Not long after the Center For Consumer Freedom op-ed appeared in USA Today earlier this month, PETA’s Ingrid Newkirk — who heads a group that has campaigned against Wendy’s, McDonald’s, and Burger King — published a defensive screed on the Internet, claiming her group’s members are “terra-ists,” not terrorists.
Really? Anti-PETA journalist Brian Carnell answered Newkirk’s op-ed this morning. He notes that PETA’s Dan Mathews told a magazine he admires the man who murdered Gianni Versace “because he got Versace to stop doing fur.” Newkirk said she hopes a group that sent razor blades to medical researchers “frightens them out of their careers.” And Newkirk told a 1997 animal rights convention, “I wish we all would get up and go into the labs and take the animals out or burn them down.” (That sounds a lot like something PETA’s Bruce Friedrich has said.)
PETA also sent $45,200 to the legal defense fund of ALF terrorist Rodney Coronado several years ago after he pled guilty to committing arson at a university animal research facility. And in the latest edition of her book about ALF, Newkirk has added,” ALF members burn down their emptied buildings and smash their vehicles to smithereens. Perhaps, after reading this book, you will find that you cannot blame them.”
