The Cruelty Behind the Mask
Hunt saboteurs are no strangers to confronting those who support legal trail hunting. Over the years, their tactics have become depressingly familiar: harassment, stalking, verbal abuse and physical intimidation – all disguised as activism. Even against that grim backdrop, however, the recent conduct of one sab has managed to lower the bar further still.
A hunt supporter - who, for his own safety, we have chosen not to name - recently completed treatment for prostate cancer. After twenty rounds of radiotherapy, he did what so many patients do at the end of that road: rang the bell, posed for a photograph, and shared the moment with friends and family on Facebook. It is the sort of post that tends to attract warm words and quiet relief from anyone who sees it, regardless of what they think about the countryside debate.
Hunt sab Johny, it seems, was not in the mood for warm words. Johny responded to the post by calling the survivor a "nonce" and an "inbred coward," before going on to tell him he hoped the cancer returned so that he could "suffer like the foxes". The hunt supporter responded with a level of composure that felt almost misplaced, calmly clarifying that he has “never been fox hunting” in his life. Instead, he explained, he has participated in trail hunting, a practice that has remained entirely legal since the Hunting Act 2004 came into force.
When a friend of the hunt supporter stepped in to congratulate him on his recovery, Johny reappeared in the thread to declare that the survivor’s cancer was, “karma baby." He illustrated the point with a meme declaring that there is "a special place in hell for people who hurt animals" - apparently without noticing that wishing a cancer survivor's illness back on him might itself qualify for consideration.
The hunt saboteur movement is fond of presenting itself as a principled campaign for animal welfare, and its supporters are quick to frame any criticism as an attack on that noble cause. Wishing cancer on a stranger from behind a keyboard, however, is not campaigning, nor is it welfare, nor is it anything that could reasonably be described as activism. It is simply a grown man directing abuse at a cancer survivor because he cannot tolerate a differing view, and no amount of animal-welfare rhetoric changes what it is underneath.
The irony sharpens further when you look at Johny’s own Facebook page. In April 2024, he set up a birthday fundraiser for The Fox Rescuers, a charity dedicated, in his own words, to relieving "the suffering of foxes who are in need of care." Johny told his friends that the charity's mission "means a lot" to him and asked them to contribute as a way of celebrating with him. Compassion for suffering, evidently, extends to foxes but not to cancer patients - a moral framework that would take some explaining.
The movement has long insisted that it speaks for the moral conscience of the countryside. On the strength of Johny’s contribution, it might want to consider finding someone else to do the speaking.
