Rage boy
What a lot of people like to dress up a love of bullying and violence and cruelty as some kind of quest for social justice – the FARC, Islamists, ZANU-PF – and the Animal Liberation Front. Good old Jerry Vlasak is still at it, only more so.
One scrawled “killer” in chalk on the scientist’s doorstep, while another hurled insults through a bullhorn and announced, “Your neighbor kills animals!” Someone shattered a window. Borrowing the kind of tactics used by anti-abortion demonstrators, animal rights activists are increasingly taking their rage straight to scientists’ front doors. Over the past couple of years, more and more researchers who experiment on animals have been harassed and terrorized in their own homes, with weapons that include firebombs, flooding and acid…Accompanying the attacks is increasingly tough talk from activists such as Dr. Jerry Vlasak, a spokesman for the Animal Liberation Front press office. In an interview with The Associated Press, he said he is not encouraging anyone to commit murder, but “if you had to hurt somebody or intimidate them or kill them, it would be morally justifiable.”
Glad you got that straight, Jerry. As long as you think it’s morally justifiable, there’s nothing more to be said. Meanwhile if you get bored with mere researchers, there are always teachers in Afghanistan you could behead.
The ALF make my blood boil. I wish someone would give them a taste of their own medicine.
Ah yes. Can’t build a world of mutual respect for all living beings without murdering a few eggs. Er, scientists. Whatever.
Sounds like an odious little man without the courage of his convictions.
This drives me nuts! people like this put the cause of animal rights back 20 years and the worst of it is that this guy knows full well how counter productive this is, but he does it anyway.
The problem with the animal rights extremists is that they’re just not very bright. Committed and single minded yes, able to tolerate subtle argument and shades of grey? Nope.
Nail on head PM. I went out with one once. Well meaning but dumb as a bag of glue.
Nick Anthis has been talking about animal rights activists. I note his anti-vivisection commenters are very reminiscent of the shrill anti-abortionists I attract to my blog periodically.
Yeah. I did a piece for TPM a few years ago about a philosopher who defended the ALF (and for awhile was an officer of a separate organization that published their press releases, until he resigned). In part of it I suggested a thought experiment about similar tactics used on abortion clinics, civil rights groups, unions, etc etc. I also noted that I’d asked the philosopher what he thought of the thought experiment and that he didn’t answer that question.
I’m thinking of republishing that piece here, since Vlasak is back in the news.
Please can you do that O.B.
I agree with Richard (hey, it can happen). There is an ethical dimension to our treatment of animals, but the best way to prevent that ethic from developing is the ‘Eat tofu or die’ approach.
When I was younger and nimbler I was a hunt sab (we pretty much shut down otter hunting in Northumberland) and I don’t regret a moment of those days, but some of the people I found myself working alongside were disturbing. Even then I saw nothing wrong with hunting for the larder, but put that forward and you got Denounced. I quite liked being denounced, in a perverse kind of way.
A lot of country people were silently resentful of the hunts (this was the seventies, where the rural bootless and unhorsed were expected to get the hell out of the way of their betters and put up with having crops trampled and the odd domestic pet rived assunder).Could have garnered some support, but the ALF nutters took over and those of us who were (to be honest) partly motivated by class hate found other outlets.
Don I aplaud you for your sabing of otter hunting (as long as it was the non violent type)it is a truely disgusting form of hunting carried out by sadistic scum,I also agree with your hunting to fill the larder comment as well,although I have been vegie for 35 years I still see nothing wrong with it.I agree even more strongly with you on the isue of the A.L.F types making it imposible to gain a more widespread concencus on things like hunting,why do you think they behave in that manner when they know that their actions put the cause into reverse gear?
Richard, Don, good posts, my old man’s been in politics all his life, and I asked him when I was about twenty why he didn’t get as pissed off with these radical single issue nutters as I did, and he replied “It means the stay out of real politics.”
Your dad is a wise man Nick,although I just get so ticked about this stuff, because animals have no voices when lunatics speak on their behalf it makes my blood boil!
But hang on, Jakob . . .
“Give them a taste of their own medicine”? Isn’t that also what the ALF think they are doing?
On my short list of evil afoot in the world today, the ALF would be below Taleban but not much.
Of course, to be truly evil you need to believe that you have some special wisdom or values that you are entitled to force on others.
That is the polar opposite of enlightenment values and goes a long way towards answering John Gray as well.