The "Wise Use" movement - the precursor of the Malheur wackos

[central scrutinizer]

http://www.publiceye.org/magazine/v07n2/wiseuse.html

Linked to the Unification Church, and every anti-gay, racist, anti-government fascist group

This article is from 1993, but worth a read for the history.

Wise Use groups are often funded by timber, mining, and chemical companies. In return, they claim, loudly, that the well-documented hole in the ozone layer doesn't exist, that carcinogenic chemicals in the air and water don't harm anyone, and that trees won't grow properly unless forests are clear-cut, with government subsidies. Wise Use proponents were buffeted by Bush's defeat and by media exposure of the movement's founders' connections to the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church network (tainted by charges of cultism and theocratic neo-fascism), but the movement has quickly rebounded. In every state of the US, relentless Wise Use disinformation campaigns about the purpose and meaning of environmental laws are building a grassroots constituency. To Wise Users, environmentalists are pagans, eco-nazis, and communists who must be fought with shouts and threats.

Environmentalists often point to public opinion polls that show most Americans are willing to sacrifice some short-term economic gains to preserve nature. But the Wise Use movement is eroding the environmental consensus that dominated American politics from the Greenhouse Summer of 1988 until shortly after the media overload that greeted Earth Day 1990.

[niyad]

1. thank you for this information.

[villager]

2. Exactly. Those of us doing environmental work in the 80's & early 90's knew about these guys

I was even threatened by them, on occasion.

It was pre-internet, so word was just spread via newsletters, the occasional newspaper article, etc. But harassment of environmentalists was considered mostly "fringe."

Though you could tell even then what kind of cancer the Reagan 80's had already unleashed....

[central scrutinizer]

3. They threatened federal workers, too

http://articles.latimes.com/1996-08-13/news/mn-33920_1_janet-reno

Does this sound familiar?

"The lack of response tends to encourage additional lawlessness by the 'wise use' zealots against resource managers," Jeff DeBonis, a former Forest Service worker from Eugene, Ore., said Monday. DeBonis is co-founder of PEER.

[villager]

4. DeBonis! Wow, haven't come across his name in awhile...

There was some thought that the environment could "win" some victories, in the 80's, using 60's-like organizing tactics, but the experience was really more eye-opening on how badly the whole game was rigged.

Those were when the first warnings about climate change (at least, for me) started to crop up. They were also considered "outlandish," "fringe," etc....

[underpants]

5. Great read. Rev. Moon was one of the chief funders of the Reagan Revolution

He couldn't be one of the faces of that "movement" so he helped create a white evangelical preacher from the south - Jerry Falwell.

His bankroll demanded respect and he demanded that "family values" be one of the pillars of the structure. God, Guns, Gays - the needless attack on gays (at the time) was all him.

This appears to be Moon as a conduit for big industry in the anti-environmental movement.

Thanks.