If you are not a radical animal activist, STOP READING. You’re not ready for this article.
Is a cat’s life more precious than the life of a mouse, a squirrel, or a bird?
Is the life of a lion more precious than the lives of zebras, antelopes, or gazelles?
Is the life of a trophy hunter more valuable than the life of an elephant he murders?
Is a deer hunter’s life more valuable than a deer?
Is Kendall Jackson’s life worth the hundreds of animals she has murdered?
Is anyone worth the 500 animals that die each year to feed a carnist?
If one believes that every animal has the same right to live as does any other, the answer is a resounding NO!
Peter Singer, the world’s most prominent utilitarian philosopher, is widely credited with launching the modern Animal Rights movement. Singer is a follower of the utilitarian school of philosophy founded by Jeremy Bentham in the 18th Century. Utilitarians argue for social policies and moral imperatives which assure the greatest good for the greatest number.
Singer’s 1975 book “Animal Liberation” makes that very argument to end animal enslavement and exploitation.
More recently, Singer and others have raised and discussed the elimination of carnivores to do away with the pain and suffering of prey animals. Singer has stopped short of embracing the proposal, mindful of the human track record of interfering with nature.
Carnivores keep populations in check, and the elimination of them to reduce the suffering of prey ignores the suffering of prey due to overpopulation, starvation, and disease, which are minimized by predation.
The elimination of captive carnivores is a much more compelling argument, as the prey involved in feeding captive carnivores, from prisoners in zoos to domesticated cats, requires the murders of enslaved animals, each as entitled to life as are the captive carnivores.
The obvious solution is to end the captivity of carnivores (and all animal slaves, for that matter) and to end the continued breeding and captivity of domestic carnivores (primarily cats, but also including ferrets, snakes, etc).
Until that is possible, is it morally justified to murder some animals to feed others? Applying the utilitarian standard of causing the least harm and suffering possible, the answer is no. And it follows that we should put down those carnivores (that we cannot free into the wild) to save the lives of many more animals that must be murdered to feed those carnivores.
It follows that people who cause the suffering and deaths of animals should similarly be eliminated, for the same reason. Such a suggestion logically applies utilitarian principles, and is the ultimate application of those principles.
As a practical matter, the methodical killing of carnists would not be tolerated by the state or be approved of by the general carnist population, and would be a political impossibility, even under the most enlightened regimes.
However, it would provide considerable moral authority to activists engaged in revolution, should that day come. It would allow activists to rain Hell upon animal abusers and killers, upon Big Ag honchos and their thugs, upon lobbyists and politicians, upon conservatives and Republicans, upon any and all involved in harming animals.
It would help fashion strategies involving massive depopulation objectives, and would serve the purpose of dissuading large portions of the populace from killing or consuming animals.
The common understanding of genocide is the killing of ethnic or religious populations driven by racial hatred, bigotry, or religious fanaticism.
The utilitarian approach would not meet the test of genocide, but rather would be the elimination of cruelty to assure that even greater cruelty does nor occur.
The proposal should more accurately be called carnicide, as it is limited to those who’s lives require the deaths of others.
Critics will nonetheless consider the proposal to be genocidal.
If it is, it is not only defensible, it is imperative.
Author’s Notes:
• I am unaware of any other blog with the Armory’s mission of radicalizing the animal movement. I certainly hope I am not alone, and that there are similar sentiments being expressed by comrades unknown to me.
If you know of other blogs dedicated to animal rights and the defeat of capitalism, please comment with a link.
• Be sure to follow the Armory and share it with your Facebook friends and email contacts, as well as on Twitter, Google, and all other social media platforms. Our influence and effectiveness is dependent upon you!
• Natasha Sainsbury, of Good Karma Graphic Design, has joined Armory of the Revolution as Editor, and is responsible for the transformation of the blog’s appearance. Visit and follow her blog V Kind.
• If you are not already subscribed to the Armory, please do so before you leave.
There’s a button to Follow us in the upper right sidebar.
• Be sure to visit Armory of the Revolution’s new commissary and bookstore: The Supply Depot
You will find recommended reading on Animal Rights, revolutionary theory, politics, economics, religion, science, and atheism. There is also a section of supplies for animal liberationists, hunt saboteurs, and social revolutionaries. This is all brand new, and we will be adding lots more merchandise in the near future!
• Feel free to comment. I encourage open discussion and welcome other opinions. I moderate comments because this blog has been attacked by hunters and right wing trolls. I approve comments that are critical as well as those which agree with me. Comments that I will not tolerate are those that are spam, threatening, disrespectful, or which promote animal abuse and cruelty.
If you support the Amory’s work and mission, please help us grow.
Just $3 per month will allow us to advertise!
Armory of the Revolution 
Had man never arrived on the scene, this earth would have been a paradise for the wild creatures living here. Despite the fact that carnivores must cause death to herbivores and omnivores in order to live, it seems a little short sighted to dismiss the fact that there must be a balance in Nature. Plant eaters would multiply quickly without carnivores to limit their population growth, and the earth’s flora would become a whole different scenerio; who knows what it would evolve into. The real problem lies in human population growth. Until the nations of the earth come to mutually realize this fact, the animal and plant kingdoms will suffer. Other than forcing a worldwide limit on human population growth, the only practical way to eliminate meat eating will be to totally ban it. Close slaughter houses worldwide, remove meat products totally from the market, and instigate stiff penalties and/or arrest to anyone caught butchering their own stock. As much as that would be my perfect world, good luck with that.
LikeLike
Many years ago I trained for 6 weeks for a position at the L.A. County Zoo. I dropped out just prior to taking the exam because if I were placed with the reptiles, I would have been obliged to feed live mice to the snakes. I just couldn’t see myself doing this. Now I am four-square against zoos.
LikeLiked by 1 person
As a non-vegan I would also be subject to annihilation.
LikeLike
Will there be bacon in your afterlife?
LikeLike
Pfffffft, big talkers.
Tell me, how do you revolutionaries plan on doing the real grunt-work of genocide? Most of the liberals and pseudo-anarchists I’ve encountered can barely manage getting 3 full bags of gluten free vegan products home from Whole Foods on their bicycle, let alone devise the military operation necessary for the killing and disposal of millions of enemy personel. Logistics of disposal of thousand of tons of biomass aside (no small feat in and of itself) do you honestly think you have the fortitude to look at another person and kill them? I mean ACTUALLY take their life? Many of you feel guilt at slapping a mosquito. Do you really think you’ll be able to kill someone?
And then there’s the other similarly unprepared factors you folks seem to be afflicted with. For example, I’d bet many of you have never even changed the tire on a car. How then do you think you’ll be able to do something as mechanically complicated as shooting and reloading a rifle or crew-served weapon, WHILE being shot at by the folks you’re trying to dispose of. Many of them have guns, and when your plans for them are made clear, you can bet they will not go quietly into your mass graves you’ve prepared for them.
This whole talk of genocide is the silliest kind of mental masturbation. Frankly, it’s impossible, it makes you look like monsters, and none of you could ever carry it out anyway.
Focus your energies and intellect instead on doing things you ARE capable of. Like earning income so you can pay taxes. And NOT breeding, so that you can make your own personal contribution towards reducing overpopulation. Or even better, making the personal decision to cull yourself out of the population, which would be just as effective as killing another human, but lacks the moral quandary about their right to exist being superceded. Killing one’s self is the ultimate testament to one’s loyalty to the Earth.
LikeLike
Some uggo dude in a blue Chevy Equinox pulled up behind me at a red light and started flipping me off because my bumper sticker says: LESS HUMANS, MORE HUMANITY. It couldn’t have been because of my driving because a) I am an excellent driver + b) I don’t believe I even drove by him. So, my feel-good bumper sticker is what likely caused a psychotic reaction in him.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Any discussion of human overpopulation is getting as bad as trying to talk about abortion (unless condemning it). They seem to think that the human species is to important, too special, too exceptional to limit.
LikeLiked by 2 people
thanks again for a terrific contribution to make us think…and yes, release animals from captivity…and let us gingerly reduce populations of the over-reproduced by acknowledging what dumb-asses we are not to get started NOW! and yes, way too many human kids have happened to the globe which sounds really snarky of me! pregnancy in humans is not cute and not some kind of competition to be applauded! wish I could write something intelligent like the rest of you…but it is 4 a.m. and I just completed two back and forth road trips to Indianapolis, the state capital of the most clueless, most animal-phobic state in the nation!…pity me? 😉
LikeLiked by 2 people
Would you please list a few domesticated, carnivorous animals we ought to eliminate?
LikeLike
Peter Singer’s thoughts on carnivores shows one of the major problems with utilitarianism. Wildlife activists, and the general public, see the protection of endangered species as a critical issue. The doctrine of the “greatest good for the greatest number” places little value on wildlife, and almost no value on endangered species, because their low numbers do not count. Thoughtless vegans whose only concern is their own moral purity may not understand the fine points of utilitarianism, but they unwittingly follow Singer’s pernicious philosophy.
Genocide, the murder of a genus, is a serious problem. We are now well into the so-called sixth mass extinction, actually the seventh if you count the North American anthropogenic extinction of the Pleistocene era, when the first humans to arrive on the continent killed off the sabertooth cats, giant sloths,mammoths and others,
I agree that the obvious solution, if we can figure out how to implement it, is to drastically reduce the population of domesticates, i.e. cows, pigs, chickens, cats, dogs, and above all humans. We domesticates have far less value to the natural order than wild species.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Animal Rights activists, utilitarians, and most animal advocates do not place a lower value on life because a creature is plentiful, not do we place a higher premium on an animal’s life because its species is endangered. A life is a life.
Most wildlife activists, and environmentalists, do not give a damn about individual animals
And that the general public has a skewed view of life is neither surprising nor controlling.
We should reduce the populations of domesticated animals, particularly carnivorous ones, as they require the deaths of other innocents.
A much more provocative solution would be to reduce the population of carnist humans.
LikeLiked by 3 people
I totally agree 😦 with that… reality/necessity.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Reblogged this on Species and Class.
LikeLike