In the middle of the night, somewhere in Holland. The door of an animal rights activist is broken open, mind the executive, and she is arrested and her car is confiscated. The reason, the police had such a feeling. No reason, no suspicions.

Change of scene to beautiful Austria. During a hunting observation, mind you from a public forest path and outside the actual hunting area, an activist is knocked down, choked and robbed by his camera. The judge said that this activist was only acting and the attackers were acquitted.

Also in Austria, an activist receives threatening letters from hunters who think they have a shot load left for him and that they will set fire to his house. Normally, this would have been a threat to the public. Since it is an animal rights activist, there seems to be no need for action.

This list could go on and on. As different as these incidents may be, they have essential components in common. Animal rights activists are generally assumed to have either done something that violates the law or are about to do it. And if they didn’t do it, then surely it is justified to punish them. If a crime is committed against an animal rights activist, he / she has to prove that it happened. And as you can see from the judgment, even if you have striking evidence, it will be dismissed. One cannot avoid the impression that animal rights activists are treated like fair game in our supposedly legally sophisticated civilizations. However, this applies not only to animal rights activists, but to everyone who works for others without being rewarded, regardless of whether it is the environment, women, children, etc. Of course, one has to be grateful that it is at least still handled like this in Western Europe and the USA. In many parts of the world, activists simply disappear without a trace, fall victim to assassinations or are put in prison, where they often face the death penalty. This is also not really new. If you follow the story a little, you can see that it has always been the case that people who selflessly advocate an improvement in the living conditions of weaker people tried to get rid of them. But the path to truth or change did not begin with violence or repression. Going back to Arthur Schopenhauer’s tiered model of truth, three stages can be observed.

At the first level, efforts are ridiculed, since at the beginning there are only a few people who are striving for change or who are in a position to be safely ignored. Basically, there is something positive to be gained from this stage, because as long as those who defend their benefices against change and do not take the activists seriously, they will be able to work quietly to win more people to their cause. So, it was probably at the beginning of the animal rights movement, the lonely fighters in the desert. „Let them spin around and talk out their slogans,“ will probably have been said, „Nobody takes the spinner anyway.“ So, they leaned back and continued as before. But while some were resting, more people could be won over to the movement, the statements and demands became more substantiated and they began to become politically and socially relevant. The first malaise occurred. Maybe they should have been taken a little more seriously. But at this point the movement has already taken on a certain dynamic. Grievances that are shown can no longer be swept under the carpet, not least because the media take up the issue because they rightly sense a conflict. In a word, the activists are becoming dangerous, for the previous lifestyle, for the naturalness of exploitation and abuse. Suddenly the proponents of animal exploitation see themselves under pressure to justify themselves. The status quo is shaking. Even if the activists do nothing more than denounce the grievances, bring the hidden to light and thereby once and for all destroy the lies that are served up to keep the crowd going, there is still a lot on the line Game. That is why the activists are being fought. And we are in this phase right now, in a struggle of unreason against reason, the reaction against action and those who see the eyes and destroy our livelihood and those who do not want to do nothing.

The question naturally arises why these changes that are being sought are fundamentally prevented, even if, on closer inspection, everyone benefits from them. And in the event of the destruction of our home planet, one can confidently say that everyone actually benefits from being prevented.

Go to part 2 here