Until this week's train derailment, the one lucid explanation that has appeared for the new homegrown terrorism in America is the Unabomber's manifesto. Widely viewed as the product of white radical environmentalist thinking, in fact the manifesto is derided and vilified by environmentalists. It connects to a much older tradition of American rebels that dates back to the Revolution. PNS analyst Jorge Aquino is a Bay Area reporter specializing in religious journalism.

Americans continue to be riveted by the O.J. verdict and its impact on the country's black-white fault line. But this week's derailment of a train in Arizona together with Oklahoma City and the Unabomber suggest that there are other gaping fault lines as well.

Most Americans think we know what black rage is about. And many of us suspect that behind the country's new homegrown terrorism is a white radical environmentalist rage run amuck. Beyond the scrawled message taking credit for the train wreck, the one lucid explanation for the terrorism is the Unabomber's manifesto -- a 35,000 word essay aimed at mobilizing public opinion against the evils of the industrial technological system.

At first glance, this appears to be a favorite target of eco-terrorists. And the news media lost little time in making the link. "Unabomber an Environmental Zealot" the headline of one local newspaper pronounced after the Unabomber's first missive to the New York Times appeared last spring. Another local TV newscast claimed the FBI was investigating links between the Unabomber and "radical" environmental groups supposedly shaping his or her strategies. The report included 1993 footage of Earth First! activist Judi Beri being removed from the wreckage of her car which the FBI claimed exploded from a homemade bomb.

But interviews with a broad range of environmentalists make clear that within their far-flung, highly decentralized movement, the Unabomber's ideas are not only derided and vilified. They're largely ignored.

Contrary to the media's quick take, the ideological rift between environmentalists and the Unabomber couldn't be deeper, says Gar Smith, editor of the quarterly "Earth Island Journal." And he accuses the media of slandering the work of environmentalists simply by associating the two.

"I don't think anybody here's read (the manifesto) or had any interest in it," says Jim Perry of World Watch Institute in Washington, D.C. "It's so far from what anybody here cares about."

"He's a kook...I ignore," admits Roland Hwang of the Union for Concerned Scientists.

"It's a distraction from the real issues," comments Bradley Angel, southwest toxics coordinator for Greenpeace in San Francisco.

For the layperson who has read the Unabomber's manifesto, such unequivocal rejection seems puzzling. The text's most widely excerpted passage cites as its most positive idea "WILD nature: those aspects of the functioning of the Earth and its living things that are independent of human management and free of human interference and control."

Other eco-sensibilities are also evident. Not only does the Unabomber blame the Industrial Revolution for "severe damage on the natural world." He or she worries about "nuclear accidents," "carcinogens in food (and) environmental pollution," "ozone depletion" and "the greenhouse effect," not to mention "the population explosion." The Unabomber even strikes a pose as a defender of indigenous peoples. "Ancient cultures, that for hundreds of years gave people a satisfactory relationship with each other and with their environment, have been shattered by contact with industrial society."

But for all this preoccupation with the ravaging of the natural world, the core message of the Unabomber is not concern for the environment but concern for the freedom and power of individuals to control their destiny.

"He seems like he would have more sympathy with the militia movement," says Smith. "He shares all their concerns with privacy, personal freedom and personal power issues."

In fact, as Smith notes, the manifesto's driving idea is something the Unabomber calls "the power process" -- a basic human drive, "probably based in biology," aimed at meeting survival needs like food, clothing and shelter. Today's modern, technology driven society, the Unabomber argues, alienates people from the power process not only by making survival too easy but by concentrating power in fewer and fewer hands.

Meanwhile "the human energies once used to pursue a fleeing animal or hoe a row of vegetables" are channeled into addictive-compulsive surrogate activities -- "climbing the corporate ladder, workaholism, pursuing sexual conquests, consuming alcohol or drugs." The result is "boredom, demoralization, low self-esteem, inferiority feelings, defeatism, depression, anxiety, guilt..."

The Unabomber concludes that only liquidating technological society will restore wild nature and with it the autonomy and freedom humans need to participate in the power process.

Here is the crux of the difference, environmentalists point out. For the Unabomber, wild nature is a means to the goal of human fulfillment. For those in the environmental movement -- especially deep ecologists and eco-feminists -- wild nature is an end in itself.

Moreover, far from wanting to do away with technology, many environmentalists see it as an inevitable part of how the world must try to address the vast problems now confronting it. "We don't have the luxury anymore of turning our backs on technology," complains Joanna Macy, a lecturer on deep ecology and Buddhism. The challenge, she says, is "to keep technology in the hands of local citizens."

"There's a long-standing critique ... about what machines are doing to us," says John Perry of World Watch. "But nobody's saying 'Get rid of technology' in the environmental movement. Technology is one of our greatest friends. It's not the force of technology, it's the cleverness of its use that can serve us best."

In the end, what sets the Unabomber apart from environmentalists is an almost religious view of the evil of the industrial technological system. Whereas environmentalists want to transform it to preserve nature, the Unabomber wants to destroy it.

On the other hand, what connects the Unabomber's apocalyptic vision to a much older tradition of American rebels is its passion for freedom. It is this passion, one that dates back to the Revolution, that is likely reverberating in the new terrorism elsewhere.