ROLAND VINCENT
SPECIAL EDITOR, ECOSOCIALISM & ANIMAL RIGHTS
OpEds-Tactics & Strategies

Gary Francione

[T]he appalling ignorance of some leaders in the Animal Rights movement is mind-numbing.
Otherwise well educated and informed, their grasp of strategy, history, and mass psychology is almost nil, and their personal successes have deluded them into thinking they are capable of wading into waters well over their heads. 

A case in point is Gary Francione, a respected lawyer, professor, and talented writer.

Using this tortured logic, Francione opposes campaigns against whaling, sealing, bullfighting, the dogmeat trade, elephant and rhino poaching, etc, as somehow supporting the slaughter of cattle, pigs and sheep.

Such campaigns are called “single-issue” campaigns, and their value extends far beyond their stated purposes.
Single-issue campaigns are the building blocks of social movements.
They cast the widest possible net to attract supporters.
They educate.
They develop personal, professional, and political relationships. They sway public and media opinion.
They recruit volunteers.
They develop leaders.
They train staff and provide experience for subsequent battles.

Mindless, juvenile, rejection of this most valuable and indispensable tool of the Animal Rights movement is tantamount to joining the other side.

However well intentioned Francione might be, he is as dangerous to the animals as the people coming at them with stun guns, knives, and scalpels.
He is undermining the Animal Rights movement under the guise of philosophical purity.
He is leading his followers down a road that leads nowhere.
It is a dead-end street lined with missed opportunity and self agrandizement.

Francione may be a brilliant lawyer, but his street smarts are still in the school playground.

By Roland Windsor Vincent
Editor, Eco-Socialism, The Environment, and Animal Rights

_Promoting veganism is animal liberation (animal welfare) NOT Animal Rights.

As is almost every other single thing we do in the Animal Rights movement. From rescuing dogs to liberating mink; from hunt sabbing to protesting animal testing; from anti-fur demos to crossposting; fostering, donating, mailing, telephoning. All are in service of protecting animals.

We call ourselves the Animal Rights movement, but almost nothing we do is in furtherance of Animal Rights.

Animal Rights can only be achieved by governments.
Whether through legislation, fiat, coup or revolution.
Animal Rights is the recognition in law of animals’ rights not to be enslaved, exploited or murdered.
And only a Socialist society, of all those ever envisaged, is likely to grant animals rights that we humans declare for ourselves.

Socialism embodies compassion and ethics. Unlike Capitalism, which embodies no societal morals whatsoever, Socialism is both an economic system and moral worldview.

The coming of Socialism may not automatically entail the adoption of animal rights.  But Socialist societies would likely embrace Animal Rights in their attempts to save the planet from the destruction wrought by animal agriculture, the chief driving force behind the Animal Holocaust. Capitalism is very unlikely to do so—ever. It’s not in its political and economic DNA, protecting the planet is just not profitable. 

Whether Gary Francione and so called “abolitionists” realize it or not, they too are animal protectionists, as are we all. Not eating animals and convincing others to stop consuming them is probably the ultimate in animal welfare activity.

Unless you are working for a Socialist revolution, you are not working for Animal Rights.

You are working for animal welfare.

Which is fine, is needed, and is admirable. But it isn’t the same as working for Animal Rights.
Animal Rights is a distant dream.  A dream farther off in the future than is a Socialist world, which must come first.

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