Crushing The Myths of a Supreme All Mighty Decision

-by Philip Steir of Vegan Sanctuary

If someone falsely yells "fire" in a crowded theater which is packed full of animal rights activists viewing a documentary film on, let's say, animals rights and that yelling causes intense panic, leading to a house full of fatally crushed patrons would this be considered illegal or cruel under the law?

Well, not if that someone filmed the incident in all it's viciousness and violence and then sought to sell the footage for commercial gain.

OK. The above is a hypothetical, possibly satirical analogy proving how absurd the Supreme Court's striking down last Tuesday of a law which Congress passed in 1999 and President Clinton signed. It's also an attempt here to demonstrate how misguided many animal rights activists might be in agreeing with this decision and imagining that it protects their own free speech while they ignore the detrimental speciesist aspects that is so inherent in this Court's ruling.

The law which was judged unconstitutional was intended to ban videos and images of animal cruelty which were created for the sole purpose of being sold for... commercial gain. Now I'm sure there is a market out there for the graphic footage of animal rights advocates stomping each other to death as well, yet that does not make this sort of violence when captured on film, video, internets (pick your media) an actual form of free speech. In fact, viewing this decision as only a matter about free speech and ignoring the killing of non human animals for entertainment merely upholds the unjust paradigm of speciesist thinking. Human chauvinism which, like nationalism, sexism or extreme patriotism, is as bewildering and insane as any type of fanaticism that has come along in our sordid history. It explains how even today both the Government and corporations will find perfectly plausible reasons to experiment and confine a living breathing chimpanzee in a cage for his/her entire existence on earth but will think it unconscionable to use a frozen human embryo for scientific research.

The idea that expressing oneself with brutally, violent, sadistic images has more importance than protecting the lives of innocent non human beings shows the massive inequality that still exists in our culture between the haves and the have nots.

Humans have all the say and power all the time while the animals have not. The beings born into the bodies that are not human lack any consideration whatsoever while the most trivial of human fetishes take precedence over the well being of non human animals lives every day. We now know that might does not make right, a sentiment that if we take a moment to contemplate is what actually lies at the heart of what justice means to a real democracy. Our natural intuition for empathy is what builds any fair and successful democracy. It's from this intuition that we also understand why child pornography is wrong and why as category of speech it receives no constitutional protection.
 
The law against child pornography was designed because the market for child pornography was “intrinsically related” to the underlying abuse, and was therefore “an integral part of the production of such materials, an activity illegal throughout the Nation."
 
This holds true for the animal abuse involved with the making of these videos and the original law from 1999 was written specifically to stop the growing market in crush videos. Which it actually did. The old law not only destroyed the market of previous legal animal cruelty videos but it also took much of the incentive out of the original illegal activity of torturing and killing animals for the purpose of filming it. When you read the language in the original law it becomes apparent that it was with out a doubt patterned on the decision to outlaw child-pornography.  

For the first time in his life and perhaps his only moment of clarity or what it might feel like to be a liberal animal rights advocate, Judge Samuel Alito, the lone dissenter in the vote claimed that the harm animals suffer in dogfights is enough to sustain the law, and that the ruling will probably spur new “crush” videos, because it has “the practical effect of legalizing the sale of such videos.” Crush videos depict women in high heels crushing small animals to death for the sake of gratifying a sexual fetish. 

Yet this decision casts more shadows than light on the landscape of filmed animal cruelty and it's sexual aspects. Most hunting is legal and the videos which are made from such activity provide many men with a pleasure that is both erotic and sexual. Sample a few lines from the narration of right wing whacko Ted Nugent's legal and gruesome bow hunting videos.

"the heated excitement of the shot. The shaft was in and out ....complete penetration. I was...hot. I was on fire. Oh yeah alot of blood here, I'm getting excited now...I'm high.

The kill is climactic. I felt good all over. I satiated a built-up frustration. A serious still hunt/stalking manuever....can gratifyingly drain a guy. I like that."

When we examine the motives hidden here we see there is really not that much difference between an illegal crush video and a legal hunting video and that is where the problem may be as well. There is a huge business in hunting videos and magazines which this law, while on the books, never effected. And no other belief system is as successful in dividing the rational from the irrational as is speciesism and this vote shows another aspect of how hypocritical humans can be when determining what is cruel and what is fine and fun.

Many animal rights activists have seemed more concerned about the possibility that this law-- which, I will state again, has been on the books since 1999-- would effect videos used to expose animal cruelty for political or educational purposes. Yet clearly one can see by the fact that no PETA videos, for instance, have been ruled illegal and the language here in the law makes it quite obvious as to why. The law stated:

(b) Exception.— Subsection (a) does not apply to any depiction that has serious religious, political, scientific, educational, journalistic, historical, or artistic value.

There you have it. In plain English. The law was only to be used as a tool for stopping animal cruelty that was produced for the sole purpose of being sold. No animal rights advocates I know of would ever purposely injure or kill animals on a movie set to show how cruel, evil or unjust animal cruelty is and then want to sell it for, lets say, fundraising purposes. Sounds ridiculous. Right? Well yeah... exactly.

I fail to grasp how the animal rights approach to justice for non humans is in anyway now gaining momentum by this law being thrown out. In fact one of the many terrible consequences is going to be the resurgence and increase of this big money making industry that is animal snuff films.

Although great theoretical arguments can be made by thoughtful activists on why this is a good thing for the people of the movement, in reality, for the animals about to be used in this unfortunate and sick industry, it is a great leap backwards with an easily tracked line of blood. This has just given mouth to mouth resuscitation to a dying and despicable industry that was all but buried. Don't get me wrong here, as I'm not one of those people who think the rest of the world should become more enraged or freaked out when a kitten is stomped to death or a pack of trained fighting dogs rip up a wild boar on video, while animals of equal sentience are being hacked and ground up for human food every year by the tens of billions. Yet now it's going to make it absolutely impossible to fight for non human emancipation and to even combat illegal hunting videos let alone the crush or dog fighting films now made legal again. And what is truly incredible is to make such a claim is beginning to seem almost controversial even in the most sympathetic circles.

Of course we all want free speech but this decision, much like the new law that gives corporations free speech, is a chronic problem which takes the interests of big business over the voices of the powerless. This decision is only going to assist the rich, powerful and violent human supremacists in shutting down any progress in the fight for real animal liberation and encourage the courts to lock those up who want to speak out or shut these industries down.

This decision is about capitalism over all else. That is what the AETA law so frighteningly is about as well. Any person who cares about the future of democracy and fighting for the "little guy" in this country can't ignore the frightening prospects ahead, not just for the animals of our world but also for the activists who want to defend their rights to happiness and to not suffering or being killed for trivial reasons.
 
When it comes to making decisions about justice and the well being of others the "do unto others" rule which has been the basis of many moral traditions long before a dysfunctional Christianity proposed it, would seem to have much more relevance in this decision than making this exclusively about the First Amendment. When we grasp that concept, the laws against child pornography begin to make complete sense and that our right to free speech regarding it becomes irrelevant.  Let's hope that this principle does not get crushed even more by the weight of the heavy boots of big business which seems to be threatening many the lives and voices of many human and non human alike.