We hear today that Tony Blair has signed a petition in favour of animal experimentation. He is doing so, apparently, because The Time Has Come To Make A Stand Against The Extremists.
Well. Mmm. Extremism is a funny thing. A relative thing. But we'll leave aside a discussion about the subjective nature of Truth for the moment. What bothers me, in his statements and the media reporting of them, is that no distinction seems to be made between the (to me) reasonable view that human beings don't have the right to kill other animals for their own sustenance or protection, and the bogeyman of "extremism"--that is, the rabid pursuit of a cause admitting of no appeal to caution or compromise, the end justifying any means at all.
There is a conservative bias in the adoption of this view. And a stupidity characteristic of all mainstream discussion in our modern society. If You Ain't With Us You're Agin Us is as deep as the newspapers and television, and politicians too, in the post-Michael Foot political world, seem capable of going.
But those involved in animal rights activism haven't helped their own cause. Or, these folks digging up graves and sending scarey letters to scientists haven't helped. They may be entirely sincere in their beliefs, but their actions have handed the media and those predisposed to hate them an archetype of terror that can be deliberately raised to frighten the average, ordinary, mild-tempered citizen--who might otherwise have been persuaded that animals shouldn't have to die so we can spin our own lives out a year or two longer.
If any activists are reading this they will probably be hitting the back browser button by now. Or they will be accusing me of too much diffidence. Of compromise. Which may be so. But I would ask them to give this consideration: how much has been achieved on behalf of the animals using the direct action method? What have the bombs achieved other than a wholesale turning of the tide back in favour of those who torture and kill in the name of science? (which is really a mask for business).
Read the Dalai Lama, I say. Read Gandhi. Read Henry David Thoreau. Learn how to oppose without violence and with due recognition of the humanity and good conscience of those whose views and actions you detest. Then you might find you're getting somewhere with the ordinary people you need to convince before anything is changed.
And if that's not what you're really about--if the adoption of the animal rights cause is really a rationalisation of anger and your desire for private, but violent, conflict with the world--be honest. Stand up for your own maladjusted temperament; be proud of your vicious streak and come out into the open where the enemy (that is, everybody else), can get a good look at you. The imprisoned, tortured animals don't need you wasting everybody's time and hijacking the cause of their freedom because you need to legitimise your unpleasantness.
Footnote: if it isn't obvious in the preceding paragraphs, I am an advocate of animal rights--always have been, always will be. And I want to thank Tony Blair, in the light of his becoming a signatory to the petition in favour of animal experimentation, for justifying conclusively, at last, the campaign I've been running--on SP and in correspondence--for his removal from Office. We've come a long way since the liberal enlightenment of the Sixties, haven't we Prime Minister?
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