Just weeks after claiming victory for the demise of the Ringling Bros. circus, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has found a new cause célèbre in its quest for publicity: a campaign to stop the wearing of fur by Warhammer characters.
On Tuesday PETA demanded an end to this outrage, because “wearing the skins of dead animals doesn’t take any skill.”
Warhammer is a board game. The characters are not real; they are plastic models of mythical beings.
Nonetheless, PETA is perturbed that some of these plastic characters were fashioned wearing plastic animal pelts.
Although PETA is apparently aware that neither the figures nor the fur is real, the group believes the depiction itself is deleterious to its cause of making the world fur-free and that the game will serve to indoctrinate youth into wearing real fur.
“The grimdark, battle-hardened warriors are known for their martial prowess—but wearing the skins of dead animals doesn’t take any skill,” PETA stated. “Indeed, nothing on the bloody battlefields of Warhammer’s conflict-ravaged universe could match the terrible reality that foxes, minks, rabbits, and other living beings experience at the hands of the fur trade.”
Lest anyone think PETA’s latest overture is in jest, the animal-rights activists are pairing their demands to Warhammer with one of their self-produced videos depicting graphic cruelty to animals — that has little to do with their fury at Warhammer.
Games Workshop, the creator of Warhammer, has declined to comment on the controversy.