In an excellent article about terrorism, Ron Schara wonders where the outrage is over animal rights terrorism. As Schara notes, nothing that the animal rights extremists have pulled off so far comes close to what Al Qaeda did on September 11, but the goal is largely the same — to create an unending sense of fear in those targeted.
As Schara notes,
These [mink farm raids] are the acts of people with a cause and a terrorist-like fervor who believe their view of animals justifies almost any violence against the enemy.
To animal terrorists, the enemy is anybody who raises animals, eats animals, hunts animals, wears animals or uses animals for research of any kind, even for humanitarian reasons.
And yet, as has been documented amply on this web site, there is still no serious prolonged national discussion about such terrorism, even though the number of such acts really started to climb precipitously in the mid-1990s. Schara writes,
Where is the outrage?
You can’t find it on the editorial pages. You can’t find it in the court rooms or police stations. Seldom are such cases solved and rarely are arrests made of mink or rat releasers.
Why aren’t animal rights organizations more forceful in condemning the actions of extremists or aiding in their arrests? Isn’t sympathizing or protecting animal terrorists just as deplorable?
One would think so, but groups that openly advocate and defend animal rights terrorism, such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, not only are never held accountable for those views, but remain media darlings in the eyes of the media ignoramuses who would almost certainly not let PETA slide if it were advocating violence against abortion doctors or defended the burning of a black church. But apparently, the lives of medical researchers and farmers just don’t make it on the media radar screen.
Source:
Different terrorists can make their mark. Ron Schara, Star Tribune, October 7, 2001.