I’m so tired of hearing “well Hitler was a vegetarian” from people who strive to make that their case and point for eating meat..

He was also Austrian - are we to not go to Austria or ostracise all Austrians???

Thanks PETA for pointing that out

Bravo Susan - well said

I shall give you an example about sothething that happened to me many years ago. I was stood waiting for a bus with a group of friends as we were all having a girls night out. Stood by the bus stop was a young lad (about 16 - 17 yrs) with some other kids. This lad kept lighting his cigarette lighter repeatedly in the face of his dog who was on a leash and couldn’t get away. I went up to him and said will you stop doing that to your dog, he doesn’t like it, and he laughed in my face and said “I’ll do what I like to my dog”. I said, if you carry on I’ll report you to the RSPCA and again he just laughed in my face and carried on. None of my friends jumped to my defence or told him to stop what he was doing and I felt helpless as to what to do. I didn’t know this lad and I didn’t know where he lived in the village but I had seen him before with the dog. My friends made me feel as if I was wrong to say something to him but I could see the dog was being tormented and I felt I had to do something. It made me sick that this person could treat his dog like this and my friends made me feel as if I was wrong to defend the dog.

I would also agree that some vegetarians become haters of people. For a long time I have loved animals and as I grew up and my eyes were openeded wider to the horrors that people can commit, I found myself loving animals more and hating people to an extreme. I felt that the entire race of people was ignorant and stupid; that nobody cared about anything other than their measly little lives. I still feel that I understand animals a lot more than I will ever understand humans. I don’t think we can genuinely say that “animals” and “people” are catergorisable in the same genre. Like other people here have said, animals don’t cause purposeful pain to their own kinds or other species. So, I must admit, I find it very easy to udnerstand the statement of “vegetarians are people haters because I am so inclined to feel that way.

Hey,
Actually I am an Austrian vegetarian :).
I also heard the myth that Hitler was a vegetarian and I simply couldn’t believe it, because for me it would not be logical at all. When people hear that I am a vegetarian, they often say “well, I’m not, but I don’t eat meat very often” as if I had reproached them that they do. I have never told anyone that I think eating meat is bad, although I think so, because I could not do that anymore and I don’t want to. I have to admitt that I feel more compassion for an animal that is being tortured than for a human.
People who eat meat often tell me that they think it’s “o.k.” to be vegetarian (as if I was interested in their opinion or as if it would change anything) as long as the vegetarian doesn’t think that eating meat is bad and that there is a difference between veggies and meat eaters (they would prefer a person who is a vegetarian for health reasons). But I can’t just sit beside a person eating meat without being a little sad and I think that there is a difference. Humans don’t need to eat meat, they can survive without it, we have the choice. An animal doesn’t. That’s why I often get very sad and - yes, it’s true - hate that so many people simply don’t care. Sometimes I wish evolution would have stopped at the stage before we got the choice about our diet, before humans started refering to themselves as non-animals and got so arrogant.

“It’s just you and your ilk” is the response to the people hater accusation.

Up to now, nobody has ever associated me with Hitler, because most people in Europe know what Germany and Austria are like now. I mean there are still people who are nazis, but they exist in other countries too. Before going to the US I heard that Americans often ask Germans and Austrians what they think about Hitler, because some think that a big part of the population are still nazis. But nobody said a word about that (well, some didn’t know where Austria was and mistook it for Australia, but those were exceptions). And well, it would be strange if somebody would, because I’m very young, so….
But it’s still an important topic and at school the teachers don’t embellish anything about the role Austria had during the National Socialism.

Here is a better account: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetarianism_of_Adolf_Hitler

John F Kennedy, Abraham Lincoln, Adolf Hitler were all good people and had something in common and they were all destroyed.And of course Adolf was vegetarian.

Mark - your quote refers to him mentioning that the world of the future will be vegetarian

If I say the world of the future will be filled with robots, does that make me a robot?

http://amstermatt.baywords.com/2008/06/03/hitler-was-not-a-vegetarian/

A lot of opposition from non-veggie seems to stem from ‘bible’ ideas.
So many people accept various quotes from this cobbled book.
They frequently believe that humans have a soul, and are therefore superior.
They can quote that animals are for us to control.
They forget Genesis, and quote permission to eat some types of animals, though they do not abide by the rules.
Vegetarians, who clearly try to do something to reduce cruelty, make them feel guilty, because they do not care about animals, as it is not part of ’scripture’. Hence they attack us, as they will often attack people who believe differently from themselves.
After all, if you believe that your ‘religion’ is the only right one, all others must be wrong and therdefore legitimate targets.