March
2004
Hypocrisy
Is Our Greatest Luxury
By Rod Coronado
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With the barrage of ALF, ELF, and now Revolutionary
Cells actions this past summer, the debate on what is and is not violence
or terrorism is once again being discussed by the animal rights and
environmental movements. Responding as the corporate media would like
us to, much of the value of any debate is lost when we solely defend
property destruction as nonviolent action. No better than the hypothetical
question of saving a drowning dog or human baby, asking our movement
to defend ALF and ELF tactics to the media is society’s way of
detracting attention away from the very real physical violence it supports
and endorses everyday.
Rarely, if ever, are the warmongers and arms manufacturers, let alone
slaughterhouse workers and vivisectors, asked the same questions. When
we are asked to defend illegal direct action that saves, not destroys,
life, the questions are posed as if we lived in a nonviolent world
where
ALF and ELF actions alone were shattering the peace of our supposed
civilized society. Yet daily we walk through life in privileged ignorance
and apathy to the legalized violence all around us: Violence inflicted
upon the Earth by the coal-, hydro-, and nuclear-powered facilities
that generate the electricity we co-depend upon; violence against indigenous
peoples, animals and the environment to extract and burn the fossil
fuels that power our cars; violence committed by the polluting and
animal-torturing
companies that produce an endless stream of unnecessary luxuries; and
the violence our police and military forces exercise daily across the
globe to supposedly protect our “freedom” to live in such
a violent way.
When CNN or Fox TV asks whether we are seeing an increase in violence,
the answer is yes, but not from our side. As always, the only commitment
being demonstrated by anyone to remain physically nonviolent is on
our
side. The timber, oil, agricultural, biomedical, pharmaceutical, and
even entertainment industries profit quite nicely from physical violence;
so why aren’t they ever held up to the same moral yardstick that
the ALF and ELF are?
It is obvious that our society values property more than life. But
the roots of justifying violence to create such a society require deeper
understanding. Most humans abandoned, either by choice or force, the
value system taught to our ancestors thousands of years ago. These
moral
lessons instruct us to live in harmony with our environment—as
if all other forms of life matter, as they surely do. Turning away
from
seeing animals and even rocks and trees as entities unto themselves,
we abandoned the only true road to peace. The dominating consumerist
lifestyle we live in now will never cease to practice and promote violence.
You cannot be a capitalist and claim to oppose terrorism and violence,
because the foundations of this country were built on blood and terror
and the exploitation of others, both past and present. As opponents
of not just state-sponsored, but all terrorism, we retain the free
will
to resist. But few of us who are given privilege in the same system
are courageous enough to oppose it.
We continually hear animal rights activists and environmentalists talk
about our society’s violence towards animals and destruction of
entire species and ecosystems. We recognize and eloquently describe
the violent crimes our society commits daily against the animal and
natural world, often comparing the animal rights movement to the struggles
against slavery and racism. But the animal rights movement is nothing
like the 19th century anti-slavery struggle, unless you take into account
the condemnation of the Underground Railroad by abolitionists opposed
to aiding runaway slaves. Nor are we anything like the South African
anti-apartheid battle, which was forced to armed struggle, and even
car bombings, to win basic human rights. Let’s be honest. The
animal rights movement as we now know it will never become a revolutionary
struggle because the representatives of the oppressed enjoy enough
privilege
from the system they oppose to prevent them from supporting, let alone
engaging in, actual revolutionary activity that would risk those comforts.
Privileged intellectuals and national welfare organizations compare
the animal rights movement to other social justice struggles, but in
the same breath condemn the actions of the ALF as counterproductive.
High salaried executives of established organizations rake in so much
money in the name of promoting animal rights through reformist campaigns
that they now publicly condemn direct action by groups like the ALF
and SHAC.
Such individuals and organizations demonstrate a level of speciesism
every bit as destructive as that they oppose. In the words of liberated
slave Frederick Douglass, they want crops without the thunder and the
rain, the ocean without its tumultuous roar. In failing to support actions
that cause no injury, except to life-destroying property, we fail to
live up to our own belief in the rights of other species. We describe
the violence, ramble off the numbers, but rarely do we admit our own
inaction to defend animal life and our Earth as if it were our own.
The loudest critics of the ALF and ELF are often those who claim to
adhere to a value system that believes in equal rights for all species.
When animal rights activists, environmentalists or anyone claiming
to represent the Earth and her animal people fail to recognize the
legitimacy
of direct action, they deny the history of social change, disrespecting
those who have lost their lives fighting oppression and demonstrating
a level of cowardice and betrayal to those they claim to represent.
Such people aren’t allies, but obstructionists to the work that
must inevitably be done to achieve true freedom in any struggle. I am
sure the animals in thousands of research labs wouldn’t want
such representation.
Claiming to adhere to a code of nonviolence in this country is the
privilege of those separated and unaffected by the violence carried
out in our
name. If we were opposing a Buddhist power structure, maybe there would
be a chance for Gandhian nonviolence. But unfortunately, the society
we live in takes little notice of the oppressed unless we accompany
our efforts with direct action. That’s the lesson my indigenous
warrior ancestors were forced to learn and one we in the animal rights
and environmental struggles must learn as well.
I’ve seen what goes on behind the laboratory doors of places like
Huntingdon Life Sciences and I’d be a hypocrite to say I wouldn’t
want to plant a bomb to stop it. The time has long passed for tolerance
of animal abusers, rapists and child molesters in our society, and if
necessary, those people should live in greater fear that what they do
to others might be done to them. Historically, such logic is all that
could prevent genocide. I wish the abusers and destroyers could be reached
with a more passive approach. But for many blinded by the wealth and
power they amass through the exploitation of others, only through fearing
for their own life will they begin to be made conscious to the suffering
they inflict on others. This isn’t my value system though; it’s
the one we’re forced to fight under and the same one that now
makes those September 11th flag-wavers opposed to the war in Iraq only
because now their sons and daughters are being killed.
I offer no apologies for the ALF, ELF, Revolutionary Cells, Zapatistas,
Palestinian Intifada, Irish Republican Army or Iraqi resistance movements,
because only when we ourselves have been the victims of real violence
can we realize its impact and begin to understand why others must justify
its use to defend their families and homes. Far from being terrorism,
such acts are the only avenue left available as self defense. These
are actions that most people would engage in if it were their homes
and families being destroyed.
The animal rights movement will continue to be the playground of make-believe
revolutionaries until we acknowledge our role in allowing the violence
all around us and act accordingly to prevent it as if every Iraqi child
were our own and every animal one we knew. If our society continues
to repress the efforts of those who advocate nonviolent change, they
leave little option but to see an increase in violent resistance by
those accepting of it as a necessary means for change. The Earth and
her threatened animal nations deserve the same level of defense that
we support when human life is threatened. Otherwise we are just more
hypocrites wanting change without the risk and sacrifice that is already
being made by others.
Rod Coronado is a well-known Native American, earth
and animal liberationist. He has served a four-year prison sentence
for animal liberation actions. Reprinted with kind permission from the
Fall 2003 issue of Bite Back magazine (www.directaction.info).
Contact Bite Back for a free copy of the magazine.
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