The Protocols of the Elders of Earthfirst
The "Earth First Death Manual" is an instruction manual on laying death traps for off-road motorcyclists, basically a lovely little work of misinformation designed to inspire gullible motorcyclists to hate environmentalists.
Off-Road.com presents this material as an example of just how far radical Eco-Terrorist orginizations [sic] are willing to go to stop "off-roaders" from using our public lands. The "disclaimer" about "enemy motorcyclists invading America" fools no one. This pamphlet is in circulation among members of "Earth First", the EDF, and others. It was written under the psudonym [sic] "el Ranchero; a known alias of the Unabomber. It should be noted that The Unabomber has been irefutably [sic] tied in to Earth First by the FBI.
[...] We present it so that the world can be made aware of just how violent the radical Eco groups really are, compaired [sic] to the "friendly & non-violent" facade which they attempt to present publicly.
[...] Remember, this is an Earth First! publication, regardless of how they commonly deny their extreme and teroristic [sic] history.
The FBI never connected the Unabomber and Earth First; however, ABC news made such a claim spuriously.
And the EDF is the Environmental Defense Fund, a scientist-heavy advocacy organization that calls on its members to send money and write letters, basically as conservative an environmental organization as there is. That's not intended to slight their work: I've been a member in the past. I just mean to say that characterizing them as a "radical Eco-Terrorist organization" isn't just wrong, it's moronic even as propaganda.
(Via Captain Rooba's Riposte)
=v= Captain Rooba took umbrage to our take on his blog entry, going so far as to call it "Hate Mail." I posted the following in response, as a comment on his site.
=v= This hoax was perpetrated by somebody named Norm Lenhart, a person who touts membership in the Sahara Club. The Sahara Club specializes in dirty tricks, including the distribution of a very similar hoax called the "Earth First! Terrorism Manual" in 1990. Lenhart first mentioned the "Death Manual" on Usenet in late 1996, claiming to have obtained it from an ad in the Earth First! Journal, placed by somebody named "el Ranchero," which he further claimed to be a known alias of the Unabomber.
I was a journalist for an environmental organization in 1996, and we maintained an environmental library, so I looked through our Journal archive and did not find any ads for the "Death Manual" or even "el Ranchero." Others did a similar search, with the same result. When asked to cite which issue and page of the Journal this manual was supposedly ordered from, Lenhart could not provide an answer. He and his cohort simply responded with Usenet-style flaming and accusations.
As a journalist, I tend not to trust information that has not been independently corroborated. If this "Death Manual" could be ordered from the Journal, surely there would be another copy of it available somewhere in the world, but so far the sole source of this thing is Norm Lenhart.
Likewise for the claim that "el Ranchero" is the Unabomber. If this was true, surely there'd be another source of this piece of information, but there isn't. And surely the FBI could have tracked him down through a publicly-placed ad, but they didn't.
Not to belabor the point, but the same goes for the "Terrorism Manual." Again, the only source for this was and is the Sahara Club.
=v= You say you haven't found an EF! denunciation of the "Death Manual," and suggest a "retraction." Do you similarly expect Britney Spears to retract claims in the tabloid press that she's pregnant with the offspring of Bigfoot and Princess Di? Bear in mind that Ms. Spears has millions of dollars and a well-paid publicity staff, whereas EF! is a bunch of activists sitting in trees, mostly unaware that some Usenet flamer is making up nonsense about them.
It goes without saying that nobody should be expected to "retract" something they weren't responsible for in the first place, of course, but you should know acts of violence against people is in fact something that EF! activists denounce on a routine basis.
I think you ought to reconsider your stance that EF! should denounce the content of hoaxes, because that just gives the content more credibility than it deserves. In many ways, the whole point of this sort of hoax is to make people waste time and energy.
The 1990 "Terrorism Manual" hoax certainly succeeded at that, and various EF! activists expended too much time and energy denouncing and debunking it. Should they then start all over when another hoax comes along six years later? And then again for the next hoax, and the one after that?
Also, do you really think denouncing something does any good? People believe what they want to believe. Given a reference to a substantive argument that EF! has nothing to do with the Unabomber, you dismissed it with "Umm... Ok." You seem willing to believe environmentalists would print such a manual, yet skeptical that anti-environmentalists would do so. Why?
=v= You write that you will "never understand why anyone, activists or not would resort to injuring, maiming, or killing anyone to prove a point." EF! activists agree with you, and in fact have never injured, maimed, or killed anyone. This fact is very inconvenient for those who wish to depict EF! and other groups as "eco-terrorists," and is why they've made a number of attempts -- all failed -- to associate EF! with the Unabomber.
=v= I don't think my message, or Zed's, qualifies as "hate mail." I also wasn't trying to be condescending, just sincere: I truly am sorry when an ugly hoax spreads and causes damage to the reputations of innocent people.
I also had no idea that Zed had made a comment when I sent you mine, as there was something (that DoS attack?) interfering with your comment mechanism. Nor did Zed have any idea that I'd had a hand in dealing with this hoax five years earlier!
Posted by Jym on May 29 2002 16:14