The Number One Source of Domestic Terrorism

The New Republic's David Michael may not have found Wesley J. Smith's A Rat Is a Pig Is a Dog Is a Boy: The Human Cost of the Animal Rights Movement particularly philosophically rigorous, but his review is notable for its catalogue of the shockingly violent tactics of the animal liberation movement:

In 2007, the ALF sent Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa a death threat in an attempt to coerce him to change the city's animal shelter practices. In Britain, one researcher's children were sent letter bombs wrapped with HIV-infected needles in the mail. Fifty-one out of fifty-eight of the incidents of domestic terrorism identified in the FBI's report Terrorism 2002-2005 were suspected to have been perpetrated by animal rights activists. The list goes on. ...

It would be easy to dismiss the violence of the animal liberation movement as a fringe phenomenon that only finds expression in small zines and radical websites. But Smith links PETA and other major animal welfare organizations to the animal liberation movement. In 1995, PETA donated over $45,000 to the defense fund of Rodney Coronado, who pled guilty to arson after burning down a Michigan State laboratory. "Arson, property destruction, burglary, and theft are 'acceptable crimes,'" said the PETA cofounder Alex Pacheco, "when used for the animal cause." 

Read the full story at The New Republic.