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.
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.
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.
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.
And it could be the catalyst for revolution.
Attacking the board members of Big Ag firms, the financiers of the animal death camps, the slaughterhouses, the packing plants, the feed lots, the factory farms could trigger revolution.
The revolution which toppled the Czar in Russia was ignited by less of a spark.
Animal activists are too few in number to successfully bring down the state by ourselves. We need all enemies of capitalism to join in revolt.
To that end, it is helpful if we reach out to the broader left on issues of concern to our brothers and sisters.
When the police and the National Guard crack down on us, they will also be cracking down on African Americans, Native Americans, civil libertarians, students, most of whom have felt the boot of the state on their throats for years.
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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Armory of the Revolution 
Excellent article! Fully agree!!
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“Animal activists are too few in number to successfully bring down the state by ourselves. We need all enemies of capitalism to join in revolt” .. and scathing vocabulary:- ‘Your Actions Reflect Your Breeding’ is the psychological tool that applies to the doors of Parliaments, highways, public toilets, online forums and everywhere in between, slaughter houses inclusive. Seen from the black-and-white view of non-humans, it is a breeding issue of humans, not just a generation of ‘refinement’ achieved, several.
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Revolution is about the only thing left. By now justice demands something more drastic than our failed attempts.
Just a few thoughts on two suggestions.
“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.”
Agreed. But activists and organizations have been recruiting and motivating for years. As for education, that seems to be the last desperate solution to changing bad human behavior. (How long have we been educating people to not drink and drive? Or not take drugs? Or not to exceed the speed limit?). The problem is combining education with the motivation to change behavior. For animal activists and organizations that means (horrors!) sacrifice, as in giving up meat, eggs, milk, hunting and fishing, wool, leather, etc. I see that as one of our main problems.
We have been accumulating and disseminating educational materials in the form of leaflets, books, videos. Education has helped in getting elephants out of some circuses and in curtailing the business of SeaWorld. There have been other victories. But we have also worked hard and lost. Laws have been enacted that were full of loopholes and allowed abuse to continue. Authorities and agencies had no will to execute laws that were passed, as we’ve seen with the USDA’s dismal failure to enforce the Animal Welfare Act. Laws may be overturned by legislatures or rescinded by court orders, as in the recent foie gras law in California.
The videos available on YouTube should be education enough to turn any decent person against the abuses they document. There are visions of dairy cows abused on farms, pigs being cut in half or battered in Vietnam, dogs and cats hanging and burned in restaurants in China, bulls sinking to their death in the corrida, and cows in halal slaughterhouses gasping their last through their slit throats.
It has been said that if all slaughterhouses had glass walls, this would be a nation of vegetarians. Some viewers might, indeed, give up meat. Others would stare through the glass with their eyes wide shut. For them, a few hours away from the carnage would dissolve the vision of the dying cows into cheeseburgers, like the photos in a slide show. Education is no solution to denial or plain lack of compassion.
So I believe in recruit, educate, and motivate but have learned not to get my hopes up.
If we know the revolution will take time, then we need better and more organization. It seems strange that people around the world who truly feel passionate about saving animals aren’t communicating more widely. If ISIS can recruit and exchange information and ideas over the Internet, why aren’t members of PETA and the HSUS and others groups and individuals here and abroad connecting more too? Ideas could flow freely and knowing how many others were involved in the battle would help maintain interest. We need to keep up the energy and mobilization that followed Cecil’s murder.
“When the police and the National Guard crack down on us, they will also be cracking down on African Americans, Native Americans, civil libertarians, students, most of whom have felt the boot of the state on their throats for years.”
They are the ones who should be our allies. But experience has shown that that logic has not always prevailed. African Americans, with slavery in their past, and Jews, with the Holocaust in their past, are often angered by the comparison of their suffering with that of animals. Some women have had a similar reaction when their oppression and abuse has been compared to the domination and abuse of animals, although there are many women now in the fight. Animal rights organizations and activists do need to do more recruiting and educating in communities who are not as involved currently but whose help we will need in the future. This is where organizations already in place and with more resources could help, such as PETA with its outreach to the Hispanic community. WARNING NOTE: Both PETA and the HSUS have attempted to reach out to evangelicals in the past, but their message was deemed “tin-eared and offensive” to religious people. So all we can do is keep trying.
Hopefully some day we will be the spark that ignites the flame!
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This call for revolution is crock! Do you understand more than 95 percent of the canine animal rescue people enjoy sharing bovine burgers with their preferred canine captives?
I harp on the canine rescue people because they are as hypocritical and guilty of the ongoing colossal animal killing as those who own and operate slaughterhouses.
Their call for no-kill shelters is a joke. Yes-kill for no-kill is the truth.
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Reblogged this on Species and Class.
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