We have a treat for you, but before we get to the good news, we need to talk about tricks.
Speciesism is spooky because it tricks us in ways that make it difficult for us to take effective action against it or any other kind of bias.
By "speciesism," we mean simply the idea that human beings are distinct from and superior to all other animals.
A key element of speciesism is the idea that human beings are uniquely rational animals. That notion leads us to deny or ignore all of the ways that other animals are thinking beings who solve problems, navigate, remember, count, and communicate.
But, perhaps more dangerously, speciesism also confuses us about ourselves and other people, by leading us to overestimate the degree to which rationality motivates behavior and to underestimate the many ways that our own animal natures can lead us astray.
We
are
thinking animals, but our thinking is not always as logical as we would like to believe, due to the many mental short-cuts our brains use, mostly outside of our conscious awareness, to solve problems quickly. This, in combination with our social nature, makes us vulnerable to hoaxers and likely to believe conspiracy theories.
Which brings us to the events of the past week. All of the men who committed depraved acts of terrorism -- the one who shot two Black shoppers in a grocery store after failing to gain admission to an African American church, the one who sent bombs through the mail to various people who have spoken out against racism or for immigrants, and the one who shot up a synagogue after becoming convinced that Jewish people were funding a dangerous influx of refugees -- all seem to have been motivated, in part, by conspiracy theories they encountered on the internet.
All of those acts of violence upset us deeply, but the last hit literally close to home, as our cofounder Miriam Jones grew up in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh. As a sanctuary, we are also always especially upset by hostility to refugees seeking safety.
So, we feel that we would be remiss if we did not remind you today that antisemitism is more than just prejudice and discrimination against Jewish people. It's a longstanding conspiracy theory that falsely charges Jewish people of having undue wealth and power and of using that alleged wealth and power to secretly undermine society. People who believe those lies feel justified in doing whatever they can do, up to and including murder, to fight back against the alleged conspiracy.
You probably know some people who believe some pieces of that conspiracy theory, even if they think themselves to be unprejudiced. Our Halloween challenge to you is to be vigilant and persistent in countering that conspiracy theory however you can. Don't just laugh it off when an uncle or a neighbor goes on a rant against George Soros or globalists. Say something.
Because conspiracy theories are similar to paranoid delusions, you probably won't seem to have much success in arguing back, but you can use your own social capital to let them know that someone they care about or respect rejects those ideas and knows some facts that lead to different conclusions. You can maybe plant a seed of doubt about something they "learned" from a stranger on the internet. You might also try to figure out which emotion -- fear? rage? resentment? -- seems to be driving the person to believe the theory and then steer them toward a more accurate, healthy, and potentially truly useful way of understanding whatever it is that leads them to feel angry or afraid.
There are no easy answers here, but the one thing we cannot do is pretend that people are incapable of genocide when we know very well that human beings are the kind of animals who can be tricked into lethality by lies. Let's all do what we can, however we can, to counteract hateful falsehoods with truth and love.
