Except the overwhelming majority of those eco/animal-terrorist activities do not involve trying to harm people. It's almost always property destruction/sabotage.
I guess the weather underground was before my time, that was decades ago though.
There have been times of left-wing violence. It's generally in the face of right-wing violence.
The Weather Underground was violent; it was in a time of things from Vietnam to the FBI assassinating a black figure (and attacking Martin Luther King's life for good measure).
When El Salvador had death squads ruling by terror, assassinating the arch-bishop when he spoke out against them, isn't it understandable for their to be violent resistance?
Wasn't John Brown violence in the face of the violence of enslaving millions of blacks? Can you blame a violent slave revolt?
Unfortunately, morality isn't always enough to end immoral behavior. Some Americans said 'slavery is wrong'; plenty of others supported it to where it wasn't leaving the South anytime soon, left on their own to decide. They had hundreds of years to 'do the right thing' they didn't.
The left generally tries to fix these things peacefully with the law, and democracy.
It's a reason why the left is so strongly opposed when leaders misuse their power and undermine democracy to do wrong, like in El Salvador, and the Contras, for example.
Or only recently it was learned that Ford and Kissinger had secretly approved Indonesia using US-supplied weapons to invade East Timor and kill 250,000. Democracy had worked - Congress had placed a restriction on the use of the weapons to be used only for defense - and democracy was then undermined by Ford and Kissinger to bloody all Americans' hands.
Repercussions? None.
The Black Panthers weren't especially violent but they were an armed movement - in response to a lot of repression.
The more we prevent violent oppression, the more we prevent violent opposition.
JFK once said a couple things, Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable. And, '"If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich." Martin Luther King said, Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Martin Luther King, Jr.
These say a bit about the typical nature of 'left wing violence'.
Once it starts, it often takes on a life of its own, though. Vietnam had leaders fighting for freedom for Vietnam; yet they killed each other in the power struggle. Cuba began as opposition to repression - and then became repressive. The French Revolution started as rebellion to oppression, and then became an orgy of violence.
Unfortunately, the stable, peaceful society always faces risk from those who think their pursuing more for themselves at others' expense is a good idea.
