Artistikem

"Alternately, there are bands, zines, and soap-box aficionados who have labored long and hard to ‘politicize’ straight edge through anti-capitalist and/or animal liberation aspects, emphasizing the corporate greed that drive tobacco, alcohol, and drug industries, as well as the cruel animal-testing that the commercial manufacture of these substances entails. However, as I have said earlier, I feel that as much as I sympathize with the aims, these linkages are simply too crude, propagandish and superficial to be meaningful; they seem arbitrary - even capricious. The realities of both capitalism and vivisection offer no empirical basis whatsoever for singling out tobacco, alcohol and (particularly) illegal drugs for special treatment. Simply put, every single product we purchase, be it tofu, Star Wars figurines, non-alcoholic beer or Marlboro Lights, entails wide-scale environmental destruction, the death of countless animals (in fields, testing facilities, or both) and continued support for the machinations of capitalist exploitation."