Search www.satyamag.com

Satya has ceased publication. This website is maintained for informational purposes only.

To learn more about the upcoming Special Edition of Satya and Call for Submissions, click here.

back issues

 

March 2004
Hypocrisy Is Our Greatest Luxury

By Rod Coronado

 

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.

 


© STEALTH TECHNOLOGIES INC.
All contents are copyrighted. Click here to learn about reprinting text or images that appear on this site.