Whenever everyday people start asking themselves the question… Wait a minute, if people of yesteryear did all sorts of things we find barbaric, from keeping slaves to public flogging, what might future civilizations be equally appalled by in our age? … they almost inevitably come up with some version of: “Well, it’s probably something about […]

33 Holocausts per Year

We all know that tormenting a cat or a dog is a pretty bad thing. Indeed, we regard it as criminal, highly immoral, and certainly as picking on someone weaker than ourselves. There’s little doubt for anybody who’s known an animals that they have real sensations, real discomfort, and—in a meaningful sense—feelings. Darwin studied this in considerable detail already in the 1860–70s.

Now, still, maybe it’s even worse to torment a little kid or an old lady than being cruel to a cat? Who knows at the end of the day? Let’s say then, to remain on the safe side of the argument (so we don’t make ourselves any kinder than we really have to!) that tormenting two little dogs and killing them is about as bad as whacking an old lady.

Nah, still don’t feel quite safe. Maybe we’re still giving the dogs too much slack. Make it three dogs.

Hmm. No. The suffering of one HUMAN BEING must surely be worth more than three pesky mongrels, no? Make it five.

Ten. Let’s say I torment and kill ten dogs, slowly, one by one. Is that about as bad as whacking that old lady?

Still doesn’t feel right. How about a hundred dogs? And a few cats crushed under car wheels for good measure.

No, no—let’s be serious about this. Let’s take one thousand dogs, each of which has a family of people and others who care about them, lock ’em up, starve them, make them work hard, humiliate them, and then gas them to death. Let’s make that count as the life of ONE human person.

Admittedly, this is a pretty speciesist and supremacist position. We cannot exactly account for why one of us humans should be worth literally a thousand dogs. But let’s just go with it, as we all have a strong feeling that a human life is something so much more than the life of a non-human animal. Maybe even a thousand ones. Most of all—let’s just remain really on the safe side that we shouldn’t be any kinder to animals than we absolutely have to by a bare minimum of decency and ethics. A bare minimum. We don’t want to overburden ourselves, do we? We need to be kind to ourselves, not too harsh, when it comes to how kind we should be to others, right?

So, a thousand it is. I, Hanzi Freinacht, hereby proclaim that I am literally worth one thousand (1,000) of those dirty mongrels. I am human. Let my supremacy be known.

Now, this leaves us with a multiplier of 1000 when it comes to comparing crimes against humanity to crimes against “non-humanity” of animals roughly comparable to dogs (we don’t know how sentient different animals are, but we can gauge their intelligence to be above that of human babies or toddlers).

Let us then consider how many land animals the global market “produces” per year—i.e., basically keeps in death camps—to the scale of the worst crime against humanity that we can think of: the Holocaust.

[Note before we go on*: Far-right apologists and Nazis have long used the trick of comparing human suffering to animal suffering while granting greater rights to the latter as a way of relativizing the plights of targeted ethnicities, who in turn are then compared to animals. The gap is thereby narrowed from both sides and atrocities become less unthinkable. I will have no such accusations cast against me for the comparison below: I am doing the exact opposite, namely using the profound seriousness of human suffering as a starting point for expanding our circle of care to other beings. The crooks are whoever become the apologists for crimes, not the ones who seek to prevent crimes from being committed.*]

Over the course of this event, the Nazis imprisoned, tormented, and killed about 6 million people over a period of five years (1941–45), so about 1.2 million per year on average (6/5 is 1.2). Or that is the relevant figure for what is usually referred to as Holocaust—the number of people killed under similar murder campaigns in Nazi Germany is around 12 million. But for the word “Holocaust” itself, 1.2 million per year is roughly correct.

Our global non-human animal industry subjects about 60 billion land animals to a comparable fate per year. Now, let us remember that these are “just animals” right? So let’s apply the 1000 multiplier. They’re just worth a thousandth of one of us!

That lands us, with this conservative estimate of the worth of non-human animal life, at 60 million. Per year. Not over five years.

Divide 60m by 1.2m to see how this compares to the Holocaust’s yearly effects— and you get a rather grim number: 50.

Our current global consumption of land animals causes: Fifty (50) ongoing Holocausts per year.

The animal industry is not, of course, 50 times worse than the Holocaust. That would be a great under-estimation of the severity of our crimes against non-humanity.

We must not forget that the Holocaust lasted only 5 years, whereas our animal megacide goes on year after year, decade after decade, and does not exhaust its killing fields.

Oh, and that’s just the land animals. Aquatic animals account for an estimated over 1 trillion kills yearly (many of which are cruel and slow deaths). Yes, that involves a lot of fish, so let’s give ourselves a yet higher ethical premium: 10,000 non-human aquatic animals for just me!

So, if you divide one trillion by 10,000 (including a few seal cubs and dolphins for good measure, death to them!) you get… 100 million.

100 million plus 60 million, divided by 1.2… produces…

133 Holocausts per year. Every year. And still growing.

This is if, and only if, I am worth one thousand dogs or cats or chickens or cows or pigs—or ten thousand sea and water animals of various sorts.

Phew, okay. Why am I saying this? It’s not really news to anyone, is it? It’s just to set the premise for what follows: This issue matters a lot. It’s well known that we all become less empathic, not more, when faced with large numbers. But as you may have noticed, I am not speaking to your feelings so much right now, but just to common sense, just to plain reason. It’s just weird to deny that this is a thing.

Even if you don’t care about animals and only have a shrugging “well, we shouldn’t be unnecessarily cruel…” then you can hardly write the issue off as insignificant. It still matters.

It’s not about your damned personal choice to eat what you feel like. It’s not about puritanism or scoring cheap moral shots. It’s not about crazy people on YouTube feeding their babies grass smoothies and sporting toothless smiles. It’s not about shame or guilt. It’s not about feeling hopeless or depressed.

It’s about, with a very conservative estimate, 133 Holocausts per year. Every year. Decades on end. And growing. So don’t make it about yourself.

133 Holocausts per year—and that’s when I also used excessively conservative estimates of the number of animals killed. On what planet, in what barbaric dark age, is this considered to be okay and entirely normal?

Answer: On planet Earth, right about this minute.

Breathe it in. The numbers don’t land in our minds, they cannot. But we can all understand the concept of a staggering moral mountain to climb: a heroic struggle against what is just not right.