Rejecting Violence Within the Animal Rights Movement

Prof. Francione, I sincerely hope that this time you will not delete nor censor my comment.
The following is your claim "I am opposed to violence . I regard violence as inherently immoral."
Well, Prof. Francione, then you owe me (and many others) an apology for deleting or censoring my (our) comments. You are violating our freedom of speech .

To All Concerned:

I have followed this debate here with some interest. More than the content of the arguments back and forth, I was interested in whether I could still hold the slightest doubt I could have that Francione and his followers are not a cult, literally a cult: an authoritarian leader who presents himself as infallible and in firm possession of the Truth and everyone else is mired in error and struggling in confusion.

The corollary of a dogmatic leader is an obedient following, and that Francione has. Nowhere, ever, have I seen one Francionite admit that their leader could be in error (which would make him human like the rest of us), that there were difficult questions surrounded by uncertainty or required experimentation in practice to work out, or that the doctrine was not perfect as is, and an answer to virtually any and all questions.

What settled this question in my mind today finally is Francione always dodges the question of what evidence did he have to level serious charges against Best, and responded by asking the MDA camp if they support intimidation tactics. He did not, and apparently, cannot answer the question. Why? Because he is WRONG, a devastating thing to admit for a God.

And thus it is no surprise that there was zero internal open or (God forbid) critical discussion of Francione’s ill-advised attack on Best, and his followers have remained silent as if it never happened, and as if Best did not have a damn good reason to respond as he did. No, history is whitewashed in a Stalinist way, such that there was no event prompting Best’s reply, his reply was not a reply at all, but an aggressive attack.

I have concluded that what we are dealing with here truly is a cult, and a menacing and frightening one I must say, now I consider one of the most serious obstacles to progress toward animal liberation.

I have also concluded that it is a total waste of time to engage Francione or anyone in his cult about any issues, for they will always have the same answer, they never be able to think in new or fresh ways, they will always pontificate and torch their critics in straw man effigies, and they will always be convinced of their absolute truth and moral purity.

There is no honesty or integrity in Francione camp, one might debate Darwin with creationistst. I recommend we just go about and advance a viable alternative to them, and forget dialogue, it is impossible. They are irrelevant, Let us move on and never look back.

Militant new welfarists claim that violence is an essential component in the struggle for animal rights and that this violence should be directed at producers and suppliers as well as at the government which subsidizes them – that is, at the supply end of the equation .

Yet it would be a radical misunderstanding to suppose, on the one hand that serious animal rights activism could consist of violent militancy, or on the other hand that animal rights could result from attacking supply rather than demand. For demand is the source of animal oppression; and it is we, the consumers, who create the demand. Moreover, violent militancy merely gives the public an excuse to dismiss a serious moral issue and the government a pretext to institute draconian legislation to protect animal industry.

But it is of course easy to see why militant new welfarists claim that we should be violently attacking producers and suppliers. For, as Nathan Schneider points out, if they admitted that demand is the problem it would reduce their approach to absurdity as it would sanction a senseless and indiscriminate attack on just about everyone.

The counterclaim to the effect that industry, together with government, manufactures the demand is absurd on its face. First, it implies that if industry stopped advertising animal products speciesist oppression would simply disappear. The foolish naivety of this should make us pause, I think.

Second, it cannot explain the obvious fact that animal use pre-dates modern advertising – literally by thousands of years.

Third, it is virulently reductive: it assigns no significance to moral, psychological and sociological considerations: as if the problem of animal exploitation could be explained without reference to the fact that people generally do not think that animals have an interest in their lives and also the fact that people are socialized into a world saturated with speciesist norms and values.

Fourth, although industry fosters demand to some extent through advertising, for example by convincing parents that their children need to drink milk for health reasons, this cannot explain why people think it is okay to kill animals. The only thing that can explain this convincingly is the fact that people think that animals do not have an interest in their lives.

In sum: industry's advertising is based upon, and is only acceptable because of, speciesist norms and values. It is not the cause of those values.

I think that we should let the public know that violent militancy is a minority position within the animal rights movement that is rejected categorically by most animal rights advocates as inconsistent with the baseline principles of the animal rights.

As Francione argues, whether or not one agrees with the notion that all violence is morally wrong, according to the fundamental moral principle of treating similar things similarly, nothing speaks in favour of targeting producers and suppliers of animal products rather than consumers.

In a moral sense, institutional animal exploitation is contract killing; producers and suppliers of animal products torture and kill animals on behalf of those who demand animal products, the consumers; without demand, there would be no supply. That's why ''those who consume meat and animal products, who create the demand, bear the ultimate moral responsibility.'' (Francione on the video page of his website)

Consumers exploit animals merely for reasons of pleasure, amusement, or convenience whereas producers and suppliers make a living from it. That doesn't make what they do any more morally justifiable, just that for them, there is a relevant substantial interest at stake. So, if anyone, the primary target of violent activism would have to be consumers, that is, 99 % of the population including the largest part of most animal activists' closest social environment , family, friends, co- workers . But assaulting McDonald's is a lot easier than stopping anyone from going there to eat.

Perpetrating or advocating violence against producers and suppliers is an expression of the failure to see demand as the core issue, in the same way as are negotiations and deals, and the promotion thereof, between animal welfare organizations and animal industry about supposedly more ''humane'' and in fact more profitable ways of exploiting animals. Both courses of action – violence against, and negotiation with, institutional exploiters – are based on denying nonveganism as the root of the problem, and on refusing to make veganism the moral baseline of animal advocacy; both send the message to the public that one can be ''helping the animals'' without being vegan; both are two sides of the same coin which is inimical to the abolition of animal slavery.

Petakills and LouisCipher77, sorry but you both are mistaken. The wild life of the carnivora has not anything in common with the option that the omnivorous human beings have. The omnivorous condition of the human beings means that they can choose what to eat while they support, and they improve, their nutrition. The wild carnivora do not have this option. These are two well different things: do not mix them to justify your taste