Are you a Human Supremacist? 

Do you find yourself caring more about the well being of cats and dogs compared to fish and turtles?

Well then you subscribe to speciesism.

Yes, as abstract as those terms likely sound, they are indeed real and based on view points shared by millions of Americans, particularly PETA supporting vegans and other bleeding heart activists. In recent local news PETA sent a letter to Kym Bergel via carrier Pigeon offering to replace the Fisherman Statue on Woodley Island with a beautiful fish sculpture created from reclaimed fishing gear retrieved from our oceans and beaches. Clearly this sculpture is both meaningful and beautiful and would likely attract a lot of attention wherever it lands. 

However, this seemingly generous and authentic gesture has a flip side that goes completely unnoticed by the untrained eye. Stick around and you will recognize the way PETA tried to manipulate Kim Bergel, and the larger observing audience, by tugging on their heartstrings and using a statue that likely doesn’t actually exist to influence Humboldt into accepting their “gift” with the strings PETA attached.

Not only will you learn about this manipulative trick, how to identify it, and how to effectively turn the tables, you will also read my first Article in full support of a decision made by the Mayor. Indeed, the way she honored the Humboldt fishing community and its history in her response to PETA is remarkable and shouldn’t go unnoted. In fact, although I am unsure Kim realizes the 4D chess move she made, the effect of her letter reversed the decision dilemma they had devised to manipulate Kim back onto PETA who now has to swallow their pride and compromise with reality on the ground, and in the seas of Humboldt County.

Curious about this ongoing dilemma we reached out to PETA and spoke over the phone with their head of media inquiries, a well spoken and remarkably knowledgeable lady named Amber, for nearly an hour. The entire interview can be heard at the bottom of this article. Even more, Kim Bergel accepted our invitation for a sit down video interview which is imbedded above.  Additionally you can vote in our online poll about this sculpture, the fate of the original statue, and what you think we ought to do as a community regarding this ongoing story.

VOTE IN THE POLL!!

Peta Try’s to Manipulate the Mayor

As mentioned above, Kim Bergel was “sent a letter from PETA,” People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals which featured a rhetorical device called a false dilemma. The false dilemma was essentially “tear down the existing statue if you support PETA and accept this beautiful sculpture to replace it.” What makes this an incredibly effective strategy is that the replacement sculpture is remarkable. No doubt a work of beauty and a creative piece that would surely attract attention given its colorful appearance. 

What’s more, the PETA sculpture goes beyond the message of a typical sculpture, allegedly created entirely from lost fishing equipment extracted from the ocean and beaches, it would obviously stand as an awareness driver to bring attention to the worthy message: Fishing has unintended consequences to aquatic life and the environment and humans ought to be innovating alternatives that reduce, and ideally eliminate any undue harm that arises from fishing.

INTERVIEW AUDIO: Kim Bergel, Eureka California Mayor

While on the surface, this may appear like an authentic gesture of goodwill, with a deeper understanding of PETA and a closer look into this offer, you will see there is more here than meets the eye. 

For instance, why does the Old Fisherman Statue need to be taken down and replaced with the one PETA has offered? Since PETA is interested in spreading awareness regarding aquatic life and the repercussions of some fishing styles on that ecosystem, wouldn’t it be fitting to show tolerance for the history and culture our current statue represents by offering their statue without strings attached? Also, why did they send the letter to Lost Coast Outpost and not directly to the Mayor -who not only answers her phone when she calls it but is very responsive over email?

Does the Fintastic FIsh Sculpture even Flipping Exist?

We also speculate that the sculpture we’ve seen, as offered by PETA, may honestly not even exist in the finished form. This is for a few reasons. The first, the language they used in their original letter suggests the statue pictured is NOT the statue Humboldt would be receiving, but something like it. Here is the quote:

“We hope you’ll take this opportunity to get ahead of history by removing the “Fisherman” statue, which glorifies the cruel and environmentally deadly fishing industry, from the Woodley Island Marina. We’d be happy to donate a new sculpture to replace it—perhaps a fish made from discarded fishing gear, as shown here.”

Activists Use Words to Influence and Manipulate

Notice they are not offering THE sculpture shown in the image above, which PETA linked to in the original letter. They are showing an example of what Humboldt could potentially receive if they remove the existing old style fisherman statue. They use similar language in an article titled, “Sink Any Appetite for Fish Through Empathy—Replace Statues of Humans Fishing,” Published September 18, 2023 (the same day they sent Lost Coast Outpost the letter they allegedly sent Kim Bergel) by David James Olsen.

Here is the quote:

Notice, once again PETA has the opportunity to spell out clearly that the statue pictured is THE statue offered, yet once again we read “A” statue of a fish and “like” the one seen above. 

It is therefore a distinct probability that PETA hasn’t even commissioned the creation of such a statue, and this was, like the shiny lures fisherman use to attract their bait, a lure to distract the Mayor, and the observing audience from the possibility it doesn’t even exist. 

Maybe the image we see is, in reality, just an Ai generated image similar to the one below we created by providing a description to image2go.com – click on the image below to run the generator yourself and fact check us! Click the “generate” button once the page loads to run the exact same phrase we used.

To make matters even more convincing that the Fintastic Fish Sculpture isn’t created from diddly squat is that if such a state did exist, reverse image lookup resources like TinEye would surely find it. When we dropped the image from PETA into TinEye it did not come up with a single result, and this is what it told us:

“TinEye searched over 62.6 billion images but didn’t find any matches for your search image.”  

Wow, now isn’t that fintastically fascinating?

The reason PETA didn’t take a philanthropic approach from the beginning, and instead went on a mission to deceive and manipulate can be found in the Official PETA mission statement, which states, in part:

“PETA opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview.”

“We uphold the rights of individual animals to be respected. For most, that means simply leaving them alone.”

PETA MISSION STATEMENT

Why wouldn’t an organization like PETA who views the world through that lens, commission the creation of a fish sculpture as pictured, well in advance of Fish Amnesty Day, and simply offer it up in good faith to raise awareness about the causes they are so passionate about? 

Human Supremacy – The Problematizing of Humanity

To those who subscribe to critical postmodernism worldview, the concepts of Human Supremacy and Speciesism are no joking matter. No, this is not satire, not a parody, this is something they take very seriously. PETA and those who support the organization exalt their mission statement as valued psalms of the ‘New Normal’ scripture. This scripture is just a offshoot of the larger religious text which predicates all woke ideology: Critical Theory

The concept of Speciesism and Human Supremacy are both a product of critical theory. Critical Theory proponents problematize anything they perceive as Americanism, a culture they claim to be inherently oppressive. Where most leftists are fine problematizing anything related directly or indirectly to Americanism, PETA takes this a leap further. As if Human beings are not co equal members of the Animal kingdom and thus a product of nature, PETA problematizes humanity itself and treats it as exclusively separate and thus an external and existential threat to all animal life who we share this world with. 

Those who subscribe to this worldview, in whole or in part, become animated by what they perceive as both a threat of impending doom and a system of ongoing oppression to which they, all animals in existence, and in this case aquatic life, are victims. Destroy, erase, and improve seem to be the core of this disposition.  

So the reason the Old Fisherman statue must be torn down and replaced is due to it being a symbol of an oppressive system designed for and by cis white heterosexual males. And just like every other instance of critical theory activism, the culture to which you and I subscribe must not be allowed a moment of tolerance and must be consistently challenged to eventually, just like the statue, be torn down and replaced with something they’ve designed. 

Death of a thousand cuts. 

Americanism and the American Dream it creates is a culture wholly embraced by the American bourgeoisie. For those who are unfamiliar with the term, bourgeoisie refers to the working middle class commoner. The plebs. Intolerant of this culture and people, activists who work on behalf of critical theory want our society, culture, and all of its statues and symbols torn down and replaced by those that reflect the New Normal they envision for us. We see this turned into kinetic actions during the Black Lives Matter riots where Antifa tore down numerous statues across the nation, much of this caught on film.

This is something we asked Kim about and she responded to it in a very respectful way.

Unfortunately for the Critical Species Theorists and Human Inferiorists at PETA, their request to have the Old Fisherman statue torn down and replaced was gently shut down by Bergel in a letter at the bottom of this article. Thankfully, the old style fisherman statue is not only cherished by the good mayor, it also stands as a salute to many who have been lost at sea; folks the Mayor knows directly. 

After we called PETA for comment, which can be listened to below, we reached out to the Mayor of Eureka California herself to get her take on this unraveling saga.

PETA INTERVIEW AUDIO

We sat down with Kim, accompanied by Miles Slattery, Eureka City Manager, who was on site in the chance our inquiries drifted more into his territory. As you will see in the interview this never came to pass, however his presence was enjoyed nonetheless having shared multiple laughs with Kim, Ash, and I through the experience. 

It takes a lot of courage for a Mayor to stand up to an organization like PETA in the way that she has 

So who holds the power?

This and many more questions we asked the Mayor are transcribed below. To know the answers you can either watch the interview at the top of this article or listen to the interview here!

Fisherman Statue Gallery