by John Tierney
Campaigns Director - Association of Hunt Saboteurs
PO Box 4734
Dublin 1
Ireland
[email protected]
Violence done to humans cannot be divorced from violence
done to animals for whatever purpose. In Ireland our government
legalises some of the most horrific acts of cruelty to wild animals by
individuals who carry themselves under the fieldsports banner. One must
examine why people engage in blood sports like hare coursing,
foxhunting, etc.
The first reason is that most blood sport enthusiasts
have been brought up to it from childhood. They genuinely cannot see
anything wrong with it. They have developed a mental mechanism known as
Double Think. A person can keep two mutually contradictory codes of
conduct in his mind at the same time but in separate compartments so
that they never meet by this psychological mechanism. A hare coursing
follower can see a hare torn to pieces without a qualm, but can be
extremely attached to, and kind, towards his pet dog.
A second common psychological mechanism is
rationalisation or justification. In the Middle ages people were
tortured to death in the most obscene ways for a wide variety of
offences without public uproar. People were brainwashed to think that it
was the correct and proper way to deal with witches or heretics. They
were brought up to it. It was a justifiable punishment.
It is interesting to note that paralleling this harsh
and brutal treatment to humans was the treatment of animals. Cruelty to
animals was the accepted norm. Anyone who objected was regarded as a
crank.
When the great Irish reformer Dick Martin (Humanity
Dick) tried to introduce anti-animal cruelty laws into the British
Parliament he was treated with scorn and derision. Cruelty to animals
has always reflected itself in cruelty to humans. Cruelty is
indivisible. Like the Aids virus it can lie dormant or spread with
horrifying rapidity.
A third group of mental mechanisms is what is called,
the screening mechanism. The effect of this is to isolate the minds of
those involved from the effects of their actions. This can be seen to
effect in war as those taking part are subjected to an amount
brain-washing so that they remove themselves from the results of their
actions. Adversaries are depersonalised. They become "legitimate
targets" and the "faceless enemy." They become mere "things."
Similarly in blood sports the hare, the fox and the stag
are merely "things" to be hunted and killed. In the case of blood sports
followers [of] the psychological mechanisms are complex and individual
to each person. This is little doubt, but that the combination of the
mechanisms outlined are operative, to a greater or lesser degree, in all
participants. Certainly, the symbolic killing, the domination, the
inflicting of pain and suffering are central, albeit subconscious
motivations.
A Government, which legalises blood sports, is approving
of the principle that cruelty and non-defensive violence against certain
animals are legitimate "rights" of the citizen. The preservation of the
"right to kill for sport" or "amusement" by a Government trivialises the
whole concept of cruelty and violence. It is symbolic of a repressed
desire to preserve this last bastion of inhumanity and the Right to
Violence.
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