Elves or people? Fantasy or Reality? 

Do you know what environmental activists are? These are people that want to help the environment and another name for them is environmentalists.  There is a group of radical environmentalists that believe that they are elves and nature spirits. The reason that they believe that is to justify what it is that they do. They also do this to add a mystic effect to them. They want to save nature and try to justify their means in any way possible for them to do so. The way that they go about this is by trying to follow three steps to do so. 

First step: Transformation 

Second Step: Transference 

The first thing that needs to happen is transformation. This means that they need to make new recruits willing to commit crimes and enact violence along with the rest of the activists. The repeated notion of calling them elves over humans leads them to believe that they are and thus are invisible to the law or unable to be seen by the law and thus untouchable by it. Some people are not willing and thus need to be won over to do it. One of the groups call themselves ELF and claim that they are like the fair folk in that they are invisible. By calling themselves this it gives the impression that they are elves and faeries. There was a journal article that said that due to the spelling they are paying homage to JRR Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” book series. This also ties into the idea of there being the whole elf thing as there is a race in the book that lives in the trees.

The second step is transference. They do this by personifying the plants, animals, and even the earth itself. They do this so that it is easier to justify what it is that they are doing by claiming revenge as though the plants and animals are people that have died. They do this through stories and articles to draw human attention to what is happening. The place that it is published is a journal that is written by environmentalists.  They are often though considered childish in the way that it happens for some of the articles and stories and almost elderly and ancient for others. This is done in a way that pulls at the reader’s heartstrings to insight pity. It does however make it easier for people to link to the plants and sympathize. By doing this it also helps to justify as then they assume that the plants are alive in the same way as people. 

Third Step: Transcendence

Conclusion 

The last step is transcendence. This is the part where they claim that the ends justify the means. They do this by claiming moral obligations that they claim are justice. They do this by claiming that they are being protected by magic, nature, and a divine, higher moral being. They claim that they are helping out gods and that the trees and plants are sources of infinite power. The idea that trees are benevolent spirits is one that crops up as well.  One of the gods that they claim is Mother Earth. They believe that she is the one that is guiding them on their journey as elves to protect nature.  There are others that they claim but most of them claim Mother Earth or other variation of her. This means that they use religion to claim morals. However, some use since that links humans to the earth but follows the same principle as well.  This is one that a lot of people do claim when people try to claim that they are in the right. 

The media has tried to say that they are mindless but looking at the information one might be more inclined to believe that they could be considered something more along the lines of a subculture. That isn’t to say that they aren’t violent as they are but that doesn’t change what they could be. The interesting part though is that they wholeheartedly believe that they are elves and they are helping Mother Earth. I think that it is very cool that these people wholeheartedly believe that they are elves. While I don’t condemn the crimes the idea that there is a subculture based on fantasy ideas like this is interesting. It is somewhat humbling to know that there are people out there that believe that. Then there is the idea that would you be able to go through the process if you were in their position? Would you be able to understand what they are doing if you were faced with the same thing?