The article attempts to analyze theoretically the socio-political phenomenon of «environmental terrorism». Complex of global environmental problems (pollution of air, water, soil, common planetary temperature increase, greenhouse effect, destruction of the ozone layer, large-scale floods, droughts, hurricanes, reduction of biological diversity, scarcity of natural resources, rapid demographic growth, cities crisis, environmental refugees, anthropogenic (man-made) garbage collapse, etc.) correlates with the radicalization of environmental views and the rhetoric of peaceful meetings and pickets of government institutions, corporations and international organizations are being replaced by firing from firearms, laying bombs, arson, namely terrorist acts. In today’s world conditions, in the fight for environmental issues solutions, for the right of every person to a clean environment and a fair distribution of resources, environmental views are transformed increasingly into extremism and radicalism, and thus, eco-activists cross the border and become eco-terrorists.
The author of the article emphasizes that in the modern scientific space there is a significant lack of research material on the issues of environmental terrorism, which significantly complicates theoretical studying and the search for methodological tools for understanding this socio-political phenomenon. In his search for the keys to understanding of «environmental terrorism», the author turns to the evolution of the environmental movement (which has been developing along two main directions: the institutionalization of the environmental movement and the politicization of the environmental movement) and notes that at some stage of the evolutionary development of the ecological movement, divergences arise in the form of extremism and radicalism of environmental movements, which became the basis of environmental terrorism. Theoretical analysis of the activities of environmental terrorist organizations, including the Deep Green Resistance, the Huntingdon Society for the Suppression of Cruelty to Animals (Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty), the Animal Liberation Front (Animal Liberation Front) and the Earth Liberation Front (Earth Liberation Front), also Earth Above All, Sea Shepherds and others, allows to assert that the increasing feelings of anxiety, helplessness and inevitability of ecological catastrophe on a planetary scale, total disappointment in political institutes and activities of international environmental organizations, «false news and rumors, pseudoscientific beliefs, turned into myths, mad populism, outdated and new group phobias, extremism and all this in hysterically transformational communities is turned into a theoretical basis and a trigger for violence» and becomes «nutritious» substance for the environmental terrorism.
ДИВЕРГЕНЦІЇ ЕКОЛОГІЧНОГО РУХУ (ЕКОЛОГІЧНИЙ РАДИКАЛІЗМ ТА ЕКОЛОГІЧНИЙ ТЕРОРИЗМ) КРІЗЬ ПРИЗМУ ПОЛІТОЛОГІЧНОГО ВИМІРУ