Infoshop carried an odd interview this week with a supporter of animal rights terrorism, Anthony Nocella. Nocella is the co-editor, with Steven Best, of Terrorists or Freedom Fighters? Reflections on the Liberation of Animals.
Much of the interview is tied up with Nocella’s statements about anarchic philosophies and how those relate to the animal rights movement.
But Nocella has some very odd views of what humans should and should not be allowed to do with animals. For example, here are two quotes from different parts of his long interview which underscore his views (emphasis added),
I strongly believe that all action should be based on the premise that the end does not justify the means. [Except, apparently, when it involves animal rights violence.] Thus, even if a child is happy at a circus, that child should not enjoy happiness at the expense of a bear being taught to dance in a tutu with the aid of an electrical prod. And a human should not have a heart transplant at the expense of a baboon being experimented on.
. . .
Furthermore, I am not an extremist. I am logical and balanced. I have dialogued with members of the FBI, CIA, UN and National Security Studies in the Maxwell School at Syracuse University. I am willing to hear all sides of a conflict and am not hear [sic] to judge. I respect people that hunt for their meat, such as Native Americans, and the people that eat road-kill. I just do not support anyone that enslaves or kills non-human animals for profit, such as slaughterhouses, research facilities, circuses or animal prisons — aquariums and zoos.
So what matters is not whether animals are sentient or can feel pain or are self-aware, but rather what sort of economic transactions which occur after they are killed? I wonder what he thinks of tofu being bought and sold lie a crass commodity in supermarkets!
Source:
Interview with Anthony Nocella. Infoshop.Org, April 26, 2004.