The Animal Rights Movement is Unlike Any Other Social Justice Movement

Why we cannot copy anti-oppression strategies other movements have employed, and what we can do about that.

Social Justice is Social Justice, right?

Many books, papers, and talks attempt to link other social justice movements with animal liberation. They show how fights for liberation among historically oppressed human groups are connected to the struggle for animal justice. 

Examples:

Aphro-ism: Essays on Pop Culture, Feminism, and Black Veganism From Two Sisters by Aph Ko and Syl Ko shows that white supremacy is rooted in the idea that animals have no moral value, so when we animalize other groups, they then no longer have moral worth.

Eternal Treblinka by Charles Patterson links Nazi oppression and genocide against Jewish people with oppression and the brutality used against animals in the farming industry. Concentration camps were modeled after slaughterhouses.

How to Unite the Left on Animals by John Tallent shows how various Leftist ideas of justice and morality fit perfectly within veganism.

I have read many more. However, the issue I have with all these books is that while they link philosophy and analysis to veganism and animal liberation, there is a severe lack of practicality in what this information means for an activist. What are we to do with this new knowledge?

Oscar Horta (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Horta) believes there is a difference between changing one's attitude and changing one's behavior. The “go vegan” message is about changing someone's behavior. “Go vegan” has been around for a long time, and there does not appear to be any difference in the number of vegans in the last several decades. Hence, Horta argues, we should focus more on changing attitudes. If we get enough people to start viewing animals as sentient beings worthy of moral consideration then behavioral changes will come as people will be more open to these changes. 

Possibly without knowing it, the authors I listed above were working on attitude changes. They get readers to see how various struggles in repressed human populations are parallel to animal struggles from an intellectual standpoint. Any action is up to the reader to discover.

From the angle of changing attitudes, the books above have been a smashing success. After all, violence is violence and oppression is oppression. Justice is for anyone of moral value, so once animals have moral values, all the arguments line up and all the counterarguments equally fail. 

Given the philosophy and analysis of the arguments that link human and non-human oppression, perhaps we can learn from other social justice movements’ tactics and strategies since they have put theory into practice. Other justice movements have already struggled to organize and make change, so we could model our actions after them.

Enter: Bury the Chains by Adam Hochschild

Bury the Chains reviews the history of banning slavery in England from around 1780 to 1830. I picked up this book because it specifically reviews campaigns, tactics, people, and strategies, some of which failed while others succeeded. Given how slavery was completely inundated in all countries across the world at the beginning of the 1700s, how then did the mightiest country in the world end such the common practice of slavery? Whatever they did to overcome such a problem surely animal rights activists can learn from them.

Indeed, abolitionists employed many tactics that we do: education, boycotts, political leaders, religious leaders, sabotages, and revolts. Slavery supporters had to deal with issues outside their control such as diseases or wars against neighboring countries. Beyond this, the French Revolution played a key part in abolishing slavery with the French’s notion that all men deserve liberty (Which they only meant the white common man, not the black man. However, the seed was already planted. Just as ideas of liberating humans work perfectly for liberating animals, the idea that common white men deserve liberty is the same argument as suggesting any black person deserves liberty).

Bury the Chains is a fascinating book on its own. However, two key points stood out that differentiate the animal justice movement from the movement to abolish slavery or any other human-focused social justice movement. And this is exactly what the listed above books are missing. These points are: The victims cannot speak for themselves and the victims cannot fight back.

The Victims Cannot Speak for Themselves

Human liberation struggles are rooted in the assumption that humans can relate and speak to other humans. A chicken cannot learn to speak English or write essays about their struggles. A cow cannot lobby governments or start a podcast. Pigs typically do not start 501(c)3’s.

Animals do have their own language. Spend the afternoon with chickens and you will hear a variety of words. While we do not know what some of them mean, our inferences are safe to make when we can hear the screams in a slaughterhouse. We can hear the cries of a mother cow as her calf is taken from her so that we can steal her milk. But since they are not human, we write off their screams as something else, something that does not matter. We act as if the pain of a baby pig getting their tail cut off without anesthesia is somehow fundamentally different if we got one of our appendages cut off. 

So when I say the animals cannot speak for themselves, I partly mean we do not listen to them. That is why we make metaphors in our arguments relating animals to ourselves or open farm animal sanctuaries so we can see animals as being similar to ourselves. We try to get human animals to relate to non-human animals, to get people to see that animals are just like us in all things that matter.

The Victims Cannot Fight Back

Slave revolts were common in the Caribbean during the 1700s. Black and African American people could have a million-man march on Washington. They can sit at white-only counters in restaurants or the front of the bus in protest. A wife could refuse various services to their husband until women had the right to vote. The French had a violent revolution to bring liberty to every citizen. The US had a civil war to end slavery.

All these struggles and many more had the oppressed fighting directly against the oppressor. Fish cannot do that. Beagles are used for animal testing because of their extremely docile nature and a general trust of humans. Animals fighting back are extremely rare stories. Pigs have no tools or power at their disposal to break out of a gestation crate and burn down a slaughterhouse. 

These sentient, conscious beings fundamentally have no control over their damned fate.

Where to Go From Here?

These two points, while obvious when pointed out, keep us from mirroring other social justice movement’s tactics and strategies. The animals only have us to speak up and fight for their justice. No one else will do it. Only those who understand the injustice and are willing to do something about it will make any changes. This means we must employ greater courage, mettle, and ingenuity in animal liberation since we are outnumbered by people who believe animals are here for us to use.

We have to approach the practicality of animal liberation with these two facts in mind. They should shape our strategy. A few ideas:

Inspiration - We need to inspire people to join the cause and take action. From donating to protesting to calling on congress members, encouraging people to become active is fundamental to growing the movement. Protests with five activists send a different message than a protest with one hundred activists. The impact of ten people calling a restaurant to drop foie gras pales in comparison to a thousand people. Greater numbers send a greater message, so encouraging people to get active is foundational to accomplishing our goals. Furthermore, more activists means normalizing the idea of caring about animals. Having more activists removes the concept of “crazy PETA animal people” from society.

Every activist should be tasked with inspiring other non-activists to be involved. This is not a job just for leaders and organizers. Bringing others into the fold should goal for all activists. 

Inclusion - The animals do not care if vegans or non-vegans free them from the shackles and blades at a slaughterhouse. Baby chicks funneled into a blender do not care what political ideology you subscribe to. Liberating animals from their suffering should be the focus and we should not fracture our tiny movement with political or moral purity infighting. 

Every time non-animal political stances are brought up in a space for animal rights, one is risking alienating someone else and pushing them away. Is this worth it? If you believe so, I encourage you to watch Dominion, and while animals are being brutalized, tell them that you simply could not work with someone of a different political stance. I’m sure the animals will understand as they bleed out.

Impact - We need winnable campaigns. Everyone likes to win. Winning is inspiring. If we take the plight of the animals seriously then we owe it to them to fight the battles we can expect change. This does not mean we should not dream big (we absolutely should), but we should be sure we are making progress for the animals. If we find something is not working, we should drop that tactic and move on without ego or regret. The animals don’t have time to waste.

Let me know if you have any others to add to this list.

The fact that animals cannot speak or fight for themselves means we cannot expect them to take up arms or call for boycotts. This responsibility falls onto us. Go do something for them today.