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Motivation
According to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, human beings are just another animal species, no more special or important than a snail darter or dairy cow. The group believes, as one commentator put it, that “animal trainers, hunters, fishermen, cattlemen, grocers, and indeed all non-vegetarians are the moral equivalent of cannibals, slave-owners, and death-camp guards.” Newkirk insists that the world would be a better place without people: “Humans have grown like a cancer. We’re the biggest blight on the face of the earth.”While valuing livestock over people may be an indefensible argument, it’s typical of PETA’s overall strategy: to stake out extreme, ridiculous, offensive, and often laughable positions, in order to constantly redefine the edge of what’s considered “acceptable” philosophy and protest activity. Ten years ago, throwing fake blood on a fur coat, agitating for vegan cafeteria food, or objecting to Biology-class dissection were unusual behaviors. Today, these are commonplace -- the radical line is now defined by firebombs, grand theft, stalking of scientists, and bloody physical assaults. For this, PETA deserves much of the blame; its habit of upping the ante of bad taste and shock value has redefined misanthropy and bad taste.
For instance, when PETA learned that the photographs of Holocaust victims displayed in its roving exhibit -- entitled “The Holocaust on Your Plate” -- included Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel as a young man at the Buchenwald concentration camp, it shrugged. “Six million people died in concentration camps,” laments Ingrid Newkirk, “but six billion broiler chickens will die this year in slaughterhouses.”
When terrorists struck on September 11, 2001, PETA issued a press release emphasizing the “animals left orphaned” and the dogs and cats in nearby buildings who would be “highly traumatized.” The press release berated Mayor Giuliani for his “poor record when it comes to animals” and urged him expend time, energy, and human resources “to set up a task force to locate and rescue animals” at Ground Zero.
When Newkirk heard that Palestinian militants had strapped explosives to a donkey in the hopes of exploding it in a crowded Jerusalem street, she faxed a letter to Yasser Arafat, pleading with him to “leave the animals out of it.”
When a grisly killing spree in Vancouver left 15 women dead, PETA tried to purchase full-page ads in local papers suggesting that this carnage was no worse than the killing of animals for food.
When Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh decided to refrain from eating meat during his last meal, PETA’s Bruce Friedrich told reporters: “Mr. McVeigh’s decision to go vegetarian groups him with some of the world’s greatest visionaries, including Albert Schweitzer, Mohandas Gandhi, Leo Tolstoy and Albert Einstein.”
And when images of American POWs brutalized by Saddam’s regime came back from the war zone -- reminding us of mankind’s capacity for barbarism -- PETA loudly fretted that the hens used by the army to detect chemical weapons “never enlisted” and that the dolphins locating deadly mines in the Persian Gulf “have not volunteered.”
Having proclaimed the life of a roaster chicken to be as valuable as that of a person trapped inside a collapsing skyscraper or imprisoned in a death camp, a murder victim, a federal worker in Oklahoma City, or an innocent Israeli civilian, PETA continues to place greater value on a dolphin than on a ship packed with American soldiers. “I don't believe that people have the right to life,” Newkirk has said. “That’s a supremacist perversion. A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy.”
In this sense, Timothy McVeigh and Osama bin Laden may be seen as heroes to PETA. By taking thousands of humans out of the food chain, they saved far more chickens and cows than they killed people.
