CSM EDITORIAL
There was a time, in the bad old days of ALF, when animal rights terrorists were considered the second greatest terror threat to the UK behind the IRA. While various Islamist groups have overtaken them now, animal rights terrorism still abounds, carried out by a small but active crew of extremist cadres who still resort to violence to pursue their political aims. The animal rights movement is a product of just the past 50 years, so these individuals are relative newcomers to spreading terror as a form of direct action.
“Children thrown from frightened horses while out for a weekend ride, vehicles vandalised, businesses threatened, fieldsports participants physically attacked, horses and hounds injured, incessant trolling by sab dross online and groups of aggressive hunt saboteurs hiding behind balaclavas … need I go on? These unhinged and violent individuals are a danger to the public, as the jailing of Paul Allman underlined this week.”
Ben McCarthy Terrorists Among Us, CSM Aug 19th 2023
What makes today’s animal rights terrorists stand out from their fellow terrorists is their choice to hide in plain sight – not bothering to conceal their fundraising, operating through charities and non-profit companies while lauding their terrorist activities online via brigades of social media activists. Yet like other terrorists their reconnaissance is somewhat professional, they operate almost military standard surveillance using drones, cameras, hacks, spyware, thermal imaging, researched target lists, trackers and infiltration. Their imagery is unashamedly paramilitary (see image above). They engage in lawfare and extortion. Their armchair troll army spend their days trying to cancel opponents’ businesses and their ability to operate freely, while scaring their women and children. Their leaders have had roles in parliament and their senior cadres have reach, for now, across the press, the BBC, Channel 4 and ITV.
The mistake that today’s animal rights terrorists make – since the invention of the Internet, having adopted a position out in the open, despite donning balaclavas out on operations – is that they have built themselves an echo chamber, thinking that they carry the British public with them when in fact that is far from the case.
Their extremism is still outlying, their beliefs are peculiar and their comprehension of support is limited to their conning of the public by presenting themselves as ‘saviours’ or ‘rescuers’ of animals rather than as the violent terrorisers of humans they have repeatedly proven themselves to be.
In short, they have believed their own lies.
They are thus exposed and open to eradication and proscription. They have grown used to getting away with their violence and lawlessness, pretending that it is legitimate direct action. They have become just another t-shirt. Even the briefest glimpse at their new members’ profiles shows they have become a magnet for druggies, the mentally ill, homeless and unemployable criminals.
This magazine has exposed a few of them over the years, each time illuminating outliers. This included a fantasist called Chris Roberts from Wales who pretended to be a female witch called Serenwyl. (Roberts’ current anti Israel Twitter account below).
Sometimes political events occur which allow watchers an insight into the collective inhumanity of a group. Since the animal rights extremists are few in number and operate so openly it is not that difficult for law-abiding opponents of these terrorists and their supporters to gauge their reactions to the slaughter of innocents in Israel; to the tying of little children’s hands behind their backs, getting doused in petrol then set alight or beheaded.
“A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy” is a quote from Ingrid Newkirk, one of PETA’s top staff. With such a perverse ideology (of which the Nazi Party were fond), perverse moral relativism follows easily.
Such moral relativism disgusts most Brits because they are decent and sane. Animal Rights extremists are not – to them the means justify the ends whether the means involve lying in court, smearing opponents or engaging in other forms of criminality.
Here is the ecologist Aymeric Caron, a tireless defender of animal rights with radical left political convictions. Listen to him attempting to justify Hamas’s terrorist butchery:
Recently there has been plenty of anti-Israeli sentiment out there from animal rightists closer to home.
From Hunt Saboteur funders LUSH Cosmetics in Dublin:
To the prominent sab, the former MP (now expelled from the Labour Party) Chris Williamson who has been loud of late attacking Israel but whose silence in failing to condemn Hamas has been even louder:
Should we be surprised?
Hamas are baby killers but Palestine is a far left cause, so silence about Hamas’ butchery has been ubiquitous across sab groups and social media accounts while antisemitism and support for Palestinians has been widespread:
The blog of Mark Avery – activist colleague of Hunt Sabs’ President Chris Packham (below) – recently came under fire from the Campaign for the Protection of Moorland Communities as antisemitism was ‘found to be rife across his website’.
The Hunt Sabs Association previously showed solidarity with Palestine and raised the Palestinian flag in Tolpuddle:
From what they post about Palestine and fail to post about Hamas, one can understand how animal rightists’ minds work, whether engaged in terror themselves or plausibly and deniably removed from it. Theirs is a pick-and-choose mentality. Truth is irrelevant. The means justify the ends.
How dangerous.
How sad.