Terrorism [2001 revisit to the issue]

"Terror": …violence (as bombing) committed by groups in order to intimidate a population or government into granting their demands"—Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary

"Even before his death, his entire life was devoted to animal rights issues... The methods he chose to achieve his ends, however, alienated him from any mainstream opinion. To most, only in the detail was he different from almost any other terrorist."—Journalist Charles Shoebridge, describing animal rights activist Barry Horne, who recently died from a hunger strike in a British jail.

 

Are you a terrorist? Do you support terrorism?

Of course not, you will probably say. It's not even something you'd have to think about. In fact, you've denounced it a million times since September 11.

But answer the following questions:

• Wouldn't you like to see the cage doors of every mink farm, laying hen battery, and animal research laboratory swung open and billions of animals escape to whatever freedom they could find?
  
• Would you really mind seeing every McDonald's sign spray painted to make the famous "golden arches" form the first letter of the phrase "meat is murder"?
  
• How about slaughterhouses? Wouldn't you like to see every one of them leveled, and shrines for the dead animals put in their place?
  
• Wouldn't you secretly (or not so secretly) root for someone who could make all this happen?
  

  The point here, of course, is that sometimes terrorism doesn't seem so bad if the "terrorist" activities support a cause we deeply believe in. In that case the "right" thing to do may shift, or at least become a bit murky. It's like the old question of whether you would have assassinated Hitler in 1933 if you'd had the opportunity to do so and the knowledge of future events. Would you?
  

  In our society terrorism—at least in the form of illegal destruction of property—is being conducted on a regular basis in support of animal rights causes. A report to Congress several years ago found hundreds of these "terrorist" acts, and there's even a federal law, the Animal Enterprise Protection Act of 1992 [ed. note: amended by the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act of 2006], that was enacted to prevent them. (Most states have similar laws.)
  

  I've never met anyone who admitted to being an animal rights terrorist. If I did, though, I think I'd like them. For the most part these must be dedicated and brave individuals who have the vision of a better world for animals and humans. They are willing to act on behalf of their passions, and willing to help the suffering and the downtrodden despite the personal risks involved. I have to admire that.
  

  Of course I also think their actions are stupid and wrong.
  

  Terrorism, even for the most noble of causes, was stupid and wrong before September 11, and it's even more stupid and wrong now. Here's why:
  

• Violence is inherently antithetical to what we stand for. You can't simultaneously condemn violence and practice it. And you can't harm one animal (people) to save another without looking like a hypocrite.
  
• The ends don't justify the means. Sure, the people who harm animals for pleasure and/or profit promote terror themselves. They do it every day, and on an incomprehensively massive scale. But it is dangerous to say that a little bit of evil perpetrated against them is justified by the greater good it would accomplish. Where do you draw the line? Whose standards do you use?
  

  Just remember, everyone who exploits animals uses the same dubious logic—"the ends justify the means"—to support their actions. We know it's not true for them. It's not true for us either.
  

• Most of all, violence makes animal rights activists, and their cause, easy targets. People are inherently fearful of new ideas. They'd much rather have an excuse to dismiss an idea outright than go to the trouble of actually educating themselves and formulating a position. Every time an act of violence (or even just something dumb) is committed in the name of animal rights it gives the public the opportunity to dismiss the whole movement and everyone in it—from the Animal Liberation Front to the cat lady next door—as "a bunch of fanatics." Why give them that opportunity?
  

  Of course everything I've said above is doubly true after the hideous events of September 11. There's little tolerance in our society for anything even remotely looking like terrorism, and average folks won't distinguish violence committed in the name of Islamic fundamentalism from violence committed in the name of animal rights (an equally unknown cause). Why should they?
  

  (If you don't believe that people will gladly equate folks who free research animals with folks who hijack planes and fly them into buildings full of people, it's not hard to find hundreds of postings to that effect on Internet bulletin boards. Better yet, look at the mainstream press. In the past few weeks the New York Times, USA Today and the Guardian (UK) (just to name a few) have published articles making exactly that comparison.)
  

  Lest anyone get the wrong idea about my caution against violence and lawlessness, I freely admit that there's lots of gray area here. Lurking in that gray area are many difficult questions that I, for one, can't answer: Is violence okay in pursuit of terrorists? What about that Hitler question? What about civil disobedience against unjust laws?? How do you keep from tearing the door off the cage when it's right in front of you and a helpless animal is staring out???
  

  In our society we have the right of free speech, and the responsibility to exercise it liberally. No one who believes in animal rights, vegetarianism, or related causes should be shy about expressing his or her beliefs. We should make speeches, carry signs, and generally do what we can to get in people's faces and (more importantly) their minds. No one who ventures out onto a public sidewalk or street in America has the right to be sheltered from the ideas of others, no matter how offensive those ideas may be. Thank God (and folks named Jefferson, Adams and Washington) for that. And of course no one has a right to be sheltered from the consequences of their own actions. (If they want to eat chickens, by golly they should have to look the chickens in the eye first!)
  

  But let's refrain from doing things that are dumb, antisocial, and most of all violent. Our causes are too important for us to be summarily dismissed as "wackos," "fanatics," "anti-human," or "terrorists." Why let people who are abusing animals off the hook so easily? Instead, let's be accessible and inviting to the mainstream public. Let's not take ourselves too seriously. And instead of violence let's inundate them with civility, articulate arguments, scientific fact and, most of all, truth.
  

  The animals we want to help deserve no less from us.
  

A Razor-Thin Difference

Many people believe that Stephen Hawking is the most intelligent human being on the face of the earth. Dr. Hawking is the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University, a chair once occupied by Sir Issac Newton. There he studies cosmology, the laws of physics and mathematics that define the universe. His goal is to unify General Relativity with Quantum Theory and explain the mysteries of our lives.

My totally-made-up, fictitious cousin Sylvia is a lot like Stephen Hawking. Sylvia studies cosmetology at night. By day she has a chair at Dee Dee's "Curl Up and Dye" Salon in Jersey City that is occupied, the first Tuesday of every month, by Doris Newton. Sylvia helps Doris understand the mysteries of Days of Our Lives while she does her nails.

Stephen and Sylvia have more in common than just their professions. At a genetic level their bodies are very similar, even despite Sylvia's baggy arms. Indeed, a researcher at Baylor College of Medicine, who has created male transgenic mice with XX chromosomes, suggests that only two genes, called Sry and Sox 9, determine male gender. That's a razor-thin difference, but unfortunately one that has been, and continues to be, very large for some people. Many societies around the world still deny females fundamental rights, while closer to home the good-old-boys at Augusta National (the golf course where the Masters is played) flex their Sry and Sox 9 by denying membership to women. Too bad.

Stephen Hawking also has a lot in common with my totally-made-up, fictitious neighbor Dave. This is true even though Dave is black. The Human Genome Project has revealed that roughly 99.9% of the DNA of every person on the planet is identical, and that variations within a race are more significant than variations between races. Unfortunately, the razor-thin nature of the difference between races is lost on many people. Nearly 40 years after legislation supposedly eliminated all legal distinctions between people of different colors, racism—both overt and subtle—remains rampant in our society.

(My neighbor Dave is gay too. Isn't it ironic that, even as the scientific evidence mounts that sexual preference is also one of the tiny genetic differences that do exist between people, so many steadfastly refuse to consider that possibility, claiming instead that it is merely a moral choice?)

Finally, even though he may not like to admit it, Stephen Hawking shares a lot in common with Kanzi. Kanzi is an ape who lives at Georgia State University in Atlanta. On a genetic level, primates are very similar to humans indeed. We share 98.4% of our genes with chimpanzees, our closest nonhuman relatives. Other animals aren't far behind. We share 95% of our genome with dogs, and an amazing 74% with microscopic roundworms.

Now, you may be the kind of smart aleck who would say, "Gee, a whole 1.6% difference between us guys and them dumb chimps? …Sounds like a lot to me!" Don't count on it. Actually, the difference is much smaller still. That's because, in actuality, none of us are very human at all. In our bodies there are more than 10 times as many bacterial cells as human cells. Doing the math, that makes us mostly bugs and less than 9% Homo sapien, whereas our dog Phydeaux is mostly bugs and less than 8.55% (that's 9% x 95%) Homo sapien. Is there a big difference there? I don't think so.

Most people, of course, don't care that our fellow animals are so much like humans. In this country animals have no legal standing. Moreover, the vast majority of people eat meat, and participate, at least indirectly, in unthinkable agricultural, entertainment and medical atrocities against a wide variety of animals, from primates on down. Often this behavior is rationalized with arguments like, "they're not like us," "they don't really think," "they don't have souls," and "they don't feel pain the way we do." Even if casual observation didn't show these rationalizations to be ridiculous (and it certainly does), the genetic likeness we share with these animals also makes such arguments highly suspect.

Of course, one thing other animals don't share with us is our capacity for speech. Certainly some animals (whales, birds, dolphins) have their own languages that we have yet to decipher. Perhaps most do. But this doesn't seem to count. If more animals could speak to us in a way that we could understand, and tell us about their fears, their suffering, their emotions, would it make a difference? Nobody wants to eat Porky Pig, or send Mr. Ed to the glue factory. I think it would make all the difference in the world.

By the way, Kanzi can speak. As long as he has the aid of a computer he can communicate with us on our own terms. He uses a special keyboard with symbols that he associates with things and concepts. Using his keyboard Kanzi has a working vocabulary of over 200 words, and he can recognize over 500 words.

Just like Kanzi, Stephen Hawking also needs a computer if he wants to speak. He suffers from Motor Neurone Disease and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, and must communicate through a portable computer fitted with a speech synthesizer.

The most intelligent man on earth and a "dumb" animal both "talking" in the same way? It's true.

Let me summarize… Cosmologist or cosmetologist, male or female, black or white, gay or straight, human or dog or ape—there's just a razor-thin difference between all of us, and it's just a genetic crapshoot that determines which side of the line we fall on. Given those facts, wouldn't you think we could manage to understand each other a little better? I would.

Too bad we can't isolate the genes for bigotry and intolerance and cruelty. Too bad we can't erase them from the genetic framework forever.