PETA kills animals.

There are people who really hate PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) passionately.

As an activist myself, I think that the world needs to become a much better place. I also think that the way PETA is trying to do this is wrong. The problems that they're dealing with are currently the most urgent problems on the planet; as an organization, they could (and should) be informative, elegant and powerful, but somehow they seem to completely lack any understanding of how the human psyche works. They could be talking about the actual problems; instead, they're shouting slogans and taking pictures of naked celebrities. They're taking the focus off what's actually happening to the animals every second of the day, and turning the whole question into a trivial, filthy joke.

I'm sure that the people working for PETA are mostly wonderful, compassionate people trying to change the world. But they should rethink the ways to do it. The animals deserve better than this.

The main problem with PETA is that they're chronically cynical.

Cynical: believing that people are motivated by self-interest; distrustful of human sincerity or integrity.

Exactly. Here's the problem; PETA think that the only way to get people to care about animal abuse is to somehow fool them into it. For PETA this means sex. Take a picture of a naked celebrity and write 'vegan' on it. This makes no sense. PETA's depressing idea of the human psyche is really hurting the animal rights movement, and getting rid of the burden of these mistakes will be a stupid and frustrating battle.

By giving people images of sex you're making them think of, well, sex!, when actually your job is to reach them on a much higher level. You're making them think of underwear models -> you're speaking to the superficial part of their brain. You see, people may be irrational, but they are not evil and they react to violence and injustice when they see it. What you need to do is to speak to the goodness in us. Most people are pretty good. Tell them what's going on. Don't act stupid. Don't drown the message in emoticons. Be graceful, understand the importance of your message, don't do something that the human rights movement wouldn't do. Reach people on an intellectual level. Generate compassion. Generate bravery. Generate togetherness. Your job is done.

Douglas Anthony Cooper.

However, some of the criticism towards PETA pisses me off even more. The team of factory farming has come up with a website and slogan 'PETA kills animals', and a lot of people seem to have quickly adopted this sentence.

It is true. PETA kills sheltered animals. It's weird and hypocritical and they shouldn't do it.

Anyway, 25 minutes ago, I accidentally stumbled upon a series of Huffington Post articles written by a novelist named Douglas Anthony Cooper. He's on a mission to bring PETA down because, well, PETA kills animals.

This could be completely reasonable. But it isn't. It's irrational and strange for somebody who apparently has no problem giving his money to the meat industry.

Okay. PETA kills animals. But the number is really not even comparable to the number of animals tortured and killed in the modern meat industry. If you don't like animals to be killed, then you should not support an industry that kills billions and billions of them every year, and prior to that, treats them in a way even crap doesn't deserve to be treated. Be consistent.

To understand the case of Douglas Anthony Cooper we only need to read these sentences:

"I don't happen to think much of the fur industry -- it's a brutal business. But as many have pointed out, at least furriers kill animals with the intention of producing garments, whereas PETA kills animals because they can't be bothered to take care of them."

As a passionate advocate for animal welfare, dear Douglas Anthony, you should be able to see that to the animal, this means absolutely nothing. The animal suffering for months in a tiny nightmarish cage couldn't give a fuck whether its fur is going to be somebody's collar or not. To the animals, our excuses don't mean anything at all.

I'd rather be a dog that PETA puts down than a fox that gets forced into the world only to live a short life of horrible pain and fear.

Douglas, I think it's great and truly beautiful that you care about animals. But everybody already cares about dogs. You should try caring about the animals that nobody else cares about; they are the ones that need your activism the most.