Activist or terrorist? Negotiating discourses of eco-terror in If a Tree Falls

ABSTRACT

Environmentalist voices like the Earth Liberation Front have been labeled “eco-terrorists.” The 2011 documentary film If a Tree Falls explores how “eco-terrorism” troubles the unstable border between activism and terrorism. This essay offers a textual analysis of the film's negotiation of the activism/terrorism dichotomy, arguing that it both destabilizes and reifies dominant paradigms for understanding eco-revolutionary activism as environmental communication. I suggest that the film cultivates for its audiences a space of critical engagement with the complexities of such activist practices in the age of terror anxiety, contributing welcome nuance to the public conversation about radicalization in environmental activism.

Notes

1. It is the only such documentary to have been nominated for an Oscar. Though films such as The East and Night Moves attend to some of the same themes as If a Tree Falls, their fictitious nature invites audiences to grapple with these issues at a more abstract level. Conversely, other documentary depictions of ELF (e.g., Green with a Vengeance) did not receive nearly as much press or critical attention. Though viewership statistics are unavailable, this contrast is illustrated by the number of YouTube views for the Green with a Vengeance trailer (fewer than 14,000) and the If a Tree Falls trailer (over 200,000) at the time of writing.