During recent Senate Committee hearings, senior FBI and ATF officials suggested that they’ve gotten over that whole Al Qaeda thing (it’s so 2002). Apparently all the hip kids these days are instead training their institutionally paranoid sights on – get this – animal rights activists and environmental groups in the U.S., whom they say are terrorists, every bit as much as the Osama Boys. Hard to believe? Yeh, especially because it’s ridiculous. Not only is Al Qaeda still a bigger bully than current scapegoats Animal Liberation Front and Earth Liberation Front (we promise!), but even when we limit the scope to just our own country, it’s not these left liberals and their orgs – ultra-sassy, edgy, and occasionally explosive as they are – who are doing the most damage. Not by a longshot.

Senators Jeffords and Lautenberg wisely reined in hearing attendees by reminding them that protesting is not terrorism and that, actually, ALF and ELF haven’t hurt anybody, ever. The FBI and ATF have to admit this is true. The March 2005 edition of the CQ Homeland Security, an online publication of that beltway fave Congressional Quarterly, reportedly notes that a draft of Homeland Security’s Integrated Planning Guidance for this year says that these groups have only “attacked scientific laboratories using animals for experimentation, as well as construction sites,” and that actually, they’re just worried because “[even though] publicly ALF and ELF promote nonviolence toward human life . . . some members may escalate their attacks.” Really? Well, we know that “may” means “maybe, maybe not,” and/or “it hasn’t happened yet, and quite possibly never will.”

The real clincher, though, is what and who the Feds aren’t worried about, much less even bothering to mention at Senate hearings. Statistically, it happens to be the pro-lifers, anti-environmentalists, white supremists, and gay-bashers (read: Bush voters) who are the real domestic terrorists here, the really super-violent ones. The damage they inflict far outweighs that of the tree and whale huggers. Duh. The Christian Science Monitor got this one so right:

It is remarkable that there is no mention of the anti-abortion, militia, racist and homophobic groups that do not “publicly … promote nonviolence,” but rather openly advocate the killing of blacks, gays, abortion providers and government workers. Moreover, these groups have acted on their words.

Fascist, racist and anti-abortion groups are responsible for nearly all the terrorist attacks in the United States—with the exception of September 11, 2001—over the past two decades. These include the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, which killed 168 people, as well as bombings of abortion clinics and assassination of abortion providers, and multiple cases of individual rampages, like that of Benjamin Smith, who went on a killing spree directed at blacks, Jews and immigrants in 1999.

In several of the mass shootings at US high schools, including the two worst cases, at Columbine High School in 2000 and at Red Lake High School in rural Minnesota last month, the youth who carried out the murder-suicides were influenced by neo-Nazi propaganda which they accessed on the Internet.

The existence of a sizeable support network for right-wing terrorists is indicated by the ability of Eric Rudolph, who carried out bombings at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta and at abortion clinics in Atlanta and Birmingham, Alabama, to stay on the loose for more than five years. Captured in 2003 in rural North Carolina, Rudolph accepted a plea bargain last month which lifted the threat of execution and allowed him to remain silent on how and by whom he was sustained during his years on the run.

A right-wing terrorist is also believed responsible for the 2001 anthrax mailings which killed five people and terrorized the US capital for several months. No one has been arrested, but the choice of targets—several media outlets and two leading Senate Democrats—and the method of attack strongly suggest an ultra-rightist. Only a relative handful of biological warfare specialists, closely tied to military and intelligence circles, could have had both the skills and the access to anthrax required for those attacks.

Anthrax mailings—all of them spurious so far—have been used frequently as terror threats against abortion clinics. A Pennsylvania anti-abortion activist was convicted of making hundreds of such fake mailings in 2003.

Also in 2003, a Texas white supremacist, William J. Krar, was arrested and pleaded guilty to charges of possessing chemical weapons of mass destruction—sodium cyanide bombs, which could have killed hundreds—as well as a huge stockpile of conventional arms.

It’s interesting to note the difference in intent and motivation, as well as outcome, between right and left extreme activism. Rescuing beagles without hurting anyone doesn’t really compare to racial persecution that destroys and ends lives and spreads hate and fear. Blowing up an empty building because it threatens a wildlife habitat doesn’t really belong in the same category as setting off a bomb in a crowd to make a point about a religious opinion, does it? Once again, Feds, some perspective please.