Notes to the Underground

Credit Claiming and Organizing in the Earth Liberation Front

Datos Bibliográficos

ID4086737
AutoresJoseph M Brown (0000-0001-6105-4799, University of Massachusetts Boston, Political Science, Boston, Massachusetts, USA, autor de correspondencia)
Año2020
Volumen32
Número2
Páginas237-256
Fecha de publicación2020-02-17
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaTerrorism and Political Violence (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0954-6553 • E-ISSN: 1556-1836
EditorialInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/09546553.2017.1364637
OpenAlexW2753779491
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas12

This paper presents a case study of the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), based on interviews of the group’s former affiliates. It examines the role of credit claims in organizing this underground leaderless resistance group’s activity. In addition to the external signaling functions of credit claims—demonstrating capability, issuing demands, and soliciting public support—credit claims serve a movement-building role in the ELF. By issuing credit claims in “aboveground” fora that other cells are known to read, ELF cells with no direct links are able to communicate information to one another. Credit-claiming communiqués serve four organizing functions for the ELF. They constitute the ELF underground as an imagined community, recruit new cells, set agendas for future actions, and enforce operational standards of behavior via an informal “peer review” process. This study of the ELF suggests broader insights, including possible organizing techniques that may be observed in white supremacist and Islamist cases

Business · Front (military · Political economy · Political science · Process (computing · Public relations · Resistance (ecology · Set (abstract data type · Sociology · White (mutation · Anthropology: Ethics, History, Culture · Computer Science · Ecology · Engineering · Middle East and Rwanda Conflicts