Fahrenheit 451: Industry, Media, and US/UK Governments Collude Against Animal Activists

Fahrenheit 451

The temperature’s rising

Originally published in 1953, Ray Bradbury’s thought-provoking book Fahrenheit 451(the title refers to the temperature at which paper ignites) is usually classified as a work of science fiction, but it is first and foremost a social criticism that warns against the danger of suppressing thought through censorship and the irreparable damage that any oppressive government, left unchecked, can do to society by limiting the creativity and freedom of its people. The dystopia motif used in books and films of this genre, which portray a futuristic technocratic totalitarian society that demands order and harmony at the expense of individual rights, is one that will resonate for many of us.

That influential social criticisms such as Orwell's Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four were published just a few years prior to Fahrenheit 451 is not coincidental. They revealed disquiet over the intellectually oppressive post-WWII political climate of the early 1950s during the McCarthy era in the US. That climate is now on the upsurge once again in post-9/11 paranoia, replacing the scare-mongering propaganda of the Cold War with the onslaught on minority groups that challenge the status quo. The resurgence in this attitude has undoubtedly crossed the Atlantic and infected the UK; their agenda is clearly to crush any resistance that challenges their power base. The most popular way of doing that at the moment is to play on people’s fears by labelling those who oppose them as terrorists - the new “reds under the bed”. By doing so, the real issues get clouded, forgotten, ridiculed and distorted; in the case of the cause we are fighting for, animals continue to die and the perpetrators of violence are given free reign to do what they want.

The Government’s new laws, designed to further stifle protest about animal abuse, are a feature of this insidious trend. In an insightful article in the Mail on Sunday, the late politician Tony Banks argued that the Government’s new laws would “result in greater power for the medical and pharmaceutical industries (…) to stifle legitimate debate on the morality and medical efficacy of animal experimentation and shield them even further from the public gaze. It is an astute tactic for them to undermine the very real concerns about their work by painting any conscientious objector, no matter how lawful, as a deranged and dangerous fanatic. It means the doors of their laboratories can remain closed and attention conveniently diverted from what I believe are often abominable experiments”. He further argued that if scientists are so sure of the validity and humanity of experiments, they should come public; they should allow people to see exactly what they are doing and let them decide if the suffering and death of millions of animals can be justified.

It is clear that the industry fears precisely this exposure; vested interests are a fundamental motivation behind the Government crackdown, and it is no coincidence that the vilification of our movement has its roots in the widespread influence of multinational pharmaceutical and biochemical corporations who stand to lose billions if the truth behind their malpractices and motivation continues to filter through to the already sceptical wider public.

The influence of multinationals is wide reaching, as we all know; they exist to make money and to increase their power. The prima facie role of the media is to report the truth; but this is without doubt illusory. They too exist to make money, and the best way to make money is through sensationalism. Tabloid headlines reading ‘Animal Rights Terror Leader’ might just as easily have read ‘Jordan’s Boob Bubble Bursts’ or ‘Sven’s Kinky Mistress Reveals All’. Veracity seldom comes into the equation. But it is not as simple as that. Media bosses are required to tow the line to those in power and to those who in turn pull their strings.

Plundering through every legitimate animal rights campaigning group, the media have now set their sights on campaigners and campaigning groups in the US. UK and US governments appear to have entered a transatlantic pact to silence the opposition that faces them from AR campaigners. This exchange of tactics has informed and infected media reporting on both sides of the Atlantic, with a lot of “Chinese whispers” added into the recipe.

“This is dreadful news (…) It means that your Planet Earth is hundreds and thousands of years behind this one. Our humans stopped killing and eating animals so long ago that no one knows how long” (Muffin and the Magic Hat by Annette Mills. 1951) Will they next start to suppress innocent texts like this one because it might indoctrinate children into actually thinking for themselves instead of accepting what they are told? Should we anticipate that the inclusion in the same sentence of the words ‘animal rights’ and ‘direct action’ is next in line for censorship?

The ripple effect

Listen!
  A frog leaping into the stillness
     Of an ancient pond!

       Basho (705-762)

If you look at an expanse of water in rain long enough, and you follow the ripple effect from individual drops of rain, you begin to notice a pattern emerging. The most defined ripples are those closest to the centre of the droplet’s impact on the water. Those radiating further outwards are less defined, but these are the ones that tend to cross over and merge with the ripples caused by the impact of another droplet on the surface of water. Furthermore, if you focus your eyes on one particular spot, several drops may fall close to or upon that spot in quick succession.

This seems as good analogy as any to define what we have seen happening in the last few weeks on the animals’ agenda. Reaction to a concerted campaign to halt construction of the new vivisection laboratory on Oxford was met with media hype, false allegations, smear campaigns, pharmaceutical claims and counter-claims, and government clampdowns. But it was also met with a tremendous amount of sympathy from the public at large, which meant that our message - which has been in no small measure propelled into the public eye because it has been supported by various direct actions undertaken by unknown individual/s - is filtering through despite the opposition’s best efforts to silence us. They have seriously miscalculated general feeling about the aims of those in the movement.

Government measures have failed to have the desired effect; rather, they have simply fuelled our determination to forge ahead. We have used the difficulties to our advantage to show a united front, to claim opportunities to speak out about our cause. And it appears that we are making inroads. Instead of being silenced, we have weathered the allegations and accusations by the media.

Reclaiming the identity they taught us to deny

If not you, then who? If not now, then when?

The difference between us and the opposition is that we are not ashamed of what we stand for; those that have been imprisoned for direct action have never tried to conceal the truth surrounding their convictions, or about what they believe. Thanks to the media, the anonymous balaclava’d animal rights figure now holds less terror for the public. They have been “unmasked” not as unprincipled anti-state law-breakers but as articulate, politicised individuals who have served time for their cause, who are unashamed by their ‘outlaw’ status and wear the badge proudly. The struggle for animal liberation is not about the individuals in the movement, but about the animals they seek to protect. There is no place for career advancement or ego-boosting in this business. Our identities are unimportant.

In media image manipulation, the masked figure as terrorist holding a liberated animal is something of an anathema – it is not the violent image of a gun-wielding guerrilla, but of someone caring. This image is at odds with government propaganda. It is at odds with the image of terror associated with movements whose motivation is to kill as many humans as possible for maximum impact in furthering their cause. In the eyes of the public, the masked animal rights activist now has a human face. Activists who have been imprisoned accept the consequences of their actions and involvement in the cause because they know they speak for Truth, not Profit. The opposition, on the other hand, is ashamed, forced to justify what it does, and in an attempt to depict us as outlaws are using every media ploy, every ounce of political hype to try to discredit a movement whose ideals are not open to question. In the act of unmasking them and revealing their true face we have made them fear us. In doing so, we have also reclaimed the symbol of the masked figure as our own - not a figure to be feared, but a figure that represents everyman, everywoman fighting for the rights of animals.  The masked figure says: this struggle is not about me – it is about the animals.

Suddenly, direct action is in the moral framework. The public and the media want to listen to activists they label “extremists”, and even if we are vilified, we are also being noticed. And keeping activists high profile has without doubt been to the benefit of media ratings.

Politician Roy Hattersley made some salient points in a Guardian comment (link it: http://www.guardian.co.uk/animalrights/story/0,,1274212,00.html) (Aug 2nd 2004)  when he said that “opposition to the way in which some animal liberationists behave and a willingness to make them respect the law should not obscure a basic truth about their cause.  Experimenting on living animals – although sometimes necessary – is an activity that a civilised nation should find distasteful. Yet the news that a construction company - intimidated by animal rights activists - has abandoned work on a new Oxford laboratory has been greeted by an orgy of simplistic nonsense about the ethics of vivisection…What society has to decide is whether the pain of innumerable puppies, even more rats, rabbits and mice and almost as many primates, is worth the possibility of finding the longed-for cure. Then we have to be sure that the suffering is the only way to discovering a remedy. The second question is technical. The first is moral.  It concerns both what we think about animals and what we think about ourselves…  A society that is careless about animals’ pain is likely to be casual about human suffering.   Compassion is indivisible…  Investors in biochemical companies complain that animal rights campaigners have revealed their names.  If they are embarrassed by the way they make their money, they should draw their dividends elsewhere.  Whatever else the liberationists have done, they have made us face up to what an ugly business animal experimentation is.”

And that, I believe, is the prevailing sentiment amongst a large percentage of the British public. We would obviously argue that experiments on animals are never necessary because the data gleaned from them cannot be extrapolated to humans - a case in point is Thalidomide, its side-effects on the offspring of pregnant women well documented. These were not discovered until the drug was licensed for use in humans; although the drug was extensively tested in pre-clinical trials on various non-human animal species, no side effects were documented. The drug is now being used in life-saving treatment of cancers, merely because one doctor stuck his neck out and believed it would work. 

The Prince of Wales was recently accused by a member of the medical profession of diverting funds away from science-based medical research by his open support of herbal remedies. He called for NHS funds to be diverted into the alternative field and was slated for it on the grounds that he did not have the experience to back his support of alternatives, whilst the scientist had 20-30 years of laboratory expertise. The Royal Family are not known to be champions for animal rights, but in this one thing they have been very clear - that is, that medical science is not always the best for its patients. The family have long used alternative cure methods and openly advocated them. If they, who have access to and choice of the best of medical care, opt for alternatives first, we must assume that generations of them have seen real benefits. By requesting that funds be diverted into the alternative field because it gives results, the Prince inadvertently scored points for our side - a side we must remember, that is not enamoured of his pro-hunting majesty!

Standing your ground

It is at times when we are under attack that we find out where our true strengths lie. I learnt two very important lessons early on in life from my parents:
(1) that you had to stand up against injustice, and (2) (this from my mother), that you should exercise compassion for all living things. To our shame, none of my family made the obvious connection or acted upon it until later in life, so effective was the indoctrination surrounding the necessity of using animals for food, clothing and comfort in our lives. Still, the basic foundations had been laid and as information about animal exploitation began to be disseminated more widely, I caught on. The fight against oppression/injustice and against the exploitation of animals were indivisible.  It has been a credo I have lived by for most of my life.

Fighting for individual freedoms has never been an easy road. My parents’ roles in the Resistance during the Warsaw uprising in WWII cost them dear - they saw their loved ones murdered, their homes plundered, their lives torn asunder and in a final act of revenge visited upon them by the occupying oppressors, they saw their ancient historic city razed to the ground as they were deported to prisoner-of-war camps. The promised help never arrived and when the war ended, the governments of the west sold them down the line in a deal struck with the Warsaw Pact.  Such are the ephemeral loyalties and duplicity of politicians.

My mother weeps to this day when she recollects the loss of animal life she witnessed during the war, the brutality, suffering and loss of human life she observed from a window overlooking the ghettos, or the fighting on the streets in running battles with the Nazis. She weeps for all those who have been the victims of oppressors. It is because of her that I am proud to speak out for the animals. It is because of her that I will NOT stand by and be silent while the Government do their worst.

The measures intended to disable us are set out to divide and rule, to distract us and focus our energies on fighting personal battles to protect individuals’ reputations. This we will not do. The propaganda-speak used by the Government today is the same propaganda-speak the Government used to argue their insupportable case when they were challenged by the anti-slavery movement.  It was a battle they lost.

Ours is battle they will lose – maybe not today or tomorrow but they will lose it. We must stand firm, take the heat, and oppose attempts to censor the truth, to stop us from disseminating it or to limit those freedoms so hard fought for by our forbears. This is, after all, a democracy. A democracy of sorts, at any rate. The battle we are fighting is not only the battle for animal rights; we are fighting the battle for freedom of speech, for freedom of information, freedom from oppression. It affects us all. If we sit quietly and allow them to silence us, who is to say what will come next?

When I Look Into Animals' Eyes, I See What I Felt

by Elisabeth Lewin

Today, when I look into the eyes of animals in the meat industry or animals being hunted or otherwise terrorized, I see what I felt.

I was 4 years old, living with my parents in the Warsaw ghetto. Hitler's troops were going from house to house, taking the children from their parents, just as the people in the meat industry take baby animals from their mothers. The children who could walk were taken away, and no one ever saw them again. The despair of these parents and their children was horrible, and I know with all my heart the despair of the millions of mother and baby animals the meat industry separates every day.

The "downers" in the meat industry are the same as the older people, the grandparents, were then - the German troops would go after them, screaming,"For soap, for soap!" and drag their feeble bodies onto the train. The same train kept coming back and being filled again with people. They were packed together into freight cars just as the animals are packed together for transport today. One week, they loaded my grandparents onto that train, and I never saw them again.

My mother smuggled me out of the ghetto and into a Polish family's Warsaw home. But soon Hitler's troops filled the entire city of Warsaw. I remember peeking out a window of my benefactor's house at a little fenced park with a garden and bushes and a sandbox. I saw German soldiers shoot the mothers and children there, as they tried to hide behind the bushes. It was just like a canned hunt, where the men shoot the fenced-in and defenceless animals - I know just how terrified these animals feel. It's exactly the same. I saw buildings going up in flames. The train came back every day to be filled with the people of Warsaw, Jews and non-Jews alike. They were prodded and packed tightly together on it to go to the concentration camp and be killed, just as the animals are packed together today for transport to the slaughterhouse.

Then one day my Polish benefactor, her sister (with her little dog hidden under her coat), and I were loaded onto the train. Like cattle, we were given numbers to wear. Just like animals in the meat industry, we were packed so tightly together that we couldn't move. Some children were sick, wrapped in blankets, and had to be carried. We had nothing to eat or drink and barely enough air to breathe. People were coughing, crying, and panicking - just as animals, petrified and confused, scream in agony and panic aboard transport trucks. After many hours, the train slowed down and the German soldiers jumped off to make sure no one would try to jump from the train.

But some people did jump, and the Germans shot them. My mother's friend told me, "Jump", but I was afraid. Then her sister threw her dog off the train and jumped off after the dog. When I saw that the little dog had made it, I jumped too. Then my benefactor jumped. By a miracle, we all escaped, and this is why I am alive today. My mother was a journalist, and she kept a journal about everything going on. She wrote at night, by candlelight. She was killed, but my aunt published her journal, and today it is in every public library in Poland. It is also published in German, with my mother's picture on the cover.

Because of what happened to me during the Holocaust, because I was once a victim while others were silent about my pain, I don't eat animals and I don't wear animals. Every life is precious. Our silence must end