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DAV I D THOMAS SUMNER AND LISA M. WEIDMAN
Eco-terrorism or Eco-tage: An
Argument for the Proper Frame
Between 1996 and 2001, a group of radical environmentalists called
“the Family”committed several acts of arson, sabotage, and other
destruction in the name of the Earth Liberation Front. As the New York
Times reported, these activists burned or vandalized “an electrical
transmission tower; timber research centers; a Eugene police station; a
ski resort in Vail, Colo.; and other sites in five Western states that they
had viewed as threats to the environment or their mission”(Yardley
1).
Three members of “the Family”were arrested in 2005, and in May
2007, Chelsea D. Gerlach, Stanislas G. Meyeroff, and Kevin Tubbs
were all sentenced not merely as arsonists or vandals but as terrorists.
In each case, Judge Ann L. Aiken used the “terrorism enhancement”
classification to significantly extend the sentence. The three activists
received 34 years and 7 months of prison time between them for “eco-
terrorism.”
On the morning of April 19, 1995, Timothy McVeigh parked a
rental truck filled with racing fuel and fertilizer in front of the Alfred
P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Okla. Just as the build-
ing opened for the day's business, McVeigh lit two timed fuses and
abandoned the truck. At 9:02 a.m. the truck exploded as he'd planned,
killing 168 people, including 19 children. McVeigh was labeled a
domestic terrorist.
On September 11, 2001, nineteen hijackers boarded four commer-
cial airplanes. Two of those planes crashed into the World Trade
Center's North and South Towers in New York City. The third
Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment 20.4 (Autumn 2013)
Advance Access publication October 22, 2013 doi:10.1093/isle/ist086
© The Author(s) 2013. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Association for the
Study of Literature and Environment. All rights reserved.
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careened into the Pentagon, and the fourth crashed in a Pennsylvania
field. The hijackers killed 2,976 people and shook the nation in
perhaps the most devastating act of terrorism in American history.
What these three examples have in common is a term: terrorism.
Yet these examples also raise a question: What does the term “terror-
ism”mean? Is it accurate to lump illegal acts that destroy property but
carefully avoid harming people into the same category as acts clearly
intended to kill? Is this a difference of kind or just of degree? While we
(the authors) don't generally endorse the destruction of property as a
method of generating social change, we believe that the destruction of
property is fundamentally different from the intentional killing of
people; therefore, to label acts of obstruction, trespassing, vandalism,
sabotage, or arson as “terrorism”is inaccurate and has the potential to
damage one's understanding of real acts of terrorism, thereby reduc-
ing the potency of the term.
We started this project with a hunch. In recent years, we have
observed frequent use of the term “eco-terrorism,”in the news media
and in conversations, in reference to the acts of environmentalists. Our
observations were anecdotal, and we wanted to be sure they were
accurate. We found no literature analyzing cultural acceptance of the
term “eco-terrorism”; therefore, before embarking on an ethical analy-
sis of this phenomenon, we set out to confirm our casual observation
that the term was widely used in the United States.
We conducted an analysis of the use of the term in US newspapers
across a period of nearly 11 years. Our analysis indicates broad accept-
ance of the term among both journalists and their sources, making it
all the more important to understand both the history and the implica-
tions of labeling obstruction, trespassing, vandalism, sabotage, and
arson as “eco-terrorism.”
Terrorism, a Brief Etymology
The Oxford English Dictionary places the first common use of the
term “terrorism”in 1795. Linguist Geoffrey Nunberg elaborates on the
OED's claim in his essay “It All Started with Robespierre.”He traces
the word's origins to what is known as the Reign of Terror during the
French Revolution. Nunberg writes, “The Jacobin Leader, Robespierre,
called Terror . . . ‘nothing but justice, prompt, severe and inflexible.’
And in the months that followed, the severe and inflexible justice of
the guillotine severed 12,000 counterrevolutionary heads before it got
around to abbreviating Robespierre himself ”(50). Nunberg notes that
through the nineteenth and into the twentieth centuries, the term
shifted in context and association, losing its capital letter and
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becoming more pejorative, but there was one constant: It remained
connected to violence directed against other human beings.
By the 1990s, however, the term was being used much more
broadly: “People were crying terrorism whenever they discerned an
attempt at intimidation or disruption,”Nunberg writes. “Hackers
who concocted computer viruses were cyberterrorists, cult leaders
were psychological terrorists. ...Andwhenphotographer Spencer
Tunick got thirty people to lie down naked for a picture in front of the
United Nations building in New York, a critic described the piece as
‘artistic terrorism at its best’” (53).
A key player in this change was libertarian activist Ron Arnold. He
coined the term “eco-terrorism”in a 1983 article published in Reason,
the monthly publication of the libertarian Reason Foundation. Arnold
is Executive Vice President of the Center for the Defense of Free
Enterprise (CDFE), and, as his website biography states, he is
“honored as the ‘Father of the Wise Use Movement’” and an “effective
fighter for individual liberties, property rights and limited govern-
ment”(“Staff and Advisors”). He is also the author of the 1997 book
Eco-terror: The Violent Agenda to Save Nature, published by the Free
Enterprise Press, an arm of the CDFE. Arnold is openly hostile to any-
thing he sees as violating his libertarian views on individual property
rights and the use of public lands by extractive industries. He claims
the “wise use”movement has “created a sector of public opinion that
didn't used to exist”and that “[n]o one was aware that environmental-
ism was a problem until we came along”(Egan). His stated goal is “to
destroy environmentalists by taking their money and their members”
(Egan).
Another turning point in the history of the term came during con-
gressional testimony for the 1988 Anti-Drug Abuse Act (Cong. Rec.
30811). This testimony marks the first time the idea of “eco-terrorism”
entered statute. In her article on the vilification of radical environmen-
talists, Rebecca K. Smith provides a concise summary of these hear-
ings. During a discussion regarding the use of booby traps by those
attempting to protect marijuana crops being grown on public land,
Senator James McClure turned the conversation to what he called
“eco-terrorists,”who he claimed were “just as dangerous and deadly
as the drug producers.”With virtually no corroborating evidence,
McClure claimed “terrorist thugs”were “driving citizens off the
public lands”(Cong. Rec. 30811). Because of McClure's claims,
Congress enacted punishment for the use of “hazardous or injurious
devices”on public land (18 USC. Sec. 1864(a)(2)). A piece of legislation
that was originally focused on illegal drug production on public land
was expanded to make certain forms of environmental protest much
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more difficult. As Smith notes, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has
also held (in a 2005 decision) that even a rope tied between trees
during a tree-sit protest qualifies as a hazardous or injurious device
(Smith 547).
During the next decade, acceptance of the term “eco-terrorism”seems
to have steadily grown, and in June 1998, the House of Representatives'
Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Crime held a hearing specifically
addressing “Eco-terrorism by Radical Environmental Organizations.”
The witnesses included Ron Arnold and Representative Frank Riggs of
California. Riggs gave wide-ranging testimony, including a claim that a
logger had been killed as a result of an Earth First! tree-spiking incident.
He asserted that the “systematic, organized eco-terrorism of Earth First!
and other militant organizations must stop. Lives have been lost”
(Riggs). Smith provides detailed refutation of Riggs' claims and adds,
“While no mill worker has ever been killed by radical environmental-
ists, unfortunately a radical environmentalist was killed by a logger
only months after the 1998 Senate hearing”(Smith 551).
Since 2001, the federal government's own definition of terrorism
has been inconsistent. In response to the attacks of 9/11, Congress
passed the USA PATRIOT Act and the Homeland Security Act. The
USA PATRIOT Act defined domestic terrorism as “acts dangerous to
human life”(USA PATRIOT Act). Similarly, the Homeland Security
Act defined terrorism as actions “dangerous to human life or poten-
tially destructive of critical infrastructure or key resources”(Homeland
Security Act).
1
In 2002, the FBI defined terrorism even more broadly. On February
12, James F. Jarboe, Domestic Terrorism Section Chief of the
Counterterrorism Division of the FBI, testified before the House
Resources Committee's Subcommittee on Forests and Forest Health. In
his testimony, Jarboe defined domestic terrorism as “the unlawful use,
or threatened use, of violence by a group or individual based and
operating entirely within the United States (or its territories) without
foreign direction, committed against persons or property to intimidate
or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment
thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives,”and eco-
terrorism as “the use or threatened use of violence of a criminal nature
against innocent victims or property by an environmentally oriented,
subnational group for environmental–political reasons, or aimed at an
audience beyond the target, often of a symbolic nature”(United States
of America).
In other words, while the USA PATRIOT Act specifies human life
as the issue, the FBI's definition not only includes property but elevates
it to the same level as human life. Furthermore, as evidenced by the
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enhanced sentences handed down to “the Family”by Judge Aiken in
2007 (referred to at the beginning of this article), US federal courts
have considered damage to property to be terrorism.
Assessing the Degree of Acceptance
Although it is clear from the above that “eco-terrorism”has been
adopted as a legal term, we wanted to know if it had entered common
usage outside of government and legal circles. To answer this ques-
tion, we could have analyzed informal conversations, formal speeches,
or news reports from either broadcast or print media. We chose to
analyze newspaper articles because language use in newspapers is
documented, retrievable, and searchable. Articles from a wide variety
of US newspapers are available through the LexisNexis Academic
database. In addition, the language in news stories is carefully selected
by professional reporters and editors; it is representative of language
used—or at least understood—by readers (i.e. the general public); and
has the potential to influence the language use of readers.
Thus, to assess the degree of acceptance of the term “eco-terrorism”
in the United States, we conducted a quantitative content analysis of
US newspaper articles over a period of nearly 11 years.
Research Questions
Our research questions were as follows:
1. To what extent have the news media used the term “eco-
terrorism”and its derivations, such as “eco-terrorist”or “eco-
terror,”over the years 1999 through 2009?
2. Who uses the term: journalists, their sources, or both?
3. When the term is used, what is the nature of its use? Does the
person using the term seem to accept “eco-terrorism”as the
appropriate word to use, or does the person distance him- or
herself from the word, indicating a lack of acceptance?
Methodology
Content analysis is the scientific inquiry into theoretically meaning-
ful questions and problems that cannot be answered by a cursory or
haphazard examination of documentary materials. Quantitative
content analysis allows the researcher to sample from a large body of
documentary material with the confidence that the sample and the
results will be representative of that large body of material (Holsti). In
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other words, this method allowed us to make inferences about the rele-
vant content offered by all newspapers in the United States over the
years of interest without examining every article published in every
newspaper. According to Ole Holsti, author of the seminal book on
content analysis, “A further advantage of quantification is that statisti-
cal methods provide a powerful set of tools not only for precise and
parsimonious summary of findings, but also for improving the quality
of interpretation and inference”(9).
Source and Sampling Design for the Content Analysis
The content to be analyzed was derived from the “US Newspapers
and Wires”source category of LexisNexis Academic. The time frame
of this study was January 1, 1999, through September 25, 2009. We
selected this time period to capture data from before and after the ter-
rorist attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001, because we
wondered if there was a change in the use of the term “terrorism”to
refer to environmentally motivated actions after 9/11.
We used the following string of search terms to locate appropriate
articles: “ecoterrorism or eco terrorism or eco-terrorism or environ-
mental terrorism.”We collected 1,818 articles containing one or more
of these terms. The second stage of the sampling design involved
selecting individual articles to be included in the study. We included
every third article for a total of 606 articles. After removing duplicate
articles, the sample size totaled 594.
In addition to searching for articles containing the term “eco-
terrorism”and its variants, we searched for words that we believe to be
more accurate, including various spellings of “eco-sabotage,”
“eco-arson,”and “eco-tage.”
2
The reason for these searches was to see
if these terms were used as frequently as the variants of “eco-
terrorism.”These searches turned up far fewer articles, many of which
also contained references to eco-terrorism. As indicated in Table 1,a
search for articles containing “eco-sabotage or ecosabotage or environ-
mental sabotage”identified 182 articles (of which, only 68 did not also
include the terms “terror,”“terrorism,”and/or “terrorist”in reference
to acts of radical environmentalism); a search for articles containing
“eco-arson or ecoarson or environmental arson”identified 28 articles
(of which, only 12 did not also contain “terror,”“terrorism,”and/or
“terrorist”); and a search for articles containing “eco-tage or ecotage”
identified 18 articles (of which, eight did not also use “terror,”“terror-
ism,”and/or “terrorist”). In other words, of the 228 articles using the
movement's preferred terms, only 88 discussed acts of radical environ-
mentalism without using some variation of the word “terrorism.”
These numbers clearly indicate that “terrorism”was used far more
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frequently (1,818 articles) than variations of “eco-sabotage,”
“eco-arson,”and “eco-tage”(88 articles).
The content analysis for this study was conducted only on articles
containing the word “eco-terrorism”or one of its variants.
We used “article”as the unit of analysis in the study, “term”as the
recording unit, and “sentence”as the context unit to be searched for
the meaning of each term. We defined “article”as a discrete section of
text with its own heading (including letters to the editor) and “term”
as a single appearance of any of the variations of “eco-terrorism”(see
list of variations under Use of Term in the next section).
Coding Scheme (Operational Definitions)
Before analyzing the recording units, two trained coders
3
deter-
mined whether each article was a news story, an opinion piece/edito-
rial, or a letter to the editor. We made this distinction because we
expect more objectivity from news stories than from opinion pieces or
letters to the editor.
4
The use of the word “terrorism”in relation to environmental acti-
vism was measured by three indicators: “use of term,”“who uses
term,”and “nature of use.”
“Use of term”was defined as a single appearance of one of the fol-
lowing words or phrases: ecoterrorism, eco-terrorism, eco terrorism,
environmental terrorism, ecoterrorist, eco-terrorist, or terrorism or ter-
rorist when used in reference to environmental activism.
“Who uses term”was defined as the person who uses the term,
either the author of the article or a source quoted in the article.
Table 1. Appearance of terms in US newspapers and wire-service articles
(January 1, 1999, through September 25, 2009)
Search terms Number of articles
containing search
terms
Number of articles
not containing
“terrorism”
Eco-terrorism, eco terrorism, or
ecoterrorism or environmental
terrorism
1,818 N/A
Eco-sabotage or ecosabotage or
environmental sabotage
182 68
Eco-arson or ecoarson or
environmental arson
28 12
Ecotage 18 8
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“Nature of use”was defined as the way the term was used by the
author: either as the appropriate term to use, as a term that the author
does not fully accept, or in a novel way. Coders chose from the follow-
ing three categories:
Accepting: The author does not indicate any unease with the term and
seems to accept the term as the appropriate description of the
activity, as indicated by use of the term without quotes around it
and without any qualifiers, such as “alleged”or “so-called,”in
front of the term.
Distancing: The author does not fully accept the term as appropriate
and attempts to distance him- or herself from the term, as indi-
cated by the use of quotation marks around the term, by the inser-
tion of “alleged”or “so-called”in front of the term, or by only
using the term in quotations of other people's words.
Novel: The author is using the term in a new way, unrelated to acts of
environmental activism, such as calling something “philosophical
eco-terrorism”or referring to a wild bear's activities as “eco-
terrorism.”
Findings of Content Analysis
After a series of training sessions and a test of intercoder reliability
to ensure consistent application of the coding instrument, two paid
research assistants performed formal coding duties.
5
The sample of
594 articles broke down as follows: 82.3 percent were news stories,
15 percent were opinion/editorial pieces, and 2.7 percent were letters
to the editor. We identified 1,345 uses of the term “eco-terrorism”or
one of its variants (see Table 2).
Research question 1 asked: To what extent have the news media
used the term “eco-terrorism”and its derivations over the years 1999
through 2009? As reported above, we found that the news media have
used variations on “eco-terrorism”far more than they have used terms
such as “eco-sabotage,”“eco-arson,”and “ecotage.”Our search for
articles containing the word “eco-terrorism”or one of its variations
turned up 1,818 articles in the US newspapers and wire services data-
base published between January 1, 1999, and September 25, 2009. In
contrast, we found only 182 articles containing the word “eco-
sabotage”or one of its variations, only 28 articles containing
“eco-arson”or one of its variations, and only 18 articles containing
“eco-tage or ecotage”(see Table 1).
Research question 2 asked: Who uses the term: journalists, their
sources, or both? Of the 1,345 uses of “eco-terrorism”identified, 1,137
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were used by the author (either a reporter, a letter writer, or an edito-
rial writer), and 208 were attributed to a source in the article (see
Table 2). The majority of uses were by authors (as opposed to sources),
indicating general acceptance of the term by journalists, given that
journalists were the authors of most of the articles analyzed.
Research question 3 asked: “When these terms are used, what is the
nature of the use? Does the person using the term seem to accept ‘eco-
terrorism’as the appropriate word to use, or does the person distance
him- or herself from the word, indicating a lack of acceptance?”We
found that 1,147 uses of the term (or 85.3 percent) were accepting, 190
(14.1 percent) were distancing, and 8 (0.6 percent) were a novel use
that didn't relate to our investigation (see Table 2).
We used crosstabulation to determine whether there was a relation-
ship between who used the term (authors or sources) and the nature
of the use (accepting or distancing). First, however, we removed the
eight instances of a novel use of the term (such as a wild bear who was
described as committing “eco-terrorism”on a neighborhood) from the
database. We found very little difference between authors and sources:
85.5 percent of the uses of “eco-terrorism”or its variants by authors
indicated acceptance of the term, and 87.3 percent of uses by sources
indicated acceptance of the term (see Table 3). A χ
2
test of independ-
ence indicated that the correlation between who used the term and the
nature of the use was not statistically significant, meaning that how
people used the term “eco-terrorism,”whether accepting it as the
Table 2. Percentages for variables
Variables Number Percent
Type of article
News 489 82.32
Opinion piece 89 14.98
Letter to the editor 16 2.69
(N= 594) 100.00
Who used term
Author 1,137 84.50
Source 208 15.50
(N= 1,345) 100.00
Nature of use
Accepting 1,147 85.30
Distancing 190 14.10
Novel use 8 0.60
(N= 1,345) 100.00
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appropriate term or distancing themselves from it, could not be attrib-
uted to the role of the person using the term (author versus source).
This result was somewhat surprising because we expected authors,
the majority of whom were journalists, to be less accepting of the term
than sources. This expectation was based on two premises: first, most
of the articles were news stories written by journalists, and objectivity
is an important professional value of American journalists.
6
Therefore,
we would expect journalists to avoid using a term coined by someone
who is vociferously opposed to the activities being written about,
except in direct quotations of sources. Second, sources in news stories
about destructive environmental activities are likely to include govern-
ment authorities, such as police officers, prosecuting attorneys, and
FBI agents, who would perhaps be more prone to call the activities
“eco-terrorism”because various branches of government, including
the FBI, have adopted this label.
To determine whether there was a relationship between the type of
article (news, opinion, or letter to the editor) and the nature of the use
of the term (accepting or distancing), we used crosstabulation again,
anticipating that letter writers and guest editorial writers might show
more acceptance of the term than journalists—again, because of jour-
nalists' presumed commitment to objectivity. However, we found
widespread acceptance across all article types: 86.3 percent of uses in
news stories, 84.2 percent of uses in opinion pieces, and 81.8 percent of
uses within letters to the editor indicated acceptance of the term (see
Table 4). A χ
2
test of independence indicated that the correlation
between the type of article and nature of use was not statistically sig-
nificant, meaning that how people used the term, whether accepting it
as the appropriate term or rhetorically distancing themselves from the
term, could not be attributed to the type of article the term appeared
in—nor, by logical extension, to the type of person who wrote the
article, whether a journalist, opinion writer, or letter writer.
Table 3. Crosstabulation of “nature of use”by “who used term”
Who used term
Nature of use Author Source
Accepting 969 (85.5%) 178 (87.3%)
Distancing 164 (14.5%) 26 (12.7%)
1,133 (100.0%) 204 (100.0%)
χ
2
(1, N= 1,337) = 0.424, ns.
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Regarding the question of whether there was an increase in usage
of the term “terrorism”associated with pro-environment activism in
the months following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, we
found that, indeed, there had been. We compared articles in our data
set from a time period of 32 months before 9/11 (January 1999 through
August 2001) with those from a period of 32 months after 9/11
(October 2001 through May 2004) and found that variations of “eco-
terrorism”appeared 294 times in articles from the pre-9/11 period and
451 times in the post-9/11 period.
Discussion of Findings
The results of the content analysis indicate that our concern about
the widespread acceptance and use of the term “eco-terrorism”in rela-
tion to acts of environmental activism was well founded. It appears
that during our study period (1999 through most of 2009), the term
“eco-terrorism”was readily accepted by most who wrote or were
quoted on the topic of environmental activism in US newspapers.
Our first indication that “eco-terrorism”had become the preferred
term in the news media was the great quantitative disparity we found
between the 1,818 articles containing variations on the word “eco-
terrorism”and the 88 articles using the environmental movement's
preferred terms, such as “eco-sabotage,”“eco-arson,”and “ecotage,”
with no mention of “terrorism.”That 82 percent of the articles contain-
ing the term “eco-terrorism”were news stories (as opposed to opinion
pieces or letters to the editor) is an indicator of widespread acceptance
of the term by professional journalists.
Our findings regarding the nature of the use of “eco-terrorism”in
the 594 articles we analyzed provide the strongest indication that the
term has become widely accepted as the appropriate word to describe
destructive acts of environmental activism. More than 85 percent of
Table 4. Crosstabulation of “nature of use”by “type of article”
Nature of use Type of article
News Opinion Letter to the editor
Accepting 925 (86.3%) 186 (84.2%) 36 (81.8%)
Distancing 147 (13.7%) 35 (15.8%) 8 (18.2%)
1,072 (100.0%) 221 (100.0%) 44 (100.0%)
χ
2
(2, N= 1,337) = 1.267, ns.
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uses of the term by authors (primarily journalists), as well as sources,
were accepting of the term rather than distancing. That is, the authors
and sources did nothing rhetorically to indicate that they did not fully
accept the term. And whether the term appeared in a letter to the
editor, an opinion piece, or a news story, it was used in a way that indi-
cated acceptance of the term at least 80 percent of the time.
With this understanding of what has been published in the leading
US newspapers over the last decade—and our suspicions of wide-
spread acceptance and use of the term “terrorism”in relation to acts of
environmental activism validated—we turn to our arguments as to
why calling such acts “eco-terrorism,”a term coined by a political
opponent of environmentalists as a tool to discredit them, is both inac-
curate and unethical.
What's in a Term?
So, what's in a term? Why does the term we use make so much dif-
ference? The answer is simple: The terms we use shape the way we
perceive reality, and that perception shapes our actions. Therefore, the
terms we use have real-world consequences. In the case of “eco-
terrorism”versus “eco-sabotage,”the choice of terms can shape the
public debate and have far-reaching policy implications, including
more jail time for activists such as Gerlach, Meyeroff, and Tubbs.
Rhetorical theorist Kenneth Burke addresses the power that terms
have in shaping debate in Language as Symbolic Action. He argues that
words simultaneously create and terminate meaning and that lan-
guage creates screens—terministic screens—through which we see the
world. He writes: “Even if any given terminology is a reflection of
reality, by its very nature as a terminology it must be a selection of
reality; and to this extent it must function also as a deflection of reality”
(45). In other words, language is always partial; it reveals while it
also conceals. Even the most precise terms leave out much more than
they include. But more importantly, as we select the terms for our
debates, we not only select and deflect reality, we also—through our
selection—predetermine the possible directions of the debate at hand.
Burke writes:
Not only does the nature of our terms affect the nature
of our observations in the sense that the terms direct the
attention to one field rather than another. Also, many of
the “observations”are but implications of the particular ter-
minology in terms of which the observations are made.In
brief, much that we take as observations about “reality”
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may be the spinning out of possibilities implicit in our
particular choice of terms. (46; original emphasis)
Burke makes two important points here. First, when we observe the
world, we are never truly objective; our observations are already
colored by the terms we use. Our terms screen the world, making pos-
sible some meanings and terminating others. Secondly, we are often
unaware of the terministic effect our terms create; therefore, what we
assume to be clear observations of reality are really the “spinning out
of possibilities implicit in our particular choice of terms”(46). We use
language, but at the same time, language uses us.
When coining the term “eco-terrorism”in 1983, Ron Arnold clearly
wanted to shape the debate. In his article titled “Eco-Terrorism,”he
argues for the replacement of the term “eco-sabotage”and the eleva-
tion of property to the same level as human life. By doing so, he
“directs the attention”of his reader to a particular field of possibilities,
thus fundamentally changing the debate and tipping the balance in
favor of large resource-extraction industries and developers. He's not
sinister; he's smart. He understands the principle Burke explicates
above. Ultimately, Arnold succeeded in gaining acceptance for the
term he coined among US legislators, federal judges, journalists, and,
presumably, the general public.
When the idea of terministic screens enters public discourse, it is
often called framing (Lakoff, McCombs, and Bell), and the effect of
framing by the mass media is agenda setting. During the 1968 US presi-
dential campaign, Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw conducted
the first study of agenda setting by the mass media. They surveyed
undecided voters in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, regarding their per-
ception of the key issues of the day. Using the survey responses, the
researchers then ranked the issues. Next, they analyzed a selection of
local and national newspapers, news magazines, and television news-
casts from the weeks preceding the survey, also noting and ranking the
prevalence of various issues covered. Of their research, McCombs later
wrote: “[The] central hypothesis was that the mass media set the
agenda of issues for a political campaign by influencing the salience of
issues among voters. Those issues emphasized in the news come to
be regarded over time as important by members of the public”
(McCombs 2). McCombs's and Shaw's study showed a high degree of
correlation between the rankings in the survey and the rankings in the
content analysis (McCombs and Shaw). In other words, the issues seen
as important by the editors, reporters, and commentators were also
the issues seen as important by the voters who were surveyed. To use
Burke's words, the news media were able to direct “the attention to
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one field rather than another”(46). Since the initial agenda-setting
study by McCombs and Shaw in 1968, more than 400 studies of the
agenda-setting phenomenon have supported their original findings
(McCombs).
It follows, then, that when the majority of news articles on the
subject of environmental activism employ the term “eco-terrorism,”it
influences how the public thinks about such acts—equating them with
far more heinous crimes intended to injure and kill hundreds or thou-
sands of people.
This concerns us because the culture of journalism counts objectiv-
ity among its professional values, and most audience members expect
objectivity from newspapers. Using the term “eco-terrorism,”rather
than a more precise and accurate term to refer to acts that do not harm
or threaten human life, is not particularly objective. It reflects a bias
against acts of sabotage that are committed for one political reason as
opposed to another. This bias is demonstrated by the media's inconsis-
tent use of the term “terrorism.”A case in point is the 2011 tragedy in
Tucson, Arizona. A gunman killed 6 people and wounded 13 others.
A federal judge and a nine-year-old girl were among the dead, and a
congresswoman was shot in the head. However, in the American news
media, the shooter was initially labeled an assassin, but not a terrorist,
even though the event resembled events that have been labeled terror-
ism by authorities and the news media. Although we recognize that it
is impossible to use language without framing the discussion to some
extent, we expect the news media to be self-critical and careful in
choosing terms, knowing that the words they choose shape their audi-
ences' perception of reality. We find such a critical awareness lacking in
the seemingly wide acceptance of the term “eco-terrorism.”
Arson, Vandalism, Eco-tage; Not Terrorism
According to the FBI's definition of terrorism (cited earlier), the
three examples at the beginning of this paper are all terrorism.
However, we have difficulty equating the destruction of property with
the destruction of human beings. There is a fundamental difference
between destroying SUVs and flying an airplane full of people into a
building full of people. Parking a truck bomb in front of a federal
building with the intention of killing both government employees and
their children is not a difference in degree but a difference in kind. To
not draw a distinction between property and people is to lose a distinc-
tion that has been foundational to our democracy.
In Green Rage: Radical Environmentalism and the Unmaking of
Civilization, Christopher Manes argues for the importance of this
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distinction. He notes that despite pressure from industrialists to
“include property as among the most precious natural rights”(181),
such an inclusion has “never been accepted by American jurispru-
dence”(181). He writes:
[Property] was intentionally left out of the Declaration of
Independence's list of inalienable rights—“Life, Liberty
and the pursuit of Happiness”—since Jefferson had a
genuine distrust of the mercantile tenor behind property
law. It failed to appear in the Preamble to the
Constitution, alongside justice, tranquility, general
welfare, and liberty, as one of the purposes of the docu-
ment. It emerges as a right for the first time in the
Fourteenth Amendment's due-process clause. Even here,
however, American jurisprudence never recognized
property as an inalienable right, but rather as a “bundle
of rights”(to use the Supreme Court's words) and
responsibilities. (181)
The US government regulates individual property rights to a much
greater degree than it regulates individuals. Whether it's a zoning law
that doesn't allow one to put an adult bookstore in a residential neigh-
borhood or the regulation of tree harvesting on private timberland, the
state clearly sees property rights much differently than individual
rights. To blur the line between people and property—as the FBI now
does in its definition of eco-terrorism—is to go against long-standing
tradition. It also tips the political balance even further in favor of cor-
porations and large property holders—something industry has sought
throughout American history.
Ron Arnold would like to expand the definition even further. In
Eco-terror: The Violent Agenda to Save Nature, he argues that peaceful
protest involving obstruction or interference should also be considered
eco-terrorism. Arnold writes, “Obstruction is not a peaceful act.
Obstruction is an act of physical coercion, an act of violence against
another, regardless [sic] how passively performed”(121). Under such
adefinition, sit-ins, peace marches that slow traffic, and other means
of peaceful protest would be considered terrorism. If we accept this
definition, where do we draw the line? What type of dissent would not
be considered terrorism?
The danger of this slippery slope becomes apparent when put in
the context of the American Civil Rights Movement. If Arnold and
other antienvironmental activists had their way, Dr. Martin Luther
King, Jr. would have spent a much longer time in the Birmingham jail;
he would have not just been convicted of violating Bull Conner's
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injunction against protest, he would have received an increased sen-
tence under the terrorism-enhancement law. For Arnold, Dr. King's
acts of obstruction and interference would have qualified as terrorism.
The closer one looks at the expanding definition of terrorism that
Arnold proposes, the more of a problem it becomes.
Another important distinction between environmental activists
and genuine terrorists is core philosophy. Whether it's Timothy
McVeigh or Osama bin Laden, sacred regard for life is clearly absent in
genuine terrorists. For environmental activists, however, the sacred-
ness of life is the motivating idea for their actions.
Environmental activism has gleaned much from writers and
thinkers such as Edward Abbey, Gary Snyder, Paul Shepard, Carolyn
Merchant, Arne Naess, and others. Two unifying themes of these
writers are a belief in the sacredness of the Earth and making a distinc-
tion between humans and property. Edward Abbey's The Monkey
Wrench Gang is a good example. Edward Abbey played an important
role at some of the early Earth First! rallies. In Confessions of an
Eco-Warrior, while recalling the origins of Earth First!, Dave Foreman
writes that one of the goals of the group was “to inspire others to carry
out activities straight from the pages of The Monkey Wrench Gang”(18).
In Abbey's novel, a small and colorful band of Westerners tries to slow
the development of the Four Corners area through eco-tage—destroy-
ing road-building equipment, pulling up survey stakes, blowing up
bridges. Yet, the tension between the destruction of property and the
risk to people runs throughout, and Abbey uses the novel to ask if
human casualties are justified in reaching an eco-centric worldview.
Abbey's answer is “no,”and in the novel, he draws a clear distinction
between people and property.
7
A second example of the importance of preserving life comes from
the deep ecology movement, a core inspiration for radical environmen-
talism. In the preface to Deep Ecology: Living as If Nature Mattered,a
book attempting to articulate the movement's thinking, Bill Devall and
George Sessions state their purpose as being to promote “the dance of
unity of humans, plants, animals, the Earth”(ix). In several articles,
Bron Taylor argues that because of this underlying assumption about
the sacredness of life, any actions from radical environmental groups
with intent to maim or kill are highly unlikely (“Religion,”
“Tributaries,”“Threat”).
In fact, there is no documented evidence of harm coming to
humans as a result of actions by radical environmentalists. In 1998,
Taylor wrote, “Despite the recurrent debates about violence within
radical environmental subcultures and the refusal by many activists to
rule it out, there is little evidence of violence being deployed to cause
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injuries or death”(“Religion”3). Taylor has been following the move-
ment since 1998, and in a recent e-mail exchange, he assured us that,
even with the rise in domestic terrorism and terrorist threats from
abroad, there is still no evidence of the environmental movement com-
mitting acts that cause injury or death (“Ecoterrorism”).
Mike Roselle is one of the founders of Earth First!. When asked
about the term “eco-terrorism”by Christopher Manes, Roselle
responded with his usual wit: “To use the word ‘terrorism’for mon-
keywrenching [e.g., disabling heavy equipment] is to totally cheapen
the real meaning of what terrorism is all about, and what people do
when they are really desperate”(Manes 177). Manes paraphrases
Roselle: “Real terrorists would not be spiking trees . . . but spiking
Merlot”(177).
Even Arnold seems to sense the difficulty in equating “eco-tage”
with “terrorism.”In the 1983 article in which he coined the term “eco-
terrorism,”he writes: “The very idea of eco-terrorism may seem to
some a preposterous anti-environmentalist invention designed to dis-
credit the programs of established groups such as the Sierra Club and
Friends of the Earth. Scoffers have pointed out that industrial vandal-
ism is nothing new in the United States”(“Eco-Terrorism”32). Yet, he
fails to answer this anticipated objection with even one example of an
injury caused by an “eco-terrorist.”Arnold argues that the practice of
radical environmental action is becoming more common and that
mainstream environmental groups are looking the other way. He
implies that there may be some threat of injury, but his article makes it
clear that the major threat is to property. Arnold does perform a nice
sleight of hand, however: he substitutes “eco-terrorism”for “eco-tage,”
and sums up the threat as follows: “Eco-terrorism is a twofold weapon
in achieving coercive command and control: it first burdens private
enterprise with economic loss and psychological intimidation and sec-
ondly provides the midrange political pressure groups with a perspec-
tive by which to judge their own proposals as comparatively
reasonable”(“Eco-Terrorism”35). He does not argue that environmen-
tal activism presents a substantial threat to life; he does not write of
why the laws against obstruction, trespassing, vandalism, sabotage,
and arson are not sufficient and appropriate; he simply—and success-
fully—makes the switch.
The difficulty of accepting Arnold's term is illustrated by the 2010
BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The breadth and depth of this disaster
is still unknown, and it puts pressure on the definition of terrorism. A
small group of activists can commit arson or vandalism, not hurt nor
maim any human, and receive long sentences under terrorism-
enhancement statutes; yet a multinational corporation can kill 11
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workers, destroy a vast ecosystem, and ruin the livelihoods of thou-
sands, and—so far, anyway—no charges are filed against the responsi-
ble parties. Why is one terrorism and the other just business as usual?
We would argue that neither is terrorism. As Geoffrey Nunberg
notes, the definition of terrorism has become so broad that it “could
include anything from hijacking an airplane to injuring government
property, breaking into a government computer for any reason, or
hitting the secretary of agriculture with a pie”(54). The definition has
become so broad that the word is, in a way, useless. Nunberg laments
the broadening of the term, asserting “when things happen that merit
the full force of our outrage, a legacy of careless usage can leave us at a
loss for words”(54). If everything becomes terrorism, then nothing is.
So, for the very fact that terrorism is real, we need to define it more
narrowly.
Terrorism: A More Accurate Definition
To define terrorism more accurately, we must think about what
distinguishes it from other crimes. What the law now calls acts of “eco-
terror”already have very specific, useful labels—obstruction, trespass-
ing, vandalism, sabotage, arson—and specific criminal penalties. We
would argue that the acts of environmental activists have much more in
common with the fifteenth-century Dutch Luddites, who rebelled
against their own forced obsolescence through mechanization by sabo-
taging textile machines—literally placing their wooden shoe, or sabot,
in the gears of automated looms—than with the 9/11 hijackers or the
Oklahoma City bombers. Gerlach, Meyerhoff, and Tubbs committed
illegal acts but did so in a way that did not pose significant risk to
human life. The same cannot be said of Timothy McVeigh or Osama bin
Laden. Although all definitions have inherent problems, an accurate
definition of terrorism must include a blatant disregard for life. Bron
Taylo r w ri tes :
Blurring such distinctions by placing non-violent block-
ades, loud, “scary”and obnoxious protests, and injury-
risking sabotage all under the “terrorism”label misleads
the public about the social movements engaged in them.
This can also exacerbate social conflicts by fanning fear
and hatred, thereby encouraging and promoting a
violent reaction by vigilantes and even by law enforce-
ment authorities themselves. (“Religion”25)
In short, by extending the definition of terrorism to include, as the
FBI does, violence against property for a political purpose or to
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“intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any
segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives”
(United States of America), we take three very real risks.
First, we risk stifling legitimate political dissent, whether it is
protest to protect the environment or for another cause. Under this
definition, lunch-counter sit-ins as implemented during the American
Civil Rights Movement could be seen as attempts to intimidate or
coerce government, and participants could be prosecuted as terrorists.
Second, such a broad definition diverts resources away from larger
threats. In a post-9/11 world, no one is denying the real threat of terror-
ism, but the danger of a bomb in Times Square is quite different from
even the worst property crimes being called “eco-terror.”Third, we
already have adequate terms and penalties for property crimes—
obstruction, trespassing, vandalism, sabotage, arson—and by classify-
ing property crimes as terrorism, the term becomes less useful.
Misused, extreme terms can blur reality. If all of our political oppo-
nents become Nazis, we forget the horrors of the Holocaust; if all
crimes become terrorism, we forget the horrors of Oklahoma City and
9/11; we fail to see the difference between vandalizing heavy equip-
ment and using commercial airplanes as cruise missiles.
Conclusion
As we began this project, we had a hunch that the term “eco-
terrorism”had become widely, and uncritically, accepted. Our content
analysis indicates that our initial hunch was correct. The majority of
the newspaper articles we studied used the word “eco-terrorism”
rather than, or in addition to, more moderate terms. Additionally, we
found widespread acceptance of the term “eco-terrorism”as the
appropriate word choice. It seems that most who use the term do so
uncritically.
As we researched the history of the term “eco-terrorism,”we
learned how it came into general use—coined in 1983 in a libertarian
magazine, inserted into federal law in 1988 as a result of libertarian
lobbying, becoming part of the FBI's definition of terrorism by 2002,
and readily accepted by the news media by 2009.
We have argued that the terms we choose matter. As Burke, Lakoff,
McCombs, and others have noted, the language we use shapes the
reality we inhabit. Therefore, we must be as accurate and precise as
our language allows. We believe the terms “obstruction,”“trespass-
ing,”“vandalism,”“sabotage,”and “arson”more accurately and pre-
cisely describe the actions currently labeled “eco-terrorism.”
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We want to be clear: while we share a deep concern about human
impact on the natural environment with many of those accused of
“eco-terrorism,”we do not condone eco-tage. As firm believers in the
democratic process, we hold that acts of civil disobedience, or direct
action, should be used only as a last resort, when all other democratic
remedies have been exhausted.
To clearly define terrorism, and make it a useful term, we must
draw the line at human life. If an act seeks to destroy human life, or
coerce or intimidate through the threat to human life, it is terrorism.
However, if an act destroys property and is careful not to injure or kill,
it may be vandalism or arson, but it is not terrorism. To define it other-
wise is inaccurate, unfair, and as Nunberg points out, takes the teeth
out of the word “terrorism”for the times we really need it.
Acknowledgments
The authors wish to thank Chelsea Langevin and Sterling Scott for
their assistance with this study.
NOTES
1. To date, we have no evidence that any act labeled as “eco-terrorism”has
destroyed critical infrastructure or key resources.
2. “Eco-tage”is the preferred term among radical environmentalists
when referring to acts that damage property in order to halt environmental
destruction.
3. We expect more objectivity from news stories because journalists are
trained to “distinguish between advocacy and news reporting”and to serve
justice and democracy “by seeking truth and providing a fair and comprehen-
sive account of events and issues,”as stated in the Society of Professional
Journalists’Code of Ethics (SPJ Code of Ethics). We understand that objectivity
is never entirely achievable and, further, that not all media organizations make
an effort to segregate news reporting from editorializing, but most US newspa-
pers still do strive to keep the writer's opinion out of news reports. See note 6
for more on objectivity.
4. Detailed information regarding the coding instrument and the test of
intercoder reliability can be obtained by contacting the authors.
5. News Reporting and Writing, a textbook written by faculty at the presti-
gious University of Missouri School of Journalism and used to train journalists
across the country, states, “The rules that mainstream journalists follow in
attempting to arrive at the best obtainable version of the truth—to report accu-
rately, fairly and without bias—are commonly summarized in the concept of
objectivity. Objectivity has been and still is accepted as a working credo by
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most American journalists, as well as by students and teachers of journalism”
(Brooks et al. 15).
6. This tension—and evidence that human casualties are beyond the point
Abbey's characters are willing to venture—appears in both Chapter 14, “Work i n g
on the Railroad,”and Chapter 28, “Into the Heat: The Chase Continues.”
7. Some may argue that actions such as the Ku Klux Klan's burning of
crosses on someone's lawn should not be seen as terrorism. But the difference
is that the KKK has a long and documented history of committing murder as a
way of following through on their more symbolic acts.
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