Some time ago, I suggested that
there are well-documented links between the Dutch animal rights
movement and violent, left-wing splinter groups. I was inundated with
reactions, particularly as I'd mentioned that the killer of
anti-immigration politician Pim Fortuyn was an animal rights activist.
Was this any more relevant than if he'd been a hair dresser or a shoe
salesman, one listener wanted to know. After all, Fortuyn wasn't
murdered for his views about animals.
It's
a legitimate question, all the more so at a time when connections
between, say, the ethnicity or religion of a criminal and his actions
are often made without thinking. I'm afraid my answer has been long
overdue. Fortunately the Dutch intelligence service has come to my aid,
confirming in a new report that violence and intimidation are indeed
becoming more and more widespread in the fight against factory farming
and the fur trade.
Extremists
As the report documents, first it's a stone through someone's
window, then threats against their family and children, and ultimately
who knows? In that respect, extreme animal rights activists are no
different from other extremists. Which may explain why so many people
from the largely defunct squatters' movement - Mohicans,
piercings, iron chains...I'm sure you know the type - have found their
niche as animal rights crusaders.
"To live outside the law you must be honest", Bob Dylan once said. But
even if you are, deciding how far it's acceptable to go can be a
slippery business. And this is where I believe there's a particular
problem with the animal rights movement.
Myth
One of the movement's basic tenets, as my great friend Marianne Thieme
from the Dutch Animal Party would no doubt confirm, is that man's
supremacy among species is a myth. In a perfect world, this would lead
to a Hindu-like respect for all creatures great and small. But, as Ms
Thieme would also confirm, it's not a perfect world. So the next more
or less logical step is to argue that someone who kills an animal is
just as guilty of murder as someone who kills a human being.
How guilty does that make someone whose daily business is killing -
'executing' as some activists would very deliberately call it - pigs in
a slaughterhouse? Or someone who makes a fortune breeding minks for
expensive fur coats? I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that for
some animal rights activists, there's an Auschwitz or a Srebrenica
every day.
Dilemma
Here's a classic moral dilemma then: how far can and should they go to
stop such mass murders? And once they've established that there are
circumstances under which it's okay to use violence, where does it end?
Should it be limited to the cause of animal rights? Or should other
vulnerable groups be included as well, which resemble animals in that
they can't stick up for themselves?
"A danger to vulnerable groups in society": that's exactly how Volkert
van der Graaf described Pim Fortuyn, the man he had murdered. To the
general public the killing came as a shock. After all, there hadn't
been a political assassination in the Netherlands during peacetime in
centuries. But in Volkert's head it was never peacetime. Animals were
being killed in large numbers, death and destruction were daily
business, and there was nothing shocking or unprecedented about the
idea of taking up arms. Or indeed of killing for the greater good.
So yes, I do believe it was relevant that Volkert was an animal-rights
activist. And I also believe that any movement that would question the
supremacy of human life is by definition dangerous, including the
animal rights movement. I'm just not sure I like the conclusion to
which all of this seems to be leading me. That without the spurious
notion that man is a superior being whose life is worth more than that
of other creatures, and who is free to assert that superiority by
treating animals with contempt, we'd all be even worse off.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are the personal views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the opinions of Radio Netherlands.