Joel Schwartz
Final Paper - Draft
7/16/12
Professor Hoge
English 1020

Animal Rights Activism:
A Domestic Terror Threat

Throughout the past two decades, extreme animal rights groups have claimed responsibility for hundreds of crimes and acts of terrorism, including arson, bombings, vandalism, burglary, animal release, and harassment. These crimes have caused damage costing more than one hundred million dollars. While some activists have been captured, animal rights terrorism cells, are extremely difficult to identify and most of the attacks remain unsolved. Although it has been overshadowed by Islamic terrorist threats since September 11, animal rights terrorism still remains one of the United State’s most active terrorist movements. This paper intends to explore the Animal Rights terrorist movement and prove that Animal Rights activists pose a significant domestic terror threat. An increasing number of terrorist activity in the United States has been carried out in the name of animal protection. Although no one has been killed in an attack, the increasingly violent nature of attacks suggests that someone will be proclaimed dead before long. Beginning in the 1970s, hundreds of groups in the United States have advocated for much stricter legal protection for animals. Change has been slow but incremental. Some activists have become frustrated by the pace of legislation, and have become violent. This violence has created an underground terrorist movement to combat companies and practices that they consider abusive and immoral. Influenced to varying degrees by their English predecessors and by segments of the anarchist movement. Animal rights activists operate through autonomous cells, and are not restricted by any geographic boundaries. This makes their organizations very hard to infiltrate and stop. Their organizations are very