The animal rights movement insists it is peaceable. For the most part — but certainly not universally — most adherents are not violent.
At the same time, the movement’s condemnation of violent acts undertaken in the name of animal rights generally is muted. As I pointed out in A Rat Is a Pig Is a Dog Is a Boy, there was scant opposition from movement activists to the violent acts and terroristic threats committed by groups like the Animal Liberation Front and Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty. For example, several years ago, PETA implicitly praised the terroristic ALF by explicitly refusing to condemn activists’ lawless tactics in its “Ask Carla” feature.
If It Had Been a Pro-Lifer
Ditto, it seems, this story: An animal rights fanatic — previously arrested for seeking a hit against a fur wearer but released after a mental health evaluation — has been arrested again, this time for allegedly stabbing a woman because she wore fur. From the Cleveland.com story:
Cleveland Heights police believe that a woman stabbed another woman inside a Fairmount Boulevard Church because the woman was wearing fur boots. Meredith Lowell, 35, of Cleveland Heights, is charged with attempted murder and felonious assault in the stabbing that happened about 5:15 p.m. Wednesday.
Hmm. If a pro-lifer had stabbed someone involved in the abortion industry, the crime would be a front-page story across the country and every pro-life organization in the universe would be asked whether their advocacy led to such violence.
So, I checked around to see whether two days after the stabbing, any animal rights group has either been asked to respond to the crime, or whether any have independently issued condemnations of violence. Not yet, at least from what I could find in a Bing search. Nor did any of the stories about the alleged crime contain any request by the reporters for comment from such groups.
I also researched specifically whether PETA had condemned the knifing — and waddya know — I did find a story of the organization condemning a stabbing.
But it was the stabbing of a mouse. In a video game. Otherwise, all we hear are the sounds of silence.
Photo credit: Luis Alvarez Marra, via Flickr (cropped).
Cross-posted at The Corner.