At San Francisco's Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair, militant vegans in hooded sweatshirts and masks pied ex-vegan writer Lierre Keith. Their pies were laced with chili peppers—the better to make her weep.

Footage appears on YouTube, set to zany clown music.

Ms. Keith was a vegan of 20 years when she splintered from her cell of Seitanazis and wrote The Vegetarian Myth, arguing that vegan diets are unhealthy. After two decades of subsisting on chick peas, Lierre experienced her first bite of flesh: The vegan anarchist hand that fed her. Since vegans operate the same way gangs do—(non-animal) blood in, blood out—her dissent required vengeance. The San Francisco Chronicle reports from the scene of the pies:

As Keith stood at a lectern at the Hall of Flowers in Golden Gate Park, three people in masks and black hooded sweatshirts ran from backstage, shouted, "Go vegan!" and threw pies in her face. While they fled, some in the audience cheered or handed out leaflets.

"The whole thing was designed for social humiliation," said Keith, speaking Tuesday from her sister's home in Kansas. "We're supposed to be against sadism and cruelty and domination, and these people were willing to do this to me."

Keith said her values are similar in most ways to those of her attackers. She believes in militant action, even property destruction, if it can lead to change.

When she became the victim of their titillating militancy, however, she changed her tune: "If this is what is considered radical action, this movement is dead."

No group has taken credit for the pieing, but the North American Animal Liberation Press Office praised the "masked marvels" who attacked the "animal holocaust denier." They add that, by calling the cops, Keith aligned herself with "agents of state oppression." Good thing the video has wacky clown music, or these people would seem so dour. [SFChron via yikesahootie]

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