Hopping Down the PETA Rabbit Hole
Digging up the dirt on why you hate PETA
I’d been planning on writing this up as a proper article for a long, long time. But maybe it works best in its original “series of tweets” form.
It was the 11th of January 2016.
David Bowie was about to return to the stars.
I’d been vegan for slightly less than a month. And I’d heard some things about the animal rights organisation PETA or People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
A number of these were from fellow vegans. I was confused.
The white rabbit darted down his hole. I followed.
I received a few responses.
Some tried to defend industry practices that PETA were against. Some pointed to PETA’s push-the-boundaries marketing approaches (perhaps fairly). But most were raging all about how PETA KILLS DOGS AND LITTLE KITTIES HOW COULD YOU EVER SUPPORT THEM!!!!!!!!
Of course, I had to dig a little further to see where this rabbit hole was going.
I found an interesting piece by Curtis Silver on Medium that you should definitely bookmark for later.
And then Bowie left us…
Nevertheless, I persisted…
What I found was not what I expected…
Then I found out about The Center for Consumer Freedom, an industry funded organisation whose sole job seems to be to get people to dislike PETA online.
And then there was this Nathan J. Winograd guy. The rabbit hole got deeper.
The whypetaeuthanizes.com website (not to be confused with the .org which is more Winograd misinformation) explains everything a whole lot better than I could ever do.
Surprisingly, what swayed me the most in the end was this video from PETA’s rescue team themselves.
There were still a few who didn’t quite get it.
Some became quite mad about everything I was saying and blocked me on Twitter.
But others seemed to see the light.
I even got a reply from the lady who runs whypetaeuthanizes.com
This article in Vice was really great, and quite sobering. They go to North Carolina where PETA’s only animal rescue shelter is and see how things really are on the ground.
After a while I needed a break.
Then more people got upset on Twitter.
In the end I accepted that not everyone would agree. But I had seen the rabbit hole to its murky end — at least to my satisfaction.
A few months down the track I found some other things about this curious Nathan J. Winograd character, which really helped solidify my findings.
And now it’s over 2 years later. Yes I’m still vegan. No I’m not quite the “angry vegan” that I was back then. Yes I have learned a hell of a lot more in those 2 years.
But the simple fact remains that no group in history has done more to save animals than PETA. I don’t support everything they do. But I will always have respect for what they’ve achieved and will always support their rescue efforts and undercover operations.
I’ll leave you with this quote from River Phoenix.
“We need an extreme movement because what is happening to animals is so extreme. Some misinformed people claim that animal rights activists are terrorists, but these people are simply ignorant of who the real terrorists are — the companies and industries that torture literally billions of animals each year.” — River Phoenix
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