The afternoon of Sept. 1, three men in the Discovery Communications headquarters building in Silver Spring, Maryland, were held hostage by 43-year-old James Lee – an environmental protester turned gunman armed with two pistols and an explosive device. After four hours of negotiations, as Lee turned a gun to the hostages, the men were rescued by a sniper’s bullet.Inspired by former Vice President Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” and Daniel Quinn’s novel “Ishmael,” Lee had protested outside of the headquarters multiple times, attempting to convince employees and passerby that the network must stop broadcasting programs that encourage procreation and begin televising anti-civilization messages. Sometime after an arrest in 2008, Lee decided to use violence to make his point.

Lee’s manifesto, a website composed of 11 things he wanted The Discovery Channel and their affiliates to do in order to “save the planet,” is written as if the television network has control over humanity. He calls for civilization to “be exposed for the filth that it is,” and for solutions to be found for “Global Warming, Automotive pollution, international trade, factory pollution, and the whole blasted human economy.”

Yet beneath the tirade against society and the misconceptions about this media giant, are genuine (albeit misguided) concerns about humanity and the environment. Lee calls for an end to war promotion in popular media (“All programs promoting war and the technology behind those must cease .. Not because it’s morally wrong, but because of the catastrophic environmental damage modern weapons cause to other creatures,”) and to rethink how much we damage the environment.

Unfortunately, he follows these ideas with militant demands about the end of human life and civilization. Unlike the environmentalists that inspired him, Lee turns against humanity, even stating at the end of his demands that “children represent future catastrophic pollution” and “the planet does not need humans.”

Though some ideas and intents expressed within the manifesto may seem built on a liberal foundation, all of them are warped and disturbed due to Lee’s personal circumstances.

Because of the nature of Lee’s demands, the University of Maryland’s Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism Center has labeled the crisis as a terrorist attack – a violent interruption of everyday life, meant to threaten or intimidate a population for political purposes.

As post 9/11 U.S. citizens, the concept of terrorism has been engraved into our minds. As has the idea that terror is not foreign, but can also be born, raised, and committed here. Domestic terrorism, but especially cases such this one, are the instances where we must pay extra attention to the road that led to the attack.

Eco-terrorism has been around for quite some time. Its aggressive acts improperly categorized among violent attacks – but rarely has it resulted in hostages or death. James Lee took a radical stance that would eventually cause him to make rash decisions, ending his life, harming his initial inspiration and severely impacting hundreds, if not thousands of people.

It is at times like this that we must remember not past terrorism, but the humans that existed before terror devoured their identity. We must remember that no matter the reasons or the argument, terror is the lowest form of warfare, and its medium, intimidation, the lowest form of persuasion.