It is Time to Take Up Arms for the Animals

Consumers are ultimately responsible for the Animal Holocaust. Were it not for their purchases, animals would not be enslaved and murdered.

For those in the animal movement concerned about animals trapped in the food system, the approach has been to impact the consumer.

We have focused on recruiting vegans, on educating the public and growing the movement through social media.

Despite all the efforts to change consumer buying practices, the Animal Holocaust continues unabated. More animals are being enslaved and murdered than ever before in history.

Were we to be increasing vegans as a percentage of the world population, we would be on a path to eventually ending the Animal Holocaust, at some future point in time.

In fact, vegans are decreasing as a percentage of world population, a trend that guarantees the Animal Holocaust will not only continue, but will increase in scope, into the distant millennia.

Which militates for a paradigm shift in strategy.

We must abandon persuasion in favor of dissuasion.

As impacting consumption is not possible, we must examine impacting production.

Dissuading people from participating in the chain of slaughter is the only logical alternative to persuading people to refrain from purchasing slaughtered corpses.

The question of whether to dissuade those in the chain of slaughter must give way to the question of how we dissuade them.

The goal is to drive up the cost of production, driving up the prices of meat, eggs, and dairy, and driving down demand as a result.

There are a number of political goals we could pursue which would increase the costs of production, some easier to achieve than others. Taxing meat. Ending subsidies to animal agriculture. Banning GMO feed. Slowing slaughterlines. Banning growth hormones and prophylactic antibiotics. Banning factory farms in favor of family farms. Requiring humane transport. Requiring USDA inspection of every animal before and after slaughter.

Few of these can practically become law, due to the simple fact of Big Ag owning so many Members of Congress and Senators.

Supporting candidates who favor public campaign financing should be a priority. It should be the litmus test for every vote we cast.

Politics aside, the animal movement must either take up meaningful direct action or continue to delude ourselves that the animals will one day be free of slavery and murder.

Direct action by animal liberationists has been widely criticized within the animal movement. Some of it valid, some of it generated by mainstream welfarist organizations anxious not to offend donors or rouse the ire of the media.

Such criticism as has been valid primarily bemoan the fact that few animals actually are rescued by liberationists, most are recaptured by their abusers, the loss of activists to incarceration is a drain on the movement, and the net effect of liberationists’ tactics is to modestly increase insurance premiums for the abusers.

I believe the criticism of liberationists has been misdirected.
I believe the problem is that liberationists have only targeted facilities.

Heretofore, liberationists have abjured violence and have only attacked facilities and property.

We must instead target those who do the killing, the grunts in the feedlots, the drivers, the brutes with the boltguns, the knives, and the chainsaws; the owners, the managers, the linemen, the people on the boards of directors.

All we might lose is our individual freedom, which seems a small price to pay to place the Animal Holocaust on the world stage. To challenge the worldviews of most people on the planet, to put a spotlight on human greed, cruelty and the horrors committed against our fellow beings.

No human endeavor is of importance in comparison.

The Animal Holocaust claims 10,000 victims each second, of every minute, of every hour, of every day, 365 days a year.

A sobering statistic is that all of the animals saved by the animal movement over the past 50 years is fewer than the number of animals who will have their throats cut in the next eight hours.

We must come to terms with the enormity of the Animal Holocaust and our utter failure to even slow it down.

It is time to take up arms for the animals.

 

 

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.

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• 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