This article should be read by those who like to pretend that the animal rights movement is an heroic enemy of extreme right and racist groups in the UK.
The opposite it true, the AR movement is just a stalking horse for the neo-nazis.
This goes right back to the start of the ALF, in the early seventies, and probably long before.
This link is to an article (recovered by Wayback Machine) where Troy Southgate, a racist animal rights activist, interviews Richard Hunt, a non-racist (but otherwise remarkably extreme) anarchist whose agenda sort of crosses over the animal rights one. (It doesn't start the same, but ends up with a very small human population living by the law of the jungle.)
The fascinating thing, is the reply to Mr Hunt, suggesting that Racial Nationalism is the only way to fight "internationalism".
This is very revealing and Medawar can see why it was taken offline and needed to be retrieved!
If the link stops working, leave a comment to tell me and I'll try and put it up again. It is so helpful to know how the other half thinks.
The opposite it true, the AR movement is just a stalking horse for the neo-nazis.
This goes right back to the start of the ALF, in the early seventies, and probably long before.
This link is to an article (recovered by Wayback Machine) where Troy Southgate, a racist animal rights activist, interviews Richard Hunt, a non-racist (but otherwise remarkably extreme) anarchist whose agenda sort of crosses over the animal rights one. (It doesn't start the same, but ends up with a very small human population living by the law of the jungle.)
The fascinating thing, is the reply to Mr Hunt, suggesting that Racial Nationalism is the only way to fight "internationalism".
This is very revealing and Medawar can see why it was taken offline and needed to be retrieved!
If the link stops working, leave a comment to tell me and I'll try and put it up again. It is so helpful to know how the other half thinks.
Posts
26 comments:
As Isaac Bashevis Singer, a Jewish Holocaust survivor, said: “In relation to [animals], all people are Nazis; for the animals, it is an eternal Treblinka.”
What you are spouting on this page is nonsensical and inherently hypocritcal. Extremely funny at times though!
One thing that Medawar has noticed about the animal rights movement: its adherents tend to belittle, not just their opponents, but almost anyone who captures their notice and doesn't conform to their script.
Anything that challenges AR dogma is nonsense and hypocrisy in some eyes, but it's hard to see the reasoned argument here. For many other holocaust survivors, and those who died, the most offensive thing was that their families were being killed like rats. No doubt, "yourmetis" will see hypocrisy in this, but Jews and Christians do generally see human beings as being something more than rats. Muslims regard it as a form of blasphemy to make men equivalent to animals.
That, in essence, may be why the Nazis turned against the Jews, but as Medawar has said elsewhere, the Nazis did not start with an anti-semitic doctrine at all, their first offering was, in Himmler's words, "almost Leninism" but party supporter threw bottles at him when he first said this in public and he and Hitler went away and had a rethink.
Making an equivalence between humans and animals is a necessary precursor to genocide. This is why Medawar does not accept any attempt to make such an equivalence, and regards even the beginnings of that kind of argument with grave suspicion.
Not everyone who emerged from the death camps, emerged a saint. Some Jewish survivors of the death camps came out as wicked as the Nazis who had tormented them, and went on to prove themselves as bad: particularly at the King David Hotel and when two British army sergeants were murdered and their bodies rigged as booby-traps.
So, Mr Singer's view is Mr Singer's view, but it shouldn't necessarily be given too much weight: thousands of other holocaust survivors did not share his view (or those of the Stern Gang), and the views of the millions who succumbed can only be conjectured, based on the teaching of the religion they were being killed for, and must not be misrepresented.
First - why do you speak in third person?
Second – Using religious doctrine to support speciesism is not a coherent argument to back up the stratification of living things (unless you subscribe to the other stratification religions often do, which yes, have been used against people of other ethnic backgrounds) - But your use of religion here in this regard, gives me a better idea of where you are coming from. Someplace very much the "norm" in western society.
That leads me to my second point. And let me make this very clear so as you don’t feel the need to deflect it, but reflect on your hypocrisy - even the religions you mention as fallback - are all monotheistic faiths. Not only are you forgetting the Hindus(i myself am Hindu - and am one of more than a billion members) and Jains and other religious faiths that are inherently animal activist by faith. (I believe vegetarianism is activism). For example, you say that Muslims consider it blasphemy to consider a human equal to an animal - consider Jains, who in their non-violent faith, believe that even a worm is equal to a human!
Then, in your statement: "Making an equivalence between humans and animals is a necessary precursor to genocide." - you are of course forgetting that the roots of stratification of living things are holding firm in all those faiths you speak of .
So what I am getting at is that is that again your points reveal an inherent hypocrisy and double standard in that: you first use monotheistic religions as an attempt to provide justification for speciesism - but - in doing that you forget that those religions are in themselves guilty of a canon of first and foremost –stratification - which has been the origin or precursor if you will to justify everything from fascist laws to all out genocide.
Yourmetis relies greatly on invented evil to dismiss anyone who fails to conform.
Speaking in the third person is actually traditional to the use of a nom-de-plume. The nom-de-plume depersonalizes, so the first person becomes clumsy. See "Cadmus" in "Guns Review" for another example.
Medawar thinks that "stratification" may be another word for sanity, or else one would ascribe individual smallpox viruses the same right to life as higher organisms. Scientific understanding of living things is based on a complex structure of classification, of which "species" are only one part, together with phyla, genus, kingdom and so on. But when life was starting out, the divergence of primordial life into the first two species (all other classifications being limited to one at that point!) was the beginning of a still ongoing process towards life becoming ever more complex. This is set to continue into the future, for as long as life persists.
Without "speciesism" it is impossible to genuinely understand or manage the real world. By making an evil out of speciesism and "stratification", Yourmetis denies the nature of nature. Life tends towards ever greater complexity, whereas cosmology's trend is towards a vast but very simple universe of coolly-separate particles not doing very much. It might be that a sufficiently complex biosphere can overcome this, or at least prolong life into the distant future a great many eons longer than a simple biosphere where all organisms are the same, which is where we started from. It is not where we are going.
And Medawar wasn't "falling back" on monotheistic religions, he was trying to make Yourmetis see that what one Jewish survivor of the Nazi holocaust said, and Yourmetis introduced this, was most emphatically not the view of most other Jews, including those who survived or perished in the camps.
And that being a Jewish camp survivor was not a free pass to being righteous and wise, as the Stern gang demonstrated.
It is being claimed, probably not for the first time, that Hitler's hatred of the Jews, and therefore the Holocaust, all stemmed from his mother's death, while she was being treated for breast cancer by a Jewish doctor.
That was in 1907. During the first world war, Corporal Hitler was noted for his loyalty to the Jewish major in command of his unit. The major commended him many times, recommended him for the Iron Cross, and when Hitler was released from hospital in 1919, wrote to Army Intelligence recommending that they employ Mr Hitler. This led to Hitler being sent to investigate radical political parties in Munich, including the German Worker's Party that ultimately became the Nazis.
Hitler certainly got as far as 1919 without hating Jews! And Himmler got as far as 1921 without any anti-semitic components in the party's apparent ideology.
Are we supposed to believe that Hitler woke up one day, twelve years and a war after his mother's death, and suddenly started blaming the Jews for it?
Medawar contends that a hatred of the Jews was adopted by the Nazis when a thinly disguised form of Leninism proved insufficient and even offensive to their core supporters. Lubendorf, Germany's wartime leader, started to blame the Jews first of all, and the Nazis wanted to use him as a figurehead for their first attempt to attain power. That's probably how it started, and then the hatred assumed a life of its own.
It is notable that Yourmetis (above) and "Chris" have both posted belittling, sneering and accusatory comments in response to Medawar's observations about Animal Rights and the Nazis. (Chris stopped posting, rather precipitately, so perhaps there is no broadband access when one is jailed for harassment, intimidation, threats and blackmail.)
What their arguments have in common is that they are not intended to persuade, merely to provide grounds for condemnation, for which purpose, the harder they are for any rational being to agree with, the better. Because as soon as one rejects or even quibbles, one is condemned. However, should one accept any of it, well, that's a confession of guilt and one is also condemned.
Make no mistake: the AR movement's concept of debate is exactly that displayed by the Boar, Napoleon, around P73 of George Orwell's "Animal Farm".
“I personally have no objection to hunting provided those who participate are prepared to eat what they kill.”- Troy Southgate
Quote from Synthesis Editor Troy Southgate Interviewed by Wayne John Sturgeon,
http://rosenoire.org/interviews/southgate.php accessed on 07/12/09
Southgate is not an animal rights activist then, but simply someone with an opposition to modern industrialism (including farming and research). Clearly Southgate doesn't believe in the concept of animal rights.
As for your wider point regarding fascists in animal rights you may (or may not) have a point. However they are not tolerated in animal rights groups (if their fascist connections are known to the group). Therefore if you are truly concerned about any fascist in the animal rights movement today please contact the relevant group with proof of any members fascist connections and they will be ejected.
There was a time (1978) when the Anarchist Fortnightly (Also known as Freedom, a title now used by the neo nazis for their own paper) was campaigning in favour of a survivor of Franco's political detention camps, who was living in the Hebrides and had been refused a shotgun certificate by Strathclyde Police, on the grounds that he had "spent more than three months in custody in another EEC country." Yes, he had been locked up, as a political prisoner, by Franco, since the civil war, until his release shortly before Franco snuffed it.
So, hunting (very much for food in this case!) was alright by "Freedom" in 1978. In 1979, it all changed, very suddenly, and not only was any sort of meat-eating or bloodsport suddenly non-anarchist, but there were long rambling articles in favour of the right of young children to express their sexuality with older people. Likewise, long spiels in favour of drug-taking etc.
There was also a short note of protest by the man who had printed the newspaper, saying that he didn't agree with very much, if any, of all this.
The pro-paedophile articles were as baffling as the anti-meat articles, because this seemed to be anarchism exactly as the neo nazis would like people to see it!
Then reports started to filter through, about a forcible takeover and the eviction of the old-style anarchists who'd been there, essentially, ever since the Spanish Civil War.
None of the people now described as anarchists appear to bear any resemblance to those that fought the Spanish Civil War, and Medawar doesn't think that George Orwell or Laurie Lee would recognize any of them as "anarchists".
There's something out there that can redefine a whole movement overnight and get away with it. If it's not the neo-nazis, then it's something currently nameless that needs naming and pulling out into the light for all to see.
And the Nazis themselves, if you look hard at their very early history, the Nazis weren't what we'd see as Nazis before 1923. Adolf Hitler was part of that change; Himmler has started off with his own version of Leninism, but, and this can't be repeated too often: Hitler had contact with the Party in the first instance, because German Military Intelligence employed him when he left hospital to go and take a look at all the radical groups in Munich.
There was a short science fiction story,"The Snowball Effect" by Katherine MacLean (1952) about a couple of academic sociologists who try and convince the new Dean of their university that sociology has a point, by going along to the "Watasha Sewing Circle" (-a sort of moribund American WI) and explaining how to improve their membership and influence according to sociological theory.
The analysts go back six months later, the sewing circle has a much bigger meeting hall, they have hundreds of members, the average of the members is about twenty years less, everyone is very purposeful. Their experiment has succeeded and the Dean concedes that their department has a purpose and can continue to exist, they go away happy -and forget about the sewing circle. A year later, they suddenly read about this new political movement that has the whole of congress jumping to its tune and is now opening branches in Europe and Japan...
Medawar didn't know enough about the early history of the Nazis to recognize the similarity when he had Katherine Maclean's book in his hands, but now he realizes: this story, written immediately after WW2, was essentially a perfect description of what German Military Intelligence had done to a no-hope political drinking club in Munich, by sending Hitler along to its meetings.
Has someone been trying something similar with radical groups in the UK in the past thirty years?
Not just AR and the neo-nazis, but all of them, in the hope that one of them will enjoy Katharine MacLean's "snowball effect"?
You have a very interesting conspiracy theory there. You don't seem to have any proof to back it up though. As I said before name the fascists in animal rights with relevant proof and they will be ejected.
The fact a anarchist paper may have changed it's view on issues when new people got involved is hardly a basis for a conspiracy. There are splits in radical/small political movements all the time.
Animal rights may possibly have become more popular in radical circles because of the effect it's actions were having and the effect this had on the state.
"A change of people" is an interesting way to describe what witnesses and victims saw as a violent takeover, assisted by known column 88 members. This was well documented in national newspapers shortly afterwards, but too long ago to be easily found via the internet.
Thing is, Medawar doesn't accept that Troy Southgate doesn't count as an animal rights activist: he is certainly violently against animal research and has taken part in AR demos.
But, still, Medawar will put a comment in to Shacwatch and we'll see what comes up, although nobody much is going to put material that the AR movement doesn't like, directly to a server that the AR movement controls, from their own computer.
Of course, anyone so named will be declared never to have been in the AR movement, just as Robert Moaby ceased ever to have been in SHAC as soon as he was convicted over the reams of kiddie porn.
Despite the scorn, ARC might take the trouble to absorb the comment above his and take particular note of what the subtle indicators are, that a movement's purpose might have been changed:
Abrupt change in number/character of members.
Sudden change in financial fortune.
Sudden changes in the level and competence of basic organization.
All of this happened to quite a big movement from 1994 onwards, Medawar struggles to remember its name; "Labour" was it?
Now watch as the average age of Conservative members and candidates suddenly drops dramatically,a £4M debt becomes a "war chest" surplus of millions of pounds and local Party meetings become very brisk, very focused and open to the wider public -but not to any argument.
The BNP, by contrast, looks to Medawar as if it's being kept on the back burner while the Conservatives are brought to the boil.
It's got nothing to do with public sympathy: UKIP has far more of that than the BNP or the Conservatives, but the financial floodgates remain mostly closed and there's no influx of youthful organizers. When somebody does give them money, they promptly get snarled in red tape and the government confiscates the cash!
Well you seem to have some big hypothesis on how social movements are controlled and they are quite interesting although you don't seem to be able to substantiate them. In any case all I can really talk about is the everyday reality of being an animal rights campaigner. We don't tolerate those who are involved in fascist groups/organizations. I wouldn't be shocked if there were a few fascists that have got involved in the movement (as with all movements) but if we were aware of them they would be asked to leave.
Troy Southgate clearly does not believe in 'animal rights' and I would argue opposes animal research and the like based on an over all disagreement with the whole of modern society rather than the primary aim of ending animal exploitation. Nevertheless I would not dispute that there may be some fascists that are also interested in animal rights but this does not mean they will be allowed to work with animal rights groups or organizations.
I notice you are a little paranoid about sending information to animal rights groups directly, so yes if you have proof post it on SHACwatch or on the 'Keep the Fascists out of Animal Rights' blog you lot set up.
Substantiation is always a difficult issue when people don't want you to! -and when some of the evidence is available in books but not on the internet. (It's as if information in books did not exist as far as some people are concerned.)
However. There's a wider issue here than AR and the Neo Nazis, so Medawar is going to do this properly and set up a sister blog, that will solicit comments on unusual and especially covert linkages between pretty well all radical, extremist and outright criminal groups. Meant to be a reporting page rather than a discussion page, because if someone's got something to say, we don't want them drowned by lots of posts from someone who simply doesn't like it. By and large comments will only be published if they give new information, or actually PROVE something false.
Medawar doesn't want to ignore organised crime, because a simple solution to a lot of apparently political campaigns, could be that someone simply wants to change which company benefits from public expenditure.
It looks as if the German-American mafia is on the side of the oil and coal companies, for example, because their contraband distribution network across the USA relies on massive oil and coal trains that are simply to big and too dirty to routinely search at state lines.
Madawar –I didn’t read the total of your lengthy replies, but I read enough to understand that, while I appreciate you allowing dissenting views here, you have not really come out with anything which supports you points while also adhering to a theoretical framework that is not the least arbitrary. Instead, you seem to employ the same type of arguments and logic employed by those you debase animal rights activists as (fascists). Again, - I will give you an example:
“Without "speciesism" it is impossible to genuinely understand or manage the real world. By making an evil out of speciesism and "stratification", Yourmetis denies the nature of nature.”
Madaware- I am assuming you have actually read up on the “Nationalist Socialist” ideology before claiming animal rights activists are Nazis – but I don’t know why bells didn’t go off here.
Let me make one distinction very clear for you and if anyone besides myself or ARC decide to post here – Not only is your claim that animals rights activist are fascists a clear use of prejudice, but also - Most animals rights activists and those opposed to speciesism, are not fighting for everything in the universe to be treated as equal – not are they wanted to inflict the same treatment on humans. They are opposed to how animals – who have the same or greater cognitive and emotional capabilities, as many humans ( who have constitutional rights to be free from oppression) – are subjected to a system of emotional and physical destruction on a daily basis. This destruction is not because this is “sanity” - but only because it provides the material benefit of one species (to which many would argue is neither far beyond the need of subsistence of a human body and sustainable levels). This species (us) have throughout history, employed arbitrary rules for justification, from religious doctrine “animals don’t have a soul!”, to other anthropocentric benchmarks (such as the assumptions that only humans can maintain a culture, language etc.) Animal rights activists – strive (in different degrees ) to reduce animal suffering within the current relationship humans have deemed “sane” with animals. They are not some organised big bad group, coming to get you. They, unlike Madaware, are a minority in this world, who unlike Madaware do not have a monopoly over what is “normal” or “sane”.
Your failure to make a coherent argument (to prove that animal rights activists are fascists) and a reliance on circular reasoning has led me to believe that your prejudice attack on such a diverse group of people is simply an attempt to maintain that shaky moral high ground, from which you, and the majority of humans hold. But if I may add a quote to comment on that “sanity” you represent:
“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. “ -Jiddu Krishnamurti
But above all – remember, even though I do not agree with you, nor see the logic in your arguments, i would never wish harm on you, for I would have to employ some measure of faulty logic! I wish you health and that you attempt to limit your detraction from so many others!
Anything that Yourmetis cannot see as agreement with his own view is incoherence and hypocrisy.
The substantiation issue will be taken care of in a systematic way, in due course. The object being to see whethe members of one cause are systematically infiltrating and manipulating another, across the board and not just on animal rights.
It seems to Medawar that Yourmetis has some words to hurl at those who do not support the AR agenda:
Hypocrite and incoherent, chiefly.
Perhaps he needs to pay more heed to an attempt to articulate that there's something more complicated here than buzzwords and put-downs will allow.
Well that sounds like an interesting exercise for sure. Any substantial proof about infiltration of the animal rights movement by fascists would be very helpful to us in the movement. We have a genuine commitment not to work with fascists and welcome any information that will allow us to remove those who are misusing our movement.
Animal rights, based as it is on a rejection of prejudice, is fundamentally anti-fascist. You cannot coherently argue against species based discrimination while arguing in favour of racial discrimination. Therefore any fascist clearly is either misusing or misunderstanding animal rights as a concept.
As a final note there may be activists that were once fascists who have seen the error of lashing out at ethnic minorities and are now actively anti-fascist, as a movement we must assume these people are genuine, just as we assume ex-animal abusers are genuine, unless evidence proves they remain fascist. Please take this into account when doing your research.
For ARC, Shacwatch etc.
http://medawarsextremistlinkages.blogspot.com/ is being built, but it's not really ready to run yet, as Medawar wants to have an introduction post, setting out some rules (to keep it legal and proper).
Also, so that it doesn't look as if people are being led by the nose to identify neo-nazis infiltrating the AR movement, the AR movement will be neither the first, nor the last, category of "extremist" to be mentioned.
Medawar expects some comments on the subject, but there will always be some and what we need is a way of telling whether that's normal or not!
Also, if there's something more going on, we need to cast a wide-enough net to find out what.
OK, lets see if any proof materialises via your new blog. I notice that a SHACwatch poster has alleged “Certainly in the North of England.... some groups who while claiming to be Animal Rights focused are little more than offshoots of Combat 18 or at the very least the BNP/EDL.” I don't believe this can be substantiated in the slightest. If that poster would like to post proof that would be great. SHACwatch is made up quite heavily of unsubstantiated rumours and nonsense. It is heartening for animal rights readers to note how little SHACwatchers actually know about the movement.
We will see.
But Medawar suspects that ARC is going to be shocked by how many different extremists try and manipulate popular or semi-popular causes, and the neo-nazis may prove to be the least of it.
Medawar also notes that not even ARC can deny that Ronnie Lee and Paul Watson are part of the animal rights movement, and their views on the future of the human race are even more extreme than those of Troy Southgate. They may not be "racist" exactly, as Watson wants only the most compliant 1% or so of the human race to survive. But non-racist genocide is still genocide, and the vision also calls for the suppression of all kinds of monotheistic religion, which will doubtless please Yourmetis.
It is perfectly possible to be worse than the Nazis, as regimes in North Korea (and Laos) are striving to prove. It's odd that we are never, ever, told about how bad the regime in Laos actually is. The oppression in Laos actually is a race war, but both races happen to look the same to us, so we don't cotton on.
Well there may be people from other groups in animal rights (socialists, etc) people are allowed to support multiple causes.
Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think Ronnie Lee and Paul Watson have advocated genocide. I'm not very familiar with their views on the optimum human population level but should imagine it is either just an ideal with no suggestion of implementation or if there is a plan it is for birth control not killing.
Ronnie Lee and Paul Watson both advocate versions of a world with a drastically reduced human population. Advocacy of something that requires genocide to bring it about, is advocacy of genocide. Paul Watson's vision also includes rigorous and intrusive control of the lives of those humans allowed to survive. Those controls themselves would fall foul of the UN definition of genocide, because they control communities by restricting their right to reproduce unless they conform to his political creed.
Ronnie Lee, and this is very well documented, not least by Lee being interviewed on a BBC radio Four programme, wants the human race "rolled back" to its pre-civilization level. (Not achievable without getting rid of an extremely large number of people.) This also puts him very, very close to what ARC says is Troy Southgate's anti the modern world agenda. (And that agenda is supposed to mean that he is in no way part of the animal rights movement!)
Yes, AR people might be socialists as well as neo nazis, this is a possibility which Medawar is going to cover. Along with several others.
Another name, better than neo-nazi, for people like Ronnie Lee, Paul Watson and Troy Southgate might be "Guidestoners" after the Georgia Guidestones.
(The Guidestones are a monument, erected by a stone working company in the state of Georgia, apparently very largely at its own expense, although the conspiracy theorists were very excited that the Lucis Trust paid part of the bill. (Nowhere near the monument's full cost.) The Guidestones set in stone (ie: granite) a manifesto that would create a world political and legal structure, for a reduced world population (still much bigger than Watson wants, but about right for Southgate and Ronnie Lee). That structure is not directly Nazi, but it would provide a framework in which Nazism would appear normal and genocide would become a legal function of a world court. It could equally well be a structure for a worldwide Kleptocracy, too, and THAT actually fits best with what Medawar has been told about the company which bore the cost of building the Guidestones. There is an organization, local to Georgia and surrounding states, about which Medawar cannot comment freely while one of his contacts is in physical danger. But think "Bizzness" rather than "Business" and readers won't be far wrong.)
Well the fact they want a reduced population does not mean they advocate genocide. For example, I personally want the population reduced via voluntary birth control. You may say it's unrealistic but it is simply my view, if I had my way everyone would use protection and the world population would drop but I have no plans of enforcing that view.
Troy Southgate is not an animal rights activist as he supports hunting, this leads me to question his motivation for being against animal testing. It is possible to be against the modern industrial world and be for animal rights simultaneously, it is simply the case Southgate is not.
They want a 90% reduction in population.
Hard to see that being done without qualifying as genocide by the UN's definitions, but evidently not ARC's.
Elimination of a population by forced birth control meets the UN definition of genocide, as does moving communities around till they die of hunger and exhaustion.
I stated clearly voluntary birth control not forced birth control. It may not be realistic to want a dramatic drop in population simply by advocating for it but it does not prevent it being my belief. Wanting a drop in population (no matter how large) does not necessarily require supporting an 'any means necessary' approach to achieving it.
Framework for Medawar's Extremist Linkages is ready, may take a while for anyone to volunteer anything about the subject in hand, as Medawar has deliberately not highlighted his immediate concern, because he didn't want to put off anyone from posting anything unexpected, but interesting.
http://medawarsextremistlinkages.blogspot.com/
Post a Comment