Genocidal Vegetarians.

For those who don't already know, I don't eat meat. In fact I eat the absolute minimum of animal produce one could have without actually being vegan. There are three main reasons for this:

• Meat is, for me, unnecessary and expensive.
• Due to a genetic cholesterol problem animal products, particularly red meat and dairy stuffs, are bad for my health.
• I don't particularly like the damned stuff.

There are some veggie fascists out there who would hate and vilify any meat-eating human being. I'm not one of those and fortunately they're becoming rarer. It's not an ethical matter for me - if I had to eat meat to survive I would. Thankfully, I don't.

Hitler
Life is amazingly balanced. For every ridiculous veginazi out there there also seems to be an equivalent anti-veginazi. These are the rare people who think that a person who doesn't eat meat needs treatment, or to grow up. I'm going to call these the "carninazis".

The carninazis have a wonderful phrase which has been churned out to me on several occasions. I've even seen it on a t-shirt.

"Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian"

Really?

So?
To be fair, most people trot out this little phrase as a sort of joke. Bizarrely, though, some people actually take it seriously. Whilst anyone of average intelligence and a little time to sit and think will soon realise that this statement is irrelevant, the hard-of-thinking carninazi actually sees some connection between a distaste for meat and ordering the violent enslavement and death of an entire race of one's fellow human beings.

The List
Whether Evil Adolf was veggie or not is under discussion by historians, so it may not even be true. But, working on the assumption that it is true, I'd like to forward a few more names.

The following people, to the best of my knowledge were NOT or are NOT vegetarians:

• Benito Mussolini
• Joseph Stalin
• Mao Tse Tung
• Saddam Hussein
• Osama bin Laden
• George W Bush
• Richard Nixon
• Margaret Thatcher
• Kim Il-sung
• Torquemada
• Hernando Cortez
• Charles Manson
• Joseph Goebbels
• Herman Goerring
• Walt Disney
• The White Queen of Narnia
• Matthew Hopkins
• and Father Abraham!

So there! Nah-nah-ne-nah-nah!

Love,
Seán