The Wise Use Radicals:
Violence Finds New Bedfellows

by Tarso Ramos
Western States Center

"Jobs versus the environment," "people before spotted owls," "protect private property rights" and "Clinton is waging war on the West" are familiar slogans of the so-called "Wise Use" Movement. In the seven years since its birth at the 1988 Multiple Use Strategy Conference in Reno, the Wise Use Movement has developed into a powerful social and political force in the West and the nation. Wise Use was one of the converging forces that delivered the November 1994 congressional putsch, sending such ultraconservatives as Idaho's Helen Chenoweth to Congress for the first time. The dramatic rightward shift of domestic politics, exemplified by the '94 election, has created space for increasingly militant groups on the rightmost edge of the political mainstream (witness the recent Senate platform provided to militia groups by Sen. Arlen Specter). In the West, significant factions within the Wise Use Movement have become increasingly radical, and radical factions increasingly influential. The results include rising militancy and ties between Wise Use and armed citizen militia groups.

The Western States Center has monitored and documented these trends through its Wise Use Public Exposure Project. While the Wise Use Movement remains distinct from white supremacist and paramilitary groups like the militia, our research shows that they are linked by crossover leaders, an increasingly overlapping constituency, and some common ideological views -- most notably belief in the illegitimacy of the federal government and assertion of state and county "rights" over federal authority. We are deeply concerned that Wise Use may launder the involvement of militia and other far-right groups into the electoral process, and hence the political mainstream. We are similarly alarmed at a growing trend of intimidation and violence directed at Wise Use adversaries, especially environmental activists and government natural resource agency workers.

The initial xenophobic rush to blame Arab terrorists for the April 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building shortly gave way to a flood of media and government interest in the rise of militant and overwhelmingly white domestic right wing groups. One result has been national coverage, rare before now, of radical right-wing figures associated with the Wise Use Movement. Aided by this flash of notoriety, we have an opportunity to peel back the Wise Use public relations front, reveal the Movement's true workings, and undercut its credibility and ability to recruit. In this article we summarize the relationship between the Wise Use Movement and the militant right wing. (For a basic introduction to the Movement, see David Hupp's "Lying About the Land" in our Summer 1992 newsletter.) With these revelations, citizens can hold public officials and corporations accountable when they support Wise Use leaders and groups that may countenance violence and extremism.

Wise Use and the Extreme Right: Hand in Glove from the Start

Although corporate financial support has underwritten many Wise Use organizing campaigns, some critics have portrayed the Movement as simply a network of industry front groups and discounted the vital role of right wing activists and organizers. But the Wise Use Movement is driven by two main motors: corporations and right-wing ideologues. Natural resource, property development and other business interests expect to profit from new laws promoting private exploitation of public resources, and weakening or eliminating environmental and other government regulations. For their part, right-wing activists of various stripes have used anti-environmental and "property rights" messages as an organizing handle, a means by which to convert widespread economic insecurity and political disenfranchisement into a broad reactionary political force.

Multiple factions of the right wing have participated in the Wise Use Movement since its inception. Some Wise Use themes were developed earlier by the neo fascist Lyndon LaRouche and his organizations, and today LaRouchians play an active role in Wise Use domestically and abroad. In the early years of Wise Use, founder and principal spokesperson Ron Arnold and other leaders worked closely with the American Freedom Coalition, an arm of Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church. Other right wingers involved in Wise Use include the John Birch Society, the New Right media and think tank networks of Paul Weyrich, and elements of the religious right. The end of the Cold War led most of these groups to seek domestic bugaboos, and many have added environmentalists to their lists of scapegoats. A favorite Wise Use term for environmentalists is "watermelons -- green on the outside and red on the inside," and one Movement leader boasts that his group helped to make environmentalism "the perfect bogeyman" for society's ills.

The blueprints for the Wise Use Movement were drafted by Ron Arnold of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise (based in Bellevue, Washington), in a series of articles published by Logging Management magazine in 1979-80. In these articles, Arnold made clear his intention to use industry dollars and technical support to create an actual pro industry citizens movement - and not just the appearance of one -- by using community organizing techniques developed by progressive social movements. Beginning in the late 1980s, and following Arnold's model, Wise Use organizers used corporate financing to mobilize company employees in the timber and mining industries behind an industry agenda of deregulation that targeted environmental laws. Exploiting the credible threat of job loss, Wise Use cleverly blamed the environmental movement as the reason for layoffs and plant closures. The result was the ostensibly spontaneous appearance of pro industry citizen activist groups across the West. Over the years, the Movement has expanded in size and depth, building national associations and cultivating a locally based network of groups and individuals ideologically committed to Wise Use goals.

Wise Use: A Militia Piggy Back Ride

If the Oklahoma City bombing put right wing anti government militants on the nightly news for the first time in years, such groups had already become a fact of life for many living in the West. According to civil rights groups, militia organizing in the Intermountain West (such as that conducted by the Militia of Montana) began in response to the August 1992 standoff between federal agents and Idaho white supremacist Randy Weaver, and is driven largely by racist, "Christian Patriot" organizers. Key organizing themes for militia groups include government misconduct in the standoffs with Weaver and with Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas; gun rights; and an alleged New World Order conspiracy to undermine the sovereignty of the United States and its citizens.

The Wise Use and militia movements developed separately and mostly function independently of one another. However, in rural communities, militia organizing has often come on the heels of Wise Use county rule campaigns to take over local government and declare authority over federally managed public lands. Many militia groups believe county boards of commissioners to be the most legitimate governmental bodies (and the local sheriff to be the highest law enforcement officer in the land) and call for expanding local power at the expense of the federal government. These views derive from the Posse Comitatus (literally, "power of the county"), forerunner to the Christian Patriots and Northwest militia groups.

The assertion of county rights to federal powers provides an ideological bridge between Wise Use and the far right. For example, the Utah based National Federal Lands Conference (NFLC), one of the founding organizations of the Wise Use Movement, promotes the Wise Use county rule campaign through seminars conducted around the West and the nation. Titled The Power and Authority of County Government, the seminars frequently are held in conjunction with larger Wise Use conferences, or are sponsored by local Farm Bureau chapters or timber companies seeking to increase their access to public resources. The cornerstone of the county rule effort is model ordinances sold by the NFLC that promise to confer upon counties authority over federal lands within their boundaries. Several dozen counties have wholly or partly adopted the ordinances, which the NFLC continues to sell, even though they've been ruled unconstitutional by an Idaho district court.

Ken Toole, president of the Montana Human Rights Network, argues that the rapid spread of militia organizing is partly due to Wise Use campaigns. "The Wise Use Movement has softened the ground for militias by politically mainstreaming virulently anti government themes," asserts Toole. "Militia organizations have ridden in on top of that." Eric Ward, associate director of the Seattle based Northwest Coalition Against Malicious Harassment, concurs. He observes that, "Militias have taken up any number of entry points into communities, including land use, private property rights and anti Indian organizing - all issues associated with the Wise Use Movement." Continues Toole, "We see definitive overlap between county rule, local planning disputes and far right militia activists. We anticipate this will get worse because of the massive growth we're experiencing in Montana and because the property rights people have gained political influence."

The overlap between Wise Use and far right organizing first became apparent to Toole in the summer of 1993. A July NFLC seminar held in Jordan, Montana featured "Red" Beckman, a tax protester, notorious anti-Semite, and activist with the Fully Informed Jury Association. In October of the following year, the National Federal Lands Conference proclaimed its support for militia groups with an article in its monthly newsletter, "Federal Lands Update" (the mast-head motto reads, "...bringing to the federal land user, helpful information for protecting private rights"). Written by NFLC staffer Jim Faulkner and titled, "Why There Is A Need for the Militia in America," the article asks: "Do we really need a militia, and why? Because we have scalawags and rascals and mischievous persons and people open to temptation and flat out liars and thieves in places of power in our federal government."

The article provides address and telephone information for the Militia of Montana and the "Deseret Political Journal" published by Samuel Sherwood of the Idaho based US Militia Association. Sherwood has recruited miners and timber workers to his militia group, urging them to resist the "green gestapo." Sherwood also warns of an imminent civil war, and as reported by the Associated Press, he told one Idaho audience, "Go up and look legislators in the face, because some day you may have to blow it off."

Endorsement of militia groups by the National Federal Lands Conference is a significant development. The NFLC is a staple organization of the Wise Use Movement, and its advisory board includes important Movement leaders, such as property rights guru Mark Pollot and Nevada public lands rancher Wayne Hage, both of whom work for Ron Arnold's Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, and Arnold himself. After the Oklahoma City bombing, Arnold suddenly denied involvement with the group. However, Arnold has not publicly repudiated the NFLC, which continues to distribute literature with Arnold's name on it.

Wise Use Movement involvement with the far right reaches beyond the National Federal Lands Conference. One crossover figure is Dick Carver, a Nye County, Nevada commissioner who has traveled the West declaring federal ownership of Western lands to be illegal and claiming states' rights to such lands. Dramatically acting out his beliefs before an armed band of supporters, on Independence Day 1994 Carver bulldozed open a closed road in the Toiyabe National Forest and threatened the Forest Service ranger who tried to stop him. Such militancy has made Carver a popular Wise Use figure and earned him national news coverage.

Carver also is admired by some on the far-right and has been a recurrent speaker at events sponsored by the Jubilee newspaper, the premier Christian Identity publication in the country. Christian Identity is a pseudo theology which holds that Jews are the spawn of Satan, people of color are subhuman "mud people," and whites are the true Israelites. Identity doctrine is espoused by the Aryan Nations and by Militia of Montana leader John Trochmann, among others. Although he has spoken at Jubilee conferences featuring notorious racists and anti-semites, Carver claims never to have heard any hate rhetoric at these events.

Numerous examples exist of cross-fertilization between Wise Use and the far right. "The Oregon Observer," a Wise Use publication, advertises for the Oregon Militia, and local property rights groups in Washington state disseminate militia literature. A recent campaign against a proposal to join Washington's North Cascades National Park with a park across the Canadian border, featuring a barnstorming tour by national Wise Use leader Charles Cushman, promoted the idea that the Park was a pretext for the New World Order to subvert U.S. sovereignty.

Who's Terrorizing Whom?
Connections to Violence

Some observers fear that the growth of radical factions within the Wise Use Movement, and especially their association with far right paramilitary groups, will contribute to one particular problem, which is growing in the West -- Wise Use related harassment and violence. The violent pressure is most commonly directed against environmental activists and government natural resource agency workers. David Helvarg, author of the book The War Against the Greens, which examines the Wise Use Movement and anti environmental violence, states,

"You see in militia materials the incorporation of grassroots environmental activists as part of their New World Order conspiratorial view. People in this country are suffering from economic decline and Wise Use and other organizers come into communities and provide easy answers and scapegoats for these complex problems. When that starts happening in rural areas like in much of the West, there aren't many Jews or 'mud people' to go after, so they go after environmentalists."

Ron Arnold accuses Helvarg and others who call attention to links between Wise Use and militia groups of using the Oklahoma City tragedy as "a public relations ploy to smear the Wise Use Movement." But while Wise Use-inspired harassment and violence appear to be on the increase, this is hardly a new problem. Charles Cushman, long notorious for the destruction left in the wake of his organizing campaigns, once delighted in his "rent-a-riot" nickname and compared himself to Nazi tank commander Erwin Rommel. Arnold has urged crowds to "destroy the environmental movement," and use the 'sword of political power' to "kill the bastards." Following a spate of negative publicity, Cushman and Arnold issued a Wise Use 'Declaration of Nonviolence' in 1993. Appearing to take the moral high ground, Arnold writes in a recent newsletter, "It would be all too easy for us...to accuse every environmentalist of being 'linked' to the recent rise in Earth First!attacks and the ['Unabomber'] bombing death." In fact, Wise Use activists aggressively promote the idea that the environmental movement is rife with "terrorists," a tactic pioneered by the LaRouchians.

Among those spinning such stories is Barry Clausen, a private investigator, co-publisher of a newsletter titled "Ecoterrorism Watch" with LaRouchian Rogelio Maduro and co author of Walking on the Edge, recounting his infiltration of Earth First! on behalf of natural resource interests. Clausen has been promoted at events organized by Ron Arnold's group, his book is distributed by a company owned by Arnold's boss, Alan Gottlieb, and Arnold designed the cover for the volume. Clausen gives presentations in struggling natural resource communities, where he brands Earth First! as a terrorist organization and promotes vigilantism against environmental activists by inferring that the entire environmental movement has been infiltrated by Earth First! agents. In response to environmental efforts to halt logging in the Cove Mallard area of Idaho, in April of 1994, a Wise Use timber company front group announced a meeting featuring Clausen and three men with expertise in surveillance, counter-terrorism and military operations. Environmentalists report a rise in incidents of harassment in the wake of Clausen's visits.

Environmentalists are not the only targets. Nineteen days before the Oklahoma City bombing incident, the U.S. Forest Service office in Carson City was bombed. Wise Use's Cushman tried to pin the attack on environmentalists. The Bureau of Land Management office in Reno was bombed the preceding year, and several federal land management agency installations and the property of agency personnel have been bombed since then. In some resource development areas, federal employees find that they are refused service in local stores, and have taken the precaution of removing identifying labels from government vehicles. Anticipating further harassment, the Forest Service has taken the extraordinary step of instructing [instructed] its employees not to resist arrest by county law enforcement agencies for violations of questionable Wise Use ordinances.

Violence and the Voting Booth

Evidence is building that the Wise Use Movement may provide greater access for militia and other far right groups to the electoral process and the political mainstream. For example, in Idaho militia leader Samuel Sherwood has claimed partial responsibility for the elections of Representative Chenoweth and Secretary of Education Anne Fox. Since taking office, Chenoweth has injected militia themes into the public debate with her unfounded suggestion that natural resource agencies are using mysterious "black helicopters" (symbolic to militia groups of "New World Order" forces) to harass property owners, and by sponsoring a bill that requires federal law enforcement agents to gain the approval of local sheriffs before making arrests or performing other duties. Both Chenoweth and Fox have refused to denounce militia groups and another Idaho elected official, Pete Cenerussa, has introduced the idea of conferring legal status on the Idaho militia. In turn, the Militia of Montana has featured a video of one of Chenoweth's presentations in its mail order library.

"What terrifies me," says Eric Ward, "is the idea of militias being able to utilize the electoral force of Wise Use groups." Jonathan Mozzochi, executive director of the Portland Based Coalition for Human Dignity, expands: "White supremacist elements add a degree of militancy and experience in conflict with the Federal Government that folks in the Wise Use Movement and militias appreciate, and the Wise Use folks like Carver offer electoral experience, which is important in the fight." Helvarg asserts that the corporate backers of Wise Use are partly to blame for the mainstreaming of the extreme right, noting that, "the Farm Bureau and other industry folks have consistently provided a platform for the county rule radicals, LaRouchians, Birchers and so forth in the Wise Use Movement, and in so doing have given these groups and their views credibility."

Confront Lies with Truth, and Organize, Organize, Organize!

The Western States Center's Wise Use Public Exposure Project has documented growing ties between the ostensibly law abiding Wise Use Movement and militant militia and white supremacist groups. Evidence indicates that far-right movements are penetrating mainstream politics to a startling degree, aided by the more moderate facade of the Wise Use Movement. Encouraged by the rightward drift of the domestic political "center," and their own organizing successes, both Wise Use and the far right have become bolder with their scape-goating and promotion of violence. The result is an increased sense of threat and polarization in our communities. But with the bright light of exposure, we can reveal the Movement's extremism and demand accountability from its political and corporate supporters. Decent people lured to Wise Use with the false promise of economic prosperity will reconsider their involvement. But exposure alone will not suffice. We must fight regressive populism with progressive populism, and where false promises are now extended we must offer real hope by redoubling our organizing for civil rights and economic justice as well as environmental protection.

Quotes

"The Wise Use Movement has softened the ground for militias by politically mainstreaming virulently anti government themes. Militia organizations have ridden in on top of that."
- Ken Toole, president of the Montana Human Rights Network

"Militias have taken up any number of entry points into communities, including land use, private property rights and anti Indian organizing - all issues related to the Wise Use Movement."
- Eric Ward, associate director of the Seattle based Northwest Coalition Against Malicious Harassment.

"Go up and look legislators in the face, because some day you may have to blow it off."
- Samuel Sherman, US Militia Association.

"Wise Use and other organizers come into communities and provide easy answers and scapegoats for these complex problems - there aren't many Jews or 'mud people' to go after, so they go after environmentalists."
- David Helvarg, author of The War Against the Greens.

"What terrifies me is the idea of militias being able to utilize the electoral force of Wise Use groups."
- Eric Ward, associate director of the Seattle based Northwest Coalition Against Malicious Harassment.

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© 1995 Western States Center. All rights reserved. Material herein may not be reproduced without permission of Western States Center. Originally appeared in Western States Center News, Fall 1995.

© 2004, Western States Center
Modified on December 1, 2004