>check out the more militant earth crisis, associated with Animal Liberation
>Front. their sXe lyrics valorize the earth/animals/nature as innocent being
>and humans as defilers. some of the local militant sXe's would, similarly,
>defend bombing local hotdog plants and jeopardizing people's lives because
>they argued that the earth was first and more important than people. you
>know the rave.
>
>used to have my students read the lyrics. right after a discussion of the
>campus anti abortionists rallied aroudn justifying murdering abortionists
>and the death penalty with their spiel about the "innocence" of unborn
>human life.
Going out on a limb -- especially given my paltry knowledge of the topic -- I wonder if any scholar of "politics and culture" (especially in the psychoanalytic Marxist tradition) has tried to explore homologies between the worldview of animal rights and envrionmental ultras and certain varieties of early Twentieth Century French anarcho-syndicalism which shaded into fascism. Namely, I'm thinking of Sorel. I can't quite put the pieces together, but my conceptualization runs along these lines: a politics laden with a symbolism venerating violence in the name of those others who can't speak for themselves, which soon degenerates into action for the sake of action. Sorel degenerated from a purveyor of the "myth of the general strike" into a source of ideological inspiration for Mussolini, if I'm not mistaken. Even if I'm not mistaken, my "insight" may be way wide of the mark, however. So sue me ...
John Gulick