by Walter Bond
3-11-2011

There is a war. Every second 321 farmed Animals are slaughtered. Every year nearly 200 billion pounds of milk are produced by the rape of “dairy” cows. Nine billion chickens are murdered annually so that flesh eating bastards can dine on gore and filth. All too often we hear these numbers and they fly right over our heads.

Did you know that you don’t even reach a billion seconds of age until nearly 35 years old? Are you aware that right now an Animal is being tortured to death by demons in lab coats, for entertainment, food, clothing, vivisection and any other trivial and redundant reason you can imagine? Animals suffer and die worse deaths than we can even wrap our minds around. And what do we do? We posture and pose. We debate the validity of tactics like arson because there may be a field mouse in the wall. How many bugs, snakes and nocturnal critters have you killed with your metal monster, I mean, car?

If you saw a man skin a cat in a field so that he could sell its “pelt” would you not run over and stop him because you might step on a mouse unseen in the grass? Give me a break. If these are your ridiculous reasons for not joining or supporting the Animal Liberation Front then you are a pretend friend to Animals. Let me guess, you’re a pacifist. Yeah right, I doubt it. If you were in a cage being raped, beaten and violently tortured and murdered you would want someone to liberate you, stop your torturer with brute force and the building that they held you in to be burnt to the ground. You’re only a pacifist when it’s not your neck on the chopping block. I’d bet my life on it. What else, oh yes, you’re a Vegan you’re doing your part.

Non-participation in evil is obviously the first step but our Veganism is not saving any lives. The human population is growing, on the day you or I went Vegan 100,000 kids got weaned into flesh as food. And Veganism doesn’t turn you into an instant activist, only being active can do that. Example, I am not a rapist, I never have been, I never will be. But wouldn’t it be dishonest for me to represent myself as a rape prevention activist? Simply because I don’t engage in said behavior. Well if it’s that easy to be proactive then I’m also a human rights activist, I’m an activist against child molestation, I’m an activist against domestic violence. Actually there are so many evils I don’t participate in, I am actually solving the entire world’s problems, by not doing anything!

Hmmm… how conveniently lazy and apathetic. Actually if you find a behavior or system of abuse deplorable the least you can do is not participate in it. Then you have the militant posers. You’ve got every Earth Crisis and Hardline Vegan album and t-shirt ever made. You look the part and talked the talk better than the rest. In fact the more years you pose like this the more others in the scene respect you. Once in a blue moon you go to a protest so that you can knock the dust off your balaclava and get some pictures of yourself looking like an Animal Rights ninja. And if I called you out on your bullshit to your face you would say something like, “you have no idea what I do when the sun goes down.” Yes I do, you go to bed. The only time you should put a bandana on your face is if you are cleaning a chicken barn at a sanctuary or about to kick ass for the Animals. To do otherwise is to disgrace the institution of radicalism and makes a mockery of the sacrifices of real Earth and Animal Liberation warriors.

There are many ways you can help Animals and the movement for their total liberation. The most powerful way is to become a direct activist. That means centering your activities and tactics around endeavors that either directly help and save Animals or directly confront their exploiters. Something you can do to help Animals are work at a sanctuary or help them out with a few bucks since caring for Animals can be costly. Or you can do a home demo, you can let an Animal exploiter and their neighbors know that killing Animals or profiting from their dead bodies is sick and wrong and will not be tolerated. Or best of all you can join the underground resistance and make the most impact.

Since 1976 the Animal Liberation Front has been saving Animals’ lives and shutting down places of abuse and harm. The ALF has also educated the public through hundreds of communiqués that not only is there cruelty going on behind the scenes but that it will not be tolerated. Actions for Animals happen nightly all over the world. But there are others in the underground as well. The brave and noble warriors of the Animal Rights Militia and Justice Department employ all the same tactics of the Animal Liberation Front but are not restricted by a philosophy of nonviolence. I think that’s great. Anything that stops Animal exploitation is of value and anything that allows Animal use and abuse to continue is unacceptable.

Even as I write this I can hear the hysterics of apathetic Animal Rights activists misplaced contention. Really, why don’t you lose your marbles over the fact that US soldiers have been murdering brown people in the desert for over a decade straight? Where’s your outrage when police execute blacks on camera and in public? True to pacifists’ hypocrisy you aren’t appalled by violence, you’re appalled by unsanctioned violence. This is because many of our own activists are as insane as the society they live in. If you are more freaked out by the statement “not restricted by a philosophy of nonviolence” than you were the statement “every second 321 farm animals are slaughtered,” then this is testimony to your faulty morality.

The issues of Animal abuse and death are incredibly serious for the individual beings involved. To them it is unimaginable wickedness. Morally, it’s depravity at its worst. Because not only is it unnecessary killing, it’s the murder of innocent beings which compounds the evil. The environmental impacts are staggering as well. Deforestation and grazing for livestock go hand-in-hand. Fifty-five percent of all drinking water is used for the raising of that “livestock.” Waste runoff is the number one polluter of the other 45% of that drinking water. Any way you look at it, you cannot build a just system off the most cruel objectifications in the world’s history!

We treat Animals with no regard because they are the least able to defend themselves in an organized way. And from there, all the way up, the hierarchy of exploitation you get used and abused according to your inability to defend yourself from attack. What a sad and sick construct. There is such a thing as cause and effect. Spiritualists call it karma. No matter what you call it, it’s unavoidable and inescapable. In the case of Animal Liberation, what it means is you are not going to fight and succeed against the most proactive evil that our animal sisters and brothers endure by eating soy yogurt or lighting candles. Industries that make billions of dollars off systematic murder don’t stop because of morality. If they had a shred of decency they wouldn’t have gotten into that business to begin with. They stopped because they are fought and they lose. It’s the only language that any bully understands.

Now I don’t expect every Vegan to spring into action and become a warrior for Animals… obviously that’s not going to happen. But badmouthing and standing against those that are actually saving Animals or taking the fight for their freedom to the exploiters’ front doors and businesses is unacceptable. I will tell you here and now that you disgust me and you have no idea the risks that we in the underground take. And all that we sacrifice to be who we are. Until you couch surfers and armchair generals can match your high and mighty opinions with actions then those opinions are invalid. This is a war and the Earth and Animals have hardly any human resistance on their side. As long as Vegans and so-called Animal Rights activists succumb to compassionate apathy, then the rest of us are obligated to become firebreathing fanatics. You can’t escape cause and effect.

When I was arrested I had in my backpack a copy of a manifesto entitled, “Declaration of War,” by Screaming Wolf
(Free pdf | Buy book). It is the single most dynamic and powerful manuscript for Animal Liberation I have ever read. While parts of it are dated, its principles and programs of action are timeless. Read it, reread it, let its truths empower you and then become a liberator. If that is not within your realm of possibility, then start an Animal Liberation Front support group. Help an actual Animal, protest aggressively, if you’re not Vegan, go Vegan. Do something besides hiding your cowardice by attacking other’s bravery!

Right now in Mexico the ALF and ELF are leading the way in activism and have been for years. They are shining example for us all to follow. Support them and our imprisoned comrade Adrian Magdaleno Gonzales, who is Vegan in a Third World prison and remains defiant in the face in of adversity. Until society stops exploiting Animals, we are at war with society. Until there is an end to the destruction of the planet, there will be no end to the destruction of property. As long as they are is an enslaved Animal and an exploiter for pleasure or profit, then there will always be someone to take the place of an imprisoned ALF activist.

Animal liberation, whatever it may take!