PETA has contributed money to terrorist groups and to the legal defense of people who have used violence in support of their cause. They are, as I said, a ‘popular front’ for other groups that use violence to influence the political process.
Compare that to the Humane Society which has nothing to do with political violence.
While comparing PETA (and the Animal Rights Movement) to Tim McV may seem silly, it is not totally laughable. For years the Right Wing people (whatever they called themselves) stewed and talked and complained. Nobody took their talk of war and violence seriously until Oklahoma City.
Now Animal Rights people and their ilk are at the same stage. They are defending the use of arson and violence. When they blow up something or someone they will be able to say they did not tell the killer to act.
True, all they did was create an environment that gave a monster direction and approval.
They use violence before they have exhausted the non-violent political process. This makes them different from (say) the Boston Tea Party.
I see no one has mentioned it, so anyone who is interested in the subject should catch the show on PETA in the Penn and Teller Showtime series “Bullshit”. In short:
In their research, they went to PETA’s published financial records and found that PETA had purchased a big walk-in freezer. As it turns out, there are only two uses for such a walk-in freezer. The first is to freeze meat so you can eat it later. (Would PETA do that???)
The second is to store dead bodies. As it turns out, that was the explanation. It seems that PETA “rescues” about 2500 dogs per year - and winds up killing (OK, “euthanizing”) about two-thirds of them. In other words, they kill more dogs themselves than a typical animal shelter. Mildred Newkirk explains this as saying that sometimes killing them is the most humane option – even while she attacks animal shelters that do the same thing.
They also discovered that Mildred Newkirk’s chief honcho (I forget her name) is a diabetic taking insulin. Naturally, this is a big contradiction in their philosophy – seeing as how all this insulin research was done on animals and the insulin is produced using animals. PETA explains this as saying that sometimes the animals have to make a sacrifice for the greater good. The greater good only seems to apply when the sick person is a member of the PETA board.
So, in answer to your question, it would appear that both of those premises are wrong. Their position is not “intellectually honest” nor is it consistent with anything but their own interests.
But, personally, I always thought that any organization that encouraged arsonists – and even funds them (something else Penn and Teller found from the public records) doesn’t have a moral leg to stand on, anyway. Someone says they want to protect animals and then goes around putting people in danger by torching buildings??? That’s not rational, that’s a nutcase.
Yes, exactly. Say “Animal rights” to your average citizen, and he thinks “strange dudes throwing red paint on models wearing fur”. It doesn’t make him think, PETA (and the other radical groups) allows your average person to dismiss Animal rights as crackpot & tinfoil hat stuff.
And it doesn’t take PETA to help stop Cruelty to Animals. For that, there is the Human Society and similar groups. PETA here isn’t doing any good and may be doing harm.
The Humane Society of the US ( http://www.hsus.org/ ) is just about as bad and as batshit insane as PETA. Most normal people really believe that most animal rights notions are absurd. Outside of properly feeding, watering, and sheltering one’s animals, not being “mean” to them except to punish, and not fighting animals, most HSUS notions are held to be just as absurd as PETA’s notions by most normal people. Most normal people, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, or Independent in their political philosophies don’t have a problem with stuff like rodeos or hunting. Nor do they have a problem with castrating bull calves, docking the tails of a Blue Heeler, or pincing the ears of a Doberman. All normal stuff that the reprobates at HSUS disagree with.
I will say that the lowlife scum at HSUS are smart in their tactics to further their totally despicable agenda. They undertake campaigns attacking the less popular and more contraversial animal sports and uses first such as cockfighting, trapping, hog dogging, and hunting with dogs with primarily outright false propaganda. But their goals are larger. They seek to destroy popular, proper animal use as we know it today.
For the most part, I agree. Not that PETA is intellectually honest or internally consistent or anything but even if they were why would it make a difference? If someone holds beliefs I find to be incorrect I’m not going to compliment on their internally consistent ideals.
I admit that I’m hostile towards animal right theories because according to my philosophical position they cannot have rights. Rights are a moral construct that animals cannot participate in. To suggest that holocaust victims and chickens are the same is morally abhorrent to me as is any effort to treat human beings as if they were animals. To claim moral superiority when you kill animals yourself and benefit from products produced from animals is hypocritical.
Uh…of course the freezer was to store dead animals. You claim that they kill more dogs themselves than a typical animal shelter; can you give a meaningful cite to this effect? A 2/3 euthanasia rate is rather good for the Southern United States, unfortunately: many shelters have a much higher rate. Overpopulation of dogs and cats in the South is horrifically bad.
Second, can you give a cite as to PETA attacking animal shelters “that do the same thing”? I believe you’ll find cites wherein they explicitly condone the euthanasia performed by animal shelters even while calling for an end to the conditions that make it necessary; but I do not believe you’ll find any examples of them condemning shelters for performing euthanasia (except when the method of euthanasia is inhumane, e.g., use of carbon monoxide to euthanize juvenile animals).
I don’t intend to defend ALF’s actions. I think what they do is akin to burning down abortion clinics – I find it reprehensible because I think they are wrong in their goals. But I think the word terrorism should describe a set of tactics regardless of the goals of the movement. I wouldn’t put the terrorism label on, for example, the burning down of a plantation house if it meant freeing the slaves on that plantation, and so I wouldn’t put that label on similar acts with different goals.
What ALF does is different from using violence to influence the political process and different from the rhetoric of right-wing militias. Killing people and burning down buildings are fundamentally different tactics in my book; one is violent and one isn’t – they are different in kind, not degree. When ALF destroys a medical testing lab, they aren’t doing it to influence politics, per se, but to end or hinder animal testing at that lab.
More importantly though, I’d like to see a cite for PETA’s support of “terrorist” groups. If for no other reason, I’d like to be able to offer this evidence to people I know who are more sympathetic to PETA.
I agree that this is an important distinction between the Boston Tea Party and other acts of political vandalism, but I’m not sure it shows how the Tea Party wasn’t terrorism under your definition.
The reason I am nitpicky over the label of terrorism is that I think focusing the FBI’s national attention of what is essentially widespread vandalism is dangerously misguided. At a time when there are real terrorists trying to kill innocent Americans, I think the FBI has better things to do than hunt down radical environmental activists.
So you’re saying that anyone who takes advantage of the fruits of research or labor they morally oppose is hypocritical? Hmmm, do you avoid any company that has its roots in slavery? Do you avoid any medication that was tested on less-than-informed patients? Do you think that people who suffer from syphilis should ignore medical advice because some of that knowledge came from the Tuskeegee experiments? Surely not. Mildred Newkirk had no control over how insulin was developed and now uses synthetic insulin. You may argue that animals had to be used to develop insulin, but that point is certainly as cut and dried as you’d like to make it.
Furthermore, even if you think that she is hypocritical because she doesn’t allow herself to die because of research she theoretically would have opposed, that doesn’t make PETA, as an organization, hypocritical. And it certainly doesn’t make them deserve the ire that they receive from most people.
I’m not sure that the sort of person that dismisses a philosophical concept because of its association with some group is the sort of person that would consider animal rights in the first place. I think most people are smarter than that, but I could be wrong.
I do think it is hard to deny the good PETA has done in reducing animal cruelty. The list of businesses that have changed their practices because of the pressure PETA brings is quite long.
I agree with this.
I don’t think the mere suggestion is morally abhorrent, especially considering that it is a fairly well-reasoned argument that they offer.
Of course not. However if you come out against using animal products for any purpose and then continue to take insulin derived from an animal then you are a hypocrite. I can recognize that slavery is wrong and still purchase products from companies who directly benefitted from the slave trade in the 1800’s.
I guess I shouldn’t have used the word “suggest” as it has obviously led to splitting hairs. They didn’t “suggest” anything with that ad they explicitely stated that the lives of chickens in food production were equivalent to the lives of those who were in concentration camps. You might not find that morally abhorrent but I do.
PETA kills animals while protesting shelters that do so and demonizing the heads of those shelters. A member at the top of the organization also takes insulin derived from an animal which is a blatant violation of what they say they’re all about. So PETA is not internally consistent they are hypocritical.
Burger King and McDonald’s, off the top of my head, changed their slaughterhouse practices after meetings with PETA officials. These meetings followed a PETA-sponsored boycott and picketing of the restaurants, including some pretty stomach-churning street theater. The changes to slaughterhouse practices conformed to PETA’s requests.
I know that post hoc ergo propter hoc is a fallacy, but really, I think we can establish cause and effect here.
Again, please cite PETA protesting shelters that kill animals, or demonizing the heads of those shelters. At worst, I think you’re completely wrong; at best, I think you’re misinterpreting what they were protesting in those cases. I’m familiar, for example, with PETA’s protests against shelters who overcrowd animals, fail to treat injuries, leave animals in dangerous conditions where they can drown slowly, beat animals, allow animals to breed in the shelter, and so forth; but I’ve never ever heard of them protesting shelters that euthanize animals simply because of the euthanasia.
LHoD mentioned two of the biggies, but they’ve had a lot of minor successes as well. Just scan the website a bit. Much of their success comes from sending people in undercover to videotape abusive practices – many companies are caught violating existing laws and forced to change their practices.
For example (from the site):
A PETA investigator went undercover at the world’s largest glatt kosher slaughterhouse and videotaped egregious cruelty to animals, including ripping the tracheas and windpipes out of fully conscious cows and failing to render animals unconscious quickly. Rabbis, scholars, animal welfare experts, and USDA inspectors all spoke out against the cruelty, and the plant has told the media that it will implement changes, including banning the throat-ripping and using a captive-bolt pistol to stun animals who are still conscious after having their throats cut.
Agreed,. But, synthetic insulin has been around for decades. Virtually no one uses animal-derived insulin anymore. Penn and Teller neglected to mention that.
Ok, but that is the well-reasoned claim of animal rights philosophy. We both disagree with some of the premises, but I don’t find their conclusions morally abhorrent just because I disagree with them. PETA’s advocacy does not violate any of my moral principles. They are not suggesting that we treat the victims of the holocaust like chickens, but rather that we treat chickens with the respect we’d give out human friends. A claim you may disagree with, but I don’t see how you find it morally abhorrent – unfounded, misguided, or ridiculous I can see, but abhorrent seems like an overreaction.
Umm, no. That’s a PETA site. Sorry. That doesn’t count. They have 0 credibility as it is, but few would accept such a self serving site, whther or not it was PETA blowing their own horn or another group. Let’s get a cite from a unbiased/neutral site.
You’re the one assuming PETA has no credibility and it is your burden to prove that.
I agree that one needs to be skeptical when getting information about an organization from their site, but if you’ve got a problem with the way they portray one of their victories, have at it. Don’t just dismiss everything their site says as biased. Saying that company X had Y policy which changed after PETA brought attention to it is not the sort of thing that can be spun. Either its true or not. Are you claiming that the website is all lies?
I think it’s a fairly uncontroversial claim that PETA puts pressure on companies about their treatment of animals and that PETA is sometimes successful.
Here’s a cite from an anti-PETA author on PETA’s affect on KFC. Cite.
I understand that the Meat Industry News Service is about as animal-rights-nut an organization as you can get, but it’s the best I can do with thirty seconds of Googling.