Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Double-dog dares

The Trump White House believes no law can bind it. No restraining order can restrain it.

“The terrorism is coming from inside the government,” writes Lisa Needham at Public Notice. Her detailed post summarizes weekend attempts by the Trump administration to send National Guard troops to whatever city Donald Trump, Stephen Miller and homeland security secretary Kristi Noem decide needs a little terrorizing.

MSNBC’s Lisa Rubin reported via Twitter on the “game of whack-a-mole” theTrump administration is playing to circumvent court orders prohibiting the deployment of National Guardsmen from California and Texas to Oregon and Illinois:

NEW: An Oregon federal court just blocked the deployment, reassignment, or relocation of not just the CA National Guard, but also — after learning about the memo calling up 400 members of the Texas National Guard — any other state or DC’s Guard members to/in Oregon.

Judge Karin Immergut, a Trump nominee, former U.S. Attorney, and member of the Whitewater investigative team, ruled that neither the facts on the ground in Portland nor the claimed legal bases for the deployments had changed since the order she previously issued this weekend.

“How could bringing in federalized National Guard from California not be in direct contravention to the temporary restraining order I issued yesterday?” Immergut asked the Justice Department’s Eric Hamilton. before cutting him off.

“Aren’t defendants simply circumventing my order?” she said later. “Why is this appropriate?”

A most important question is the timing of this Secretary Hegseth Memorandum

On 10/4/2025 3:40pm PT, Judge Immergut signed opinion holding President exceeded his authority by federalizing the (Oregon) National Guard because the situation did not meet the statute's conditions: pic.twitter.com/5vD2kETirn

— Ryan Goodman (@rgoodlaw) October 6, 2025

Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff, declared Immergut’s earlier restraining order “legal insurrection.” While social media users posted videos of DHS agents violently abducting people off the street and tear gassing bystanders, the president’s pet psychopath spent the weekend fuming in Twitter rants about federal agents “facing relentless terrorist assault and threats to life.”

From “terrorists” like the Portland Frog (above).

Judd Legum at Popular Information calls DHS actions against residents “systemic violations of U.S. citizens’ Constitutional rights.” He recounts the experiences of six U.S. citizens detained and held for days, sometimes after being injured, before release without charges. In a September 8 Supreme Court decision, Justice Brett Kavanaugh dismissed such detentions as a minor inconvenience in a free country.

“If the officers learn that the individual they stopped is a U. S. citizen or otherwise lawfully in the United States, they promptly let the individual go,” Kavanaugh wrote. Promptly indeed.

With no touch of irony or self-awareness, Miller insisted Sunday evening:

The core purpose of the organized terrorist attack on DHS is to reverse, through assault and assassination, the 2024 election mandate to expel the millions of illegal aliens the Biden Administration criminally imported into our cities.

They seek to overturn votes with violence.

Kill me now.

Did you see this one? Portland in front of an ICE facility. Hard pressed to see anything these women are doing wrong other than peaceful protest and exercise of freedom of speech. pic.twitter.com/qo1NkQgXme

— Crazy Fenak (@CrazyFenaker) October 4, 2025

Needham asks:

It honestly isn’t clear where we go from here. There are no mechanisms in the structure of American democracy for one state to defend itself against another, or to defend itself against the federal government. There’s no precedent for this sort of thing because it was, until Trump, inconceivable.

It also would’ve been inconceivable not so long ago that both the Supreme Court and Congress would stand aside and let a lawless president try to tear America apart with impunity. But if no one will check Trump’s behavior, why should he stop?

When courts draw the line, Trump steps over it. Draw another line, as Immergut did over the weekend, and he steps over that. With this lawless administration, court orders enjoining Trump’s illegal behaviors amount to no more than double-dog dares.

Seth Abramson offers grim advice to the journalism community:

As a retired journalism professor, I believe every newsroom in America must now develop Civil War Protocols: how it will conduct the profession of journalism when Donald Trump declares martial law and systematically ends our democracy. If your newsroom isn’t prepared for this, it’s rank malpractice.

* * * * *

Have you fought dictatorship today?

50501 
May Day Strong
No King’s One Million Rising movement – Next national day of protest Oct. 18
The Resistance Lab
Choose Democracy
Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink 
You Have Power
Chop Wood, Carry Water
Thirty lonely but beautiful actions
Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense

Dr. Jane Goodall filmed an interview in March 2025 with the understanding it would only be released after her death. This is her final message from it.

Dr. Jane Goodall filmed an interview in March 2025 with the understanding it would only be released after her death. This is her final message from it. pic.twitter.com/ViMgNm6C37

— Time Capsule Tales (@timecaptales) October 5, 2025

It really was their Reichstag Fire

This is chilling and I think we’re just at the beginning. Rolling Stone reports that after the Kirk killing the White House quickly saw their opportunity to go after their political opposition and immediately drafted plans to begin the crackdown.

The memos and legal justifications leaned heavily on the infrastructure and the statutes left behind from George W. Bush’s Global War on Terror. Trump administration aides and attorneys talked among themselves about how the Kirk slaying made it clear they needed a new “war on terror,” in their words, but one launched and branded by Donald J. Trump, and aimed straight at the homegrown domestic enemies of MAGA world. It came at a moment when the administration was already throwing around the “terrorism” label widely as it tried to accomplish its most extreme goals, from blowing up boats of alleged drug smugglers in the Caribbean to revving up its militarized deportation operations.

In the earliest moments of Team Trump’s rapid-fire drafting process in mid-September 2025, administration officials say, names that kept coming up in the revenge-minded deliberations included: antifa, America’s disparate anti-fascist movement; the liberal-donation processor ActBlue; megadonor George Soros; the anti-Trump organizing group Indivisible; a variety of pro-immigration and Know Your Rights organizations; and the anti-war group CodePink, whose activists recently protested Trump at a restaurant. And, of course, administration officials couldn’t help themselves from brainstorming new ways to try to target the American trans community.

[…]

“We need to use our anti-terrorism laws, our RICO statutes, our conspiracy statutes — we need to use every tool in our law enforcement arsenal to crush these left-wing terrorists legally, financially, and politically, and to cut off their funding sources, and throw them in prison,” Mike Davis, a conservative attorney close to Trump, tells Rolling Stone. “George Soros, and the octopus of his left-wing organizations, must be investigated. NGOs importing and harboring illegal aliens must be investigated. Nobody is above the law. I’m very excited for these Democrats to face criminal probes for their real crimes.… Justice is coming — and justice is best served cold.”

May I just take a moment to address those of you who’ve been following me for years? You will recall that I always said, “if you build it, they will use it” referring to the erection of the surveillance state and assault on civil liberties. The great irony, of course, is that that was the “deep state” we were all warning about, not this silly evocation of the name for anyone who isn’t a MAGA sycophant.

Anyway, I digress. The article says that there were quite a few people in the White House who “felt something was off” about all this since Kirk was obviously killed by yet another lone wolf psycho and the groups they were targeting were run-of-the mill non-violent liberal groups. But I guess they just shrugged and went along with it.

Read the entire article if you can. It lays out much of the program of repression that’s just beginning. It doesn’t get to the immigration and deportation strategy and the escalating street violence that’s being perpetrated by DHS and associate agencies. There’s only so much space. But it’s all connected. Stephen Miller’s ongoing tantrums this weekend make that crystal clear:

Guess who he’s going after next?

What say you John Roberts?

Oh, never mind. He’s already bent the knee as have the rest of that Supreme Court majority. And they were all happy and privileged to do it.

America for Americans. We are asleep no longer. pic.twitter.com/9D2ZBSsUQi

— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) October 4, 2025

Trump’s HR director is on a tear. The WSJ reports:

White House officials have grown tired of her posts and Loomer’s efforts to work around them, several administration officials said. Top administration officials have launched a hunt to try to find out what motivates her posts and attacks, the officials said.

On Wednesday, she claimed that Nicholas Waytowich, a U.S. Army official, was fired because she had identified him as the creator of Red Dot, an app that tracks ICE officials. An Army official said Waytowich is suspended and under investigation. 

“I don’t work for the administration, and I don’t control hiring,” said Loomer. “I’m posting facts.”

Some White House officials have also grown concerned about Loomer’s access to Trump and suspected that she was being paid for some of her attacks. Several posts outside her usual national security interests, including a campaign against a Food and Drug Administration official and push for the administration to approve a drilling license off the coast of Venezuela, raised particular concerns at the White House, according to administration officials. Loomer has denied taking money for specific posts.

Let’s back up a little bit, shall we? Some White House officials have also grown concerned about Loomer’s access to Trump. Really? Does that mean she really is behind all the firings of national security officials and others? She’s calling up Trump and he’s just issuing he orders?

I think that’s probably right. How else to explain how this stuff is happening? And why does Trump do whatever she wants? It’s kind of strange, don’t you think?

Anyway, here’s a bit of information I didn’t know before:

Her work has often been funded by conservative donors who supported right-wing positions on Israel or critical views of Islam. She has worked for years with an Israeli-American cyber intelligence analyst, Yaacov Apelbaum, who was involved with analyzing and distributing content from Hunter Biden’s laptop before the 2020 election.

Apelbaum has provided Loomer with research for her recent attacks, according to a person with direct knowledge of the work, including against national security officials the two deemed to be Muslim sympathizers.

Hookay.

Meanwhile. Loomer is starting to go after MAGAs, which is the main thrust of the article:

In recent weeks, the right-wing conspiracy theorist has:

Gone after former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, dubbing him “Tucker Qatarlson” who is being “bought off by the Muslim Brotherhood,” and attacking his son who works for Vice President JD Vance;

Accused Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of funneling government money to her own daughter and called her a “loud-mouthed bitch.”

And she said that Joe Kent, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, whose wife was killed by a suicide bomber, was soft on terrorism.

“They can attack me all they want, I’m more America First than them,” Loomer said in an interview, adding that she believed she faced targeting herself because she is Jewish.

Loomer’s intraparty attacks have expanded as some Trump allies have openly started criticizing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and veering into antisemitic conspiracy theories. Carlson and podcaster Candace Owens, for example, have suggested that Israel may have been involved in the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk last month, which had allegedly targeted him for his shifting views on the country.

In his speech at Kirk’s memorial, Carlson likened the killing to that of Jesus Christ, saying: “I can just sort of picture the scene in a lamp-lit room with a bunch of guys sitting around eating hummus, thinking about what to do about this guy telling the truth about us.”

Netanyahu has said it is “insane” and “outrageous” to suggest that the country had anything to do with Kirk’s death. Top Turning Point officials have denounced the theories.

Loomer has since claimed Carlson took money from Doha and suppressed damaging information about Biden, referencing claims derived from Apelbaum’s analysis.

Carlson said he has never taken money from any government, including Qatar, and has no debt or investors. “I’m the only one to blame for my opinions,” he said. Owens said supporters of Israel were “scraping the very bottom of the barrel, and at the bottom is Laura Loomer.”

Loomer’s attacks on other Trump officials have continued.

I don’t have an opinion on Israel’s involvement in anything but the horrors in Gaza but it’s very weird how much this stuff is affecting American politics. If it manages to be the catalyst for the MAGA freak show to eat it’s own I can’t say I’m sorry.

Again, Loomer is a very, very bizarre person who has a very bizarre relationship with the president of the United States which apparently no one in the White House can do anything about. I guess that’s just another data point in our increasingly surreal body politic.

Republicans don’t seem to care so I’m not sure it matters, but here are some of the latest numbers. This is from CBS:

Trump’s overall approval rating hovers around 43% in all the polls similar to where he was the last time. I guess the price of eggs is low enough that people don’t care that much about the economy anymore.

But he does have a license to kill

What happens when a leader of a democratic country believes he has a license to kill and proceeds to use it? It appears we are finding out. 

During the arguments in Donald J. Trump v. United States, the Supreme Court case that conferred immunity from prosecution for presidents committing crimes in the course of their official duties, the prospect of a president ordering Seal Team Six to carry out assassinations of political opponents was raised to illustrate the breadth of powers being considered. This chilling scenario was raised in separate dissents by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson. But in his majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts dismissed such concerns as “fear mongering on the basis of extreme hypotheticals about a future where the President ‘feels empowered to violate federal criminal law.’”

As anyone could have predicted with Donald Trump’s return to office, it hasn’t taken long to test a different but nonetheless related scenario. Right now we are being forced to consider whether the president of the United States can legally order the military to murder “non-international” civilians he has unilaterally declared to be drug trafficking terrorists. 

On Friday morning, for the fourth time in a month, American forces launched a strike on a boat off the coast of Venezuela that the administration claimed was trafficking drugs. Four people were killed, bringing the total number of casualties from all four strikes to 21. 

As he has done with each operation, Trump took to Truth Social to brag: “A boat loaded with enough drugs to kill 25 TO 50 THOUSAND PEOPLE was stopped, early this morning off the Coast of Venezuela, from entering American Territory.” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth chimed in on X, “Four male narco-terrorists aboard the vessel were killed in the strike and no U.S. forces were harmed in the operation.”

No evidence has been provided about the alleged drug trafficking operations. When questions have been raised about the legality of the strikes, the administration has brushed them aside. Vice President JD Vance even joked that there probably aren’t any fishermen in the area anymore. “I don’t give a s**t,” he posted on X in response to concerns about the strikes.

Congress, though, apparently does. After asking politely if they could please see some sort of legal justification for the actions, the administration finally found time to send notice, as required by law, of a military action they are now defining as an active “armed conflict” with drug cartels. On Oct. 2, the New York Times reported the president’s decision that we are formally at war, and acknowledged the serious implications of such a position. 

Charlie Savage and Eric Schmitt wrote, “Mr. Trump’s move to formally deem his campaign against drug cartels as an active armed conflict means he is cementing his claim to extraordinary wartime powers, legal specialists said. In an armed conflict, as defined by international law, a country can lawfully kill enemy fighters even when they pose no threat, detain them indefinitely without trials and prosecute them in military courts.”

But international law doesn’t apply here, at least according to Trump. The president, the Washington Post reported, has declared this to be a “non-international conflict [with] designated terrorist organizations” that have helped to kill U.S. citizens through drug smuggling. The attacks were provoked, he also claimed, using drugs as weapons instead of guns, and the U.S. is “[using] force in self-defense and the defense of others.”

By this logic, since Americans are voluntarily taking the alleged drugs, does that make drug users material supporters of terrorism?

Geoffrey S. Corn, a retired judge advocate general lawyer and former Army senior adviser for law-of-war issues, stated the obvious to the Times: That selling a dangerous product is different from an armed attack: 

Noting that it is illegal for the military to deliberately target civilians who are not directly participating in hostilities — even suspected criminals — Mr. Corn called the president’s move an “abuse” that crossed a major legal line.

“This is not stretching the envelope,” he said. “This is shredding it. This is tearing it apart.”

What else is new? Since we have not heard of any member of the military objecting to this action, it would seem that the reassurances we all received that the military would never agree to undertake an illegal order were a bit overblown. They are murdering civilians on the high seas on the president’s order. Just as in the Seal Team Six scenario, the president’s pardon power is also plenary, so there’s no exposure there either. 

This operation appears to be a Stephen Miller special, coming from his role as the head of the Homeland Security Council, which he successfully parlayed into a stand-alone entity instead of reporting to National Security Adviser (and Secretary of State) Marco Rubio. During Trump’s first term, Miller famously asked why the president couldn’t order migrants in boats to be killed. He was told then that such an act was illegal. All these years later, the response has apparently not dampened his enthusiasm for the idea.

As I noted in September, Rubio has seen these actions as a way to pursue his white whale: Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Along with Miller and CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Rubio is now pressing for direct military action against Venezuela — predicated, one assumes, on the assertion that Maduro is directing the drug traffickers, despite findings by America’s own spy agencies that he is not. In planning that strongly echoes the ill-fated invasion of Iraq, Rubio is working with exiled opposition politicians on day-after regime change plans. And just like with that debacle, the administration is relying on bogus legal theories, manipulation of evidence and lies to justify their actions.

Apparently, some lessons have to be learned over and over again. 

There are many motivations for what’s about to happen; drugs are just the excuse. Rubio has a vendetta against Maduro, Miller wants to punish foreigners and Trump wants to show that he has the biggest, most powerful trigger finger in the world. Overriding all of it is what the president has said many times: “To the victors belong the spoils.” 

And as the Times pointed out about what sad fate likely awaits Venezuelans, “with its oil, gold and other minerals, there are many spoils.”

Salon

Against cooties

Donald Trump is not the only one fighting an imaginary war. Trump thinks there is one going on in Portland. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is waging one against military fitness double standards that don’t exist. There will be one standard going forward, the former Fox News Weekend co-host insists: the male standard.

To review (ABC News):

In addition to the newly proposed annual fitness exam, Hegseth’s speech emphasized “gender-neutral” testing with men and women required to meet the same minimum physical performance benchmarks.

Speaking to hundreds of high-ranking military officials in Quantico, Virginia, Hegseth said it was important that certain combat positions return “to the highest male standard,” acknowledging that it may lead to fewer women serving in combat roles.

“If it means no women qualify for combat jobs, then so be it,” Hegseth said.

One problem. There is no standard for men and another for women.

BBC:

“I am sick and tired of Pete Hegseth lying about women in the military and standards,” former US Marine fighter pilot Amy McGrath said in a video on Instagram.

“There has always been one standard for those jobs,” she said. “There was never a man’s standard or a woman’s standard for flying a jet.”

Elisa Cardnell, an 11-year US Navy veteran told the BBC:

“These standards have always been gender neutral, and they have always been set at a high standard,” she said. “Of course, not all women are going to make those, but not all men do either.”

It is a weird obsession Hegseth has.

“Eliminating the current highly rigorous standards for women in combat positions has nothing to do with increasing lethality and everything to do with forcing women out of the Armed Forces,” responded Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-N.J.).

“Secretary Hegseth has said he does not believe women should serve in combat,” said Sherrill, a former Navy helicopter pilot. “Now he is trying to make that happen by escalating his war on women in the military, despite presenting no evidence that women cannot ably serve in combat positions.”

ABC News again:

“To me, Hegseth wants a military that looks a certain way … which [is] definitely male and muscular,” Jill Hasday, a professor at the University of Minnesota Law School with expertise in sex discrimination in the military, told ABC News. “It seems like his expectation is that once they enforce more ‘rigorous standards,’ more women will be pushed out.”

That is exactly it, a friend noted. Most boys outgrow wanting to keep girlz out of the tree house because of “cooties” by age 11, she said.

Hegseth is 45.

* * * * *

Have you fought dicktatorship today?

50501 
May Day Strong
No King’s One Million Rising movement – Next national day of protest Oct. 18
The Resistance Lab
Choose Democracy
Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink 
You Have Power
Chop Wood, Carry Water
Thirty lonely but beautiful actions
Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense

Constitution? What constitution?

“The only threat we face is to our democracy – and it is being led by President Donald Trump,” declared Oregon’s governor, Tina Kotek (D), after a federal court issued a restraining order against Donald Trump’s call to deploy 200 National Guard troops to Portland.

Politico:

“This is a nation of Constitutional law, not martial law,” wrote U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut, a Trump appointee.

Immergut said Trump’s decision to enlist members of Oregon’s National Guard was based on false claims about nightly unrest targeting federal immigration authorities and buildings in Portland. Though Trump described the city as “war-ravaged” and wracked with violence, police said immigration-related protests had been small, manageable and largely peaceful in the days leading up to Trump’s pronouncement.

“These incidents are inexcusable, but they are nowhere near the type of incidents that cannot be handled by regular law enforcement forces,” Immergut wrote.

The president is due a great deal of deference, Immergut writes, “in his determination that he ‘is unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States.’” But she finds that Trump lacked a “colorable basis” for invoking his authority under federal law. “The president’s determination was simply untethered to the facts.”

Trump’s lizard brain is “simply untethered to” his frontal lobes. It has been suggested that Trump’s image of Portland stems from Fox News using in its recent coverage b-roll footage from George Floyd protests from 2020. But as his recent United Nations speech revealed (unsurprisingly), Trump holds grudges for decades. He criticized the U.N. for not accepting his bid to renovate the complex 20 years ago. He likely resents Portland for not bowing before him five years ago.

Like Chauncey Gardiner, Trump mainly knows what he sees on TV.

Per Elon Musk’s Grok, Trump has never visited the city:

The New York Times adds:

In her ruling, Judge Immergut wrote that she expected a trial court to agree with the state’s contention that the president exceeded his constitutional authority in mobilizing federal troops for local work and likely violated the 10th Amendment.

Constitution? He don’t need no stinking constitution.

* * * * *

Have you fought dicktatorship today?

50501 
May Day Strong
No King’s One Million Rising movement – Next national day of protest Oct. 18
The Resistance Lab
Choose Democracy
Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink 
You Have Power
Chop Wood, Carry Water
Thirty lonely but beautiful actions
Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense

I’m sure you’ve heard that the Eye of Sauron is now fixated on the Pacific Northwest:

Images of the mayhem have been pouring in all week:

Sorry…I should have prefaced with a trigger warning for sensitive viewers. My bad.

As a Seattle resident, I’m concerned my city could be next; particularly considering the anarchy permeating the mean streets of the Wallingford neighborhood where I live:

Then again, as evidenced in that hard-hitting report, local law enforcement has the situation in hand. Hopefully, cooler heads in the Trump administration will prevail. Oh, dear:

OK. Sure-that’s tough talk and all, but they are going to at least need a pretext before sending the troops to Seattle, yes? Oh, crap:

There’s such a fine line between the right to bear arms and the right to name bears.

On a more serious note, it is concerning that the Trump administration has been playing so fast and loose with the definition of “domestic terrorism”. In our current political climate, one person’s “activist” is another person’s “terrorist”, and vice-versa. For example, I’m old enough to remember earlier this year, when Attorney General Pam Bondi described Tesla vandalism as “nothing short of domestic terrorism” and vowed to “impose severe consequences on those involved in these attacks, including those operating behind the scenes to coordinate and fund these crimes”. That’s like, her opinion, man…but in my view, vandalizing a Tesla is…vandalism; however, if you purposely plow said Tesla into a crowd, that’s terrorism.

For reasons that hopefully become clear, I’m re-posting my review of the 2011 documentary, If a Tree Falls:

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on July 23, 2011)

A (not so) clear-cut case: If a Tree Falls ***

In the mid-90s, I worked at a Honeybaked Ham store in the Seattle area (don’t ask). Normally, I wouldn’t bring that up, but…funny story. Well, not “ha-ha” funny, but it does tie in with this week’s review.

Because you see, that was when I had my personal brush with “eco-terrorism”. I came to work one day, and espied a couple of Redmond’s finest standing outside the store, talking to the manager. Then I noticed  interesting new artwork adorning the windows, writ large in dried ketchup and barbecue sauce: MEAT IS MURDER! It was signed “E.L.F.”.  Apparently, several other restaurants down the street had also been hit (McDonald’s had had their locks glued shut).

So, as I was scrubbing to remove the graffiti, I wondered “Who is this ‘ELF’ …a disgruntled Keebler employee?” I had never heard of the Earth Liberation Front. I remember the manager saying “How much you want to bet this guy fled the scene in  leather Nikes?” “Yeah,” I snickered, whilst contemplating the dried globs of Heinz 57 on my sponge “these suburban anarchists aren’t exactly the Baader-Meinhof Gang, are they?” (I can’t say that I felt “terrorized”).

Flash forward to 2001. I turned on the local news one night, and saw the UW Center for Urban Horticulture engulfed in flames ($7 million in damage). The arson was attributed to the E.L.F. “Hmm,” I pondered, “maybe they are sort of like the Baader-Meinhof Gang, ”

Or are they? According to the FBI, “Eco-terrorism” is defined as:

The use (or threatened use) of violence of a criminal nature against people or property by an environmentally oriented, sub-national group for environmental-political reasons, or aimed at an audience beyond the target, often of a symbolic nature.

That certainly covers a lot of ground. One could argue that Johnny Appleseed was an Eco-terrorist. Sure, he’s a legendary conservationist and agrarian icon. However, he was against grafting, which resulted in a fruit more suitable for hard cider than for eating. Hence, the “environmentally-oriented”  Appleseed was “responsible” for introducing alcohol to the frontier. And it’s inarguable that much “violence of a criminal nature against people or property” is committed under the influence. OK, that’s a stretch .

Then again, there are a number of “environmentally-oriented” types doing a “a stretch” in the federal pen right now for non-lethal actions that the government considers terrorism, and that others consider heroic. This is not a black and white issue; a point not lost on the directors of If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front.

So what type of circumstance can change a nature lover into a freedom fighter? Anyone can make a statement by holding up a sign or throwing on a “Save the Rainforest” t-shirt, but what motivates someone who decides to take it to the next level-throwing on a Ninja outfit and torching a lumber mill in the middle of the night? And what would they hope to achieve? Wouldn’t that just encourage corporations to cut down even more trees to replace lost inventory?

In order to convey a sense of the humanity behind the mug shots, co-directors Marshall Curry and Sam Cullman focus primarily on Earth Liberation Front member Daniel McGowan, who at the time of filming was facing a possible life sentence for his direct involvement in several high-profile “actions” (including the arson of an Oregon lumber mill) that resulted in millions of dollars in property damage. Holed up in his sister’s NYC apartment (and sporting a house arrest anklet for the first third of the film), McGowan candidly opens up about his life and what led him to change his own M.O. for making a statement from “environmental activism” to “domestic terrorism”.

The filmmakers parallel the timeline and details of McGowan’s personal journey with a study about the development of the E.L.F., adding present day interviews with  his cohorts and archival footage of some of the group’s early “actions” (which were more in the realm of civil disobedience and passive resistance-like sitting in the path of bulldozers and camping out in old-growth trees marked for cutting). McGowan initially became involved with the environmental movement through “mainstream” activities, like “writing hundreds of letters” of protest and participating in peaceful demonstrations.

McGowan became frustrated with what he perceived to be the ineffectiveness of such actions. He sums it up with a rhetorical question: “When you’re screaming at the top of your lungs, and nobody hears you, what are you supposed to do?”

The tipping point for McGowan came in 1999, when he participated in the WTO protests in Seattle. There, through some of the more radicalized E.L.F. members, he became embedded with the relatively small band of black-clad “anarchists” who were disproportionately responsible for most of the property damage that occurred during the demonstrations (the majority of participants made a point after the fact to disassociate themselves from the anarchists).

From there, it was a relatively small jump to the more extreme acts that would lead to his eventual arrest and prosecution (he agreed to a “non-cooperation” plea deal that saved him from life in prison but still saddled him with 7 years and a “terrorism enhancement”).

The filmmakers give equal screen time to some of the law enforcement officials and prosecutors who made the case against McGowan and his associates. Although no one was ever injured or killed as a result of E.L.F. activity (astounding considering that there were approximately 1,200 “actions” perpetrated by the group during their heyday), there are still victims; and some of them appear on camera as well to offer their perspective.

Were these people “terrorists”? You almost have to get back to defining “what is a terrorist?” Or in this case, who are the real terrorists? One interviewee offers this: “95% of the native American forests have been cut down. Trying to save the remaining 5% is ‘radical’?” That’s a valid question. McGowan himself seems to be arguing (in so many words) that in a post 9-11 world, people have a tendency to make a “rush to judgment” without considering the alternate point of view (he suggests that the word “terrorist” has supplanted “Communist” as the demagogue’s dog whistle of choice).

I wonder if the filmmakers intend McGowan’s story to be a litmus test for the viewer (how far out on the limb would you be willing to go for your personal convictions?) If so, that’s a tough one. Part of me identifies with Daniel McGowan the environmentally-conscious idealist; but I don’t think I can quite get behind Daniel McGowan the criminal arsonist. For now, I’m just content to keep recycling and doing my part to think “glocal”. And in case you’re wondering…I haven’t stepped foot inside a Honeybaked Ham store since I quit working there 14 years ago. Those murderous bastards.

Previous posts with related themes:

The Trial of the Chicago 7

Judas and the Black Messiah

Monkey Warfare

The Baader-Meinhof Complex

Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay

More reviews at Den of Cinema

— Dennis Hartley