The Continuing Holocaust

No one can argue that the designation of Jews as animals is what led to their being treated and slaughtered like animals by the Nazis.

At Auschwitz, the creamtorias were actually giant processing plants. Except that instead of processing pigs, they processed people defined as pigs. This brings to mind the processing of other living creatures whom most of us think little about.

But what is the ethical distinction between processing pigs and processing people defined as pigs? The argument of course being, that moral considerations need not be extended to animals. This is just what the Nazis said about the Jews.

Auschwitz and the other camps have an odd familiarity about them.... Many living creatures crowded together in despicable quarters; transported without food or water; herded into slaughterhouses; their body parts efficiently used to make sausages, shoes or fertilizer.
What was done in those camps is done all over the world all the time...

The United States and Germany, two of the world's most modern industrial countries, slaughtered millions of people and billions of other beings during the twentieth century. Each country made its own unique contribution to the century's carnage: America gave the world the slaughterhouse and Nazi Germany, the gas chamber.

At the killing centers speed and efficiency are essential. Just the right mix of deception, intimidation and physical force is needed to minimize the chance of panic or resistance that will disrupt the process.

At the Belzec death camp in Poland, victims were moved through a process at top speed. With no chance to grasp what was going on, their murders were smooth and efficient.

At the union Stock Yards in Chicago, cold-blooded, impersonal slaughterhouse workers swing the hogs up without a pretense of apology or the homage of a tear.

Today Auschwitz symbolizes the entire globe: people being manipulated and used; animals being tortured in useless experiments; men hunting helpless vulnerable creatures for the thrill; humans being ground down by inadequate housing and medical care and not having enough food; men abusing women and children; people polluting the earth; the oppression of those who look, feel or act differently.....

From Eternal Treblinka, Our Treatment of Animals

You've got to admit, this certainly puts "factory farms' in a new light.

Actually, there is a distinction you failed to mention. Nobody was eating the Jews. The Jews were being killed because people hated them and wanted to eliminate their kind from the Earth. Pigs are being killed because there whatever force it was that created us designed us to eat other living things. What alternative is there? Plants are alive. We may classify them differently, but they are alive. So your defense of pigs extends to plants, but then there is another problem. If we prohibit eating, then we exterminate yet another class of living things- HUMANS.

Somebody is going to die. Nature makes it pretty clear that this is fine. Everything eats. Nothing cries for its prey. Stop eating if it helps you sleep at night, but this is just the way of the world. Like I'm always saying, this is a harsh, dog eat dog world we live in. For one reason or another the universe didn't or couldn't make itself a nice place to live. That's just something we've got to deal with. And before you go killing yourself, let's remember our Shakespeare, "For in that sleep of death what dreams may come?" For all you know you'll die and find out that souls have to eat other souls. Probably not, but who knows.

This is life, and there is no hiding from it.

[edit on 8-8-2005 by The Vagabond]