Ted Rall Winks At Ecoterrorism — Does Anyone On The Left Care?

17 Sep, 2003 by John Hawkins

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Here are some excerpts from an editorial by ultra-popular left-wing columnist Ted Rall on ELF & SUVS…and yes, you’re reading it right, he’s trying to make it perfectly clear that he approves of eco-terrorism without explicitly saying so…

“The environmental crisis is, hands down, the most important matter facing humanity today. Who cares about peace in the Middle East if the region is under water, stricken by famine or choked by dust storms? Weather systems are becoming increasingly violent and unpredictable, species are going extinct and virgin-growth forests are vanishing at an alarming rate. While smog has diminished somewhat in places like Denver and Los Angeles, air pollution is getting worse nationally. Ohio’s EPA, for example, announced that 2002 was the most toxic summer on record in 14 years.

…In an ideal world, American consumers could be convinced to do the right thing through an appeal to logic with public service messages like the “What Would Jesus Drive?” TV campaign, but the kind of people who would buy a car that increases the risk to other motorists in an accident can’t be reasoned with. They’re selfish and stupid. It’s unfortunate that drivers must worry that their SUVs are being targeted by insulting stickers and Molotov cocktails, but one thing’s for sure: It couldn’t be happening to a more deserving group of people.”

So, “It’s unfortunate that drivers must worry that their SUVs are being targeted by insulting stickers and Molotov cocktails, but one thing’s for sure: It couldn’t be happening to a more deserving group of people.”

Now, maybe it’s just me, but the is the left not UNBELIEVABLY, INCREDIBLY, HAIR-TRIGGER, sensitive to people on the right who say things similar to this?

If you criticize some anti-war celebrity for saying something ridiculous, you get left-wingers hysterically claiming that all dissent is being silenced in the US. You have Christine Armanpour claiming Fox News “intimidated” CNN somehow or another. Bill Clinton tried to tie the Oklahoma City bombing to conservatives complaining about government in general on talk radio. Tom Daschle even claimed (among other things) that his family was getting death threats because Rush Limbaugh was calling him an “obstructionist”.

So we get all that hysteria, all those drastic over reactions, and then Ted Rall comes along and says that “working within the system hasn’t stopped the polluters,” SUV drivers “can’t be reasoned with,” & that people who drive SUVs deserve to have Molotov cocktails thrown at them.

That makes perfect sense doesn’t it? Sure, as Rall himself mentions earlier in the article, SUVS make up “more than half of new car sales,” but since Ted Rall doesn’t approve, I guess they “deserve” to have some eco-terrorist torch their car, right? Who told them this was a free country where they could drive whatever car they wanted without having to get Ted Rall & ELF’s approval?

Rall’s eco-terrorist friendly editorial will not provoke widespread outrage on the left, it won’t cost him his Yahoo column, his cartoon at the New York Times is safe, and I sincerely doubt if it’ll even turn off any of his fans.

I guess the ends justify the means for a few — well, let’s call it like it is given the fact that Rall is a popular left-wing columnist — a lot of people on the left. Maybe they don’t want to come right out and say it, but they figure, “Hey, if it takes terrorists throwing Molotov cocktails at people’s cars to force them to do what we want, so be it.”

Am I wrong? Prove it to me. Rall is as well read on the left as people like Michelle Malkin and David Horowitz are on the right. So show me several left-wing blogs of note denouncing this editorial. Show me the sort of outrage you’d see on the right side of the blogosphere if say a popular conservative columnist advocated torching the cars of anti-war protestors or people who had abortions.

You’re simply not going to see it and that is quite telling…

Hat tip to A Small Victory for finding this one.