The things that Lexis-Nexis searches turn up often boggle even my cynical mind. The Rocky Mountain News, for example, ran a very brief editorial item on September 16 about the philosophical connections between animal rights and anti-globalization activists and the terrorists who caused so much grief on September 11.
The Rocky Mountain News was outraged by a comment that appeared in a Wall Street Journal story which interviewed anti-globalization activists for their reaction to the bombing. One San Francisco-area activist actually told the Journal,
We’re supercritical of the terrorists’ scorn for human life. Why couldn’t they done what they did on a Sunday? There are always ways to make allowances for people’s lives.
The Rocky Mountain News comments that, “Anyone who suggests that shattering the World Trade Center with a hijacked jet on a Sunday night might be considered a concession to civilized norms needs to be under the care of a psychiatrist.”
Indeed, one would suspect the validity and accuracy of the Wall Street Journal quote were it not so completely consistent with the direct action philosophy — as long as it only hurts property, the activists claim, it is not really violence. If the terrorists had managed to take out the World Trade Center without taking any lives but their own, this would have been just as valid a political statement as fire bombing laboratories or smashing in the windows of a local McDonald’s.
One of the upshots of the World Trade Center attack is likely to be an increased media emphasis on all acts of terrorism. Animal rights and environmental terrorists have largely been able to fly under the radar of national attention. The destruction of buildings at the Vail Ski resort received national attention for a few days, but for the most part terrorist acts by groups such as the Animal Liberation Front or Earth Liberation Front have been largely ignored by national media, having been relegated to being local affairs.
Hopefully, this will begin to change as the media and public realizes that the fear and trepidation many of us now feel is something that many medical researchers, animal agriculturalists and others have been living with for years.
Source:
Bankrupt explanation. The Rocky Mountain News, September 18, 2001.