EARTH FIRST! EXPOSE

EARTH FIRST! — FAKE ENVIRONMENTALIST CULT

History Earth First! was founded in 1980 by a group of wilderness preservation activists of whom the most prominent was Dave Foreman. Its stated mission was to call attention to ongoing damage to America's forests and wildlife and interfere - sometimes by sabotage of logging equipment - with the destruction of the environment, EF! rapidly became known for raucous, high-profile protests and radical, inflammatory rhetoric.

In 1990, during a period of disarray caused by the arrest of Dave Foreman and other leaders, a coup was engineered and the control of the movement was hijacked by a leftist group led by the late Judi Bari. All of the original group of leaders have since left the movement. For the past 10 years Earth First! has been highly manipulated by covert leaders for purposes which have nothing to do with protection of the environment, although the rhetoric is still employed for recruitment purposes.

Structure of the movement Earth First! (the ! is part of the spelling ) exits as a network of local groups and chapters, some of which use other names, coordinated by a periodical, The Earth First! Journal, various newsletters, websites and a series of annual or semi-annual encampments called "Rendezvous". The big event of the year is the "Round River Rendezvous" held each summer in a different location in the nation's national forests. Smaller regional rendezvous are held throughout the year in various parts of the country. Each winter an "Activists Conference" is held which is not open to the public or rank and file members. It is at this secret leader's meeting that the real decisions are made. Additionally, there are, at any given time from five to twenty semi-permanent "Base Camps" in various wilderness and national forest areas, sometimes on Indian reservations with the permission of a few tribe members. The base camps are allegedly for opposing some ecological problems in the area, but are, in fact, for indoctrination and milieu control.

Additionally, various projects exists, such as video production, road shows which travel the country for recruiting purposes, and fundraising concerts by Earth First! musicians. The journal office is the unofficial headquarters of the movement.

Numbers The annual rendezvous usually has between 300 and 400 people. Regional rendezvous about 80 to 100. A typical base camp will have 10 to 50 long-term residents, but may grow to several hundred during an active campaign. The journal circulation is about 7,000. Attendance at the annual Activists' Conference for the leadership is normally about 75 people.

Demographics EF! is mostly white, middle class and most members have at least some higher education. I have met one black person - a college student of middle class background - one Polynesian, several Orientals and quite a few Native Americans, usually American Indian Movement activists. EF! is always trying to establish relationships with Indians and frequently condemns other environmental groups which object to ecological damage done by Indian tribes.

About 50% of EF!ers are of college age. There are a few working-class people, I met one Gay Rights activist and one Christian Fundamentalist. A slim majority identify themselves as Pagans, but religion is not usually a major motivating factor. Some families with children show up at every rendezvous despite the anti-child propaganda, but a large number of couples of breeding age conscientiously refrain from reproducing due to concerns about overpopulation.

Women are a majority in EF! and hold many if not most of the real power roles. Due to the guilt-tripping and denigration frequently aimed at men regarding male domination, most men accept a subordinate role.

Leadership The official EF! ideology is that there are no leaders; EF! is non-hierarchical, non-authoritarian, grass-roots, spontaneous, and "a movement, not an organization." In fact, there is a cadre of full-time professional activist who attend the annual organizer's conference which other people are not allowed to attend, write most of the articles in the journal, give most of the workshops at the rendezvous, put out the press releases, organize the demonstrations, give the interviews, and in general run things. These people also collect the donations and do not have to account for any of the funds to anybody.

The leaders practice a covert style of leadership based on manipulation, guilt trips, chronic anxiety about infiltrators, labeling of dissenters as provocateurs, secret deals, and other crytomachiavellan methods of obtaining uninformed consent to their decisions. Group meetings usually reach a "consensus" agreeing with whatever the leaders put forth due to the assertiveness and seeming self-confidence of the individuals involved, the well orchestrated support from shills in the meeting, and the control of speaker's time and order by the chairperson. The material lifestyle of most of the leaders does not differ significantly from that of the rank and file.

Funding: Earth First! receives large donations from a small number of wealthy supporters, and numerous small donations. The admission fees to events, sale of the journal, sale of trinkets and other items such as books and bumper stickers, and admission to rock concerts put on by the stable of movement minstrels also bring in money. Many young members are financially supported by their parents.

Since the group is not incorporated and has no legal existence, there is no public record of its sources or amount of income - or expenditures. There is no accountability and some leaders are reported to have skimmed off hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations.

Psychological manipulation Members are kept in a state of tension and anxiety by a steady diet of articles in the journal about how bad the state of the world is and the sheer overwhelming numbers of environmental problems. Also by numerous articles about FBI infiltrators, police brutality against non-violent protesters, grand jury investigations of environmental activists, and repressive legislation being passed. Most of these articles are factual and accurate, but the net result is to overwhelm. At the rendezvous fear is constantly inculcated by warnings about the possibility of attack by local rednecks or police raids. Many Earth First!ers use a false name for security reasons.

 

Guilt is another pervasive state of mind. Earth First!ers constantly guilt-trip each other about such normal everyday actions as using toilet paper, eating hamburgers, having children ( parents are disparaged as "Breeders") and exhaling CO2.

Any criticism of an Indian is denounced as racism. Men are constantly made to feel ashamed of normal male sex-drive and attitudes toward women; while women are guilt-tripped if they have or want children.

Consumption of large amounts of alcohol is an Earth First! tradition and free beer is frequently provided. People stay up until almost daybreak around the campfire chanting " Fuck the Human Race! Fuck the Human Race!" and " Millions are living who should be dead! Millions are living who should be dead!"

Enemies Earth First! is in constant conflict with other environmental groups such as Greenpeace, The Sierra Club, The Wilderness Society and others who are regarded as "Sell-Outs" and "Corporate Greenwashers." On the other hand, EF! is also quick to condemn the Sea Shepherds as "too fanatical." The bottom line would seem to be the bottom line; other environmental groups, no matter what they do, are rivals for recruits and donations.

Political ideology For an avowedly anarchistic movement, Earth First! is surprisingly quick to insist the police take action when Earth First! is attacked. They file lawsuits, urge people to "Write your representative in Washington," and constantly cite laws they say are being violated by various government agencies. Genuine anarchists would not expect help from the police or use the courts to redress grievances. They would not see officials in Washington as their representatives or expect then to respond to letters from the public. Although EF! pays lip service to the concept of direct action by concerned citizens, in practice its policy seems to be aimed at influencing laws and their enforcement.

Recruitment Earth First! is not in fact primarily about protecting the environment. The environment is used as a recruiting tool to attract people with an interest in nature and protecting wilderness areas into a movement they would not otherwise join. The actual focus of Earth First! is much more on left-wing social reform than on environmental protection but most new recruits have no initial interest in social reform issues so they are told EF! is involved in wilderness issues. They are also told that EF! is the most militant, radical, extremist environmental group around. It is not.

On a scale of 1 to 10 EF! is about a 6, several other groups- Sea Shepherds, Earth Liberation Front, Animal Liberation Front, Ocean Defense, World Whale Police are much more militant. Rhetoric about how radical EF! is is mainly for the purpose of attracting young hotheads who fantasize about being Eco-Warriors. Once involved with EF! however, they will find all their energy going into dramatic but harmless and ineffective forms of protest that do nothing to save forests but do bring in donations and new recruits.

Base Camps Frequently solicitations appear in the EarthFirst! journal and elsewhere for volunteers to come and stay at a base camp while taking part in a campaign in the area against some logging or development project. What participants are never told is that the camp is "Camp A" and another secret "Camp B" exists in the vicinity. Recruits arriving at Camp A are observed, talked to, and evaluated for up to several weeks, until it is decided if they can be trusted. Then they are either sent on to Camp B or, if they are regarded as "wing nuts" or possible infiltrators, they are kept in Camp A as cannon fodder to be arrested in protests; and never learn of the existence of Camp B.

Expulsion As an environmental activist group EF! attracts a large number of people who are interested in helping to protect the environment but are psychologically not good material for a mind control cult like EF! to assimilate easily. Over the past 10 years over 1,000 people have been forced out of EF!, usually by false accusations of being an FBI infiltrator or advocating violence. False accusations of racism or sexism are also used to marginalize and discredit non-conformists and force them to leave.

Persons who have left the movement for whatever reason are routinely vilified and denounced, especially of they publicly criticize EF!.

Media control A media committee exists and only members of it are allowed to speak to the press. One of them will escort any reporter who shows up and make sure he hears only the official version of EF!. At demonstrations there is a "Wing-nut Patrol" whose job is to keep unindoctrinated supporters who turn up from giving the "wrong" impression to the press or bystanders.

Capitalism Earth First! seems to be strongly opposed to capitalism but not at all interested in socialism as a replacement for it. Capitalism and big corporations are demonized as the root cause of all environmental problems and any suggestion that some environmental problems are due to other causes or predate the rise of capitalism is ignored and if persisted in will be strongly resisted. But unlike socialists, communists, Marxists, Maoists, etc., EF! ignores any prescription of what to do after the revolution. Capitalists serve as a needed whipping boy and scapegoat- any movement needs an enemy to hate - and EF!'s hatred of corporations is populist, not Marxist.

Non-Violence Earth First! is avowedly non-violent. This is emphasized to a pathological extreme. The non-violence is however, selective; Native peoples and third-world revolutionary groups who use violence are supported and never criticized, although, White American environmentalists are expected to remain pacifists even at the cost of their lives in situations where most people would consider self-defense justified. Aside from the racism, this policy serves to weed out and eliminate individuals too aggressive to submit easily to indoctrination and control.

Earth First! considers itself to have a right to control the use of public forest land and to close an area to the public when it chooses. A person camping in such an area preempted by EF! may find his tent, sleeping bags, and other equipment stolen or vandalized.

Earth First! does not engage in actual physical violence but frequently provokes attacks on EF!ers in order to claim a position of innocent victim. In one such incident in California a young EF! member was killed by an irate logger prodded beyond endurance by EF! taunts and verbal harassment (a tactic practiced by training camps conducted by EF!).

Extortion: In 1990 bomb exploded in the car of Earth First! leader Judi Bari. She was seriously injured, she later filed a suit against the FBI for bungling the investigation. The suit is still working through the courts. The FBI was investigating EF! at that time and can not risk a court order to disclose identities of informers since that would destroy their credibility with informers in hundreds of other cases who would no longer trust the FBI to keep their identities secret. To avoid scuttling hundreds of other cases and permanently hurting their effectiveness, the FBI will be forced to settle out of court and give EF! several millions of dollars of taxpayer's money!