Modern-Day Nazis (Blog)

[joylangtry]

Originally Posted by cylon

Actually, I sort of like the freedom to express my opinion. I think I'll keep it. I'll let you keep your freedom of expression too. My gift to you.

People who aren't chickens are complaining about chickens dying. Same thing.

As regarding eggs. It's something that would be alive, but is not allowed to be alive. A fetus is something that would be alive, and is not allowed to be alive.

It just comes down to which one you think is more acceptable.

You are totally free to express your opinion... I just had to share mine.

And Cylon, in order to mass produce the eggs (which, granted, are not yet conscious), living baby male chicks are put in a grinder, alive. So, the point is that in order to eat those clean boxed eggs from the store, millions of living animals are killed gruesomely.

In order to have an abortion, a living, sentient creature is not necessarily impacted, other than perhaps the resulting psychological issues.

[jay78]

That post was ridiculous.

Are you seriously trying to convert people to vegetarianism by calling them Nazi's?

And this is coming from someone who makes a conscious effort to eat less meat.

First of all, when it comes to eating meat, I see nothing wrong with FREE-RANGE chickens, eggs, etc. Animals don't fear death, they don't wonder all day about what lies beyond, torturing them is wrong but letting them roam freely then dying one day is what they will do anyways whether it is on a farm or in the wild.

It is just as wrong to eat plants then it is to eat animals. Have you ever read The Secret Lives of Plants?? They do have a consciousness ya know. Even though it is more limited, just like most animals have a more limtied consciousness than humans do, it is still a living being before you kill it.

The whole not eating meat thing will never catch on, at least not on a global scale, because it is nature - you will never stop a shark from eating fish, you will never stop the lion from killing the zebra, and if you somehow convince humanity as a whole to stop eating meat with a magic wand, millions of animals will die each day to feed another animal regardless of what you do because there are carnivores, herbivores, and omnivores, and I guess carnivores just get a bad rep.

Torturing the animals and injecting them with hormones and all that other horrible stuff is what needs to be eliminated.

One living organism dying to feed another living organism is how this planet works - whether it's a plant or an animal.

And yea, I guess you could call THESE guys Nazi's, but there are definitely more humane farmers and you are totally zooming in on a certain segment of a population and using it to paint the whole.

There are problems that need to be addressed - but this is not the way.

And I'm sorry but equating eating eggs to being a Nazi is just getting silly.

[ChaosKiwi]

I have a friend who has done some work on a chicken farm. They didn't put the male chicks in a grinder! They merely threw them against a wall and stamped on any survivors (true story). I'm surprised the video didn't mention that all those little chicks could be your chicken dinner only 6 weeks after you see them there! Or maybe those are just battery hens.

I'm an option 2 guy at the moment. I don't eat things like scrambled or fried eggs or anything like that, but I do eat pasta, and biscuits etc. I assume I am like many in that I do not connect that video with my food, or the eggs in my fridge.

I am interested in how killing a chicken is worse than eating some corn for example. Picking a thing of corn doesn't kill the plant, but all the plants are destroyed at the end of the season. Is it the disparity in the consciousness between the two?

I think the comparison to Nazi's has to be commended. It takes a lot of skill to be able to write a "wake up people!" type article without it denigrating into a personal attack.

Though I think a more realistic comparison would be if the nazis were breeding jews to be fatter and juicer, more abundant, and marketed them for eating. Effectively they would have been ensuring there survival. Just like tiger farms could quite possible ensure the survival of native tiger populations.

O look at this post and its contrariness.

[Rose of Cairo]

Originally Posted by jay78

It is just as wrong to eat plants then it is to eat animals. Have you ever read The Secret Lives of Plants??

I don't know how many times I will need to repeat it. A vegan diet kills less plants than a meat based one. A vegan diet kills less plants than a meat based one. A vegan diet kills less plants than a meat based one. A vegan diet ...

To me killing no animals and less plants is not just as wrong as killing many animals and ten times more plants. Just because we can't be perfect doesn't mean we should give up on making any effort.

The whole not eating meat thing will never catch on, at least not on a global scale, because it is nature - you will never stop a shark from eating fish, you will never stop the lion from killing the zebra

I don't feel particularly drawn by my instinct to catch sheep and cows and stick my teeth into their throat. Human kids don't try to catch preys. They naturally play with animals, they don't try to eat them. Most people are disgusted by the thought of killing an animal or eating raw flesh. If the guilt wasn't distributed so conveniently I bet many people would not eat any meat. Doesn't look like we are carnivores to me.

[jay78]

The movement needs to be more focused on the free-range concept.

Like I said, animals don't sit around all day on a farm going "oh my god, they're gonna kill me, they're gonna burn me alive" and live in a state of 24/7 terror and torture like a Jew in a concentration camp would.

If you just let the things free roam, don't inject them with all those hormones and other junk, and then one day they have to die...they didn't spend their lives in terror or being mistreated.

And on a side note, WHY do people not understand that plants are living, breathing beings too?!?! Some of which are actually quite animate - ever seen a venus fly trap?

Steve, I think you are just a different kid of Nazi. A plant Nazi, that is.

[jay78]

Originally Posted by Rose of Cairo

I don't know how many times I will need to repeat it. A vegan diet kills less plants than a meat based one. A vegan diet kills less plants than a meat based one. A vegan diet kills less plants than a meat based one. A vegan diet ...

To me killing no animals and less plants is not just as wrong as killing many animals and ten times more plants. Just because we can't be perfect doesn't mean we should give up on making any effort.


I don't feel particularly drawn by my instinct to catch sheep and cows and stick my teeth into their throat. Human kids don't try to catch preys. They naturally play with animals, they don't try to eat them. Most people are disgusted by the thought of killing an animal or eating raw flesh. If the guilt wasn't distributed so conveniently I bet many people would not eat any meat. Doesn't look like we are carnivores to me.

Of course you don't have the urge to go out and kill an animal - you have the convenience of going to a grocery store, unlike a lion or a tiger or the Native Americans. Now should you get rid of all the grocery stores in the world, I guarantee you the situation would change pretty fast.

[javamannen2]

Steve, do you have a comment on the suggestion by talekhine to apply the SR perspective (the chicks don't suffer unless I believe they do)?

Or do you prefer to not to see through that lense nowadays?

[Rose of Cairo]

Originally Posted by jay78

Of course you don't have the urge to go out and kill an animal - you have the convenience of going to a grocery store, unlike a lion or a tiger or the Native Americans. Now should you get rid of all the grocery stores in the world, I guarantee you the situation would change pretty fast.

I don't eat meat despite of being surrounded with grocery stores, yet the situation hasn't changed, you see.

[cylon]

If you were starving to death and there were no grocery stores, you would spend hours trying to hunt and eat cute little squirrels.

[seeker5]

Even though initially on the video, I was most saddened by the chick grinder, I think ultimately, the worst ones are the female chicks. The male chicks get put out of their misery early on. The female chicks have to put up with this inhumane and factory-treatment for much longer. If they treat chicks like this when they are little ones, then I can see that the inhuman treatment of them will continue for the rest of their lives.

[Rose of Cairo]

Originally Posted by cylon

If you were starving to death and there were no grocery stores, you would spend hours trying to hunt and eat cute little squirrels.

Sure, maybe. Maybe not, who knows. That is difficult to say now, one never knows how they will react when it really comes to the crunch. Maybe I would also be frantically scratching the earth with my fingers to find some mushrooms, roots, leaves... Maybe I would try to go breatharian. Maybe I would indeed chase cute little squirrels. There have been cases of people starving to death who ate dead corpses of other people and even who killed some other person to eat them. Everything's possible. (Yet we are not naturally necrophages or cannibals as far as I know)

Nowadays we have a huge choice of foods available in huge quantities to us. People who eat meat or eggs in their normal, daily life are certainly not starving to death. It's not an emergency situation. So I don't see the point.

[cylon]

The point was that you don't have the urge to go kill an animal because you live a life of having convenient access to food. A few days without it, and all this moral righteousness would go right out the window.

That was jay78's point... we have the luxury of taking a moral stance on these issues because our ancestors struggled in harsh conditions and survived off killing animals and eating their flesh, using their parts for clothes and technology, and that is what led to us having this abundant lifestyle they could never have imagined.

But fortunately, we can stand back and cast judgment because our lives are different today (in most parts of the world), thanks to all those beasts of burden and foodstock our evil ancestors murdered.

You don't have to eat meat now, but show some appreciation and be thankful that millions (zillions?) of animals were killed and utilized over the course of history in order to give you this advanced society that allows you the freedom to criticize it.

In any case, soon we'll have those Star Trek food replicators and this will be a non-issue.

[seeker5]

Originally Posted by cylon

The point was that you don't have the urge to go kill an animal because you live a life of having convenient access to food. A few days without it, and all this moral righteousness would go right out the window.

I doubt that. You have people who have so much food around them, and yet they go on hunger strike out of principle for a cause. A number of people would rather die than betray what is most important to them. A number of people have indeed died because of their moral righteousness, rather than take the "easy" way out.

I know it's possible to know who you are in your core and how you will react when circumstances changes in order to stay true to your principles. I've been in very drastic circumstances, and I've seen my mother be in very hard-hit financial situations. Despite the easy opportunity to steal, we never stole a single thing. Even when we were having a very hard time over money, trying to figure out how to make ends meet, and we found a wallet with plenty of money in it, we still returned the full wallet including all of the money in it. Our morals were absolutely against stealing of any kind and we followed that no matter how desperate our situation was.

Some people use that same justification you use "We can throw our morals out the window when things are hard". Not everyone follows that. Plenty of people stick to their morals no matter how hard times are.

The question is, who are you as a person if you believe that? What do you think that does to your self-esteem to know you'll throw out your most important principles in a few days if you get in a desperate situation?

[Rose of Cairo]

@Cylon: You're talking about righteousness and judgment, which I cannot relate to. You seem pretty reactive to me. If you feel judged and have a problem with it, that is your problem. Look inside. *shrugs*

[scottyp]

Steve what happened to causing a stir and then ducking? You didn't duck this time you jumped right in. You certainly aren't chicken today.

[cacheborn]

Wow! Steve, is this the most provocative post you have written?

It was very hard for me to watch the video. In fact I just watched it in bits and pieces. And I agree with the basic point. Every creature has the same consciousness, be it an animal or a human. It does not really matter what you call it. It's barbaric, period.

For me the choice has been easy. I was brought up as a vegetarian. Later, I did try meat for a while to see what it tastes like. I did not like it much. but even if I would have liked it, I think it would have clashed with my values somewhere down the line.

I must confess I am little bit confused about how subjective reality agrees with this. If the chickens are just projections of my consciousness, then can I make their suffering disappear?

[Trezker]

"Hitler was against abortion" So he was pro-life >_<
George Carlin put it nicely when he said that pro-lifers want the power to choose who lives or dies. In others words, take away freedom of choice from pregnant women just to make the choice for them.

In politics, when you're pro-life there's also a very high probability you're pro-war. People need to think about more than one issue at a time, compare their views on different matters and see if their whole world view is sensible.

[cylon]

Originally Posted by seeker5

The question is, who are you as a person if you believe that? What do you think that does to your self-esteem to know you'll throw out your most important principles in a few days if you get in a desperate situation?

Yes but I'm not the one who is being morally righteous about this topic. All the stuff you mentioned is comparing eating meat to all these bad things, I don't see it that way... so to me doing so would not be violating some principle. If I was starving to death, I'm going to kill and cook that squirrel. And from my perspective, you would be foolish to NOT seek to survive off an animal if it came to that. As animals, we live off other animals. If you have to revert back 50 years, I think you are totally justified in doing so. You'd actually be depriving the world of your gifts and talents if you chose to let the squirrel live, over your life. There will be plenty of squirrels.

I know no one wants to think of themselves as mammals, as animals who can kill and eat other animals to survive. But we are. That's our shared history.

I really don't think a human body, if dying, and faced with starvation, is wiling to allow itself to perish. It's only when you have the luxury to think about such things that you can intellectually wonder how you would react if your life was true danger and you were about to die from not having anything to eat. Hopefully no one here has to face that. Your body isn't going to die without a fight.

I'm not suggesting anyone actually go without food and face something like that, but if it happened.... I'm putting the odds in your favor, and against the squirrel's favor.

[cylon]

Originally Posted by Rose of Cairo

@Cylon: You're talking about righteousness and judgment, which I cannot relate to. You seem pretty reactive to me. If you feel judged and have a problem with it, that is your problem. Look inside. *shrugs*

Just poking fun at you. I don't feel judged by anything you said.... I don't recall you saying anything insulting in your post.

But you can at least acknowledge that the quality of life you experience today is a direct result of animals having been murdered throughout history (eaten for survival, and other parts used for shelter and technology)? It might not be pretty, but if it hadn't had happened, none of us would be here to debate these topics on the internet.

I'm sure you can acknowledge that. Look inside, and give thanks to the animals who died, so that you can live. They deserve that reverence.

[Beuford]

I just want to say people will go to great lengths to convince themselves that it is okay to eat eggs, dairy and meat.

[seeker5]

Originally Posted by cylon

I really don't think a human body, if dying, and faced with starvation, is wiling to allow itself to perish. It's only when you have the luxury to think about such things that you can intellectually wonder how you would react if your life was true danger and you were about to die from not having anything to eat. Hopefully no one here has to face that. Your body isn't going to die without a fight.

Cylon, I've faced death and life situation, and I've stuck to some of my very important principles that I either grew up with or had chosen to deeply ingrain in myself. I've been there and I know it's possible to stick to your deeply held principles, no matter what. I haven't adopted that many core principles, but I have a few that I've consciously chosen that are extremely important to me, and those I've stuck no matter how desperate, no matter how close to death I may have been, or what was at stake.

This has been true for a number of other people. Sometime, in the 1940's, Mathama Gandhi went on a hunger strike to protest the rioting that was going on in India. He declared that he would refuse to eat until all of the rioting was over. He felt it was very important for his people to stop. He chose not to eat. Even though his body wanted food, he consciously made the decision he would not eat until all of his people stopped rioting. He became weak because of this, and some say he almost died.

While Gandhi lived because his people stopped rioting to keep Gandhi from dying, I have heard of other people have gone on hunger strike and died because of it.

You can choose to believe it's not possible to stick to your principles no matter what happens if you wish. You can choose to believe that when you become desperate, you'll act like a wild rabid dog chasing anything just to live. Realize by choosing this belief that this is how everyone act, you're also choosing a lot about how you act. By choosing this belief, you're given up a lot of power, the power to fundamentally choose what kind of a man you are. Not just in the area of food, I'm talking that this belief affect the kind of man you are when you find yourself in a very hard spot, no matter what kind of spot.

[aelle]

Originally Posted by cylon

I don't mean to take it off topic, but this makes me think of when pro-lifers who would go to my high-school and carry signs that showed images of aborted fetuses trying to scare the kids into not having abortions (and most likely becoming christians).

So my question to you vegans is: are you pro-life as well? Are you against abortions? Do you think it's the same thing as what we're talking about here?

Nope, I'm vegan and pro-abortion rights. And I do see a clear parallel between the 2 issues, but not the way you put it in your post.
The isolated events of eating an egg or aborting a fetus don't have much in common at all: eggs are unfertilized and comparable to menses, not fetuses. But the greater context shave many similarities.

By buying eggs (that weren't laid by pet chickens), you financially support and maintain a system that is oppressive and cruel to animals. You treat animals as products that can be owned and used for profit, not as sentient beings whose well being should come first.

By restricting access to abortion, or to body choices in general, you maintain a patriarcal system that is oppressive to women. You treat women as irresponsible creatures who should be punished for sex, not as reasonable people whose freedom to make conscious choices should come first. (Incidentally, your gender doesn't matter when it comes to restricting other people's choices.)

I see no contradiction in being both a vegan and a feminist, in working against both speciesm and patriarchy. I'm for the end of all oppressions.

[aelle]

As a side note and to address several points made in this thread, the pro-life vs. pro-choice polarity (a phrase coined by the media first) does not really represent either point of view.

As far as I understand it, pro choice vegans (who often also favor gay rights, women's rights and oppose rascism, death penalty, classism, sometimes also organised religions) see it as an issue of oppression. Through this lens, all these issues are aligned as a defense of all the groups who are granted less rights (legally or out of habits or societal pressure).

Pro-life people, who are often pro-organised religions, pro-conservative values, pro death penalty and oppose gay rights, sometimes women's rights, see it as an issue of family values. Abortion destroys traditional family values; killing criminals protects the traditional family unit.

As you can see in none of these lenses are actually much about life.

[Gregorz]

I completely agree with you here Rodrigo, and I've noticed the same thing a lot. Whilst I actually do agree with Steve on this case, I think he does sometimes make conspicuous leaps in logic to make his points. I really couldn't say whether he's aware of it or not, as I've noticed he doesn't generally respond to posts which point out such things. I've wondered sometimes whether it's a deliberate decision - guess we'll never know :P It used to bother me a fair bit, now I've figured that it's better to just disregard the leaps in logic if his point stands regardless.

[Developer]

According to Godwin's law, this thread was over before it began.

More Nazi comparisons:

From The Wiki:

After the early 1930s, Hitler generally followed a vegetarian diet, although he ate meat on occasion. There are reports of him disgusting his guests by giving them graphic accounts of the slaughter of animals in an effort to make them shun meat.[314] A fear of cancer (from which his mother died) is the most widely cited reason, though many authors also assert Hitler had a profound and deep love of animals. Martin Bormann had a greenhouse constructed for him near the Berghof (near Berchtesgaden) to ensure a steady supply of fresh fruit and vegetables for Hitler throughout the war.

[Katia]

A question for everyone and especially Steve: What makes a Nazi a Nazi? How would you define a Nazi? On what level?

[Mnemosyne]

Originally Posted by Rose of Cairo

And may I ask what you do with the baby goats?

We raise them; and yes, they get their mother's milk. We're not in the business of killing animals simply because they don't meet our needs. And the point I was trying to make is that we need to move away from factory farming toward sustainable agriculture. Regardless of your view on eating meat/dairy/eggs or not, factory farming is a very big problem. It goes beyond just animals and includes our crops as well.

[JoeGoldfarb]

Originally Posted by dmaterialized

If you eat eggs, you EAT BABY CHICKENS THAT HAVEN'T HATCHED YET. What is the problem? They are JUST EGGS. They have never been born, are not yet truly alive, and are in essence a cluster of protein.

INCORRECT.
Supermarket eggs are NOT FERTILE and will NOT grow chickens.

[newmark]

Factory Farming is callous. So, buy local freerange eggs or become a vegan.

[Thomas]

Originally Posted by James81

An abortion pretty much involves grinding the fetus into pieces with a vacuum (if I'm remembering the procedure correctly). Just because you don't eat it doesn't make it any less different.

Gotta say that I'd write anybody who believes that killing animals is wrong, but aborting fetuses is ok, off a a full blown hypocrite.

Abortion is possible before life begins, not afterwards. There are countless debates about the moment it can be called life. If you argue, that a chick that looks back at you is similarly alive to a cell mass that doesn't as yet have a heart beat or, more importantly even, a brain to be conscious and sentient with, I'll wear a t-shirt with your hypocrite stamp any day.