Animal Liberation: The Next Step

This post, like most of my articles, is aimed at radicalizing the animal movement. In the scheme of things, all our efforts are futile and failures. Our courses of action do nothing to slow down, let alone stop, the Animal Holocaust.

We touch a few animals here and there, but for most animals it is as though the animal movement does not exist.

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The most radical elements within the animal movement are thought to be liberationists. I know and respect Ronnie Lee, the founder of the ALF (Animal Liberation Front), but critics of animal liberationists correctly argue that the few animals released or facilities damaged really accomplish little and cost the movement a great deal in lost activists, in the support of those incarcerated, and in the drains on financial resources that might be otherwise more productively expended.

But the criticism of animal liberation I believe to be misdirected. The problem is not that liberationists are ineffective, but that they are focusing on the wrong targets. Rather than merely inconvenience those committing atrocities and slightly increasing their insurance rates, liberationists should be forgoing attempts to avoid human injury, and instead target the people committing the horrors.

The idea is revolutionary.

It rejects the conventions of human society and the anthropocentric legal systems that allow Earthlings to be owned by humans and disposed of in any way humans see fit to employ.

Animals have no rights under human legal systems, and the very governments which enact and enforce those systems protect and enable the greatest atrocity in history: the Animal Holocaust. Every hour as many animals are murdered in slaughterhouses as were Jews under Hitler. Six million per hour. Upwards of 60 BILLION creatures are murdered in the food system every year. Animals who valued their lives and their families as much as we humans value ours.

Were the victims of this Holocaust human children, the hue and cry would be deafening. But the overwhelming majority of humans are speciesists. They believe human life is not only more valuable than the lives of other sentient beings, they believe that humans have the right to enslave, exploit, and murder any animals that are not human.

Animal Rights advocates believe all sentient life is equally precious. That all beings have the same right to be here as do humans. We believe that humans should conduct themselves so as to do as little harm to others as possible, whether those others are human or non-human animals. It is both illogical and preposterous to believe that the interests of animals can be achieved within the framework of extant human society and capitalist governments.

Nothing short of complete chaos and a new social order arising from the ashes of defeated capitalism could even begin to give the animals a chance to live in peace. And even then, the most likely result would be that socialists who do not give a damn about animals would be running the resultant governments. But even that result would mean that 30 Billion animal lives would not be murdered each year. Why? Because socialist societies consume and murder half the number of animals per capita as do capitalist societies. Socialism removes the profit incentive for people to kill and sell animal corpses.

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Capitalism is the primary cause of animal cruelty, exploitation, and murder. Capitalism is pernicious in its control of governments and media. It buys politicians and judges, writes the laws, and operates solely to generate wealth for the few oligarchs at the top.

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Animal Rights can never become law in a capitalist environment.

Animal Rights may never be realized at all. But in a society that protects the weak, the disenfranchised, a society which recognizes and values human rights, Animal Rights have a much better chance of flourishing.

While most Animal Rights activists are advocates of universal rights (rights for people of color, LGBTs, women, the poor, disabled, etc) few advocates for those oppressed minorities return the favor. The animal movement is alone, without allies.

But the animal movement is positioned to actually lead social insurrection. There are many people who are opposed to capitalism, many who are victims of the system. The poor, the incarcerated, the disenfranchised. But none are as motivated as we are. None are as organized as we are. And none have a more compelling imperative to enlist direct action.

The modern animal movement has been a complete and utter failure. All of the animals (overwhelmingly dogs and cats) that we have saved over the past 50 years are fewer than the number of animals who will be murdered in the next 8 hours. For 99.99% of the animals in the world it is as though the animal movement does not exist.

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If we are to actually change human society, change the way animals are treated by humans, create governments which will recognize the rights of animals, protect the most vulnerable creatures, ensure that cruelty and exploitation are banned as normal human practice, we must radically change our goals, our strategies, and tactics.

Quite simply, we must revolt against the status quo. Recruit, educate, and motivate a critical mass of revolutionary activists who will take direct action to the next level.

We must attack those who commit the horrors. Anonymously. By stealth. En masse.

We must make the risk of engaging in animal exploitation too great to attract participants. We must remember that feeling, innocent, frightened, creatures are being murdered every second of every day of every week of every year. The people who do the killing and the people who profit from the killing are nothing but mass murderers, indistinguishable from Hitler and the German High Command. We owe it to our animal brothers and sisters to wage war against their torturers.

Every person in the chain of slaughter should be worried they will be a target. From the ranch hands who feed the enslaved and doomed creatures to those on the boards of directors of animal exploitation enterprises: the factory farms, feedlots, slaughterhouses, packing plants.

Also the fur farmers, the circus owners, the horse and dog racers, the puppy mill owners, the breeders, the manufactures of traps, poisons, the vivisectors, the animal testers.

We have nothing to lose except our own freedom, but the animals will actually have a chance because the issue will be as widely discussed as is ISIS. We can impact the world. We will create enemies, certainly, but we will wake up multitudes.

Continuing as we have is to do nothing for billions upon billions of animals that will continue to be bred, tortured, and murdered into the distant future.

All we are presently doing is to guarantee their suffering and deaths.

 

 

Author’s Notes:

• I am unaware of any other blog with the Armory’s mission of radicalizing the animal movement. I certainly hope I am not alone, and that there are similar sentiments being expressed by comrades unknown to me.

If you know of other blogs dedicated to animal rights and the defeat of capitalism, please comment with a link.

• Be sure to follow the Armory and share it with your Facebook friends and email contacts, as well as on Twitter, Google, and all other social media platforms. Our influence and effectiveness is dependent upon you!

• If you are not already subscribed to the Armory, please do so before you leave.

There’s a button to Follow us in the upper right sidebar.

• Be sure to visit Armory of the Revolution’s new commissary and bookstore: The Supply Depot

You will find recommended reading on Animal Rights, revolutionary theory, politics, economics, religion, science, and atheism. There is also a section of supplies for animal liberationists, hunt saboteurs, and social revolutionaries. This is all brand new, and we will be adding lots more merchandise in the near future!

• Feel free to comment. I encourage open discussion and welcome other opinions. I moderate comments because this blog has been attacked by hunters and right wing trolls. I approve comments that are critical as well as those which agree with me. Comments that I will not tolerate are those that are spam, threatening, disrespectful, or which promote animal abuse and cruelty

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