since both 
organizations are generally perceived as 
unassailable warriors in the fight against 
oppression. We must always be clear that our 
problem is not with combating anti-Semitism, 
racism and fascism, but with doing so in a 
manipulative and unethical fashion in order to 
advance a repressive, neoconservative agenda.

Additionally, we must be careful not to 
accidentally align ourselves with white 
supremacists. When researching the dark side of 
these organizations, pay close attention to what 
your sources are. Many websites “exposing” the 
ADL and the SPLC are operated by KKK and neo-Nazi 
groups. If your source refers to “the Jew Morris 
Dees” or cites the ADL as part of the “worldwide 
Jewish conspiracy,” you should look elsewhere for
information.

As a final word of caution, it is my strong 
belief that direct action must be avoided. Home 
demonstrations and property damage will not work 
against the ADL or the SPLC. These organizations’ 
employees have endured death threats and physical 
violence from neo-Nazis and the KKK. They won’t 
be swayed by animal rights and environmental 
activists. Besides, this kind of approach would 
prove suicidal from both a law enforcement and 
public relations perspective. If action is to be 
taken, it should be restricted to peaceful 
demonstrations at relevant public events.

Effective opposition to unethical practices of 
the ADL and the SPLC must necessarily focus on 
the general public. Both organizations depend 
upon direct mail fundraising campaigns that tend 
to target liberals and progressives, who are 
largely unaware of these organizations’ dirty 
dealings. Mainstream animal rights and 
environmental activists, as well as sympathetic 
liberals and progressives, are likely to respond 
positively to a reasonable critique of these organizations.

Finally, Jewish animal rights and environmental 
activists—like myself—who are deeply disturbed by 
the ADL’s activities should discuss this with 
family, friends and members of our community. The 
involvement of a vocal contingent of anti-racist 
organizers, Jewish activists and activist people 
of color would go a long way toward legitimizing 
a challenge of the ADL and the SPLC, and it would 
help assure that these efforts retain the nuanced 
and cautious tone that they will require to be 
successful. Ultimately, exposing the reactionary 
and repressive nature of the ADL and the SPLC is 
not just about defending the Earth and animal 
liberation movements. It is about creating 
legitimate methods of challenging 
institutionalized oppression wherever it appears.





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