The Army of God and the Earth Liberation Front: domestic terrorist group analysis

¶ … Domestic Terrorist Groups

Group 1 -- the Army of God (AOG)

Membership Demographics (Ethnicity, Religion, etc.)

The Army of God (AOG) is a domestic terrorist group formed in the early 1980s and dedicated to opposing abortion through violence, arson, and the intimidation and murder of abortion service providers (Horsley, 2011

The group is composes primarily of Caucasian-Americans who subscribe to fundamentalist Christian beliefs.

Terrorist Activity

The AOG actively disseminates literature proclaiming that abortion services are a moral abomination, that physicians who provide abortions should be killed or abducted to have their hands cut off, and that abortion clinics should be bombed or burned down to protect the lives of unborn children. Individuals affiliated with the AOG have killed physicians and abortion clinic workers and promoted their efforts as doing "God's work" (Horsley, 2011

Geographic Influence

The geographic influence of the AOG is nationwide, as evidenced by the 1993 murder of two abortion clinic workers in Florida by Paul Hill, a Presbyterian minister with ties to the organization and the murder of a New York physician by James Kopp (Schmalleger, 2009).

Code of Conduct/Behavior

The fundamental code of the AOG is that they are morally justified in taking any action necessary to prevent abortion because abortion is simply a legalized form of murder. They view all unborn embryos as human beings from the moment of conception and they believe that their actions to protect them are justified by the higher authority of "God's law" to oppose unjust manmade laws. They believe that they will be regarded as heroes in the future for their actions (NAF, 2010).

Membership Demographics (Ethnicity, Religion, etc.)

The Earth Liberation Front (ELF) is an organization whose purpose is the economic sabotage of organizations that are guilty of destroying the Earth's ecosystem and the organisms in the biosphere (ELF, 2009). The ELF membership is highly diverse and without any dominant ethnicity or religion, primarily because it is a global organization that is leaderless and highly decentralized by specific design to thwart law enforcement efforts.

Terrorist Activity

The ELF engages in acts of terrorism such as arson attacks against automobile manufacturers that produce SUVs, vandalism and destruction of building sites constructing laboratory facilities, and (increasingly) cyber-attacks against their IT systems perpetrated in the online medium.

Geographic Influence

The geographic influence of the ELF is global, largely because the organization actually consists of a large number of otherwise independent, autonomous, and unaffiliated groups, including solitary so-called "lone wolf" actors who share the ELF philosophy.

Code of Conduct/Behavior

The ELF code of conduct or philosophy is very similar to that of the AOG except it is directed at a different target issue: namely, entities the group holds responsible for environmentally irresponsible actions as opposed to abortion service providers as in the case of the AOG. Their fundamental belief is that man does not have the moral right to destroy the natural environment or its natural species and fauna (ELF, 2009).

Political Influence

The ELF does not enjoy any appreciable political influence or mainstream support at all. That is because all of its goals could be pursued through legal means (boycott, negative publicity, economic competition, etc.) but the group chooses to pursue its goals through violent means that cannot be condoned by traditional groups or elected officials (Martin, 2004).