The animal rights movement intrigues me. Most of my friends
are, to a greater or lesser extent, involved in some way, although I am not
particularly. I am quite happy with the concept of “If you like animals, don’t
eat them”, but beyond this my reservations are somewhat deeper.
On the face of it, the concern for animals presents an
admirable spectrum of levels of opposition, from the general base of interest
in animal welfare to the direct action of the Animal Liberation Front
(ALF).
All age groups can participate in animal rights campaigns and there are
a variety of specific issues within the movement for the prospective activist
to choose from e.g. looking after strays, save the whales, the fur trade, the
meat industry, vivisection etc. … in fact, a veritable supermarket of tasty
morsels to choose from (vegan morsels, of course!) rather like the choices
facing the young rebel looking for an outlet for his/her opposition to society.
The level of activity is also optional, from sending money to a campaign,
joining a local group, picketing a particular establishment, spending your
entire ‘free’ time in the service of animals, hunt sabotaging to bombing fur
shops.
The latter is usually carried out by (fairly) tightly knit
cells of individuals who have become frustrated at the more mundane efforts
bearing little fruit. The ALF are the most effective direct action group in
England today. Their professed aim is to ‘persuade’ individuals and
organisations to stop abusing animals by economic sabotage of their property.
As property if more important than life to these people involved in animal
abuse, this is a pretty good tactic and it also reduces the likelihood of
public opinion uniting against the activists, as has happened with other groups
who have attacked people. The ALF have had some success in closing down fur
shops, laboratories etc. and exposing what is actually going on, but have
brought on themselves heavy police harassment and hundreds of activists
imprisoned .
However, waging a campaign of economic sabotage brings risks
of an escalation, with ordinary people being injured. Fringes of the animal
liberation movement have suggested that scientists, hunters etc. are legitimate
targets in the greater struggle for animal rights. This will only disintegrate
the animal rights movement because the whole principle of equality of animal
rights with human rights will become an obviously nonsensical proposition. Those
people concerned with animal welfare, rather than rights or liberation, will be
alienated. The argument that there can be no human liberation without animal
liberation works the same the other way round. Any notion that the rights of
animals are more important than those of humans is bound to disappear up its
own arse due to total irrationality.
More damning is the glamour associated with the ALF, which
can be seen as an arrogant escalation of their specific struggle by a handful
of people intent on proving their compassion is so much greater than others.
Like the Red Army Faction and their ilk, the ALF is a glamorous role for young
people – the chance to put on your paramilitary gear and go careering through
the countryside to break into a pharmaceutical lab. Hey, why don’t they just
join the Territorial Army? More causes to fight for, a bit more self-sacrifice.
Some, by no means all, partake in this for the kicks, Gee, it’s cool being a
‘terrorist’. It would be intriguing to see how many of the ALF are young
anarchists, and of those how many will turn their backs on it all when their
youth is gone … more wacky young rebels that the SWP missed. The most offensive
thing about liberationist glamour is that much of the barbaric torture of
animals is for the beauty industry, with its own blatant glamour.
Of course, the majority of the ALF and the general animal
rights movement are genuinely concerned individuals who are quite rightly
horrified at the abuse of animals in this so-called civilised hi-tech society.
However, the alarming thing about the animal rights movement is the lack of
tolerance and the astonishing efforts at ‘right-on’ ness it’s proponents go to.
From checking the ingredients of food products to boring anyone willing to
listen (usually other animal rights activists) with the fact that a certain
company making herbal tea is part of a larger company whose sister company is
part of another that makes yoghurt! The smug arrogance makes me sick. It is
surely no coincidence that animal rights people form their own communities,
shunning and being shunned by the rest of society.
Taking the moral high ground is an attempt to distance
themselves from something that they do not like, a particularly nasty feature
of society, alienating themselves from the problem, and the solution of a
destruction of society and its dominant speciesist culture. The thing that
annoys me is the way many activists seem more intent on establishing their own
purity, and nauseating Victorian-style morality, than explaining to the rest of
society that there is no need to eat meat, vivisect or hunt animals. They are
beyond reproach; discussion of the basis of animal rights outside the movement
is rare and if questioned by outsiders is ridiculed or abused.
In the end, of course, all their efforts are wasted because
a single issue can never succeed – only an assault on the totality can bring
down the spectre of capitalism which pulls the strings of specific abuses. The
animal rights movement is deceiving itself if it thinks a few victories, such
as shutting down a fur shop, are pretty cool. Society is having a good laugh;
the powers that be are quite happy to have thousands of potential
trouble-causers focusing on one particular obscenity in an obscene world – at
least it stops them from having time to look beyond this particular oppression
to the root cause of it all. The animal rights direct action is merely turned
into a part of the spectacle of oppression for the rest of us to passively
observe – if the army doesn’t blow you up, the terrorists will. The fact that
the ALF is not terrorist or out to get ordinary civilians is irrelevant because
the image is established that they are. Army or ALF; in Semtex we trust! In the
final scenario, the animal rights movement seeks an end to animal abuse,
invariably from legislation from the very people who inflicted the injustice in
the first place … a very worthy cause for many will have its bite removed by
reform; a sad and predictable end to a movement that has interesting
possibilities.
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