(Beth Clifton collage)
Attempts to force “animal rights” into either a “left” or “right” political agenda both miss the point
OAKLAND, California––The venerable Eric Mills, among the oldest, longest involved, and still most dynamic of politically left-leaning animal rights activists, was among the first to forward to ANIMALS 24-7 an August 7, 2024 Vox opinion piece entitled “If the left is serious about saving democracy, there’s one more cause to add to the list: Animal rights must become a core issue for progressives.”
Mills may be credited with the perspective of time, having lived approximately as long as the combined ages of the Vox authors, Astra and Sunaura Taylor, 44 and 42, respectively.
And Mills, along with many much younger animal advocates, may agree with much that the Taylors say.
But that scarcely means that animal advocacy can be accurately considered a “left” or even “progressive” cause, any more than it could be considered a “right” cause.
Eric Mills, president, Action for Animals.
“Animal rights” had both “left” and “right” ancestors
The animal rights movement, as it has existed for the past half century, emerged as a fusion of several much older causes, coming from starkly different directions, as often in conflict with the political “left” as with the “right,” and still fundamentally in conflict with any ideology that puts human interests first, other than the interest we share with animals in staying alive.
The most direct ancestor of the animal rights movement was of course the humane movement that emerged in the mid-19th century, whose leaders had mostly been anti-slavery abolitionists before the U.S. Civil War.
Before World War II, the humane movement, whose collective national voices were the American Humane Association and the American Humane Education Society, distinguished itself by standing up to the Ku Klux Klan and eugenics, a brand of pseudoscience which was at the time widely accepted, but was most vehemently pushed by leftist “progressives.”
F. Rivers Barnwell of the American Humane Education Society. (Photo courtesy of granddaughter Evangeline Olive Morris.)
Integrated humane cause later self-segregated
For nearly 40 years the public faces of the humane movement were African-Americans: John W. Lemon, father-and-son Richard and Seymour Carroll, and F. Rivers Barnwell.
(See Four black leaders who built the humane movement––long before MLK! and Black humane history found in great-grandpa’s attic near a town called Ark.)
On the eve of World War II, however, the American Humane Association and the American Humane Education Society purged themselves of their African-American leadership. Most established humane institutions have remained determinedly self-segregated ever since.
The American Humane Association actually embraced Nazism, briefly, as did the Royal SPCA in England, though both quickly recanted after World War II broke out.
1948 Vegetarian & Temperance Party presidential candidate John Maxwell.
(Beth Clifton collage)
The vegetarian movement
A second major ancestor of the animal rights movement was the vegetarian movement, strong and growing throughout most of the 19th century and the early 20th century.
The vegetarian movement, however, became so inextricably intertwined with the temperance movement, associated with the spectrum of Protestant religions, that it largely collapsed and all but disappeared after the end of Prohibition in 1933.
Vegetarian organizations were only just beginning to recover by the early 1970s.
Largely through the influence of the late Nellie Shriver and National Animal Rights Conference series founder Alex Hershaft, most of the leading animal rights groups of the past several decades spun off from veggie advocacy beginnings.
(See Nellie Saiom Shriver, 80, introduced Alex Hershaft to vegan activism.)
Anna Kingsford.
The antivivisection movement
The third major ancestor of the animal rights movement was the antivivisection movement. While Astra and Sunaura Taylor in their Vox essay made indirect reference to the English Victorian antivivisectionists and proto-feminists Anna Kingsford and Frances Power Cobbe, without naming them, reality is that Kingsford and Cobbe had only marginal influence on the antivivisection cause in the U.S.
Antivivisectionism in the U.S., in the 19th century and today, has from the beginning remained deeply rooted in Christian fundamentalist rejection of evolution, in favor of Biblical creationism.
(See Conservatism, the religious right, & the evolution of anti-vivisectionism, and Fauci vs. the White Coat Waste Project: did Hans Ruesch sire the conflict?)
Theodore Roosevelt.
(Beth Clifton collage)
The environmental movement
Animal rights advocacy in the late 20th century also spun off, to a considerable extent, from the rise of the environmental movement, which from several decades followed a parallel course before mostly returning, philosophically, to hunter/conservationist origins, focused on protecting huntable habitat.
(See Why mass shooters sometimes sound like conservationists and The animal issue that made Donald Trump a presidential candidate.)
Henry Spira. (Beth Clifton collage)
Henry Spira
Indeed, the only major figure in the late 20th century rise of the animal rights movement who had significant “left” credentials was Henry Spira, who hosted Peter Singer while Singer wrote his opus Animal Liberation (1975) and founded Animal Rights International.
(See Henry Spira, 71, founder of the animal rights movement.)
The genius of Henry Spira was that he managed to cobble together the animal rights movement as we know it today from a constellation of often sharply conflicting political perspectives.
The other early “animal rights” leaders of note ranged from mild liberals to far right Republicans.
To this day, among the “animal rights” leaders who have espoused partisan political views on other topics, there appear to be approximately as many Republican conservatives as liberals, leftists, and self-described progressives, a category of belief chiefly noteworthy––in animal advocacy circles, anyhow––for their ability to get into fights with each other.
Astra & Sunaura Taylor.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Exaggerated & overdrawn
ANIMALS 24-7 does not disagree with everything alleged by Astra and Sunaura Taylor in their Vox essay, but quite a lot they mention––including much that we have worked to expose for more than 50 years––is exaggerated and overdrawn.
“For decades,” the Taylors opened, “animal industries, including meat, dairy, and commercial fishing, have been working successfully to undermine democracy and government oversight in order to boost their bottom lines.”
(Beth Clifton collage)
Democracy favors animal agriculture
Not exactly. Undermining democracy has historically not been part of the meat, dairy, and commercial fishing industry agenda, because historically––and to this day––the meat, dairy, and commercial fishing industry leaders have believed that the meat, dairy, and fish-eating overwhelming majority of Americans would always politically favor their interests.
Historically this assessment has also proved correct. Only very recently have some laws constraining animal agribusiness been getting passed, and some vegans and vegetarians been getting elected to public office. More importantly, only very recently have some vegans and vegetarians been getting re-elected to positions where influence comes with tenure.
(Beth Clifton collage)
The U.S. government is not a monolith
Continued the Taylors, “The U.S. government, meanwhile, at the behest of corporate influence, has spent the last three decades tarnishing animal activists fighting these industries as domestic terrorists.”
This misstatement assumes, first of all, that “the U.S. government” is a monomaniacal monolith, which it obviously is not, in view of the deep divisions in Congress, conflicting branches of the appellate judiciary, and current public support for presidential candidates as different in their perspectives on animal agribusiness as Kamala Harris, who fought in court to protect California laws restricting factory farming, and Donald Trump, who in his 2017-2021 tenure as U.S. president practically halted enforcement of the Animal Welfare Act.
Plant-based food entrepreneur Josh Tetrick (left) with Farm Sanctuary founder Gene Baur (right).
“Tarnish” looks more like a bright shine on the cause
Second, the Taylor claim mis-presumes that animal activists fighting the meat, dairy, and commercial fishing industries actually are categorically “tarnished” with someone as “domestic terrorists.”
To the contrary, some of these activists have in recent decades built multi-million-dollar food industries in direct competition with the meat, dairy, and commercial fishing industries. Others have built multi-million-dollar animal advocacy organizations.
The number of animal advocates who have been investigated and in a few cases prosecuted as “domestic terrorists” are vanishingly few. And most of those, including some the Taylors named, have in fact been convicted of arsons, break-ins, and uttering threats, all of which are tactics of terrorism.
(Beth Clifton collage)
“Divide-&-conquer” or embrace debate?
“To build a successful progressive movement, one that can challenge animal industries’ extraordinary corporate malfeasance,” the Taylors argue, “the left needs to resist this strategy of divide-and-conquer. It’s often said in animal rights circles that the movement needs buy-in from the broader left to succeed. We agree, but we also believe the reverse is true: For progressive movements to win, they need to incorporate animal rights.”
Perhaps. But conversely, one could substitute the words “political right” for the words “left” and “progressive” in that passage and the same would be true, in the perspectives of conservative animal advocates such as Dominion author and former George W. Bush administration speechwriter Matthew Scully.
History, meanwhile, demonstrates that animal advocacy as a cause cuts diagonally across the political spectrum, either from left to right or right to left.
Very little pro-animal legislation has ever been passed with support only from Democrats or Republicans. Practically every law helping animals on the books, especially at the federal level, has been won with strong bipartisan support.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Veggie-bashing
“For conservative pundits and politicians,” the Taylors continued, “vegetarian-bashing is a cheap and easy way to offer proverbial red meat to their base. Over the past decade, the right’s hostility toward the LGBTQ+ movement and embrace of white nationalism have grown in parallel to a histrionic fetish for animal products and contempt for those who avoid them (‘soyboys,’ in the right’s parlance).”
True enough, but as the late linguist, scholar of pejorative speech, and cat rescuer Reinhold Aman pointed out, insults in any language focus on perceived deviations from the societal norms, with the general aim of building support for the views of the people who hurl the insults by influencing the undecided to distance themselves from the insulted minority.
Reinhold Aman & friend.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Lessons from Reinhold Aman
The most frequent targets of pejorative speech, as Aman laboriously quantified in English, German, French, Yiddish, and Hungarian, and had other researchers quantify in a variety of Asian and African languages, tend to be aspects of appearance, behavior (especially sexual behavior), disabilities, religion, race, gender, and diet.
Also, as Aman noted, pejorative speech tends to be used most, though certainly not exclusively, by the side in any dispute that feels it is losing ground.
(See Pit hags, rescue angels, crazy cat ladies, dog men & chicken fighters: what’s in a name?
Jesus driving the buyers and sellers of sacrificial animals from the Jerusalem temple, painting by Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione. (1609-1664).
Abundant cheap meat
The Taylors mentioned, accurately, that “Abundant, cheap meat is unquestioned orthodoxy across the political spectrum.”
They might also have mentioned that this was true even in Biblical times.
“Mainstream vegan advocacy tends to emphasize individual consumer choice,” the Taylors continued, “thereby turning what should be a liberation movement into little more than a lifestyle defined by a particular shopping list.
“While we certainly encourage people to purchase oat- or nut-based alternatives instead of dairy or to purchase cosmetics produced without animal testing,” the Taylors said, “we ultimately see veganism as part of a more far-reaching, socially transformative agenda.”
ANIMALS 24-7 addressed this notion at length on July 22, 2024: “Food fight over veganism” becomes fight over anti-Israel statement.
(Beth Clifton collage)
“Animal rights” travels fastest when traveling light
In all likelihood, given the range of political, religious, and other sociological differences among animal advocates, veganism as a lifestyle will make most headway to the extent that it is able to spread without becoming encumbered by associations with other lifestyles and beliefs.
For example, see The animal rights movement is divided on abortion, by Vasu Murti.
“Big Meat’s agenda increasingly focuses on suppressing First Amendment rights,” the Taylors contend, “whether by pushing to make it illegal for plant-based dairy alternatives to use the word ‘milk’ in their marketing or to criminalize undercover investigations on factory farms under so-called ag-gag laws.”
(Beth Clifton collage)
The free market works for plant-based alternatives
Certainly this is true of some of the “Big Meat” industry, as ANIMALS 24-7 has often reported, but other segments of the grocery business are selling peanut butter and soy milk, and otherwise cashing in on the growing market for plant-based food products of all sorts.
Just as the animal advocacy cause is not to be judged by the extremes of a few, neither is the food industry as a whole to be misrepresented by the actions of the most economically threatened sectors.
As a whole, the grocery business continues to energetically embrace the workings of the free market––as we see on every visit to any of the six supermarkets we patronize on a regular basis.
Ten years ago, plant-based dairy alternatives were to be found only in one corner of one refrigerated display cabinet. Today, at most of these stores, plant-based dairy alternatives get more shelf base than cow’s milk and other dairy products.
(Beth Clifton collage)
“Mad bombers”
Some of the history the Taylors offer in support of their arguments is just plain wrong. They allege, for instance, that “Only months after the twin towers fell, the FBI identified the animal rights movement as America’s No. 1 domestic terrorism threat.”
This statement was reiterated, but actually originated a decade earlier, in support of the Animal Enterprise Protection Act of 1992, introduced after a series of arsons that may not have actually killed anyone, but in at least two cases very nearly did.
The subsequent rapid expansion of animal advocacy in multiple directions, despite the successful prosecution of a few “mad bombers,” clearly demonstrated that the animal cause did not need “terrorism,” or anything resembling it, in order to grow just as much, as fast, as any cause ever has.
Benjamin Lay, painted by William Williams in 1750.
Cited example limited his own reach & influence to make a point few people noticed
The Taylors mentioned that, “Animal advocacy has not always been cordoned off from other causes, and history offers numerous compelling examples for today’s activists.”
Again, true enough, except that the example the Taylors cited was Benjamin Lay (1682-1759), “who authored one of the earliest American anti-slavery books, challenged both racial and gender hierarchies, and helped push the Quaker church toward abolition with his bold activism.
“His compassion for animals was so intense,” the Taylors wrote, “that he not only refused to eat them, but also refused to travel by horse, walking everywhere by foot.”
This, however, severely limited the number of audiences Lay could address, leaving him as a footnote in both animal advocacy and abolitionist history.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Why “far more Americans are actually animal advocates than we think”
“Instead of perpetuating the narrative that animal liberation activists are extremists who are not impacted by or attuned to other systemic harms, the time has come to recognize that far more Americans are actually animal advocates than we think,” the Taylors concluded.
“Doing so,” the Taylors said, “will strengthen struggles for environmental sustainability, racial and disability justice, restraining corporate power, and — perhaps most urgently — protecting our right to dissent.”
ANIMALS 24-7 has been pointing out all of that for somewhat longer than the Taylors have been alive. So has Eric Mills.
Beth & Merritt Clifton with friends.
But “far more Americans are actually animal advocates than we think” precisely because animal advocacy is not, and never has been, shackled to any other ideology, left, right, up, down, or sideways.
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The post “Animal rights” is not a “left” or “right” cause, & never was appeared first on Animals 24-7.