PETA’s ‘Holocaust’ campaign sinks to new low

By DARREN GARNICK
cultureschlock@yahoo.com

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals was founded in 1980, 40 years too late to woo a tax-deductible donation from Hitler. Although the fuehrer probably cared little about mascara-wearing rabbits or chimps who ingest too much cough syrup, he would have been absolutely giddy over PETA’s latest billboards.

The campaign is called “Holocaust on Your Plate.” Conveyed through photographs mounted on 60-square foot panels, the message is that farms where chickens and cows are raised for meat are no different than the Nazi death camps of World War II.

“Just as the Nazis tried to dehumanize Jews by forcing them to live in filthy, crowded conditions, tearing children away from their mothers and killing them in assembly-line fashion, animals on today’s factory farms are stripped of all that is enjoyable and natural to them and treated as nothing more than meat-, egg- and milk-producing machines,” asserts a PETA press release seeking the “approval” of the Jewish community for the campaign.

“The very same mindset that made the Holocaust possible – that we can do anything we want to those we decide are ‘different’ or ‘inferior’ – is what allows us to commit atrocities against animals every single day.”

So now it’s PETA’s turn to dehumanize Jews – again. Reducing people’s lives to the value of agricultural livestock was a cornerstone of Hitler’s legacy. Nazi goons rounded up Jews and stuffed them into cattle cars.

In some Eastern European villages, naked Jewish corpses were hung on meathooks and sadistically labeled “KOSHER.” No need for subtle metaphors here. In PETA’s juxtaposition of farm and concentration camp imagery, there isn’t much of a distinction between “Animals are being treated like Jews” and “Jews are like animals.”

Shrewdly, PETA got the “Holocaust on Your Plate” traveling exhibit funded by an unnamed Jewish philanthropist. One of their key spokespeople also is quick to mention that he has many Jewish relatives and some close friends who like bagels and cream cheese. Nonetheless, mainstream Jewish groups, such as the Anti-Defamation League, are expressing outrage and shock over the campaign.

The real shock here is that there is any shock at all. PETA is the Howard Stern of animal rights organizations, perpetually slow-dancing on the floor of bad taste. Unlike Stern, they have no conscience whatsoever. PETA operatives would slay their first born if they could guarantee a page three headline.

In 2001, PETA sponsored billboards in Florida mocking an 8-year-old boy who had both arms bitten off by a shark. “Would you give your right arm to know why sharks attack?” the ads asked. “Could it be revenge? Go vegetarian.”

Boy becomes a double amputee – Ha Ha! PETA spokesman Dan Shannon summed up the celebration to The Associated Press: “Children are easy to love. Fish aren’t as lucky.”

Back when former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani announced he had prostate cancer, PETA thought that was hysterical, too. All over Manhattan, PETA plastered pictures of Giuliani with a milk mustache along with the slogan, “GOT PROSTATE CANCER?” This was a twofer for PETA as it simultaneously slammed the evil dairy industry and the evil Republicans.

At the height of Britain’s Mad Cow Disease scare, PETA President Ingrid Newkirt told Reuters she was rooting for the epidemic to spread to the United States.

“I openly hope that it does come here,” she cooed. “It will bring economic harm only for those who profit from giving people heart attacks and giving animals a concentration camp-like existence. It would be good for animals, good for human health and good for the environment.”

PETA, protected under the U.S. Constitution, is entitled to express its twisted fantasies. They just can’t act on them. Those lines, however, seem increasingly blurred.

Fox News recently revealed that PETA has been donating thousands of dollars to support the Environmental Liberation Front and individual radicals convicted of burning research labs, firebombing fur farms and attacking fishing boats.

Given that track record, how safe is your neighborhood hot dog cart, really?

Much of PETA’s fund-raising is done with the help of such celebrities as Paul McCartney, Moby, Candice Bergen, Jennie Garth, Kim Basinger, Alec Baldwin, Gary Shandling, Bill Maher, Drew Barrymore and Alicia Silverstone.

McCartney and company could’ve opened their wallets and hearts to Greenpeace or the Sierra Club. Instead, they endorse the trivialization of human tragedy. PETA is only a few rat hairs away from equating the use of RAID on an anthill to Saddam gassing the Kurds, or comparing underfed goldfish to the famine in Ethiopia.

Why stop there? Given PETA’s core belief that all forms of life merit equal protection, they will soon be targeting the senseless slaughter of plants. The People for the Ethical Treatment of Vegetables will sponsor billboards pleading for an end to the “killing fields,” a.k.a. tomato gardens. They’ll be decrying the refrigerated “concentration camps” where frozen peas and carrots are suffocating.

And plenty of mindless celebrities will be lining up to endorse the cause.

Darren Garnick’s “Culture Schlock” column appears Thursdays in The

Telegraph’s Encore section. Feedback and ideas are welcome via e-mail or by

writing to: PO Box 132, Hudson, NH 03051.