HSUS Campaigner: “I’ll Kill You”

As HSUS works to get a bacon-and-egg ban on the Massachusetts ballot next year, it seems as if a whole brigade of vegan activists has converged on the Commonwealth to collect signatures for the initiative. One such fellow is HSUS campaigner Matt Dominguez. You may remember him from this summer, when he was in Rhode Island harassing a state senator (and farmer) who helped defeat HSUS-backed anti-egg farmer legislation, which resulted in the police being called at one point. Now, in one of his latest tweets, Dominguez giddily sports a shirt that says, “Be kind to animals or I’ll kill you.”

Presumably, this is supposed to be some kind of joke. But it’s hard to see what’s funny about this at all—and believe us, we are as far from PC as you can get. In fact, the gal on the left works for The Humane League. The Humane League’s founder, Nick Cooney, was found guilty of making terroristic threats, harassment, and criminal conspiracy. According to media reports and court documents, he threatened to kill the children of an employee of a drug company. And speaking of shirts, at Cooney’s sentencing hearing, the prosecutor noted Cooney had worn a shirt with the message “I believe in the use of violence to achieve animal liberation.” Cooney later went to Farm Sanctuary, working alongside longtime PETA VP Bruce Friedrich, who has remarked that “blowing things up and smashing windows” is “a great way to bring about animal liberation.”

These are the kinds of people who approach veganism with near-religious fanaticism. The animal rights movement has a history of violence through groups like the Animal Liberation Front—and folks employed by HSUS have even voiced support for the ALF in the past. Now, HSUS and Dominguez inhumanely smear people’s character simply for disagreeing about public policy. If we really think shirts about violence against people shouldn’t be taken seriously, then perhaps the joke is on us.