NOTE: Do not read this section until you've read the two essays in Empathy, Education, and Violence: A Time for Everything. You can also watch me explain the insanity of pure pacifism during the 2012 interview shown just below, at right. This is my response to anyone who disagrees with those pieces. If you still disagree with my position, don't bother sending me an email because this will still be my retort, along with a line from the Pink Floyd song ‘Wish You Were Here’: “Did you exchange a walk-on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?”
Contrary to popular belief, pacifism is more evil than violence, and non-activist pacifists are incapable of using reason and rational thought when it comes to liberation movements. I say NON-ACTIVIST pacifists because these folks are not emulating Martin Luther King, Jr. when they write letters to corporations, sign online petitions, and spend five to ten hours a day on Facebook and Twitter. None of that qualifies as pacifism-activism, because King not only confronted hundreds of armed police officers in an endless array of street demonstrations, he went to jail dozens of times for intentionally breaking the law. He refused to apologize to judges, marched down the city streets he was banned from, and shed no tears in the jailhouse.
Non-activist pacifists have turned King's brand of action-activism into nothing more than a public relations game of meaningless ideals. As philosopher Edmond Burke once said, "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." Pacifism has actually convinced this "movement" to give its unwavering support to those who murder and rape animals, such as slaughterhouse-designer Temple Grandin, and staunch animal-eating documentarians/authors Michael Pollan, Eric Schlosser, and Morgan Spurlock. This caused me to break away from the animal rights "community" years ago.
It's amazing that PETA, HSUS, and 99 percent of vegans and vegetarians embrace Grandin, Pollan, Schlosser, and Spurlock—along with convicted dog-killer Michael Vick—praising them in the media or on their websites, even though they're responsible for harming millions of animals. Yet, whenever I show up, they all run for cover, even though I am responsible for saving the lives of millions of animals by leading tens of thousands of people (a conservative estimate) to act on the recognition and stop exploiting other animals.
As I stated in the essay Empathy, Education, and Violence: A Time for Everything, even though Malcolm X and King disagreed about which tactics should be used to eradicate segregation, when King was asked to help stop X's radicalism, he replied, "Don't ask me to stop Malcolm X. Malcolm X will stop when racism stops!" If pacifists were capable of logical thought, they would take the same approach with me and substitute X's name for mine, and racism for speciesism. Technically, we don't have to agree on tactics, but NOT supporting me—and other activists who risk it all—is treasonous, and a slap to the face of every enslaved animal.
I find the pacifist position and all of their condemnations hurled at me to be inadequate for many reasons. First, for more than 10 years, I've been the only activist invited into college and high school classrooms to give more than 200 vegan lectures a year, while my 2010 Georgia Tech speech has been translated into more than 35 languages for more than 11 million hits on YouTube. I've been able to represent the animals effectively because I made a conscious choice not to be a disingenuous public relations pacifist politician [see the video just below this paragraph]. I never lie or conceal my feelings to placate evil customs and evil people. It's funny how everyone claims to despise politicians but then they imitate them, and want me to be one, too.
Second, these people have never even bothered to read my essays on violence. They read an excerpt of an excerpt of an excerpt on the Internet. For the record, here's the entire excerpt in question: "Sometimes I think the only effective method of destroying speciesism would be for each uncaring human to be forced to live the life of a cow on a feedlot, or a monkey in a laboratory, or an elephant in the circus, or a bull in a rodeo, or a mink on a fur farm. Then people would be awakened from their soporific states and finally understand the horrors that are inflicted on the animal kingdom by the vilest species to ever roam this planet: the human animal! Deep down, I truly hope that oppression, torture and murder return to each uncaring human tenfold! I hope that sons accidentally shoot their fathers on hunting excursions, while carnivores suffer heart attacks that kill them slowly. Every woman ensconced in fur should endure a rape so vicious that it scars them forever. While every man entrenched in fur should suffer an anal raping so horrific that they become disemboweled. Every rodeo cowboy and matador should be gored to death, while circus abusers are trampled by elephants and mauled by tigers. And, lastly, may irony shine its esoteric head in the form of animal researchers catching debilitating diseases and painfully withering away because research dollars that could have been used to treat them were wasted on the barbaric, unscientific practice of vivisection."
Third, why is everyone so irate with the rape sentences but completely nonchalant about the "sons-accidentally-shooting-their-fathers" line?
Rapists, murderers and child molesters should be vivisected, executed and dissected, allowing researchers the opportunity to gather useful information that would actually benefit human health for a change. I see nothing wrong with capital punishment because if you willfully destroy someone else's life, then you automatically relinquish yours [see the interview near the top of this page].
For the pacifists who now wish to condemn me for supporting capital punishment, let me expose your insanity a little more. When you fight for the lives of people on Death Row, you condemn even more innocent animals to a murderous demise. What do you think convicts in prison eat? Carrots and tofu? Or the dead, dismembered bodies of animals? And if you wish to use the trite argument about executing an innocent person one percent of the time, let me know when society condemns executing 150 billion INNOCENT animals in the meat, dairy and egg industries 100 percent of the time! As for the lame "eye-for-an-eye-only-makes-the whole world blind" comment, when was the last time there was a blind mass murderer? I'll take a blind compassionate world/person over a seeing evil one any day of the week. There's NO nobility in protecting victimizers. Murderers, rapists and child molesters don't need your voice. The victims are the ONLY ones who need help.
Have pacifists become so in love with their ideals that they've forgotten who the real practitioners of violence are? I have harmed no one while meat, dairy, and egg-eaters pay people to RAPE animals to impregnate them, pay people to steal newborn babies from their mothers, and pay people to kill the babies, and the mothers. I have harmed no one while people who wear fur pay people to rape foxes via anal electrocution, rape chinchillas via vaginal electrocution, and break the necks of minks, so that they can drape themselves in skin-coats. But hey, I'm a reasonable guy who's willing to change his position on violence, and make a deal with all the pacifists in the "movement." When the rapists stop raping the animals, then I'll stop "wishing" or "hoping" that rapists get raped. And let me clarify something else. I think rape is purely evil. I don't support it. Don't be stupid. Rape is the most evil act of violence that can ever be committed, which is why I wish it happens to evil people. I hope Nazis, KKK members, and domestic abusers get raped, too. I certainly don't wish for bags of lollipops and money to fall from the sky and gently land in their laps. I honestly think every rapist should have his cock and balls sliced off with a cuticle-remover while he's fully conscious. Then, he should be forced to eat his severed genitals after they've been dipped in puke. After he takes the last bite, I personally want to be there to shove two 12-inch metal skewers through each eyeball, and then drag him into a room filled with 10,000 flies so he can be eaten alive. Go rent the movie Law Abiding Citizen and watch Gerard Butler's character carry out some poetic justice on the man who raped his wife and daughter. It warms my heart to no end.
What's more, anyone who condemns me for my rape comments is a pure hypocrite anyway, because when child molesters are convicted and imprisoned, EVERYONE says something like this: "I can't wait until Bubba gets a hold of him in prison." And don't you dare deny it! What do you think Bubba's gonna do when their paths cross? Counsel him about his troubled childhood, or forcibly penetrate (rape) his asshole? The problem with pacifists is that they don't fully understand evil because they refuse to look at oppressive situations from the victim's point of view—unless, of course, the victim is a fur-wearing ogress who gets raped in some fantasy retaliatory payback prose of mine. The animals who are raped and murdered see no difference between someone who violates them for their flesh and skin, or someone who does it to a human. If only the pacifists could understand this.
It's also unfair that pacifists play the pacifism default-card in every situation, meaning that no matter what a non-pacifist says, the pacifists think their position is automatically right. What they fail to realize is that there are different avenues for achieving substantive change. I understand that violence isn't always the best tactic for every situation, which is why I spend 100 percent of my time EDUCATING students in college and high school classrooms. Conversely, pacifism cannot be the appropriate tactic in every situation either. Sometimes evil people need to be killed. People who have NO compassion deserve NONE in return.
To prove once and for all how evil pacifism can be, let's play a time-travel game. The year is 1945 and I'm being held captive with thousands of others in a Nazi concentration camp. Do pacifists support The Allied Forces who enter the death camps and MURDER Nazis in order to save me and the other victims [see the video just above, at right]? Or do the pacifists hold firm to Gandhi's solution to the Holocaust? Even though the Mahatma was one of the most effective pacifist-activists in history, it's time that everyone knew about his INSANE solution to the Jewish Holocaust. Gandhi thought that all the Jews imprisoned in concentration camps should have committed mass suicide in order to rouse the conscience of the world. And pacifists have the nerve to think that I'm crazy! Pacifism truly clouded his judgment just as it continues to cloud the judgment of animal rights people. Pacifism ALLOWS violence to continue unabated. And if you're about to use that stale "violence-begets-violence" line, well, I'm sorry, but I must've missed that moment in history when killing thousands of Nazis caused them to commit more acts of violence against Jews. Exactly when did that happen?
And how did violence beget violence on July 2, 2013, when a knife-wielding lunatic took a two-year-old girl hostage at a Walmart in Midwest City, Oklahoma, and a cop killed him to end the standoff? Sometimes retaliatory violence is the only way to stop evil in its tracks. If pacifists truly oppose killing the armed maniac, then pacifists are clearly saying that the victimizer should be treated no differently than the victim. I shall forever be puzzled as to why pacifists perpetually fight for the rights of violent individuals, while constantly brushing aside a victim's right not to be tortured and murdered.
I also find it odd that animal rights pacifists refuse to condemn Nelson Mandela and his associates for trying to use violence in an attempt to end apartheid in South Africa. Mandela actually took part in guerrilla warfare training in Algeria, which is still one of the hotbeds for terrorism today. During his 1963 trial, he told the Court: "I do not deny that I planned sabotage. I did not plan it in a spirit of recklessness, nor because I have any love for violence. I planned it as a result of a calm and sober assessment of the political situation. Without violence there would be no way open to the African people to succeed in their struggle." And what about this comment when he was released from prison after 27 years on February 11, 1990: "Our resort to the armed struggle in 1960 with the formation of the military wing of the ANC (Umkhonto we Sizwe) was a purely defensive action against the violence of apartheid. The factors which necessitated the armed struggle still exist today. We have no option but to continue. We express the hope that a climate conducive to a negotiated settlement would be reached soon, so that there may no longer be the need for the armed struggle."
Why not condemn the great civil rights activist Rosa Parks for stating the following in her autobiography My Story: "To this day, I am NOT an absolute supporter of nonviolence in all situations (page 175)."
I refuse to condemn these wise, thoughtful, and necessary propositions, and the activists who lived and died by them. If people are truly opposed to using violence as a tactic, why should Mandela and Parks get free passes to promote and justify violence? I'll be eagerly anticipating the pacifists' forthcoming defense of Gandhi's Holocaust solution, and their condemnations of Mandela and Parks.
If pacifism is so wonderful and effective, and there are ONLY a handful of animal rights people who promote and support violence as I do, why is it that animal rights people are seen as weird lunatics, and animals remain oppressed by the billion? It's because no matter how much you act like a politician, and embrace pacifist ideals, evil people rarely change their evil ways unless they're forced to. So I learned a long time ago to say what needs to be said, and to support what needs to be done, even if it goes against popular thought. And lo and behold, guess who became a pretty effective activist over the years. Go to the Comments and Conversions section from any page of this website, and spend a moment reading the thousands of testimonials from former meat, dairy and egg-eaters who made the world a better place because they listened to my message of compassion.
This discussion is now permanently over. CHECKMATE. I win. Pacifists lose.