Animal-Holocaust Denier Pied at Anarchist Book Fair
Speech of anti-vegan antagonist shut down by masked pie throwers in San Francisco
While Animal Liberation Front-line focuses on exclusive content (vs. reposts), I am republishing the below article on yesterday’s pieing of non-human animal holocaust denier Lierre Keith, author of “The Vegetarian Myth”.
Predictably, the choir of opposition to this action so far is a collection of vegan regressors, “rewild” fetishists / weekend-warrior primitivists, and those who hide behind an “anything goes” neuvo-anarchist critique – all of which breed the culture of degeneracy and hedonistic caveman role-playing that give Lierre Keith her only audience.
A disrupted speech is trivial in comparison to the billions of deaths this woman promotes, but yesterday’s resistance to this death-merchant will undoubtedly give Keith some (vegan) “food for thought” while she travels the country, promoting the consumption of animals.
– Peter Young
Read the anonymous statement below:
***
“Bound Together Books and PM Press continue to try to prop up and foist veg*n antagonist Lierre Keith onto the radical community in the Bay Area. Today, at the 15th Annual San Francisco Anarchist Bookfair, where she was scheduled to be a featured speaker, Keith was served her just deserts for her obnoxious attacks on veg*ns in The Vegetarian Myth. She was pied in the middle of her speech in the main auditorium at the SF County Fair Building in Golden Gate Park.
The myriad logical fallacies and other personal, logical, and factual problems with Lierre Keith’s misanthropic book need not be reiterated here. A thorough debunking of her attack on veg*ns was posted on Indybay last June when Bound Together Books first invited her to speak about her book.
Lierre Keith’s Elaborate, Self-Congratulatory Excuse for Abandoning Veganism
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/06/12/18601536.php
If her book had been written as a good faith effort to start a discussion about the topics of vegetarianism and industrial agriculture, it certainly would not have evoked such a visceral reaction from veg*ns. But that’s not how Keith addressed the subject. She instead chose to rebuke her own former vegan self by verbally assaulting all veg*ns, calling them ignorant and child-like, sometimes based on nothing more than dishonest accounts of anonymous online comment threads or her own self-loathing.
Phony environmentalist omnivores like her buddy Derrick Jensen — who farcically claimed the “book saved my life” — might find the gratuitous attacks on veg*ns self-satisfying or validating, but the insults and invective directed against veg*ns have been taken, not surprisingly, quite personally by veg*ns everywhere who are aware of the book, sometimes by having had it thrown in their faces by those who mistakenly believe the book to be the last word on vegetarianism. And surely it was a reaction to these attacks that led the culprits of the pieing to feel compelled to take symbolic action against Lierre Keith at the very moment she was being held up as a paragon of radical thought by Bound Together Books at this year’s Anarchist Bookfair, normally a vegetarian-friendly venue.
Some will condemn the pieing as a useless symbolic action. Others will object to the breaking of decorum at the bookfair. Many of those who might condemn the action would not think twice about praising other symbolic direct actions, pieing or otherwise. It is doubtful if her book were “the anarchist myth” or “prison activist myth” that anyone present would do anything but cheer the action.
Some will undoubtedly argue that the pieing was an attack on free speech, but Keith has been afforded more speech than most people on the planet will ever be, courtesy of PM Press. In fact, she is profiting from the soap box she has been given to pretend she is a radical environmentalist who just happens to jet around the country to and from her home in rural Massachusetts. In a world where vegans and vegetarians are a definite minority, face constant bombardment with pro-meat messages our American cattle culture, and frequently have to deal with direct attacks from government, law enforcement, and multinational corporations that profit from the sale of factory-farmed meat and dairy, Ramsey Kanaan of PM Press, himself a long-time vegan, strangely chose to pile on with yet another attack on veg*ns, this time being especially traumatic in that it comes from the inside of the supposed radical environmental movement. (Was the book printed in part to curry favor with Derrick Jensen who now publishes through PM Press?) Through the Bound Together collective, of which Ramsey Kanaan is a member, Lierre Keith has been asked to speak in the Bay Area repeatedly. The mean-spirited book and these speaking engagements are largely one-way conversations with Keith dominating the dialogue.
But today, anonymous masked peoples stood up and refused to allow PM Press and Bound Together to yet again try to cram Lierre Keith down our throats. They stood up for many who have suffered silently, without a voice, since the publication of her book. We don’t want what you are serving.”
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It wasn’t a little fluffy white foodstuff gently smeared across Lierre’s face. It was cayenne pepper-laced, shoved hard into her face, and it was forced into her eyes by three assailants who came up behind her. Lierre has a degenerative disc disease already (caused by two decades of veganism). If the truth hurts you, it’s nothing compared to what Lierre endured — both from the caustic agent and — are you that clueless? — an assault as a woman done by multiple, and male, assailants.
Your overt approval of physical violence against a thin disabled woman by three perps, at least two of whom were men, shows that you are as cowardly as they are. So anonymous masked assailants “stood up for” the movement? Did you go attack the actual structure you pretend to fight? Did you go take out all the walls on a CAFO operation? Go plug an outlet pipe? No, you n’ yours beat up on a woman with whom you disagree. Because she couldn’t fight back. I sincerely hope you and yours are fully outed, names and pictures and residences, and that Lierre’s allies obtain the info.
Booo Hooooo.
hahah U MAD!!!
Trust me somewhere a animal smiled right before it’s throat was slit at the pie in the face.
“I sincerely hope you and yours are fully outed, names and pictures and residences, and that Lierre’s allies obtain the info.”
yikes.
Wait a second Diana, before you go calling the cops or sending out a lynch mob, do some research. The author of this blog spent two years in federal prison for tearing down fences and liberating mink from fur farms. So, yes, actually Peter has “stood up for the movement” in ways most people in the primmie-scene wouldn’t dare. Pulling the “show me your activist-cred” card is annoying enough, but you picking Peter as the target is just pathetic.
It’s funny how Lierre Kieth’s apologists rail against what they call “horizontal hostility”, yet are willing to call the cops at the drop of a dime, not thinking twice about sending people to jail. With incidents like this it’s good to see where people really stand.
Save the pc liberal “anarchist” garbage. That piece of shit got what she deserved. I only wish I could have made it to the bookfair this year. Fuck the speal of turning this into a gender issue. Not all “male” on “male” direct action is equally balanced either. I tip my hat to the pie throwers! And if that makes some pc-deathsquad wanna come step to me. Fucking bring it on!
I may consider myself an anarchist. But I follow nobody else “rule book” but my own & besides that, I loathe most anarchists anyway.
(PS- I’m also one who wishes to see civilization gone. But free-range farming isn’t gonna get us there either! And until it is, & possible thereafter… Veganism is the only way!)
Great article thanks. I would love to see more pictures!
Thank you, Peter. Keep up the great work and don’t let any detractors make you second guess yourself.
you want a factual rebuttal of the myths in the veg myth?
welp, here you go: http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2010/03/15/18641159.php
this is for everyone dazzled blind by Lierre’s numbers without being able to read between the lines
Vegan, you missed the point. I don’t care what Peter has done, past tense. He’s applauding the assault on a physically fragile, middle-aged lesbian woman who happens to be aware of, and willing to talk about, the physical-body issues of veganism. So you don’t agree; that’s fine, and go write your own book. But to attack Lierre AS IF she is the problem is beyond idiotic. Lierre was an easy target for your cowards; CAFOs and factory farms have more security and more risk. Plus there’s the downside of not being able to gleefully exercise privilege — male, physical, youth, non-lesbian, and the overarching whiteness that frames the vegan so-called movement. And then you missed the really obvious point. Unless the *woman* who was attacked by **three men from behind** has some other option, there’s no reason why she shouldn’t talk with the police. Are they going to help her? Unlikely. But who the hell else is? After all, her supposed allies had just risked further damaging her spine while forcing cayenne pepper into her eyes. Yes, I think it’s imperative in this broader community, the one you and I seem to have to share, to out these three and the others who were involved in this fiasco. And I’m someone who’s argued against calling this horizontal hostility — there’s no horizontal about it. Lierre against three men? Is it that hard to do the math?
billy, “Trust me somewhere a animal smiled right before it’s throat was slit at the pie in the face.” The animal smiled knowing Lierre was pied?
vegan, “It’s funny how Lierre Kieth’s apologists rail against what they call “horizontal hostility”, yet are willing to call the cops at the drop of a dime”, ie publically physical assualted by masked assailants who ran off; content of pie unknown.
I think the lack of protein is rotting your brains…
Diana- And as far as privilege- You make a big deal out of her being lesbian, but how do you know that the pie throwers are straight? Is there some kind of stereotype that I am not aware of that states that gay men aren’t willing to throw pies at someone who spreads hate and abuse? I don’t think gender or sexuality have anything to do with this.
If you are so sensitive to “privilege”, then maybe you should consider the fact that humans are by far the most privileged animals on earth…
diana, I’m with you. This reeks of male privilege and downright cruelty. As a vegan activist who has stood up for the movement, and who has been raped and mugged by armed men, I see this as a cowardly act that preyed on her vulnerability. Have fellow vegans become the monsters we were fighting?
I never have any sympathy for someone who advocates the torture and murder of thousands of innocent animals. If she can promote the deaths of so many innocent beings without batting an eye, she hardly has the right to complain about a pie in the face, whether thrown by men or women. Her “injuries” pale in comparison to those she advocates against the animals. After all–she is still alive……
Approximately 308 million people in the US participate in the enslavement, torture, and murder of animals on a daily basis. Should we go throw pies in all of their faces? Whether Keith deserved a pie in the face any more than those hundreds of millions of people or not, I don’t see how throwing a pie in someone’s face does anything whatsoever to build a real animal rights movement instead of one that advocates giving animal slaves bigger cages. Liberating minks (or better yet, freeing Tilly, if that were possible) has the potential to be a “teaching moment.” Pieing someone in the face is about as relevant to building an animal rights movement as “I’d rather go naked than wear fur” campaigns. It makes animal rights activists look stupid and belligerent and doesn’t do anything to get people to take the issue seriously.
I disagree with you, Jeff. Nothing can make the fight to free all the enslaved animals look stupid. Anybody who wants to dismiss the cause of Animal Rights because somebody got a pie in the face was never going to be that committed to animals in the first place, so no great loss. I see that video and, personally, I could not care less about her getting a pie in the face. She is not really the issue–the animals are. Nothing changes that for me.
Antigone, I disagree. There are plenty of intelligent, caring people who never hear a thing about animal rights other than PETA threw a pie in someone’s face for eating a seal heart or some other “direct action” like that. Considering that only .3% or so of the U.S. is vegan, this is especially unhelpful. Throwing a shoe at George Bush achieved nothing, but it got a laugh from a lot of people who already didn’t like Bush. However, there aren’t a lot of people who are vegan to laugh about this, for whatever that’s worth.
I have classes with some brilliant people who I know are far more intelligent than I am and who I admire intensely for their ability to love… except they are not vegan. I should not need them to start off the conversation on veganism by reporting that PETA pied someone in the face who they identify with. Your views don’t justify pie-ing anyone in the face.
Anyway, in response to the article, that is a good point about the way the book targets vegans. I think she gets away with “the vegetarian myth” because vegetarian is seen as a diet above all, and so she supposedly has “vegan” cred, whereas anarchist is just a viewpoint. If there were a book called “the anarchist myth,” it would be more obvious to the readers that her viewpoint is not on point with the rest of anarchists, whereas in this case most ignorant meat-eaters are just like, “Look! She was ‘vegan’ for 20 years! She therefore has so much more cred than me and all two of the vegans I know.”
i don’t care how much you disagree with Keith’s viewpoints, she simply offers a different perspective on these issues, and for that, she was assaulted by cowards. If they believed they were so much more right than Keith, they could have presented a counter-argument, laying it all out there for everyone in attendance that Keith was full of shit, but they chose to be thugs instead.
Come on, people. We can be better than this.
@antigone1000: “Nothing can make the fight to free all the enslaved animals look stupid.”
Looks like it only took three people this time.
Furthermore, show me specifically where Lierre Keith “advocates the torture and murder of thousands of innocent animals,” because i’m inclined to believe that’s an inference–and a mistaken one–on your part.
I used to know Ms Keith.
I saw what a nut job she was, with a serious victim mentality,
who liked to emotionally blackmail those around her.
Glad I stopped doing activism with her !
She needs someone to blame for her illness, and has decided to
attack vegans. How stupid.
Yet another ex vegan/veggie who has gone to meat eaters for
health advice and acted the’victim’.
I think the pie was hilarious ! But I do wish some of the pie throwers had been female !
She’s failed trying to be a feminist ‘leader’.
I can’t believe she is doing the anarchist book fair/bookstore circuit, as nothing that comes out of her mouth, writtings etc is in any way anarchist. In fact she looked down on me for being anarchist (and feminist) when I knew her.
So now she is making her fame by attacking someone new.
PS she had her degenerate spine condition BEFORE she was ever vegan.