From: ra-AT-alor.univ-montp3.fr (Ronald Creagh, Moderator, Research on Anarchism List)
Date: 09 Feb 1997 06:06:37 UTC   (02:06:37 AM in author's locale)
To: ra-l-AT-bred.univ-montp3.fr

Date: Sat, 8 Feb 1997 18:56:40 0100
>From: David.Olivier-AT-iol.it (David Olivier)
>From: Andrew Flood <ANFLOOD-AT-macollamh.ucd.ie:
>
>One example and the one that annoys me the most
>is the constant trivalising of the Nazi holocaust
>by implying it is equivalent to battery farming,
>or cattle transporting.
Andrew, it is your own remark that is trivialising. It trivialises the very
real and often intense suffering and deaths of millions of non-human
animals, by implying that it is too trivial to be compared with the
suffering and deaths of humans. I don't know which is worst, of the Nazi
extermination of Jews or battery farming; I do know they are comparable
abominations.
Sadly, wheareas real trivialisation of the Nazi's acts is relatively rare
and confined to extreme right groups, the trivialisation of what non-humans
have to endure is everywhere, in everone's plate, in every supermarket. It
is we animal liberationists who have good reasons to be annoyed; your own
annoyment is only the refusal to discuss and take seriously arguments that
imply you have no birth-priviledge by having been born in the 'right'
species.
>But above all else its the constant return
>to a 'better then thou' moralism that I otherwise
>associate with religious bigots.
To a Nazi, wouldn't you say 'better than thou'? You very probably morally
condemn Nazism; why should ethical condemnation be 'bigotry' in one case,
that of speciesism and meat-eating, and not in the other case, that of
racism and mass murder of humans? I mean, apart from the fact that the
victims of meat-eating aren't white like you - sorry, I mean human like
you?
>Having got all that off my chest I'd like to say
>this does not apply to all the exponants of animal
>rights I have come across, those that are
>also involved in struggling alongside people tend
>to have a view that this is a question of a personal
>rather then a collectivly imposed morality and not
>something to shove down others throats.
What you have on your chest is just that you don't like your actions to be
criticized.
If a person defines eirself as an exponant of animal rights, and at the
same time believes that respecting those rights is just a question of
'personal morality' (whatever such an expression may mean!), ey has some
kind of strange concept of rights. Can we recognise the right of a daughter
not to be raped by eir father, and still say that it's just a matter of
'personal morality' for the father to choose to do it? Please explain this
to me.
I know lots of animal liberationists, many of whom are engaged also in
struggles against forms of human oppression, and not one of them considers
rape or mass murder or meat-eating as matters of 'personal morality'. They
are political and ethical questions.
David Olivier (David.Olivier-AT-iol.it)
Les Cahiers antispecistes
(www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/3347)

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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
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