Wise Use Terrorism – Craig Cole’s Anti-Indian Campaign
September 22, 2015
by Jay Taber
The Wise Use Movement, a fascist movement of industrial-sponsored terrorism against environmentalists and Native Americans, has a thirty-year history of fomenting violent interracial discord aimed at intimidating activists, journalists and public employees. With funding from industry, the Anti-Indian Movement in turn promotes Wise Use propaganda, organizing hate campaigns to capitalize on white supremacy and religious bigotry.
The Wall Street/Tea Party Convergence in the fossil fuel export war on the Salish Sea, using counterfeit front groups and political action committees, is a textbook example of Wise Use netwar (networked psychological warfare) exploiting organized racism. Gray ops (misleading propaganda) and black ops (counterfeit front groups) make it possible for Wise Use fossil fuel export developers to confuse mainstream media, and in conjunction with bribery through advertising, ensure that only the industrial point of view is represented in the corporate mainstream news.
Drumming up resentment against environmentalists and American Indian tribes, however, has repercussions. From 1992 to 1996, Wise Use ideologues and agent provocateurs (funded by developers) hosted Christian Patriot militias to intimidate their political opponents. In 1997, militia members from Seattle and Whatcom County, WA were convicted of firearms and explosives charges in U.S. District Court, where it was revealed they planned to murder human rights activists.
As noted in Fossil Fueled Fearmongering, political action committees, funded by Wise Use developers proposing a coal terminal at Cherry Point, capitalized on promoting interracial discord in conjunction with CERA (the “Ku Klux Klan of Indian Country”), KGMI radio and the Tea Party. In her September 14, 2015 article Creating Something Out of Nothing: Craig Cole and the Northwest Jobs Alliance, Dena Jensen examines the latest in netwar waged by SSA Marine against Lummi Nation and the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians.
While not a new phenomenon, The Politics of Land and Bigotry feeds on a growing politics of fear promoted by PR people like Craig Cole and his employer, Pacific International Terminals. As a rationalization of theft, Fascism in America includes both Wise Use and Christian Patriots (the people responsible for the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing), who share a willingness to use violence to maintain power and privileges based on wealth or race.
[Jay is an associate scholar of the Center for World Indigenous Studies, a correspondent to Forum for Global Exchange, and a contributing editor of Fourth World Journal. Since 1994, he has served as communications director at Public Good Project, a volunteer network of researchers, analysts and activists engaged in defending democracy. As a consultant, he has assisted indigenous peoples in the European Court of Human Rights and at the United Nations. Email: tbarj [at] yahoo.com Website: www.jaytaber.com]