The Ethics of the Animal Rights Movement, Part One

I am now heavy into the research for my paper on the AR extremist movement and can't help but be very concerned and saddened by what I am finding.  At the moment, I am still rather stunned.  I actually had to take a break, because this just really blew me away.  A young man with a history of mental illness and suicide attempts, doused himself with gasoline and set fire to himself, outside a Portland, OR fur store, this past January.  It is clear from what I could gather that this young man wanted to die for what are likely many reasons.  There is no question that his suicide was not primarily motivated by his animal rights beliefs.

Yet the ALF pressoffice includes his story in their media links.  It can also be found on some other sites around the webs.  But what the local AR extremists did on the heels of this sad affair is unconscionable.  The following is an email received by KATU, channel 2 in Portland;

The Portland Anti Fur Campaign was just alerted to the action outside Nicholas Ungar Furs earlier today [Wednesday].

We do not know who this person was nor do we know what his intentions were. If his intentions were to raise awareness of unnecessary animal suffering and killing done in the fur industry, and by businesses like Ungar Furs, then we wish him well.

We are not saying that we want people to light themselves on fire and run into fur shops, but we do understand that sometimes you have to make noise and make a scene to stand up for the animals. It is really unfortunate that one would feel as if they must take such drastic measures, yet, this Fur Store has continued their bloody business despite protests outside for 3 years now.

If the person's motivation was to bring media attention to the issue, they obviously achieved their goal.

Raise your fist, and your voice, Fox and Mink have no Choice!

 Any sane organization would have, if anything, soundly condemned Daniel Shaull's suicide as being tragically misguided.  Were the ALF press office sane, rather than throwing this into the mix without comment, they would have made it clear that anyone feeling the urge to commit an act such as this should seek help.  But these are not sane people.  Not by any stretch of the imagination.  The following is the introduction to this video of Steven Best, that I have linked to before:

There's a new civil war unfolding in this country, a new civil war. And it's a war that's unfolding about and around the politics of nature. And on one side, there are people who are exploiting the earth, and who are destroying the lives of animals by the billions. And they are prepared to defend their interest, their alleged rights. On the other side, are people like us and our fellow activists. People who are willing to escalate the struggle, to whatever extent is necessary. And when there is a war, as a war is brewing now about the politics of nature, that means the gloves are coming off.

There is also this essay by Best:

Realizing that nonviolence against animal exploiters in fact is a pro-violence stance that tolerates their blood-spilling without taking adequate measures to stop it, a new breed of freedom fighters has ditched Gandhi for Machiavelli and switched principled nonviolence with the amoral (not to be confused with immoral) pragmatism that embraces animal liberation “by any means necessary.

Or at the last link Best quotes a Communiqué from the Revolutionary Cells Animal Liberation Brigade after the 2003 bombings of Chiron and Shaklee Corporations:

We have given all of the collaborators a chance to withdraw from their relations [with Huntingdon Life Sciences]. We will now be doubling the size of every device we make. Today it is 10 lbs, tomorrow 20....until your buildings are nothing more than rubble. It is time for this war to truly have two sides. No more will all of the killing be done by the oppressors, now the oppressed will strike back. We will be non-violent when these people are non-violent to the animal nations.

What is very important to recognize here, is that while there is insanity in the movement, these people aren't stupid. Nor are these people any different than extremists and terrorists who kill in the name of a god.  The only reason that people have yet to be killed, is because of the fortitude of the young men and women who listen to Steven Best and his ilk and commit terrorist acts.  But how long is that going to last, with Best, Vlasac and a host of activists ramping up the rhetoric of escalation?

Post Modern Extremism: Steven Best, Civil War and Animal Rights

A post modernist world view is full with important conversations. The world as we know it is rife with uncertainty and instability is a way of life. The status quo of the Western world is political upheaval, economic turmoil, cultural clashes and a growing discontent with political and traditional social institutions. It is bleak picture, chaotic and at times simply terrifying. For some the obvious choice is to latch tight and hard to the familiar - religion, patriotism and a past who's sun has set. For others it is obvious that we must accept change, while working hard to minimize the chaos of inevitable extreme social transformation - holding onto the past as we develop viable new paradigms. But for some, nothing short of total revolution will suffice. A complete shredding of the past for a presumably bright new future, heretofore only viable on paper and in the classroom.

For some taking the important discussions fostered by postmodernism to an extreme is the only answer.

A couple of posts ago, I linked a clip of Dr. Steve Best discussing terrorism, which he euphemistically described as "direct action." The shorter clip I embedded in that post provides a taste of the linked clip from which it was edited. If you have not watched it and don't want to spend ten minutes of your life with Dr. Best, I highly recommend that you check it out now - it is only about three and a half minutes. The longer clip actually makes for a much more intensive watch, but the shorter clip encapsulates the points that I want to touch on here quite reasonably.

There are a lot of things that jumped out at me, but the most obvious and I suspect the most important involve the past of Dr. Best. As the chair of the philosophy department at the University of Texas, El Paso, Best teaches Anarchism, Marxism, Feminism and Postmodernism. Yet he feels that none of these philosophies is radical in the sense that animal rights is radical. What is striking is that he virtually throws the rest under a bus, completely marginalizing them with the statement that unlike animal rights activism, none of these philosophies requires us to change our daily habits.

While I am not an anarchist, Marxist or ultimately a postmodernist (I am, as I consider it, a feminist), I have a fair grounding in all of these. And ultimately I believe that if the human race survives, a responsible anarchy is inevitable - though a very long ways off. The thing is, one needn't even fully embrace any of these philosophies to find them changing their daily habits and behaviors. While the only one of these I would consider a part of my identity is feminism, all of these have changed my daily habits, in that they have significantly influenced my thinking and the decisions that I make. I suspect that I have rather more respect for the philos that Best has spent his life teaching, than he does.

What really strikes me and is rather a continuation of this point, is when best describes his relationship with his university, in the context of teaching animal rights. While I have little doubt that Best is a true believer, I also have little doubt that part of his reason for embracing animal rights, is that he finally found a philosophy that created conflict with his university. His whole demeanor changes when he is describing this, his mouth turning up into a smirk of obvious glee.

To be clear, I do not think that Best bases his support for animal rights on the controversial nature of his teaching. Nor do I think that Best has completely rejected the rest of what he has taught. I have no doubt that Best is passionate about human rights philosophies. What I suspect is that the quest for controversy has largely driven his movement through radical philosophies, until he landed on animal rights and the advocacy of full out civil war. I believe his passion for it is genuine and unwavering. But I suspect what brought him there was being a radical extremist in need of a Cause, a priest in need of a Faith.

The other thing that Best does that is extremely important, is that he is wedding himself and the AR movement to several other causes. In the video he is wedding it to the larger environmental movement. In this essay, he weds it to a great deal more, including the very important and very real struggle for civil liberties. This is a very important tactic to take, because it garners him and the AR movement peripheral allies. People who disagree with virtually everything that the AR movement stands for, are standing with him and with the AR movement on certain issues. This creates the illusion that the AR movement carries considerably more weight than it actually does.

Words define reality, and the animal and Earth liberation movements must resist being defined as violent fanatics and extremists. They must defend themselves rhetorically and philosophically, establishing a sharp distinction between animal and Earth liberation, property destruction, protests, and demonstrations on one side, and bona fide violence and terrorism on the other side.

Notice that he is including property destruction on the side of non-terrorist actions. This is important because the primary tactic of AR terrorists is to burn down or blow up cars, labs and businesses. These are actions that are meant to intimidate scientists and businesses that exploit non-human animals, to terrorize them into submission. And these actions are not happening in a vacuum. Right along side this, is rhetoric about escalation - Best engages in this himself, calling for acts of violence directly against scientists, businesses and institutions that use or engage in animal testing and other people who exploit animals.

It is one thing to engage in peaceful protest and even engage in acts of civil disobedience. It is quite another to terrorize people with carbombs and arson and threats against their person. While he is calling for a sharp distinction, the extremist AR movement (as well as the extremist environmental movement) actually does it's best to blur the lines and obfuscate, so that when the political arm of the movement is attacked by law enforcement, they can cry foul and scream about their civil liberties being violated. By mainstreaming the soft target terrorism, leaders of the AR movement create martyrs of virtually every member of the movement.

When this is all wedded to the very legitimate fight for civil liberties that we in the U.S. have seen destroyed by the patriot act and the war on terror, it often brings people like myself into the fray. And no matter how the AR movement has orchestrated it, when it comes to the issue of civil liberties, I cannot help but come down on the side of liberty and on the side of vast swathes of the AR movement.

What this does is create a critical need on the part of advocates for civil liberties and the freedom of expression to a) be well educated about the people and movements they are defending and b) to make very clear distinctions between defending and supporting. I defend a great deal of expression I strongly disagree with, that does not mean that I support it.

Animal Rights Redux (updated)

I am not going to take the time right this second, but I am definitely going to address the insanity that is extreme post modernism. My earlier post made an extremist facebook page and that is where I came across this gem:



It is not that all post modernist thought is wrongheaded or bad. There are some perfectly valid discussions to be had. But taken to it's extremes you end up with sentiments like this one, left on Jason's blog - a comment that I think encapsulates animal rights insanity;

"But I am not a violent person. I simply want the violent people dead."

I am going to get to going in some depth about the nature of extremist political movements, especially post modern extremism - but I want to give it the discussion it deserves and will take a few days. I did find the video that the above clip was culled from and highly recommend that you watch it in it's entirety.

In particular, I would like you to pay close attention to the ending where Dr. Best discusses the concept of living in harmony with all living beings. This is a very good example of hitting people where they are likely to be more vulnerable. There are a very few of us, liberal or conservative, radical or down to earth, who cannot identify with that concept in some way or another. It is propaganda of the very highest order and is as effective as it is for a very important reason.

Best believes what he is saying - absolutely. There is little question in my mind that Dr. Steve Best, chair of the philosophy department at the University of Texas, El Paso, takes what he is saying as an article of Faith. When I watched the linked video, I was stirred by it - it spoke to me in a very particular fashion. Even as I was sitting here, picking out the fundamental flaws in his reasoning, angry about his overt support for terrorism - his Faith moved me.

The elements that make Dr. Best's commentary so very powerful, is the very same element that makes devoted theists - theists who truly believe what they claim to believe, so very effective as recruiters for their religion. And make no mistake. Without gods or supernatural elements, the philosophy that Best espouses is very much a religion. Given his background, I am comfortable in assuming that Best is an atheist. The difference between him and atheists such as myself, is that Best has created for himself a non-theistic religion that excepting a god, carries all the trappings of religions from the dawn of sentience. Faith, dogma, fundamentalism and absolute Belief - Dr. Best's religion has it all, even it's fanatics.