Contributed by: filbert Tuesday, August 02 2005 @ 07:55 AM CST
The ALF and ELF worldview is also expanding. Their rhetoric (which can be read on a number of websites including www.animalliberationfront.com[*2] ) has become infused with Marxist and anarchist ideology, criticizing the familiar litany of globalization, American imperialism and capitalism. In March 2003, just before the Iraq war, ELF ideologue Craig Rosebraugh called for, “strategies and tactics which severely disrupt the war machine, the U.S. economy, and the overall functioning of U.S. society.” In his book, The Logic of Political Violence, Rosebraugh wrote: “[R]evolution in the United States … cannot be successful without the implementation of violence.” Transferring ALF’s and ELF’s enemies from particular industries and companies to society as a whole could inspire larger scale terrorist attacks.
The era we’re living in today reminds me a bit of the era of anarchist bombings and assassinations around the turn of the 20th century. One difference is that explosives are much, much more powerful today (not even considering the nuclear threat). I don’t like where we’re going.