FBI Vs. ELF

Officials from the FBI and ATF recently described eco-terrorism as being one of the greatest internal security threats to the US. They mentioned the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) and the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) in particular as dangerous groups. I suppose this may be proper, given the increasing militancy and occasional calls for violence one finds in radical environmentalist circles. But I have to wonder if they’re really as dangerous as, say, far right groups like the Hammerskin Nation and the Army of God, both of which have been implicated in several murders. Neither of those groups were mentioned in the media coverage of the recent testimony. I’ll try not to slip into paranoid leftist thinking here, but I’ll note that both the ELF and ALF inflict serious economic damage on corporate entities, and have therefore targeted with extreme prejudice by law enforcement agencies. The Hammerskin Nation and the Army of God, on the other hand, only kill people.