Gary Francione / click to enlarge
OpEds
Roland Windsor Vincent
With Branford Perry
(13 October 2014)
[M]ost everyone in the Animal Rights movement would like to see an end to the suffering of animals trapped in the food system.
But some actually believe that embracing efforts to alleviate some of the pain, discomfort, and treatment of those poor creatures is tantamount to supporting the Animal Holocaust.
They even suggest that “animal welfare” is at odds with Animal Rights.
Before we can intelligently discuss the issues it is important that we are all conversant with the terms we are using.
We call ourselves the Animal Rights movement, but we are actually the Animal Protection movement.
Of the tens of thousands of animal activists, barely a handful is working on Animal Rights. All the rest of us are engaged in animal welfare, or, if you prefer, animal protection.
Those working on Animal Rights are doing one of two things: Either working to change the laws to grant personhood status to animals (which is being pursued in the courts in New York by a few Animal Rights lawyers trying to have personhood declared for a chimpanzee) or educating potential revolutionaries for a future overthrow of the system that denies rights to animals.
Those doing EVERYTHING else are working on animal welfare. And yes, that includes being vegan, recruiting vegans, hunt sabbing, liberating mink, rescuing dogs, opposing sealing, whaling, rodeos, etc.
All of it is animal welfare. It is what I do every day of my life. In all likelihood, it is what you do as well.
Animal Rights is a legal concept. It is government recognizing that animals have the rights not to be owned, exploited, or murdered. Only governments or society can recognize Animal Rights. And no government on Earth is close to doing so. Animal Rights is a distant dream, and one that you are likely NOT working on.
Some of our activists friends are unclear on the concept. They think recruiting vegans is working for Animal Rights, and to do anything short of that is to be a welfarist, which they deride as evil.
The fact is that there will be hundreds of generations of animals in the food system before we can end the Animal Holocaust. We owe it to them to alleviate their suffering. To self righteously refuse to try to help is to condemn them to more misery than they must endure. It is flawed reasoning and premeditated cruelty.
The Animal Rights movement has two goals; one is short term, the other is long term.
“…there will be hundreds of generations of animals in the food system before we can end the Animal Holocaust. We owe it to them to alleviate their suffering.”
Our short term goal is the alleviation and prevention of suffering of animals in the here and now. These are the aims of animal welfare.
Our long term goal is to secure for animals the rights not to be enslaved, exploited, or murdered. These are the aims of Animal Rights.
Most everything we do on a day to day basis is in service of our short term goal. We rescue, we work to pass legislation which will eliminate cruelty, we engage in demos and direct acion, we impact corporate and public policies, we educate, proselytize, and organize.
Working toward our long term goal is almost exclusively a function of education. Animal Rights will only be secured when we have a political climate receptive to the concept and our numbers have reached a critical mass sufficient to ignite and sustain a political drive powerful enough to ensure the adoption of Animal Rights by whatever government is then extant.
It is possible we can achieve Animal Rights politically, but I seriously doubt it. To succeed politically means we must overcome human greed and self interest. It means people voluntarily giving up profits, pleasures, and comforts in favor of ethics and compassion.
I don’t see it happening. I believe the only solution is revolution. But revolution fomented exclusively by Animal Rights advocates is not a likely scenario. To sustain the widespread moral imperative necessary to topple governments will require broad popular support addressing a host of grievances and inequities.
To achieve our long term goal I believe we need a socialist government in place. A capitalist one will not allow animals more deference than profits, and capitalist governments have proven their hostility to both animal rights and animal welfare.
Our long term goal is truly long term. It won’t be realized in our lifetimes, perhaps not for centuries.
Our short term goal similarly requires a receptive political atmosphere. In the US the political choice is between Conservative Republicans and Democrats. The Democrats, unfortunately, are not all Liberals, but the Republicans are exclusively Conservatives. And Conservatives are the enemies of all we do in the Animal Rights movement. Local city and county Conservatives oppose no-kill shelters, bans on pet shop animal sales, mandatory free spaying and neutering, neutering and release; at the state levels they are advocating new horse slaughterhouses, wolf and bear hunts, opposition to bans on puppy mills, etc.
At the national level, Conservatives carry water for the slaughter industries, environmental polluters, loggers, coal and oil companies. They oppose the Environmental Protection Agency and the listing of endangered species. The favor wolf kills, Mustang roundups, the killing agenda of the infamous Wildlife Services, a wholly owned government subsidiary of the cattle industry.
Conservative politicians are the enemies of animals, even if our Conservative friends don’t know it!
Like every social movement in history, ours is a political one. And we cannot win protection for animals, or ever achieve rights for animals, without winning their political struggles.
And both short term and long term, that means the success of the political Left. Which means that educating the left about these issues is also a necessary step in the process.
One thing is for sure: animal liberation is the toughest revolution ever conceived, and it may well be the last.
Roland Windsor Vincent is special editor for ecosocial matters. Branford Perry is associate Editor of The Greanville Post.
Addendum—
Veganism: A Battleplan Doomed To Fail
The vast majority of them eat animals or use animals for clothing. Asking them nicely not to do so is what we as vegans are doing.Like asking murderers not to kill..
Because that is what they resemble. Murderers. Albeit murderers living in a culture where the killing of animals is so generalized, so common, so mundane an act, and so hidden, so removed from view…that no one who consumes animals is likely to see himself or herself as such.
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Hiding the reality of our ugly behavior toward helpless living nature has long been one of the greatest instances of mass deception recorded in history. Humans are simply splendid at it. Modern, industrialized societies have perfected such evasions into an art.
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Thus, if animal consumers do not kill themselves, they pay others to do their killing for them. Out of sight out of mind—so to speak. This has created trades and professions.Butchers have existed since time began—almost. And as a recognized profession from the earliest forms of sedentarism. In some societies such as India, Hindu tradition made butchers and other professions that worked animal remnants o dealt directly with death (gravediggers) and “bodily pollution”, into Dalits, “untouchables.” They were (and are) oppressed and despised by higher-caste Hindus.So if asking people to behave nicely toward animals is an illusion, we’re talking a preposterous battle plan. On many occasions, humans do not even behave nicely toward each other, nor toward those they considered as “foreign” whom they can be easily taught to fear and loathe. For most humans, non-human beings are the ultimate “foreigner.”
So this approach may be doomed to failure.
Even if carnists were not having children faster than we are creating vegans, voluntary veganism guarantees billions of animals continue to die.
We count the number of animals that vegans do not consume and think we are making progress. In actuality animals we do not consume are merely diverted to other uses: animal food, fertilizer, garbage.
Veganism can only impact animal slaughter and production in spurts, and only as our numbers become economically significant.
Even a mathematically challenged child should be able to discern the problem: At best, if we are incredibly successful in growing veganism, the Animal Holocaust will continue.
So no matter how hard we work at selling veganism and compassion, animals will continue to die. Billions upon billions of them. For decades or centuries into the future. With no end in sight.
Vegans are a tiny fraction of the population. And our percentage of the population is DECLINING! We may have an uptick here or there, but the world population is exploding and our numbers are not keeping pace.
The only way to assure veganism is to require it by law. In fact, as many people—pro animal or indifferent to their fate already know—meat consumption is not just about being kind to animals. It’s an issue of ecological urgency. In that sense, just as we may soon see legislation controlling human conduct toward scarce resources such as drinkable water,
We must require veganism just as we require men not to rape women or to molest children. Just as we ban murder and slavery.
Most people want to eat meat. They do not want the Animal Holocaust to stop. We are living in a society of animal murderers. We cannot change it by persuasion or voting. The only avenue open to us is revolution. And we are not strong enough or numerous enough to pull it off by ourselves. We need revolutionary allies. Others disaffected by the murdering capitalist system who similarly want to end it.
Even all of us together are no match for our enemies in the present. It will take years, decades, maybe even centuries for us to reach a critical mass of opposition that can topple capitalism.
We must build alliances with other progressives, organize, educate, support Leftist candidates, Leftist issues, Leftist organizations. Vote. Agitate. And, as hard as it may be, try to educate leftist activists on the issues connected to animals and the environment, which are inextricably linked.
Of course we do not stop being vegan. Of course we continue to proselytize for veganism. But it is possibly the least important thing we can be doing.
But just because the solution is both enormously difficult and a distant dream is no reason to shrink from our need to build for it to come about.
It is the only hope for animals.
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