On “Stolen Suffering” and Denying Suffering

I have never been a person dismayed by the use of the Holocaust analogy when it comes to animals. Actually, I have said that mass slaughter of nonhuman animals is in a way worse in that the entire world is not calling for its cessation. There is no consensus that: Of course it’s a barbaric, atrocious, hideous, evil crime! We must act immediately to stop it!

Upon reading "Stolen Suffering" by Op-Ed contributor Daniel Mendelsohn in the New York Times, I was struck by his profound speciesism. Speciesism is the reason someone would be angry with the Holocaust analogy. After all, it’s an insult to humans to compare them in any way to animals.

Yet, Mendelsohn’s refers to animals in his article, and when he does he speaks volumes. It’s ironic that we shouldn’t compare animals to humans, however we can compare humans to animals if it makes the point of how much lower and less deserving of concern animals are.

Let’s deconstruct:

• The second paragraph begins: "She was referring to literal survival, of course — survival at its meanest, most animal level, the mere continuance of the organism." It’s so early twentieth century to refer to animals merely as organisms in a battle for survival.
• The very next sentence: "At a time when Jews throughout Europe were being rounded up like livestock or hunted down like game . . ." Jews were treated so badly . . . as badly as we treat animals, right? Then why can’t we say: Animals, everyday, are treated as badly as Jews (and others) were during the Holocaust? After all, we just said Jews were treated like animals–what’s so unspeakable about turning that around?
• Next, "[A] museum that offers ticket holders the chance to go inside a cattle car, presumably in order to convey what it was like to be in one, can ultimately encourage not true sympathy or understanding, but a slick ‘identification’ that devalues the real suffering of the real people who had to endure that particular horror. (When you leave the cattle car, you go to the cafeteria to have your chicken salad; when they left it, they went into a gas chamber. Can you really say you ‘know what it was like’?)" Someone at all attuned to the suffering of anyone other than humans would have said, "you go to the cafeteria to have your hamburger."
• Finally, in reference to a woman who wrote a memoir about things that never happened and after essentially calling her psychotic, he derides her for several actions including: "her galling manipulations of the people who believed her. (Slate reported that she got one rabbi to light a memorial candle ‘for animals.’)" It’s a galling manipulation to help others see the suffering of animals and light a candle for them?

Mendelsohn is obviously a very angry man. But he is also a man who appears to be able to see injustice, pain and suffering and be appalled by it.

Now if he could only broaden his circle of concern . . .