[Beck:] Well, if you think environmental activists are peace-loving tree huggers, guess again. Earlier this morning in a Seattle suburb, firefighters battled a blaze that engulfed four multimillion-dollar homes. A sign was found at the scene by authorities that said, "Build green? Nope, black." Along with the word "ELF" printed on it. You may not have heard of ELF before. It`s a calling card, according to authorities, for the Earth Liberation Front, a collection of radical environmentalists. Now the FBI is involved in the investigation. Brian Levin is here. He`s the director for the Center of the Study of Hate and Extremism and associated professor at California State University in San Bernardino. Brian, if I`m not mistaken, these guys were the at one time the biggest terror threat in the United States. They they came from Earth First, which were actually peaceful and someone in ELF decided, "You know what? We need to take action ourselves and take it into our own hands." Earth First was a group in the `80s, and they were involved in something called monkey-wrenching, the most notable of which was putting spikes in trees... Right.
[B. Levin:] ... which could then injure mill workers. When they decided to go on a more peaceful route, they splintered, and ELF came about in about 1992 in the mid- to late 90s. ELF came here to the United States, where they`ve committed acts of terrorism.
[Beck:] Right. And didn`t the FBI at one point say that these are the most dangerous domestic terrorists that we have?
[B. Levin:] There was a story about that, but to tell you the truth, there is a lot of debate within the terrorism monitoring community. And I certainly don`t agree with with that at all.
[Beck:] OK.
[B. Levin:] However, it depends on what you`re talking about. If you`re talking about sheer money damage money damages and frequency of attacks, the eco-terrorists are certainly a significant domestic terrorist threat.
[Beck:] I personally define terrorism as somebody who is trying to cause terror to get people to change their their way of life. These guys believe that people are subservient to to animals and the earth and everything else. And they will do whatever they have to do. They`ll burn things down. They`ll destroy as much as they can. I mean, here they are in California in Seattle, but they`ve done it in California. They start fires. Well, I mean, how smart is that if you love the earth, to start fires in California and out west?
[B. Levin:] It`s not smart at all. And the damage as a result has been in the hundreds of millions of dollars. So I am not in any way rallying for these individuals. What I am saying, as far as fatalities are concerned, there are certainly movements that pose a bigger threat and have domestically and internationally. So I don`t want to say...
[Beck:] They`re not targeting people, but I believe that it`s only a matter of time before they cross that line. This is a I mean, look, this is a religion. The earth is becoming a religion to some of these nut jobs. We`re sitting on a powder keg that is constantly having matches flicked at it by people like Al Gore in this global-warming movement.
[B. Levin:] I would like to make a distinction. One thing that I`d like to do is not take legitimate areas of public debate and then morph them into the terrorist angle of things. Because you can find people of good will on issues such as abortion and the environment and then radicals that do rocky things. We don`t want to, you know...
[Beck:] What I`m saying what I`m saying to you, Brian, is will you agree that these people, this is almost becoming a religion with these people?
[B. Levin:] Yes.
[Beck:] And it is a powder keg. It`s only a matter of time before somebody gets hurt.
[B. Levin:] On that angle, you are absolutely correct.
[Beck:] Brian, I`ve got to run. Thank you very much. We`re up against a break. Coming up, a conversation with the president of the Czech Republic. Next.