Patrick M Brennan

This week, the US Congress passed a bill, known as the “Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA)“. The corporations fought for (a.k.a. bought and paid for) this legislation, and they’re just jizzy over it. The act severely increases the criminal penalties afforded to animal-rights activists for some activities which were already illegal, and arguably for some activities which are just acts of civil disobedience. But this isn’t really about amending the criminal code; this act is purely political, and its real political goal is clearly to expand the rhetoric of “terrorism” well beyond all sensible bounds. Under this act, for example, you’re a terrorist if you and your friends chain themselves across the entrance to an animal-testing laboratory to prevent trucks coming and going.

Think about that for a moment. According to your Corporate Masters in the Republican Party, a bunch of animal-loving hippies singing in the Merck parking lot is exactly the same as Mohammed Atta and his band of suicidal thugs crashing into the World Trade Center. Isn’t that special? Doesn’t that warm your heart? Aren’t you glad they’re in charge?

Sure, folks, there are some people out there who have committed crimes – against property and people – and in their own minds, they may be doing it for a noble cause. Well, number one, we already have laws on the books to deal with these people, and number two, anyone heard of Paul Hill? How about Eric Rudolph? Why does nobody call these guys “terrorists"? (Any guesses?)

This new law has no other purpose but to chill dissent and shut down peaceful protest. Its impact on actual criminal behavior will be minimal; its impact on the rhetorical war against animal-rights activism and eco-activism will be large. Sure, today the targets may be the Earth Liberation Front and the Animal Rights Militia. Today. Tomorrow, the targets will be PETA and Greenpeace. Green is the new Red.

The political program which is being deployed in our country is depressingly familiar. It should be obvious to anyone who actually reads. Those of us who do read have been expecting this for a long time.

We’ve already seen that in our country, those who are tagged as “terrorists” have no rights – no right to contest their imprisonment, no right to trial, no right to see the evidence against them – and they may be jailed indefinitely on the mere say-so of the executive.

“He’s a terrorist,” says George W. Bush, and nobody challenges that, and off goes someone, into a black hole where we will never hear from him again.

Once that bulwark has been established – once there is a distinct class of people without any rights – it only remains to enlarge the sphere of that class. It only remains to enlarge the definition of who is a “terrorist".

It’s a program which has been repeated over and over again, in many times and places. You probably know about a few of the more famous places; repeating them here would be redundant.

First they come for the terrorists.

They may take a while to work their way to you. (How do you feel about eating meat? Inhaling mercury? Having a private conversation with your attorney?) But they will, eventually.

Have you heard about Chad Catagana, the guy who just got arrested for sending fake anthrax and death threats via the mail to a number of prominent Americans whose politics he disagreed with? Turns out that intimidation via post was only one of Chad’s many gifts.

This guy obviously had so much “talent on loan from God", he clearly needed a second career. Or possibly a third.

Not content to merely be a cranky wannabee right-wing commentator (by way of the Free Republic), he also seems to have tried his hand at being a kooky right-wing terrorist-by-mail; and apparently he’s also a bitchy wannabee right-wing sci-fi critic!

Here’s Catagana railing about the state of SF on TV:

How about creating a new sci-fi anthology with none of the puerile baggage of Rod Serling, Gene Roddenberry, Rockne O’ Bannon, etc., etc. It is time to end their reign of Left-wing innuendo, their anti-American, anti-mankind cynicism and fatalism.

(See this post for more.)

Boy, I bet he was pissed at Season Three of Battlestar Galactica! After two seasons of the Cylons standing in for The Terrorists, I’m sure he was absolutely appalled at the turn the plot took as the Cylons became the occupying power of the human colony and the humans resorted to suicide bombings. It probably flustered him so much, he got sloppy in his threat-mailings; and that’s how the Feds finally picked him up.

I bet Chad and his fellow travelers on the crypto-fascist message boards were just tickled when Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and Jon Stewart received their death threats. Chad had an extra-special chuckle, of course, because he knew something his friends (probably) didn’t. Nevertheless, they were all sure that people who stand in the mildest opposition to the thing that calls itself “conservativism” deserve to die. Doesn’t that just warm your heart?

Unlike moronic asshole right-wingers like Chad Catagana, I don’t gloat when Americans receive death threats in the mail; much less would I ever send those threats. However, I do reserve the right to gloat when moronic asshole right-wingers like Chad Castanga are exposed for what they are, and when they receive a measure of justice for their crimes.

You’ve probably heard about Ted Haggard, the (former) pastor of the New Life Church, in Colorado Springs, and (former) president of the 30 million member National Association of Evangelicals. Until just recently, he was a big wheel in the Christian evangelical movement and in the Republican Party, participating in weekly conference calls with George W. Bush, Karl Rove and other senior strategists of the Party. It’s no secret that Haggard was in the vanguard of a movement which stokes up hatred against gay people in order to cement their political power, which is why there is a poetic element of rough justice in last week’s revelations that in secret, Haggard was abusing methamphetamine and availing himself of the services of a gay hooker.

The specifics are Haggard’s alone, of course, but the general outline of the story is so familiar, it’s become a cliche. Another highly-placed hypocrite gets hoisted by his own petard. Not very surprising, right? But what is it about these particular people that have made it such a cliche? After all, you wouldn’t think that the population statistics of leading evangelical preachers, who all agree that homosexuality is a vile sin, would track the distribution of homosexuality in the general population. In other words, you wouldn’t expect that some fundamentalist preachers are drug-abusing homosexual fornicators; you would expect that none of them are. And yet, here you have it: some of them really are drug-abusing homosexual fornicators, just like some of the rest of us. I’m not judging; I’m only pointing out what it means, which is just this: we’re all human after all.

But there’s another point that occurred to me when thinking about Haggard. One of the cornerstones of Haggard’s career, and the power of the movement he is a part of, and the power of the Republican party he served, is hatred. It might be impolite to point that out, but it’s true. Haggard was a willing participant in a system which stokes hatred, not exclusively against gay people, but largely against gay people. Encouraging and fomenting hatred is a political skill, and some people are better at it than others. I bet the people who are best at hating others are so good at it because they’ve had lots of practice hating themselves.

I feel very sorry for Haggard, and for all the victims of the corrosive ideology that he represents.