Silence & Complicity

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Silence & Complicity

Posted by thomaspainescorner on May 7, 2009

 

 

 

By Camille Marino

5/6/09

This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism.

–Albert Einstein

In order to trade in death, agribusiness demands a compliant and malleable social order. In fact, one needs to step back and appreciate the diabolical nature of indoctrination; the fine art of sacrificing individual thought in favor of a collective social psyche.

 

A corpse — by definition, harvested from a once-living flesh-and-blood individual — elicits a profoundly-disconnected programmed response in the mainstream: flesh… A-1 Steak Sauce… yummy. The cemented indoctrination of a culture. The youngest child knows that sacrificing non-human animals for human animals is a noble pursuit: sending monkeys into space; sacrificing insignificant lab rats; milk-mustache posters advocating stealing secretions from other species; and, of course, pet ownership to bring home that biblical concept of dominion. And adult humans — their lives measured from one type of flesh fix to another — worship at the feet of the capitalist machine, secure and content with their assigned status as the consumer for whom the entire system functions. Without corpse-munchers financing the confinement, rape, mutilation and murder of sentient life, the holocaust would stall.

Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.

– Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Evil depends on silence.

Those who furnish non-human flesh and secretions for consumption need the realities of factory farming confinement to remain hidden. Those who make a living torturing living beings in laboratories need to have the population believe that their sadistic barbarity is essential for human progress. The utter heartlessness knows no boundaries: whether animals are beaten into submission and humiliated to entertain, whether their skin is ripped from their warm bodies to sell fashion to a vain consumer, or whether hunting, fishing, and clubbing baby seals is defended on grounds of tradition — silence is essential to perpetuate violence.

Recognition of injustice requires response. The only logical response in a society where the non-human holocaust fuels the economy is veganism — a philosophy which seeks to avoid all manner of animal exploitation. But vegans recognize that adopting this philosophy is the absolute least that each one of us can do to address a violent culture. It is incumbent on vegans to speak out and challenge the institutions and behaviors that necessitate animal exploitation.

“In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.â€

–Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

While some animal advocates adopt an attitude of tolerance, no one should be deluded about the fact that this position aligns the advocate with the perpetrators. Tolerating those who perpetuate the holocaust is providing tacit approval for the holocaust to continue. These “advocates†are actually specieists who would never tolerate pedophiles or rapists whose victims were human. Sharing a laugh with a flesh eater over his/her mutilated corpse part reduces the animal advocate to part of the joke but, more importantly, devalues the non-human victims.

Silence equals tolerance. Tolerance equals complicity. Inaction in the face of injustice equals guilt.

It is the responsibility of every vegan to spread the message of compassion and empathy for our fellow species. Those who have surrendered critical thought to mindlessly satisfy their taste buds are the most resistant to and offended by the message of animal rights. Those who actively seek to silence vegans are the enemies and their behaviors cannot be tolerated. Those vegans who appease the perpetrators with their silence are guilty of justifying every animal abuse that our culture condones.

One must recognize that silence is the domain of the complicit. To understand injustice and do nothing is to actively condone it. Our animal-exploiting culture needs silence to perpetuate its evil as much as it requires an endless stream of sentient beings to be sacrificed to the holocaust.

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