New Animal Liberationist Terrorist Threats
The Edinburgh Zoo has a new enclosure to house polar bears. But the Animal Liberation Front (AFL) has promised to attack the zoo and shut it down in the same fashion with which liberationists attacked a UK guinea pig farm and coerced its closing. That included threats of violence, repeated vandalism, threats against friends of the farmers, threats against business associates, and finally, the coup de gras that finished the job, grave robbing.
Every time these tactics succeed, it energizes the movement like warm ocean water does a hurricane. I have repeatedly called on animal liberationists to condemn such criminality. With one or two exceptions of responding posts to this blog, the overall silence has been deafening. In private e-mails, I am accused of caricaturing the movement. Don't judge us by the whackos, they say. But when I respond asking for an explicit condemnation, all I usually get are evasions or non responses. Much more notably, when PETA explicitly refuses to condemn violence, when Steven Best, the U.S. professor who is at the forefront of the movement explicitly condones grave robbing and other tactics, and is banned from the UK for being a terrorist sympathizer, it is hard but to conclude that most of the people who support animal liberation are pleased that the thuggery works. Animal liberation isn't about protecting animal welfare. It is about imposing its radical ideology upon the rest of us "by any means necessary."
And don't think it is just the UK. The animal liberation movement is international. The most extreme actions are often taken in the UK first, and then they spread like a cancer here and elsewhere (but never to places like the Mideast where animals are treated far less humanely then in the West, but where the response to liberation lawlessness would be far less measured).
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 7:13 AM
5 Comments
5 Comments:
Consider why animal liberationists who maintain an official stand against violence might not feel obligated to publicly renew that position after every ALF-type incident. One reason that has been given is that to do so is to step into a no-win scenario. In a soundbite age that reduces every issue to absolute polarities, seemingly calm, rational, white-lab-coat professionals who experiment on animals will always look like heroes when the other side is supposed to be comprised of guerilla terrorists. Moral concerns about animals are completely drowned in those situations; liberationists must be the bad guys.
There is then a dilemma for peaceful animal liberationists. Someone does something sensational in the name of the ALF, and the liberationists are expected to repeatedly distance themselves from it, even though they never called for or supported that tactic. Yet there is rarely opportunity to show the positive rational case for abolishing animal experimentation. No one seems to stick around to hear that; it involves intellectual work and is much less flashy.
There is a related reason for the breakdown in communcation between experimenters and liberationists. Because of ALF violence, liberationists are expected to give up everything in their position, while the experimenters concede nothing. The latter get a free ticket to keep up the status quo and even expand it.
Here is a possible way forward: if all experimenters became vegetarians--adopting a plant-based diet and shunning fur and leather--then their arguments for animal experimentation might be accompanied by a degree of good will that seems to be mostly absent at the present time. After all, for most North Americans and Europeans at least, animal suffering for food and clothing is completely gratuitous; excellent alternatives are everywhere.
To summarize: every moral issue has its difficult cases, but vegetarianism and/or veganism is ethically straightforward, even if experimentation sometimes is not. Focusing on ALF violence while ignoring the central issues of animal liberation is thus a hindrance to incremental moral progress for the common person.
They have an absolute obligation to condemn violence--AT LEAST ONCE! PETA refuses. Most remain silent. There should be ringing condemnations about issues such as these threats, the grave robbing to drive the guinea pig farmers out of business, the SHAC atrocities, etc.
Vegetarianism is fine. If you can persuade people to adopt the lifestyle, so be it. But it should not be coerced.
The crucial issue in animal liberation is whether humans and animals are moral equals. That is the ideology of the movement. And it is misanthropic.
There is a well-established and widely acknowledged link between abuse of animals and violence against humans (i.e., domestic abuse). Therefore, the major pro-liberationist organizations realize that they cannot ignore the issue of domestic abuse. In fact, they explicitly address it in a variety of forms, often through partnerships with organizations whose primary focus is abuse of humans.
I just did a quick search on three pro-liberationist sites: PETA (www.peta.org), the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (www.pcrm.org), and the Humane Society of the United States (www.hsus.org). In each case the results showed a large amount of material on their involvement in prevention of domestic abuse.
Now, if these organizations have so many public pages of information on how to keep men from beating women, for example, is it not fairly obvious that they do not condone bombings and other forms of havoc?
Given this data, the charge of misanthropy simply doesn't stick, and the burden of responding to ALF-style incidents is not one that they must bear. A little common sense and a little research is sufficient to establish that ALF actions and promotion of human/non-human moral equivalence are not characteristics of the most influential liberationist organizations.
The explicit creation of the moral equivalence between humans and animals, is the primary distinction between animal rights and welfare.
PETA refuses to condemn ALF, SHAC, and other such violent groups. PETA is the largest, most visible animal liberationist organization. Promoters of violent actions such as Steven Best and Dr. Jerry Vlasak, are invited to speak at animal liberationist conferences around the world. I haven't seen one press release condemning the grave robbing that drove the guinea pig farm out of business. I have seen quotes from animal liberationists about how pleased they are--and how proud--of the people who perpetrated that abomination.
I don't have a problem condmening grave robbing for any reason; I do have a bit of a problem believing that story, however. I think there is a larger picture here. Arkvelo touches on it when he or she speaks of scientists taking the moral high ground so that we don't reach legitimate animal advocacy questions. I have to respect you because of your work with Ralph Nader and for people with disabilities; I hope you are able to establish a mutually respectful dialog with those who feel you are attempting to make a cariacature of animal advocacy and really understand what they are trying to say. I have come to the conclusion that the National Animal Interest Alliance, based here in Portland, has been mischaracterizing and mocking local efforts to improve conditions for animals, as well as to raise the level of discussion on research issues. Adrian Morrison, one of the sources you quoted in "The Culture of Death" is on the NAIA board; I have an ariticle he wrote for one of the NAIA newsletters where he urges research scientists to "educate' (read propagandize?; I think these folks are into psyop type stuff) news media and other writers about the dangers of animal liberationists. I see this as a self-serving attempt to prevent the media from permitting real dialog on issues such as pound seizure (should organizations that handle people's pets be permitted to sell or realease animals to the research establishment?). Someone-I suspect someone involved in NAIA-falsely told the Humane Society of the United States that pound seizure is illegal in Oregon. Besides flat out lying, these people characterize ordinary people who care about animals as "terrorists". It is the stuff of criminal cover-ups, not responsible science. Patti Strand, NAIA president, tells people she is a Christian, but if she is a Christian and not an angel of light, she must not have read the scripture that warns liars are going to burn in the Lake of Fire. The grave robbers are atrocious and the guy who was eaten by a Grisly Bear your wife recently wrote about was ridiculous. But I think that is as far as you can take it. You wouldn't suggest that every parent who finds it abhorrent that some people kill their children to have to condemn every case to avoid being classified as child killers, would you? And please look beyond Strand's take on the No-Kill movement. Richard Avanzino and Nathan Winograd deserve more than the dismissive statement that no-kill is "all the rage". And you deserve more than to be lumped together with the NAIA in the final analysis. If you saw first-hand what goes on in Portland, I think you would see the similarities between abuses of power in the legal and medical arenas and the scientific research establishment that is represented by these folks.
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