EDITORIAL: Beware the radical green extreme
The Trump administration OK’d the Keystone pipeline and now two East Coast pipeline projects have also cleared key regulatory challenges. But what appears to be an antifa environmental faction vows to “resort to sabotage” in order to “defeat” the pipelines.
Their tactics serve as an example of the extremism embraced by some factions of the environmental left.
As the Washington Examiner notes, the two projects — the Mountain Valley Pipeline and the Atlantic Coast Pipeline — will run along the mid-Atlantic Coast, transporting natural gas obtained through innovative drilling techniques. According to estimates by the planners, the pipelines would combine to create more than 25,000 construction jobs, nearly $7 billion in capital spending, hundreds of millions of dollars in annual energy cost savings and tens of millions of dollars in annual tax revenue.
Despite the projects’ economic benefits — and the fact that the National Transportation Safety Board and the U.S. Department of Transportation say that natural gas pipelines have the best safety record of any energy delivery system in the nation — antifa groups have declared war against them.
The group, which describes itself as a “digital community center for anarchist, anti-fascist, autonomous anti-capitalist and anti-colonial movements” is known as It’s Going Down. Like antifa, which is short is for anti-fascist, the Examiner explains that It’s Going Down is a loosely configured network of activists opposed to capitalism.
As the Examiner explains, the group recently posted an anonymous article online that is directed against the Virginia pipelines and hints at the group’s apparent willingness to physically attack the infrastructure transporting natural gas, as well as to continually harass public officials who support the projects.
The post details the efforts of activists who trespassed on the private property of a Virginia Water Control Board official and draped a banner from her front porch that read “Stop Poisoning Our Community” and “No ACP” and “No MVP,” in reference to the pipelines.
“When we have done everything we can to prevent this pipeline within legal means,” the post threatens, “we will resort to sabotage and we will defeat this symbol of domination, exploitation, globalized capital (and) earth pillage.”
The post also pledges to bring “Fire to the Prisons, Fire to the Pipelines, Fire to the Fascists.”
Yes, much of this may be just infantile, overheated rhetoric. But these threats must be taken seriously. While instances of so-called “eco-terrorism” dropped significantly in the past decade after a series of high-profile prosecutions, the radicals of It’s Going Down offer a reminder that the mainstream environmental movement has spawned a number of darker and more dangerous offshoots prepared to engage in violence to advance their agenda.
