From: ra-AT-alor.univ-montp3.fr (Ronald Creagh, Moderator, Research on Anarchism List)
Date: 30 Jan 1997 14:52:04 UTC   (10:52:04 AM in author's locale)
To: ra-l-AT-bred.univ-montp3.fr

Date: Thu, 30 Jan 1997 00:07:38 0100 (MET)
>From: Harald Beyer-Arnesen <haraldba-AT-sn.no>
I will try to answer some of the responses to my post on
this subject, but I am afraid I will not gain many friends
in doing so ...
First to John Clark, who wrote: "This is a classic example of an ad
hominem argument. It's quite possible that such seemingly crazy "notions"
might be popular with urban dwellers and alienated petit bourgeois
types, but yet be absolutely brilliant examples of truth.."
Of course you are right to point out that this in itself proves nothing,
which was never my point anyway, but yet it can be relevant to our
understanding of a social phenomena. I don't think it is a coincidence
that most of the promoters of "animal rights" comes out of this background,
nor that this movement is especially strong in the US along with all kinds
of escapist "new ageism". Neither that there are far more centres for
mistreated animals in the US than for battered women and so on. On the
other side there is no coincidence that in places like the North of Norway,
where people live much closer to nature, vegans must be considered a
threatened species. And not because the people living there are any less
sensitive to the sufferings of others. Actually until very recently
vegetables and mushrooms was considered animal food, and still is by the
older generation of Samis (Lapps).
I can understand that to have to rely on the death of other species to
survive is an existential problem to some. This is of course nothing new.
But there is just no way out of it. It is simply not true as I will try
show below that being vegan necessarily causes less death and torture
(if you want to use the word) to other species.
To speak of animals rights - which is something else than saying we
should not inflict unnecessary pain - sounds very strange, especially
coming from anarchists -- as I believe that the anarchist view that
"rights" is not something you have or are given but something you take,
is fundamentally true. In the capitalist society we are living the concept
of "rights" is either totally abstract (like human rights), or implies
law enforcement, i.e. the state.
James Corrigan wrote: "Personally, I believe that changing one's diet
is the most radical action that an individual can take. I haven't eaten
anyone's child in over fifteen years, and have been a vegan for over
five years."
This is the kind of statements we know from the "pro-life" movement. Not
surprisingly, the vanguard of the "animal rights" movement, like the Animal
Liberation Front, has the same kind of elitist approach, willing to kill
human beings for their sacred cause. This kind of thinking lends itself
easily to a total moral relativism and thereby also to all kinds of right
wing movements. Along this line of unreality there is no difference between
the nazis and the "child-eating" Jews, Gypsies, Slavs, homo-sexuals,
anarchists and others who ended their lives the nazi extermination camps.
Probably James Corrigan would deny this. But this only shows the basic
dishonesty -- or more likely unreflected viewpoint -- underlying this true
born child of a industrial society. This whole line of thinking is founded
and depended on the reality that human beings actually already have driven
animals away from their past pastures, and have invented technology which
makes the soil yield more. The animal rights movement is founded on what
in their own terms equals genocide..
The resources of this planet are limited.. What makes you believe that
youcause the death of less animals being an vegan. When you grow vegetables
grain etc. you steal the food and living grounds of animals and cause painful
starvation, not drinking milk makes you even more murderous, because it
causes you to take even more of their pastures. Not eating seal's meat, you
cause the death of trillions of fish. If you put an end to all hunting you
would rely on wild animals killing and torturing one another, or die a slow
and painful death caused by starvation or epidemics.
Carl Chatski wrote: "I am in the utopian school. Our potential is not
to dominate each other or 'nature', but to 'transend the struggle for
suvival.' This means that each and every act is purely symbiotic and
no act is parasitic."
What is the meaning of the above in lay terms, e.g. for Inuits living in
Greenland? Should the island be depopulated.? According to James argument,
the most lives would be saved by just killing them all, as the Inuits
obviously eat far more than one seal each in their lifetime. But then again
he would be against this BECAUSE HE VALUES HUMAN LIVES MORE THAN THOSE
OF SEALS. James of course, like all other "animal rights" supporters when
it comes down to reality, are speciest. Their whole way of life, regardless
of their eating habits, is depended on the death of other species.
Another related movement is of course the primitivist: To achieve their
utopia they would probably have to kill or starve to death 9/10 of the
world population.
Sorry for my disrespect, but I don't think anarchism (nor the conditions
of animals within the industrialised agro-business) is served by being
connected with these kind of movements. Maybe it is I who is being
irrational now, but the animal rights movement always gives me the shiver,
and I don't think I am the only one who gets that feeling.
Harald
in solidarity,
Harald Beyer-Arnesen
haraldba-AT-sn.no

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Moderator/Moderador/Moderateur : Ronald Creagh
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