From: ra-AT-alor.univ-montp3.fr
Date: 12 Feb 1997 12:52:32 UTC   (08:52:32 AM in author's locale)
To: ra-l-AT-bred.univ-montp3.fr

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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