rivista anarchica
anno 41 n. 364
estate 2011

Italiano

Anti-speciesism??

Anti-speciesism??
by Troglodita Tribe

is not a diet is not a fad is not a religion.

When Peter Singer finally put on the table that holds all the blatant contradiction speciesist system, it was finally clear that only racism and fascist culture of the fittest could fully justify the use that the majority of human individuals are doing of the animals.
In fact, before that time (found that depriving the liberty and killing animals is not indispensable for human health and survival) was routinely offered the answer that was about the supposed inability of animals to experience sensations - considered uniquely human-like fear , anxiety, anger, affection, boredom. It was argued that these beings are simply not aware they exist, do not have the ability to formulate thoughts, to distinguish, for example, the difference between freedom and imprisonment.
While considering the backwardness and lack of common sense, empathy and sensitivity inherent in this response (which is, today, is overcome by evidence and studies in ethology) Peter Singer asked, then, to carefully consider the treatment that was reserved for those humans who, by birth or by accident, were no longer able to express thoughts or being aware of their being here and now. Obviously, these people receiving care and attention, and nobody, apart from well-known memory of the Nazis, would have dreamed of using them as guinea pigs for experiments, to lock them up and bringing them to exploit the skin, flesh, bones, work or the fun you could make.
It was therefore obvious that the supposed inability of animals to think was not the right answer, it was not, in other words, the real discriminator that allowed us to decide who could be tortured, killed and eaten, and who, instead, was entitled to care and respect.
Because it is clear that if the discriminator had been until then only the exposed, even the brain-damaged hands-u should have suffered the fate of animals called "farm".
After this "output" of Peter Singer, then, several philosophers concluded that human beings had the right to care and respect for the moral part of our species, in other words the mere fact of being human.
And this, in fact, is the answer to where all the people who do not want to tackle in an open and complete the animal question. Is the answer that you give more usually. But Peter Singer was not satisfied with this response. Peter Singer asked why. Because the churches belonging to a species rather than another would ensure the moral respect, the right to life, guaranteed not to be bought, sold, imprisoned, mutilated, killed.

Peter Singer

No response has yet arrived.
And it is obvious that it is, for the simple fact that the only possible response should be closely linked to the ideology of domination: the foundation of racism, fascism, sexism, militarism ... isms from which all in many now, claim to have definitely taken their distance. In fact, if we decide in an arbitrary way that a species can do what he wants to all the others, why should we not accept that a race, an army, a sex, an elite, a caste can do the same with everyone else?
Unfortunately it's always good to remember that dominate a person, a people means a kind act on its life cycle, its freedom, then remove that person, to deny his identity, deny him any opportunity of realization.
The antispecismo choose to drastically exceed the ideology of the domain, choose to do it in all its aspects, highlighting also (and of course not limited to) the question of animal that is the first of many steps leading to the apex of a well-known pyramid based on violence, control and hierarchy.
The essential point, however, is that even those who recognize and fight this pyramid, very often not aware of being part of, to use its own dynamics, to foster their growth and ruthlessness.
It happened in the past, when old friends return home after the political struggles, they exploited their own wives, or insulted and beat a gay son. It happens today in many libertarians who accept and participate in the domain of all animal species, which accept and fund structures surrounded by barbed wire where they live, crammed into narrow places, terrified, inseminated artificially force-fed, exploited and then killed, billions of people whose only fault is that of not being human.