And I don’t think you’d have to kill — assassinate — too many vivisectors before you would see a marked decrease in the amount of vivisection going on. And I think for 5 lives, 10 lives, 15 human lives, we could save a million, 2 million, 10 million non-human animals.
And I — you know - people get all excited about, “Oh what’s going to happen when - the ALF accidentally kills somebody in an arson?” Well, you know I mean — I think we need to get used to this idea. It’s going to happen, okay? It’s going to happen.
For these words, Vlasak’s outraged braying critics transformed him into the John Brown or Eric Rudolph of the animal rights movement. Read carefully, it is clear that Vlasak is not advocating violence, although he does think it is morally justifiable to use some violence in order to save animals from a far greater level of violence. Mainly, Vlasak is laying out an imaginary scenario where he speculates that were someone to kill a certain number of vivisectors, it would in fact have a positive benefit for animals, as it would intimidate many actual vivisectors into ending their experiments on animals while driving numerous potential vivisectors into other lines of research. Basically, Vlasak is simply making a tautological statement, something true by definition, telling us that 2 + 2 = 4.
Moreover, looking at the dynamics of many past human liberation movements, Vlasak claims that someone in the animal liberation movement, sooner or later, will use violence against animal exploiters. Decades or even years from now, animal exploiters may reminisce about the good old days when they only had to worry about attacks on their property instead of their lives. Opponents of animal rights also are saying this with increasing frequency as they too recognize the struggle for animal liberation is becoming increasingly tough and militant. So why the hysteria when the augur comes from Vlasak? As shocking as an assassination of a vivisector, fur farmer, corporate pimp from the Center for Consumer Freedom, or noxious nuisance from the vile Animal Crackers web site might be, Vlasak does not think the negative publicity will discredit or destroy the animal rights movement as a whole, any more than the actions of Eric Rudolph and other members of groups such as the Army of God threatened the integrity of the anti-abortion movement or the pro-violence period of Nelson Mandela’s activist career tarnished the current halo over his head as he made the transition from terrorist to freedom fighter.
In making these claims, Vlasak certainly entered into controversial territory, shocked and angered vivisectors and other speciesists, and even got banned from the UK. But his words fall squarely within the First Amendment of the US Constitution and therefore are constitutionally protected. The very essence of the First Amendment is to protect unpopular speech, words that many people might find offensive and objectionable, statements such as Vlasak made at the AR2003 conference. Everyone knows that exploiters of any kind love free speech so long as they are the ones using it in honor of their detestable motives and unconscionable actions. Had Vlasak actually advocated violence against vivisectors in such a way as to incite and possibly provoke immanent violence, he would have crossed a legal line. Despite the frenzied distortions of critics who favor violence toward animals but not toward humans, Vlasak in fact did not cross this line.
Vlasak is speculating about the use of violence in the broader historical context of past human liberation movements that often used violence to end the violent oppression of one group over another. The US War of Independence comes to mind. In a subsequent clarification of his views after the radioactive fallout from his initial statement, Vlasak said:
You cannot put the animal rights movement in a vacuum. You must put it in a historical context. We are fighting for the right of nonhuman sentient beings to not be exploited, taken against their will, imprisoned, and then tortured beyond anyone’s comprehension for profit and bad science.
In looking at other historical movements to end the obscenity and egregious violence and death to innocent lives, including the fight against apartheid in South Africa, the fight to free black slaves here in the US, and the fight for the rights of indigenous cultures, violence has been used and there have been casualties. People have been killed over absolutely ridiculous things like oil, power, and money. It would be “speciesist” of me to say that in a battle for the moral and ethical high ground, in the fight on behalf of the most oppressed, abused and tortured beings the world has even known, that there will never be casualties. I’m not encouraging or calling for this, I am simply stating that the animal rights movement is and has been the most peaceful and restrained movement the world has ever known considering the amount of terror, abuse, and murder done to innocent animals for greed and profit. If by chance violence is used by those who fight for non human sentient beings, or even if there are casualties, it must be looked at in perspective and in a historical context.
Vlasak reiterated these points countless times to various international media, distinguishing between his view that violence is a morally defensible tactic and a view that actually advocates violence. In a July 26 2004 interview with BBC Radio 4’s Today program, for example, Vlasak stated:
I am personally not advocating, condoning or recommending that anybody be killed. I am a physician who saves lives. I spend my entire day saving people’s lives. All I am saying, in a historical context, [is that] violence has been used against us as animal rights campaigners and against the animals and is no different from us using violence on the other side. In any struggle against oppression, historically speaking, from the days of slavery in America to the days of apartheid in South Africa, violence has been necessary. I don’t see the animal rights struggle for liberation as any different from any other struggle that has gone on throughout history.
When interviewed on Australian TV in October 2004, Vlasak did not back down from his positions, and had the following exchange with show’s host:
JENNY BROCKIE: How far are you prepared to go though, because you’ve been quoted as saying, I think, five lives, 10 lives, 15 human lives would save 1 million, 2 million, 10 million non-human lives. And you’ve also said that violence is a morally acceptable tactic, and that it might be useful in the struggle for animal liberation. Do you stand by all that?
JERRY VLASAK: I do stand by all that. If you look at historically, at all the struggles against oppression, whether it was against apartheid in South Africa, slavery here in America, other struggles in Northern Ireland, Ireland, Iraq, Vietnam - everywhere that there’s been struggles against oppression and for liberation, violence has been used. And, by the way, they are using violence on their side all the time. They are using violence in laboratories where they kill all these animals in slow tortuous ways, and they are using violence against animal rights campaigners. At least a dozen animal rights campaigners have been killed by the animal abusers, but yet no-one seems to be talking about that.
JENNY BROCKIE: So would you take a human life to save an animal life, is this what you are saying?
JERRY VLASAK: I am not saying that’s never going to happen.
JENNY BROCKIE: That’s pretty close to what you said in the quote.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
