Warped Priorities
Let’s put moral outrage in perspective here. We are talking about the difference between an animal liberationist abstractly discussing or defending violence against vivisectors and people who make their living by confining animals in small cages and concrete dungeons, invading their brains with electrodes, pumping them full of toxic chemicals, poisoning them with radiation, smashing their skulls with pneumatic devices, mutilating their sex organs, sewing their eyelids together, and on and on. The list of barbarities is endless and rivals or surpasses anything Dr. Mengele did to his victims. We’re talking about a trauma surgeon who out of compassion saves lives versus people who with hatred and contempt take lives. The real violence, the real terrorism, stems not from anyone like Jerry Vlasak, but rather fur farmers, vivisectors, hunters, trappers, sealers, whalers, mangers of factory farms and slaughterhouses, and the corporations that profit from the misery and bloodbath of the ongoing animal holocaust.
Neither the UK nor the US has anything to fear from Jerry Vlasak. Let every animal exploiter tremble at the mere mention of the ALF, but citizens have nothing to fear from the dedicated, courageous, and compassionate souls who will break through barriers and security systems to rescue animals from their captivity and dire agony.
In bold contrast, the extreme right-wing US government has conveniently excluded extreme right-wing political groups from the “domestic terrorism” priority list. Unlike the ALF or ELF, militia men and groups like the Army of God are a serious threat to people, for they have a proven track record of hatred and violence. It is a more serious crime in this nation to threaten the profits of a corporation than to blow up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people and wounding more than 500; to set off a bomb at the Atlanta Olympics, killing one person and injuring 100; to kill doctors who perform abortions; to kill blacks, Jews, and immigrants; to possess weapons of mass destruction such as anthrax, sodium cyanide bombs, machine guns, several hundred thousand rounds of ammunition, and remote-control explosive devices.
These are all crimes of the extreme right, whose myriad organizations the state considers less a threat to citizens and homeland security than the ALF. But the ALF threatens corporate profits, not people; since in this demented society, profit is more valuable than life, the ALF, along with the ELF, is Public Enemy Number One. On April 25, 2005, a Newsday.com article reported that, “A recent Homeland Security document lists the Animal Liberation Front among groups that could potentially support Al Qaeda as domestic terrorism threats.”[4] This document constructs an absurd fabrication, misrepresentation, and inverted distortion of the facts. The political views of the ALF are Left anarchism and are diametrically opposed to the violent, patriarchal, authoritarian, and fundamentalist outlook of Al Qaeda. Whereas the ALF has no philosophical or organizational links to Al Qaeda whatsoever, right wing extremists in the US are far more predisposed to violent opposition to the US government and terrorist attacks on American citizens.
According to the Council on Foreign Relations, there are no known operational links between domestic terrorist groups and al-Qaeda, but monitoring organizations have noted that both American right-wing extremists and Islamist militants spread similar theories about Jews, Freemasons, and other groups conspiring to control the world. Moreover, some white supremacists applauded the September 11 attacks. “Anyone who is willing to drive a plane into a building to kill Jews is alright by me,” said one leader of the National Alliance, a neo-Nazi group based in West Virginia; “I wish our members had half as much testicular fortitude.[5]
By linguistic fiat and domination of mass media and public opinion, the Right and Corporate America control the definitions and discourse of “terrorism.” Accordingly, by these golden standards, state violence, corporate violence, and the human species violence against animals are ruled out of the definition of terrorism, as property destruction, documentation of violence and destruction, and other tactics of animal rights and environmental organizations – as well as dissent in general – are ruled in. Once the first act of power and violence is exerted — that of linguistic terrorism — the corporate-state complex can then attack those who challenge its legitimacy with appropriate ferocity and repression.
The main threat facing the citizens of the US and, indeed, of the entire globe, is the US government, the leading terrorist menace on the planet. From Nicaragua to Chile, from Vietnam to Iraq, from Iran to Indonesia, the US terrorist state has overthrown dozens of independent or democratically elected governments, systematically violated human rights, massacred tens of thousands of people at a time, aided and abetted fascist governments and juntas, and sought by every means possible – be it markets or bullets — to dominate the entire planet.
For those with vested interests in exploiting animals, Jerry Vlasak is a menace and extremist. For those fighting for a sane, just, and nonviolent world, one that extends basic rights and justice to animals, he is a champion of liberation. And perhaps he is an augur of a dark future to come, where the civil war between those hell-bent on destroying life and the planet and those intent on stopping them erupts into the kind of violence that has been a part of modern liberation movements. As of yet, the animal liberation movement has no John Browns or Nat Turners, and it is a remarkable testimony to the restraint of activists who know the horrors and true extent of violence that human sadists inflict on animals.
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1. “Dr. Jerry Vlasak Replies to Media Libel,” http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2004/07/295293.html
2. “Violence against sealers OK: activist,” http://stjohns.cbc.ca/regional/servlet/View?filename=nf-vlasak-seals-050419.
3. “Ted Nugent to Fellow NRAers: Get Hardcore,” http://apnews1.iwon.com//article/20050417/D89HEBO00.html?PG=home&SEC=news.
4. “FBI Investigating Radical Animal Welfare Group,” The oxymoronic reference to “radical animal welfare group” is a good example of how confused much media reporting on animal rights struggles is, conflating, in this case, conservative welfare approaches to reducing animal suffering within the limits of the law with the illegal tactics and abolitionist philosophy of the ALF.
5. “American Militant Extremists,” http://cfrterrorism.org/groups/american_print.html
Dr. Steve Best is TPC’s associate editor. Associate professor of philosophy at UTEP, award-winning writer, noted speaker, public intellectual, and seasoned activist, Steven Best engages the issues of the day such as animal rights, ecological crisis, biotechnology, liberation politics, terrorism, mass media, globalization, and capitalist domination. Best has published 10 books, over 100 articles and reviews, spoken in over a dozen countries, interviewed with media throughout the world, appeared in numerous documentaries, and was voted by VegNews as one of the nations “25 Most Fascinating Vegetarians.” He has come under fire for his uncompromising advocacy of “total liberation” (humans, animals, and the earth) and has been banned from the UK for the power of his thoughts. From the US to Norway, from Sweden to France, from Germany to South Africa, Best shows what philosophy means in a world in crisis.
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