PART TWO: Unethical means to justifiable ends?
“Thinkers may prepare revolutions but bandits must carry them out.”
- Ingrid Newkirk on the Animal Liberation Front PETA is an organization that is willing to use all sorts of means towards upholding animal rights and insisting their philosophies and way of life on the masses. This means that they’re going through great lengths, including working with known terrorist groups in order to achieve their goals. The organization’s notoriety precedes its numerous works. It has been known to have significant links to domestic terrorist groups in the US such as the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and Earth Liberation Front (ELF). PETA has been accused of coordinating with militants from these terrorist groups and even going so far as funding their legal defense for their convicted members. Terrorist support In 1992, Rod Coronado, a former ALF member was convicted for setting the Michigan State University research laboratory on fire. The activist was said to have received a total of US $102,240 from PETA for its legal defense fund. A part of this money was taken as a loan that has never been repaid as of writing. This is not the only instance of PETA’s providing monetary assistance to domestic terrorist organizations and individual activists of the same cause. According to the New York Post, the animal rights group donated $1,500 to the ELF in 2001 and even contributed $7,500 to Fran Trutt’s legal defense fund in 1988. Trutt was a schoolteacher who was convicted for the attempted murder of US Surgical Corporation president Leon Hirsch. His company is engaged in animal testing operations which Trutt outrightly opposed. More than financing the legal defense of convicted animal rights militants, PETA has also been known to act as the press arm of domestic terrorist groups. While it doesn’t take part in illegal raids to free animals from research labs and other facilities, it does willingly publicize footages from ALF’s raids. In the trial for the Michigan State University research lab arson, US Attorney Michael Dettmer implicated PETA president Ingrid Newkirk in the case. He accused the latter of having prior knowledge of the attack because she has arranged for Coronado to send her the video footage and other related documentation on the raid. US Senator James Inhofe singled out the animal rights group as a major financier of both ALF and ELF. In June 2005, he organized a special hearing based on allegations that PETA, among other aboveground animal advocacy groups, is a “front group” for militant organizations who are devoted to illegal means of freeing captive animals such as property destruction, arson, and even violence against animal exploiters. According to the FBI domestic terrorism section Chief James Jarboe, the ALF and ELF have committed more than 600 criminal acts in the United States which resulted to damages worth more than US $43 million. In an interview with the CNN, Jeffrey Kerr, Ingrid Newkirk’s general counsel, denied the Senator Inhofe’s accusations as without proper basis. He went on to say that PETA does not support violence and terrorism. In fact, he claims that the group exists to fight such operations that are inflicted on billions of animals. Curiously, this statement greatly contradicts PETA’s overall stand about ALF and animal rights activists as a whole. The organization justifies the existence of these militant groups and even compares their cause to the French Revolution and the Underground Railroad resistance. They believe that there are times when laws must be violated “to answer to a higher morality”. They even go so far as to state that such militant groups are essential towards achieving a much more important goal of upholding animal rights and saving their lives from undeserved cruelty. "If we really believe that animals have the same right to be free from pain and suffering at our hands, then of course we're going to be blowing things up and smashing windows. ... I think it's a great way to bring about animal liberation, considering the level of suffering, the atrocities. I think it would be great if all of the fast-food outlets, slaughterhouses, these laboratories, and the banks that fund them, exploded tomorrow."
- Bruce Friedrich, PETA’s vegan campaign director Such a twisted way of thinking is what drives the organization to tolerate and even encourage extreme acts of violence towards what they believe is a much more important goal of upholding animal rights and welfare. While there’s nothing wrong with fighting for the rights and welfare of other beings, the means by which these causes are upheld are still worth looking into. Infiltrating research facilities under false pretenses, conniving with domestic terrorist groups, harassing people who choose to believe otherwise – these are just a few of the appalling methods that PETA utilizes to achieve what they believe is a higher end of improving the welfare of animals. Insulting advertising campaigns PETA spends thousands of dollars in ad campaigns each year to promote their cause. In June of 2005, they bought a full-page advertising space in the New York Times to publicize the controversial Covance alleged animal cruelty issue. The organization has an annual revenue of more than $30 million according to its publicized financial statement. More than 85% of this amount is allocated for its various programs including advertising campaigns that aim to gain a considerable amount of attention from the public. And their efforts at advertising their cause reaped the attention that they are gunning for. Most of their campaigns have raised public outrage over the explicit themes and racist and gender discriminating undertones. Anti-woman When PETA came out with its “I’d rather be naked, than wear fur” ad campaign, numerous feminist groups came out and cried foul on the blatant disregard for the dignity of the woman. In its effort to fight for animal rights, it has appallingly disregarded women’s rights and welfare – something that has been as much an important issue as the cause PETA is lobbying for. Many feminist groups felt trampled on by the imposing billboards of nude ladies promoting animal rights. Batya Bauman, a known feminist complains that in an organization which comprises of 75% women, it is interesting to note that PETA would be the first to objectify the female body just to sell an idea, no matter how crucial it happens to be. The animal rights group’s ad campaigns have reached the line of pornography and outright obscenity. In her editorial, she views the “I’d rather be naked, than wear fur” is an insult to feminist organizations and even to animal advocacy groups. With the cause that Ingrid Newkirk and her group is fighting for, one would think that they would be more sensitive to similar causes but the ad manifests the fact that PETA is willing to go so far as exploiting women just to get its message across. As if that isn’t enough to spark the angst of the feminist community, PETA went out and corroborated with Playboy to produce a thought (and libido) provoking ad to promote vegetarianism. Centerfold models are garbed in swimsuits that look like lettuce leaves. While this may be an effective way in sparking the interest of the male audience, it has also caused massive outrage from those who view it as another way of objectifying and exploiting women. In this day and age where women continue to struggle against patriarchal oppression, PETA’s controversial ad campaign is seen as a slur against this cause. It was viewed as a low blow to all feminist movements the world over. But this is not the only trampling that PETA has done for the sake of animal rights and welfare. The Holocaust imagery PETA has also tried to sell its animal rights advocacy at the expense of the Jewish community. In 2003, broadcasted a public service announcement on US cable television entitled, “They Came for Us at Night”. According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the ad showed the outside world through the slats of a box car and an accented man narrates how it feels like to be transported without food and water. It was a blatant use of the Holocaust imagery, a catastrophe that has taken the lives of millions of Jews during Adolf Hitler’s regime. To add insult to injury, the group came out with the “Holocaust on Your Plate” exhibition two years later. The said exhibit was composed of photos of Nazi concentration camps juxtaposed with images of factory farming. One of the photographs shows an emaciated man next to the picture of a starving cow. The exhibition was put on show at the University of California in Los Angeles and is aimed at appealing to the Jewish community for support. But the exhibition elicited a reaction that is completely different from what PETA expected. The photos sparked mass outrage from the Jewish community as they claimed that the campaign was an insult to their heritage. According to Abraham Foxman, national director of ADL and a Holocaust survivor, the attempt to win their (Jewish community’s) approval was “outrageous, offensive and takes chutzpah to new heights”. The comparison was viewed as uncalled-for and has just undermined the struggle towards making sure that such catastrophes as the Holocaust will never happen again. There’s nothing wrong with selling one’s idea to the public but if this is done at the expense of other races or minority groups, then that’s something to be frowned on. Child terrorism PETA’s underhanded techniques to promote animal rights awareness has gone so far as targeting children as young as six years old and indoctrinating them into a militant struggle that is completely unnecessary. “Our campaigns are always geared towards children and they always will be.”
- Dan Matthews, PETA Vice-President PETA sees children as the key to making sure that they would stay as a highly-influential movement for a long time. Most of its campaigns are geared at encouraging the youth to adopt their radical philosophy towards animal rights and welfare. The animal rights group came out with two websites geared towards appealing to the support of children of various age groups. Petakids.com is for elementary and middle-school age children and Peta2 caters to adolescents. PETA Kids seems like a harmless website that teaches young people to respect animal rights. It contains content that is typical of a child-centered websites – games, contests, and trivia – plus additional propaganda materials to encourage children to adopt a vegetarian lifestyle and refuse animal dissection projects in school. It provides related research material attracting children into using this information for their school projects and reports. It relates the horrors that circus and zoo animals have to go through for the sake of entertainment and advices its young readers to boycott trips to these places in support of animal rights and welfare. PETA2 is something that parents should be concerned about. For one, it promotes the slogan “question authority” giving teenagers the idea that it’s perfectly fine to rebel against their parents or teachers for the sake of animal rights. This message is tinged with violent and edgy graphics that can attract adolescents into taking part in illegal acts. It motivates young adults into resorting to harassment to air their advocacies to the public. With the increased accessibility of online media, it’s disturbing to learn that seemingly innocent websites can influence children into radical activism. Aside from online visibility, PETA continues to go behind parents’ backs by providing disturbing graphic pamphlets to children. One pamphlet, which contains the message saying “Your Daddy kills animals”, is aimed at addressing the issue of fishing. A second one which addresses the wearing of fur screams, “Your Mommy kills animals”. PETA maintains that these materials exist to inform adults on the negative images that they send to their children through fishing and wearing of fur. Being exposed to graphically violent comic books such as these can deeply traumatize young children. But it seems that PETA couldn’t care less about a child’s development so long as it gets the message across to a wider audience regardless of the age group. Schools cannot even provide a safe haven for children from such explicit content. The animal rights group has been known to send speakers to schools to lecture about vegetarianism and what the youth can do for the animal rights advocacy. Interestingly, the “highly educated lecturer” is actually a former ALF member who is out to teach high school and college kids about animal liberation and radical activism. Rodney Coronado is just one of the many animal rights militants who travels across universities to teach college students how to build firebombs for raiding research laboratories. Aside from sending resource persons, PETA also encourages teachers to incorporate the group’s advocacies in their lesson plans. The “Teachkind” program offers a wide array of materials that educators can use to uphold the animal cult propaganda that PETA fosters. Such campaigns are either a desperate move towards recruiting more people or a way of maintaining a certain degree of influence over the public mindset. Whichever the reason may be, the only thing that’s clear about PETA’s movements is that they seek to cause widespread alarm that’s enough to turn rational beings into terrorists. Hilarious attempts While PETA is widely known for its radical campaigns for animal rights and welfare, it has also made its fair share of hilarious and preposterous appeals for this cause. For instance, it regularly asks towns and cities whose names they believe are suggestive of animal exploitation to change their names. In 2003, the animal rights group has offered to donate $15,000 to the town of Hamburg, New York in exchange for a rather unusual favor of changing the town’s name to Veggieburg. CBS News reports that PETA offered to supply the town’s local schools with of $15,000 worth non-meat burgers for the name change. In a request letter addressed to Hamburg supervisor Patrick Hoak, PETA spokesman claims that “the town’s name conjures up visions of unhealthy patties of ground-up dead cows. Our offer is as serious as heart attack.” Hoak declined the offer saying that the town is proud of their heritage as hamburgers are a popular delicacy in their place. PETA also took offense in another town’s centuries old name back in 1996. This time, it’s the quiet town of Fishkill, NY that caught the group’s attention. PETA spokesperson Anne Sullivan maintains that there is a violent imagery behind the town’s seemingly innocent name. George Carter, the town’s mayor at that time thought that the proposal to change Fishkill’s name into, say, Fishsave, is just idiotic. The term ‘kill’ is actually a Dutch term for ‘stream’ and the town is located a few miles east of Hudson River; thus, the name. The proposal didn’t sit too well on the town’s residents either so again, the animal rights group’s request was declined. Narrow-minded idealism The Silver Springs monkeys’ case was probably their first well-publicized attempt in shunning animal-based testing on the basis that the creatures utilized for research where being maltreated – actively being subjected to pain and suffering when no human person simply doesn’t have the right to do so. Dr. Taub’s research on nerve regeneration in Silver Springs led to further discoveries on brain plasticity. This paved the way towards the development of new technique in rehabilitative therapy. Constraint-induced movement therapy now helps cerebral palsy and stroke patients to relearn how to move their paralyzed limbs. In their goal to uphold animal welfare, PETA has gone so far as condemning animal-based scientific and medical research. The organization abhors all manner of research using animals even if it is aimed at finally discovering a cure for cancer or AIDS, ailments that have taken millions of human lives. Instead of funding research for such diseases, they claim that the government isn’t efficiently educating the public about the risks of unprotected sex, for instance, or the dangers of smoking. PETA would rather that medical research funds be allocated towards effective advertising campaigns to promote awareness and prevention of these diseases instead of finding a cure for them at the expense of innocent creatures. “Even if animal research produced a cure for AIDS, we’d be against it.”
- Ingrid Newkirk on animal testing Note how PETA completely abhors any form of animal abuse based on their press release. Testing and in most cases, killing animals for the sake of medical research that could save millions of lives is something that’s completely against their ideologies. Because interestingly, the animal lives that they seek to save by sparing them from being used for research are the same ones that the organization has been compromising for the past couple of years. It seems that the staunch animal rights advocates have become the prime animal murderers.
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