From: ra-AT-alor.univ-montp3.fr
Date: 15 Feb 1997 12:28:55 UTC   (08:28:55 AM in author's locale)
To: ra-l-AT-bred.univ-montp3.fr

Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1997 09:52:28 -0800 (PST)
>From: Bob Helms x341465 <bhelms-AT-iww.org>

Dear Harald,
I wrote in once before, to correct misstatements about animals'
quality of life in India. I am in agreement with most of what you have
said but like your opponents, you sometimes make grotesque connections.
For the record, I'm a meat-eater who would like, some day, to become a
vegetarian, so as to avoid things like prostate cancer and also to reduce
by one the number of meat consumers --it just seems like a decent thing
to do. I also have a reasonably clear understanding of the Nazi SS
system and the things it did, and I agree that Alka's comparisons have
little connection to reality.
I am writing to point out a mistake you made, which is quite
obvious to me, only because I am an anarchist from the United States.
You responded to Alka's comments about FOOD NOT BOMBS without being
familiar with the organization, as I am. With any such familiarity, you
would have responded differently, because his comments co-opted FNB into
the animal rights camp even though that organization has nothing to do
with the animal rights movement. Your comments took the distortion even
farther, comparing FNB with Brigitte Bardot's fascist soup kitchens.
Please learn the following before you wind up believing that pigs have
wings, just because Alka might tell you that pigs and chickens have a
commonality of interest --your assumptions about FNB are that far from
the mark.
1. FOOD NOT BOMBS is a militantly anti-racist organization, and serves
free meals to crowds of protesters who confront racist groups. Any
suggestion that FNB compares with Bardot's activity would be met by
laughter in the US. When the Ku Klux Klan has a parade in the morning,
you can bet that a few dozen FNB people will be in jail that evening for
blocking the parade route in a disciplined, non-violent manner.
2. FNB doesn't merely hand out food to poor people. It helps them
organize their own food supply. The membership of FNB (totally informal)
includes large numbers of very poor people of every race. Many of its
organizers are anarchists. Many of its participants are not even
vegetarians.
3. While FNB may state its vegetarianism with ethical language, in my
experience the main reasons for it are practical and health-related.
Handling meat would be far too involved and expensive for groups (who
operate on virtually no money). Meat spoils without changing its
appearance, and because FNB cooks only donated food, it would be taking
serious risks if it handled meat. Besides, all this is usually happening
in cities, where neighbors might share garden space, but where almost
nobody raises animals for food. How and why would the FNB organizers
teach poor and/or homeless people to raise rabbits or chickens, when they
can so easily teach them to raise or acquire safe, healthy vegetables?
There are all sorts of health laws that apply only to meat --why worry
about them?
4. Vegetarianism is far more common in North America than it is in
Europe. One can be a vegetarian there without having to explain the
reasons at every meal, and without being perceived as a fanatic. I could
make similar statements about non-smokers and non-drinkers of alcohol,
for that matter. Fly across an ocean, and there will be different
answers to questions you never thought of asking yourself. FOOD NOT
BOMBS has an effective method of converting people to vegetarianism by
showing them how much sense it makes, rather than brow-beating them about
animal rights.
Finally, I'd like to offer my opinion on the concept called
"rights." When correctly understood, rights are no more than legal
theories. I often say, when engaged in labor activism, that workers have
no rights, and bosses have no rights. Both either have or do not have
political power. Power dictates the outcome of every conflict of
interest. On the other hand, my heart dictates what I want and how much
I want. I satisfy my desires because I have the power to do so, and
never because I have the right. This applies to the food choice question
because it removes some of the confusion. If Alka cares about animals,
he would do better by avoiding methods of argument that tend to alienate
people, because humans will dictate the outcome to all of these debates.
One free community dinner with tasty vegan food will win more converts
than ten years of screaming about the Nazis.
I must add, though, that direct action on behalf of animals has
won some worthwhile territory. I was quite intrigued when unknown
persons raided an animal research laboratory in Philadelphia, and made
public some videotapes of scientists who were making crass jokes about
the chimpanzees as they smashed in their skulls with high-precision
head-bashing devices.
Yours in Solidarity,
Robert Helms
PS Harald, didn't we meet at Montague last year?
On Wed, 12 Feb 1997 ra-AT-alor.univ-montp3.fr wrote:
> Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1997 13:43:34 0100 (MET)
> >From: Harald Beyer-Arnesen <haraldba-AT-sn.no>
>
> I said I would not enter any more into this debate, but as a weak soul,
> I could not resist the temptation to comment on the below. But first.
> How to you argue with people who consider most of humanity throughout
> history as equal to Nazis? Can you get any further away from anarchism?
> Also, from their point of view the collectives in Aragon during
> the Spanish Revolution would really be some kind of extermination camps. The
> historical struggle against plagues and epidemics in Europe could similarily
> be rewritten so as to include the "genocide" of rats. What was so bad with
> slaves growing cotton instead instead of being engaged in the hunt on
> animals back in Africa? I don't see how capitalism is in need of police
> forces with anarchists like these which do their best to render it absurd to
> the great majority of people. Even putting slavery in the same category as
> eating honey which according to some is considered exploiting bees, making
> you an accessory to slavery.
>
>
> Alka wrote: "Well, I do know plenty of people who are on social assistance,
> but who are vegan. But this debate is really about the
> ethics around food choices. You just have to look at an organization
> like Food not Bombs (which is exclusively vegetarian, and increasingly
> vegan) to witness the politics between food choices and hunger."
>
> If this means what it sounds like, then we are really back to the
> days of the missionaries, or the Maoist, where you have sacred
> right to enforce your sacred views and practices on others. If it
> is right as you write that Food Not Bombs has made this choice ON THE BEHALF
> OF those in need of the food they give out, then god bless the far less
> authoritarian Salvation Army. Presuming I have understood you right and your
> information is correct, maybe Food not Bombs should change their name to
> Vegan or No Food.
>
> In what I am now follows, I could easily be accused argumenting through
> guilt by association, but I think that politically vegans - I have nothing
> outspoken with people who make this their personal choice - should give
> more consideration to how they arguments easily play into racist currents.
> As a spokesperson for the very small Green Party during election campaign in
> this country a few years back, Arne Naess (which I unlike Murray Bookchin,
> respect in many regards) made the proposal that the population of Norway
> should be reduced from 4 million people to 2. At a time of a increasing
> racism and anti-immigration propaganda, (the micro-party White Election
> Alliance recently even suggested the forced sterilisation of foreignly
> adopted children) it is easy to imagine who would be the first to go should
> this proposal ever be taken seriously.
> And it's tempting to ask if Jean-Marie Le Pen's racist party, the
> National Front, which has endorsed the animal rights campaign of Brigitte
> Bardot, and also started soup kithcens for the homeless, has the same policy
> as Food not Bombs seems to have. Brigitte Bardot has praised the National
> Front and pronounced that "France is being invaded by muslims", a statement
> which according to her was not racially motivated, but by her concern for
> animals and the muslims rituals for slaughtering sheep. Which reminds me of
> a animal rights advocate in a TV debate last year who argued for the right
> to make rules which restrict the number of immigrants admitted into housing
> cooperatives since such rules exist many places for cats and dogs (which she
> was passionately against).
>
> Harald
>
>
>
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>

TO SEND A MESSAGE TO EVERYONE write to RA-L-AT-bred.univ-montp3.fr.
TO UNSUBSCRIBE, WRITE TO : listserv-AT-bred.univ-montp3.fr
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Moderator/Moderador/Moderateur : Ronald Creagh
Co-Moderator : John P. Clark
e-mail : rcreagh-AT-alor.univ-montp3.fr
snail mail/correo ordinario/courrier ordinaire : Ronald Creagh, Universite
Paul Valery, B.P. 5043, 34032, Montpellier-Cedex, France.
fax : (33) 67 64 77 23