All Men Are Nazis

All Men Are Nazis

“In relation to animals, all people are Nazis; for the animals it is an eternal Treblinka.” Isaac Singer, Nobel Prize Winner

Isaac Singer immigrated to the US from Poland to escape the Holocaust. He has spoken often, both in fictional works and in interviews, of the parallel between the Holocaust and the mass slaughter of animals. If this parallel is valid, it present a disturbing moral dilemma for those in the animal rights movement for in Nazi Germany it would not have been enough to abstain from murdering one’s Jewish neighbors. Condemnation would not have been enough, petitions would not have been enough, nor the passing of humane legislation have been enough. Much more was required of the German people and the world community, and in this all failed miserably.

Within Germany itself, the first step in dispossessing the Jewish people of their rights was to dehumanize them, to create a pseudo class of “sub-humans” thus paving the way for the social acceptance of genocide. They were herded into cattle cars and taken away to concentration camps where the young, old and ill were immediately taken to the gas chambers while others were worked to death for the benefit of Germany.

Such atrocities continue today, though not on the same horrifying scale as in Nazi Germany. What horrifies one the most is that it happened in a “civilized” nation and it was done with a true German eye towards efficiency and organization, so systematic that they were a step away from placing Jewish people on a conveyor belt to death.

The parallel to today’s industrialized meat production is evident. Yes, animals have always been eaten as people have always been killed but never in the history of the world has it been so efficient and organized, the numbers so staggering as to be beyond comprehension. Humans are blinded by denial, immobilized by apathy, or too self-absorbed to recognize any suffering but their own. The ability of humans to justify the murder of other animals, rather of their own species or another always rests on the denial of granting “others” the same rights that they claim for themselves.

In a world where the rights of animals was recognized, the ludicrous claim of the Nazi scientists that the Jewish people were “sub-human” could never have justified their murder even so, which is why the recognition of the rights of animals is so crucial to our own species for our human enemies are always portrayed as less than human to make it easier to kill them.

The moral dilemma therefore is this: how far should one go to prevent the slaughter of animals in a world where it is acceptable to do so? Had we lived in Nazi Germany, what actions would have been justified to stop the murder of six million Jews?

The Animal Liberation Front in independent actions has destroyed property and used intimidation and threats against the perpetrators of animal abuse. Most recently, they claimed responsibility for setting fire to a vivisectionist’s house and in letter to the victim/criminal threatened worse if she did not stop.

Is such action ever justified? Or is it actually too little? Would Gandhi’s philosophy of peaceful resistance have prevailed against the SS? What acceptable action could we take if we saw a train of boxcars packed full of humans on their way to slaughter? And why is that different than a train or truck packed with cows or chickens?