Regan can be seen to the right of the lead banner of the 1990 march.

​​I’ve noticed a new generation of vegans who seem to have, in my view, little grasp of what veganism is, and none of what it meant to the founders of the vegan social movement – the founders of our movement, that which the new generation have recently joined. There are plenty of people who have accepted, apparently without question, Tobias Leenaert’s nonsensical assertion that the vegan movement is “about food,” while the cry of the new activists seems to be that veganism as a movement is far more than that – it’s “for the animals,” and only “for the animals.”
 
In terms of the history of the vegan social movement, both of these views of veganism are wrong. So, how have these misconceptions about veganism come about?
 
My thoughts are that (1), the current definition(s) of veganism are weak and lack the depth required to capture what the pioneers of the vegan movement meant by veganism, (2), the movement has been (understandably) involved with making veganism “mainstream” in the last 30 years but with negative consequences, and (3), we often don’t teach, and don’t seem to care about, our own movement’s history.
 
In relation to the last point in particular, we must be a rare social movement that seems to think that we “can make it up as we go along.” However, we’ve also done that same thing in relation to the meaning of animal rights, so we do have a track record of sloppiness and of business-interests-over-principles.
 
DEFINITION(S)

• […] a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude—as far as is possible and practicable—all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose; and by extension, promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of humans, animals and the environment.

 
When people in the movement talk about veganism, they usually cite this 1979 Vegan Society definition (some say that this wording was pretty much in place by 1988), and others, fewer in number, are content to use the awful definitions of veganism one finds in standard dictionaries.
 
The (first and British) Vegan Society does not have a very good record when it comes to sorting out a good definition of veganism. Its 1979 definition is weak and it does not anywhere near grasp the “full meaning” of veganism.
 
On a personal note, people like myself who can be called long-time vegans have been at fault here. We let things slide – big time. 1979 was the year I became a vegan. However, I did not join The Vegan Society (TVS) or really see it has having much to do with my movement for animal liberation. I think in those days, I saw TVS as pretty irrelevant to the direct action parts of the movement which I was immediately involved in. Indeed, in the early 1980s, when the numbers of activists going to prison rose, we rather crossed swords with TVS.
 
Back in those days people had to be a member of the Society in order to get a diet in prison that vegans eat. One literally had to show senior officers your red TVS membership card. We asked TVS if they were prepared to send a membership card out to new prisoners immediately upon their need for one, and we’d sort out actual paid membership later. The last thing animal liberationists needed on their plate (no pun intended) was a fight with prison authorities to get a vegan’s diet.
 
TVS refused, so we resolved the problem by forging their membership cards. The result was that activists had no need to officially join the organisation. TVS updated their definition in 1979 – the one virtually everyone uses now – and I don’t think there was much of a discussion about it, at least not in my circles.
 
As I said, from the 1940s, when TVS was formed, getting the definition sorted out didn’t seem to be the most pressing issue – it’s quite likely that just remaining viable as a group of revolutionary mavericks (for that is what they were) was the priority in the early years. A lot of the initial burden of administration and writing fell on the shoulders of Donald Watson, who also was forced to make an early priority of vegan health issues because some of the first members of the Society got sick and virtually everyone told all of them that living, let alone thriving, without consuming animal products was impossible.
 
It seems that in the very late 1940s and early 1950s, Leslie Cross was among the first to point out the need to clarify just what being vegan meant. A couple of years ago, a video was circulated from some health vegan who claimed that Cross was some sort of “animal rights extremist” who corrupted TVS and forced it in a new radicalised direction. I do not think the evidence suggests that. Indeed, even Donald Watson, the most famous of TVS co-founders, described veganism as “the greatest cause on earth.” He talked about other movements as “lesser movements.”
 
That may sound rather arrogant but I think he meant that the vegan movement had a wider remit than most others – and the consequences of bringing about a vegan world would have huge benefits to other animals, of course, but also to human beings, and the environment (then called ecological concerns).
 
The early vegan movement pioneers were also very practical – they had to be. The movement began during “World War Two,” and food and other forms of rationing (clothes, fuel, etc.) did not end until the mid-1950s with some arguing that the effects of war rationing were felt until the 1970s and 80s. The early vegans were, not surprisingly, part of the grow-your-own veg movement and some of the early movement pioneers, such as Eva Batt, were concerned about soil quality.
 
The ethos and vision of the vegan movement was summed up in 1995 by Kath Clements in Why Vegan: the Ethics of Eating and the Need for Change

• Veganism is about having a consistent approach to human rights and animal rights, ecology and world food problems.

 
This is an echo of what Eva Batt wrote in 1964 in a booklet called Why Veganism?

• Veganism is one thing and one thing only – a way of living which avoids exploitation, whether it be of our fellow [human beings], the animal population, or the soil upon which we rely for our very existence.

 
There are only hints in the 1979 definition of veganism by TVS that give any indication of veganism’s impressive scope and objective expressed by Clements and Batt.
 
Neither is there much in the 88/79 definition that captures the radicalism of the vegan social movement in the late 40s and early 50s.
 
For example, in 1951, TVS were clarifying what it means by the term “exploitation,” saying that the Society seeks “to end the use of animals by [humans] for food, commodities, work, hunting, vivisection, and all other uses involving exploitation of animal life by [humanity].”
 
Adding

• By the adoption of this rule, the Society has clearly come out on the side of the liberators; it is not so much welfare that we seek, as freedom. Our aim is not to make the present relationship between [humans and other animals]…more tolerable, but to abolish it and replace it by something more worthy.

 
This sort of rhetoric (not regulation of animal treatment but the abolition of animal use) was to resurface in the rights-based writing of Tom Regan who wrote The Case for Animal Rights in 1983. However, this radicalism rarely featured in The Vegan Society’s claims-making of the 1980s.
 
Human Evolution.
 
In 1951, Leslie Cross also talked about “the second broad aspect of the vegan aim” which included, reminding us of Watson’s “greatest cause” claim, the expected “effect upon human evolution.”
 
Remembering that these vegan movement pioneers had experienced a huge war that had ended only six years previously, it is not surprising that they believed that human violence – including that against other animals – would “return like a boomerang upon humanity's own head.” Thus, Cross argued that, “Until the present relationship between [humans and other animals] is replaced by one of companionship on a relatively equal footing, the pursuit of happiness by [humanity] is foredoomed to a painful and tragic frustration.”
 
In 1954, Cross again outlined that veganism means liberation for both humans and other animals. He said that a vegan future would have no butchers’ shops, no vivisection labs, no hunting, and people would be drinking vegan milk. Still part of 21st century vegan claims-making, Cross said that, “The countryside will not be heavy with the anguish of cows crying for their calves.”
 
As ever, though, benefits to humanity were also outlined: “But some of the changes are not so obvious. The benefits to [humanity] of living in a kindlier and more enlightened world can be envisaged only in broadest outline.”
 
Moreover, in direct agreement with Watson that veganism is the greatest cause on earth, Cross writes in a 1954 edition of The Vegan, that

• Veganism is the most recent of the periodic surges which have marked the tide of freedom ever since history began. It is distinguished from its predecessors by virtue of the fact that it brings a quite new and distinctive feature into the long fight for liberty; it has driven the tide of freedom beyond what has hitherto been held to be its natural boundary — the concept of [a free humanity].

 
The “distinctive feature” being spoken of is, of course, that the principles of justice in veganism vaults over the species barrier and declares other animals as rights holders along with human animals. And Cross did write in terms of rights
 

• Until the advent of veganism, comparatively few [people] regarded the animals as being either worthy of or entitled to the right to be free, and probably fewer still realised the impressive effect which the granting of such a right would have upon the freedom of [humanity itself].

​These are the values of vegans – the recognition that the fate of humanity and other animals are bound together on a fragile planet under attack from within. The vegan movement pioneers knew all too well about being attacked by an outside enemy – but their revolutionary thought looked at injustice at home and abroad. Have we lost the radicalism of our movement’s past?
 
THE MAINSTREAM
 
As noted in this blog entry, via the work of pattrice jones, when we say “the mainstream” we are not saying “the majority of humans.” The word sounds like we are saying that, but we’re not. The majority of humanity is made up of marginalised persons of various types.
 
Leenaert openly characterises his approach as being about “mainstreamness,” and I think we can all see the attraction of veganism “being mainstream.” However, I’m not sure that this notion has been analysed much, certainly not critically. Veganism becoming “mainsteam,” may simply mean that the idea of veganism is better known, more widespread, and more accepted than it has been in the past.
 
I think that is true. In my time as a vegan, I’ve seen people finally being about to pronounce the word “vegan” and not think it’s something to do with Star Trek. The huge increase in vegan and vegan-friendly eateries, and vegan’s food and clothing being more easily obtainable in stores, makes veganism more “mainstream.” Some people prefer the term “normalisation,” but I think the meaning is generally the same.
 
I think the difficulty – the mistake – even the betrayal – of vegan values is when vegan organisations try to align with conventional values thought to reflect what’s called, of course, “mainstream values.”
 
When radical social movement go for “mainstreamness” in this sense, then they may face a very real danger of losing their core, foundational, values. This process, which is predicted in some social movement theorising, is the process I see happening in the vegan movement.
 
I hope that the first section has sufficiently demonstrated that the origins of the vegan social movement can be described as pro-intersectional in nature, even with the important caveats that the term had not then been coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw, and the story of the origins of the vegan movement discussed here (revolving as it does around the British Vegan Society) is a very white story.
 
This initial pro-intersectional impulse was carried through into the 1970s and 1980s as I recall them. I often say that we would be busy sabotaging a hunt on a Saturday, maybe a “Club Row” demo, or something similar – and perhaps less legal – on a Sunday, and then we’d find ourselves engaged in Reclaim the Night and Rock Against Racism events in the week.
 
That was my sense of the recognition of what David Nibert calls the “entanglements of oppression and liberation” in what we “just did” in the 1980s. A lot of us were influenced by punk music too (not so much me, in all honesty, stuck in Bolan mainstreamness!), so this pro-intersectional orientation was fired up in the mid-1970s.
 
In campaigning terms, we were at the crest of a wave and we were fighting everything: apartheid, patriarchy, speciesism, racism, hierarchy, injustice, and so on. In terms of values, Steve Best is right (in his 2013 Total Liberation talk) that, whatever our politics as individuals, we are expressing left wing values.

Then there was a change, the start of the slide, and we didn’t take much notice, and barely any action against it. The national animal movement became dominated by a group of animal welfare corporations – and huge blame for the mess we are in can be laid at the doors of one organisation: People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PeTA). In my eyes, this transnational abomination has done terrible damage to the animal movement.
 
Why – and this is a question raised by the Francione countermovement – did we, from the 1990s onwards, just stand there and passively let PeTA get away with its blatant sexist bullshit? After that was seen to be largely accepted by a complacent movement and a cap-in-hand grassroots, then came the ableism, fat shaming, racism, and ground scraping to shallow celebrity culture. PeTA had moved from a radical innovation to a corporate monster dripping in aggressively marketed mainstream patriarchal capitalist values.
 
One of their greatest crimes was their role – that continues to this day – in the marginalisation of rights-based animal rights thinking in favour of animal welfarism that is nevertheless called “animal rights.” The corporate movement – and the submissive, docile, grassroots – destroyed Animal Rights as an idea, and as the proper articulation of the position of the “animal rights movement.” The way that this movement treated Tom Regan is nothing less than disgusting and shameful. It will take a lot of work to remove that stain from the animal advocacy movement.
 
The effect, then, of mainstreamness on a once radical movement, is the moderation of the organisations within it, and the marginalisation of any revolutionary values that, although were the initial drivers of the cause, are now seen as “not sellable,” “too extreme,” “too radical,” “purist” and, in a nutshell, “too consistent” for mainstream consumption.

In the meantime, again as Best argues, the movement becomes a laughing stock among progressive movements that should, at the very least, be locked in an alliance for justice with the vegan animal rights movement. By pandering to mainstream values, and doing everything to bend over backwards to meet the conventions of a mass media, we have alienated those who hold the values we hold – or which we once held.
 
Things are now so bad and so dangerous that, as Christopher Sebastian said in a recent Livegan podcast, there are prominent (and seemingly popular) white supremacists and Nazis currently in the “vegan” movement, not to mention the recent #TimesUpAR revelations about male entitlement, harassment, and violence in a movement made up mainly of females (see this ARZone podcast with Carol J. Adams for an account of that scandalous situation that should have never arisen).
 
HISTORY OF THE MOVEMENT
 
By their very nature, social movement move. They evolve and, indeed, move with the times – to not do so would be devastating for them. However, social movements are also grounded in a set of claims and principles, some of which should not bend and should not be diluted or else its original vision may be crushed and lost.
 
It is clear that I put a lot of emphasis on the values and vision of the founding pioneers of our movement – but I’ve also said that their words are not law, and cannot be thought of in such terms. However, any attempt to alter the principles and values of the vegan movement should – as a bare requirement and also an act of basic manners – acknowledge the principles and values that are under examination.
 
I don’t see a lot of that in the vegan movement. Indeed, some relative “newbies” have told me, “f*ck the founders,” when I point out what they stood for. That is both ridiculous and juvenile, as if people join a Marxist movement and the first thing they say is, “f*ck Marx!” Actually, some neo-Marxists got close to that after years of reflection, but they were always capable of describing what they thought should be changed and what it was that they were changing.
 
The new generation of vegans don’t do that – they simply declare what veganism is – it’s “about food,” it’s “only about the [other] animals,” with no acknowledgement that such declarations are totally out of step with the very founders of the vegan social movement in the 1940s – how can anyway be so conceited as to not care about the values of a movement they have just joined?
 
I argued, here, that the history of the vegan movement reveals that it has an interconnected focus and scope. There appears to be a number of people in the present vegan movement who seem petrified of pro-intersectionality. These people seem not to understand what intersectionality is, or exaggerate what it would do to the animal movement if widely adopted within it. However, by looking at the vegan movement in terms of its focus and scope, that should allay their fears that pro-intersectionality takes away from a concentration on “animal issues.” That is not what pro-intersectionality within the vegan movement would do.
 
Some may think it rather overblown to say that the vegan movement is in crisis – aren’t we seeing a massive growth in veganism just now? I think the answer to that is yes and no. We are seeing a growth in something that often gets called veganism – but a vegan movement “only about food,” or “only about [other] animals” is not the vegan movement.
 
There is also the problem that Tom Regan was keen to point out – that it seems to be the case that, yes a lot of people join the animal movement, but a lot leave as well. Some estimate that as many as 80% leave. We should be bothered by that.
 
I just wonder whether, if people join the vegan movement with a full understanding of its revolutionary reach and ramifications, they may stay – but who are most likely to stay in such a radical movement. People who are radicals – right!
 
Finally, to remind people what we are all about, again from Tom Regan, this time in a rights-based animal rights context from 1983, remember: “The animal rights movement is a part of, and not opposed to, the human rights movement.”

On the 21st February 2017, Anna Charlton, Gary Francione, and Bob Linden spoke on Go Vegan Radio about the late Tom Regan who had died a few days earlier. It can be regarded as a critical tribute. Click the player above.
 
By and large, it was a fond and sympathetic remembrance of the time when Francione was working with PeTA, and it seemed for a while that rights-based animal rights may have become a force in the animal advocacy movement. Essentially, the corporate welfare movement strangled animal rights at birth to the extent that there is no animal rights movement now.
 
Of course, the phrase “animal rights” is heard often enough but used by virtually all animal advocates rhetorically as a label only. I don’t see any of the emergent You Tubers of the movement – and none in the national group structure – showing much evidence that they are at all familiar with rights-based theory on human relations with other sentient beings.
 
Charlton notes that Regan was frustrated by the lack of philosophical foundation to the animal movement. Newkirk and Pacheco, co-founders of PeTA, had read Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation but Regan’s The Case for Animal Rights was neglected and ultimately rejected by PeTA and the rest of the animal movement which was sliding into (or back into) animal welfarism during the 1990s. To this day, the only philosophy book PeTA sell is Singer’s which they mistakenly describe as an animal rights text.
 
Francione notes that he and Regan wanted to figure out how to bring a rights-based foundation into the animal movement. So, in terms of timescale, we are talking about the mid to late 1980s to 1996.
 
The story that emerges in this tribute of sorts to Tom Regan is of the birth and then the death of the North American animal rights movement. Francione admits that Britain was ahead of the States on this but, again, there is no rights-based animal rights movement in Britain at present either. That Regan was becoming a force in Europe was demonstrated in the lead he took in the 1989 BBC Arena animal rights debate. Regan’s opening and summing up of this survives on YT.
 
Francione claims that his own break with Regan occurred between two “marches for the animals.” The first was in 1990 and the second 1996. Francione suggests that, between those years, animal welfarists organised to marginalise animal rightists.
 
In 1992, Animals’ Agenda published a “Point/Counterpoint” article in which Regan & Francione argued for abolitionism, stating that a movement’s means creates its ends, and vice versa, while Ingrid Newkirk of PeTA argued for new welfarism. “Going into bat for animal welfarists,” Newkirk trots out the language we now hear all the time: “steps in the right direction” – “purists” – “all or nothing.” Interesting that Newkirk even offers up a reduced view of veganism in 1992, saying that some “vegans” support animal experimentation. No wonder that the original radicalism of veganism is in danger of being destroyed.
 
Regan and Francione, it seems, recognised that the rights-based surge that emerged in 1990 in North America was to be deliberately put down by welfarist corporations, and that the 1996 event was designed to re-establish the dominance of animal welfarism in the “animal rights” movement.  
 
Francione says he writes about all this in his 1996 book, Rain Without Thunder: The Ideology of the Animal Rights Movement (RWT), in the postscript. Regan and Francione called for a boycott of the 1996 march, seeing what was going on in the politics of the movement as a whole, but Francione claims that Regan eventually caved in to welfarist pressure and “nastiness,” and decided to support the second march in 1996. Francione suggest that, at this point, Regan fully embraces new welfare methodology but I think that a different interpretation is possible.

1996 is also the year in which the first embers of the Francione countermovement began to glow – dimly at first. Francione split with PeTA and began to evolve what we now know as the Francione Abolitionist Approach. However, in the RWT postscript, Francione suggests that the difference between himself and Regan may be that he begins to see himself as utterly outside of the existing movement (hence seeing his “approach” now as a “countermovement” to the animal advocacy movement). On the other hand, Regan, naively perhaps, seems to have thought that he could work within the prevailing movement and bring it into line – or more into line - with rights-based animal rights.
 
Francione’s own account in RWT shows that Regan had not fully embraced new welfarism. Francione reports that Regan, after agreeing to talk at the 1996 march, nevertheless said critically that he thought it was a “welfarist event” while accepting that animal welfare “does some good.” Regan also criticised PeTA for its move into sexist campaigning, which is still a strong feature of PeTA’s current stance, along with racist and ableist campaigns.
 
Maybe if Regan and Francione had stayed within the animal movement as strong rights-based voices, things would be different now. Instead, Francione bailed out. Francione prefers the interpretation that Regan fell into welfarism, rather than he abandoned the movement, leaving Regan’s position much weaker.
 
As ever, Charlton provides a more nuanced analysis of events. For example, both Charlton and Francione believe that Regan struggled to deal with the bullying and hatred that quickly came from the welfare camp when Regan and Francione called for a boycott of the 1996 march, but Charlton keeps the stress on education and said that this was Regan’s strongest suit. In terms of Francione’s allegation that Regan collapsed into welfare, Charlton’s view suggests an alternative, that Regan thought he could operate as an educator within the movement rather than deliberately placing himself increasingly as an outsider, a status that Francione seems to welcome rather than seeing being an outsider as a block to him having any influence at all within the movement.
 
It is hard to imagine that, either way, the welfarists would not win out. I think Francione is right if he’s implying that education inside the movement would be very hard. Probably impossible before the internet age, given the gatekeeping powers that the national corporations had back then, and still do in terms of access to conferences. The internet improves things hugely in terms of maverick voices having the opportunity to be heard. The internet brings its own problems, however, not least the sheer amount of information available on virtually any topic.
 
So, even though there are rights-based voices that no longer can be silenced, they still can be marginalised it seems – and that’s even if animal advocates go to the trouble of investigating what animal rights means. We only have to look at what the “largest animal rights conference in the world” offers up as “animal rights” to see that welfarism is presented as animal rights but devoid of the theoretical foundation.
 
I would dearly love to see the new You Tubers adopting a rights-based position and reflecting it in their language which currently is stuck in the welfarist paradigm of talking about issues of animal cruelty.
 
Francione has criticised Regan’s theoretical position in recent years – he rightly is critical of the subject-of-a-life criteria, and has unfairly attacked Regan on the one million dogs lifeboat scenario - but says that there were other disagreements too. At one point in the broadcast, Francione suggests that Regan, like Singer, would eat dairy cheese if a restaurant got a request wrong. As ever with Francione, we are receiving a version, because it is also the case that, although claiming to have become vegan in 1982, Francione writes 14 years later in 1996 that he’s a vegetarian – so maybe he wouldn’t have objected to a bit of misplaced cheese then either for all we know. Francione says that, for a time, they had tried to cling on to the term “vegetarian” and wanted to “rehabilitate” it. He says that they were “basically” talking about veganism in those days.
 
So, would the present movement be different if Regan and Francione had stuck together? It is an intriguing prospect but it is clear that, later in life, Regan’s health wasn’t good. I think that’s why Regan didn’t respond to the recent attacks on his position, not least from Francione himself. I think it may also be possible that Regan recognised that he didn't have the time to start a new social movement from scratch, one that would always be in the shadow - and confused with - the existing animal movement. As said, we may ask pointedly whether rights-based animal rights would not be virtually forgotten in the “animal rights movement” as it is now had Francione not abandoned animal rights as the basis of his claims-making. He did this on the grounds that animal rights as a term has been appropriated by the welfarists. Of course it has – they’ll use anything that may make a buck. They are now calling themselves abolitionist when it suits them, which Francione has acknowledged and complained about. He should have stayed in the fight for animal rights.
 
We don’t get anywhere by running away. Ideas like animal rights and veganism have to be fought for or they will be devalued and redefined into something else.
 
Single-issues.
 
This broadcast really does reveal that Francione’s critique of single-issues is totally stuck in the 1980s. He is completely out-of-date on this, and still refers to events in the 1980s in every criticism of single-issues as if they are still relevant. He alleges that Regan “went back” to single issue campaigns. I reject that, at least in the sense that Francione means; the way single-issue campaigns were back in the 1980s.

I think that Regan would recognise that the people doing single-issues in the 21st century correspond to how Francione thinks that single-issues can work. In other words, if single issues are part of an overarching vegan campaign, Francione believes that they are acceptable. He fails to recognise that this is what’s happened. To maintain his dated attack on single-issues, he cannot look at what’s actually happening in the movement, certainly in the grassroots, but drop back to what was happening in the last century.
 
Bob Linden, to his credit, reveals that, for many years and in terms of many campaigns, he simply “followed the leaders,” and thus got involved in lots of welfare and single-issue campaigning. He does say that, although people were all vegans in those days (something Francione disputes in relation to the prime movers of the movement), the campaigns were not focused on veganism. This is more evidence against the position of Matt Ball who, in an appalling recent video, claimed that vegan education had been going on “for decades” and has failed.

Below is the 2006 Go Vegan Radio show mentioned by Bob Linden

CW - speciesist language.

The Bob Linden/Gary Francione countermovement provide an interesting analysis of the animal movement, looking at Matt Ball's new video inciting people to eat cows rather than chickens, Brian Kateman's mocking of vegans, and an "animal rights conference" having all the reducetarians as guests.

These audio extracts are from Go Vegan Radio (June 12th, 2017).

I've been asked to clarify my claim that Gary L. Francione is not part of the existing animal advocacy movement. Am I simply making that up?

​No, Gary Francione says that Gary Francione is not part of the existing movement. In this 30 second clip from Go Vegan Radio (September 6th, 2015), Francione explains it all to host Bob Linden.

In the clip above, Francione clearly states that he has nothing to do with the existing animal movement. Indeed, in his view, his separation from the prevailing movement means that he cannot be charged with being divisive within in. On the 23rd April, 2016, long-time Camp Francione insider, Elizabeth Collins (NZ Vegan), stated

• But there isn't any infighting if it is one movement criticizing another movement. If one is a welfarist supporter one is in the welfarist movement, not the abolitionist movement. We criticise the welfarist movement. That's not infighting.

In this, Collins accepts that the Francione "movement" (to the extent that it exists at all) is a countermovement to the animal advocacy movement. In fact, she uses a sociological definition of a countermovement: "a social movement opposed to another social movement."

Ever since the mid-1990s, Francione has embraced an increasingly isolated, outsider, position. He likes being seen as a maverick. The last thing he wants is to be part of the existing movement.

The longer audio clip (3:30 mins), below, and from the same show, is extraordinary. First, however, please be aware that it contains ableist language towards the end of the clip.

Second, it places Francione's statement (in the above audio clip) in the context of animal movement moves towards working for - or accepting - or partnering in - forms of other animal exploitation that are labelled "humane."

Third, Francione essentially argues against himself here. Listen to the clip and you will hear Francione saying that, not only are the traditional welfarist groups, such as the HSUS, partnering with animal exploitation industries, so are the "animal rights" groups. He names PeTA, Compassion Over Killing, Mercy for Animals, and Farm Sanctuary in this context.

This is bizarre. It could be possible that Francione was trying to simplify things for Bob Linden, who shows no evidence of understanding the difference between an organisation that stands for animal welfare and one that stands (or says it stands) for animal rights. Linden often calls the HSUS an animal rights group - whereas Francione, in the clip and elsewhere, correctly places them as conventional animal welfarists.

However, for the above reason, or some other - like convenience, Francione is arguing that these "animal rights" organisations are in alliance with the welfarist ones, and all are partnering with industry to attempt to bring about the "humane" exploitation of other animals. Francione is flatly contradicting himself with this claim. Ever since he wrote Rain Without Thunder: The Ideology of the Animal Rights Movement (1996), Francione has claimed that organisations such as those he lists are not animal rights groups at all. They are welfarist groups, more specifically, they are all New Welfarist groups.

By his own theory since the mid-1990s - we are not talking about an alliance of rights and welfare groups - the former don't even exist according to Francione. Therefore, the claim in the clip below is bewildering. This cannot be a rights-welfare coalition at all; it can only be, at best, a welfare and new welfare cartel.

Francione has declared that "animal rights is dead," - not least because he ran away from the fight for animal rights as initiated in the late 1970s by Tom Regan - and so it seems that he has rather lost the plot on this.

What he means, of course, is that the phrase "animal rights" is overwhelmingly used rhetorically in the "animal rights movement." In other words, for most animal advocates, the term "animal rights" is just that - a term. It is a label with no philosophical substance.

The idea of animal rights - that is, rights-based animal rights that takes the philosophy of rights seriously - is worth fighting for: within the movement.

Francione has backed off from the fight - and he's an outsider in any case. The fight for animal rights needs a reboot in the 21st century. Let's hope that there are enough rights-based animal advocates to do it!
​

In 2011, I wrote that I thought that The Abolitionist Approach run by Gary Francione was “not fit for purpose.” Nothing much has changed and, if it has, it’s changed for the worse.
 
It is important to note that Francione’s theory is OK. It’s very good in fact – much of his critique of animal welfarism and the corporatised animal advocacy movement is as valid as when it was developed in the 1990s. It is also important to note that, when Francione criticises the animal advocacy movement and/or groups and individuals within it, he’s criticising what, for him, is a separate movement to the one he imagines that he has founded.
 
The theory is good but Francione’s personality is an absolute disaster in the context of a functioning social movement, or even a single social movement organisation. He actually revels in his “outsider” position. He loves being the “maverick” – and, indeed, his difficult, individualistic, personality traits probably helped him in the early days when he started to turn his back on the animal movement and begin to call everyone in it by a slur he invented: “New welfarist.” I happen to believe that this concept also has merit – but he uses it not only as a conceptual tool to distinguish traditional animal welfarism, but also as a weapon and a stick with which to beat people with. If one gets on the wrong side of Francione, then one is a “welfarist” or “new welfarist” forever after, regardless of whether that description matches reality or not.
 
There is nothing more Francione would like to believe but that the “alternative abolitionist movement” he dreams of is a reality. Like any good salesperson, he keeps saying that his movement is real – but his personality blocks it at every stage. There is NO WAY that Professor Gary L. Francione could grow a social movement, especially not a mass movement. He requires far too much social control for that to ever happen.[1]
 
In the absence of a functioning social movement of his own – coupled with the fact that he rejects membership of the existing animal movement – he is left expending his energies, and the energies of his “mods,” in obsessively monitoring the campaigns of others, trying to discover things to find fault with. This obsession currently takes the shape of systematically screen-shooting what appears to be the entire internet, giving observers the amusement of reading blog entries crammed full with invitations to “click to enlarge.” The obsession is so severe that Francione screen-shoots others’ “likes” on FB posts that he disapproves of. This is not psychologically healthy.
 
The Recent Francione Attack on the Dublin-Based Vegan Information Project
 
An example of Francione seeing only the bad and never the good comes from his treatment of the group I organise for and volunteer with, the Vegan Information Project (VIP).
 
In the interest of full disclosure, I’m relying on memory of some of the things Francione said on FB over the last months. There is a comprehensive “statement” written by Francione in which he details his gripes about me as an individual, and VIP as a group. I have not read this “statement” – in fact, I’ve not even opened it and do not intent to. I believe that I know the contents – but I’m sure Francione and his mods will correct me if I’m wrong (or right!) on this.
 
On a personal level, Francione has called me a “sell-out” (his new fave insult he borrows from Bob Linden); a “failed academic;”[2] implied that I’m getting wages from animal welfare corporations (untrue – never have, never will), and that I will happily “throw animals under the bus.”
 
I can live with these insults but they are a little frustrating since I’ve been an ethical vegan for longer than Francione,[3] I’ve done my share of writing about abolitionist veganism, and agree with the idea that the rights-based animal rights movement should have veganism as its moral baseline, and I’ve done substantially more local community street advocacy than Francione will ever do.
 
When it comes to what Francione says against the Vegan Information Project as a group, things are complicated by the fact that some of his critique is valid – yet unfair at the same time. If he had the decency to contact VIP and ask questions, he would not have ended up distorting the truth as much as he does.
 
So, a bit of background. In 2013, the VIP received ONE (a single) grant from an organisation called VegFund. I first became aware of VegFund in 2012 when, as part of the ARZone team, I co-interviewed two of the three co-founders of the organisation, Rae Sikora and JC Corcoran. The VIP run regular (and in 2013, irregular) events with another group: VEGO (Vegan Education on the Go). One of the 2013 joint events was a “pay-to-view” day when people are paid to watch a short film. VegFund favour the showing of a graphic 4-minute film, whereas I’ve always been wary about the graphic nature of films and argued against using it. It turns out that this was a Mercy for Animals (MFA) film. I did not know this and had no part in preparing the showing of it. Almost three years later the VIP were attacked by Francione over this single grant and the showing of the film at a joint event. Moreover, he implied heavily (the being paid bit) that I was being regularly “sponsored” by this group, or other groups. Untrue. Because he is not a street campaigner, and that his word is law when it comes to The Abolitionist Approach, Francione has no idea about team work and the fact that, now and then, one gets out-voted and things are not exactly as one would like them to be all the time. Francione also clearly has no conception that grassroots groups might want to do something more than give out literature and plant-based cupcakes from a fold-down table – such ambition costs, and we all can’t be multi-millionaires; capitalism doesn’t work like that.
 
I mentioned on FB that I wasn’t even sure whether VegFund were associated with MFA in 2013. Francione saw that comment because he commented on it. His problem now was that a VegFund sign had been left on the VIP website which is true – and it could have been – and even should have been – removed much earlier. However, at the time, the website was a mess because the Vegan Information Project had transformed into the Vegan Intersectionality Project, and back again. The reasons for these changes are not important for this blog entry – I might get to explore the issue at VegFest Bristol 2016 when intersectionality is one of the subjects up for discussion.
 
One important part of the name change is important to mention. When VIP moved to the Intersectionalty Project, the old Information site was bought by one of these website banks that seem to scoop up available websites. That did not stop Francione attacking me and the VIP because the old site - that we no longer controlled or owned - had some vegetarian references on it. Again, if Francione had sent an email rather than acting as an internet troll, this issue could have been resolved in minutes. Indeed, a search on the internet would reveal that VIP no longer owned the site that he was nevertheless attacking us about.
 
Not-A-Real-World-Critique
 
As if to prove how removed Francione is from real campaigning, his second complaint about the VegFund sign was that one of the employees of VegFund, executive director Leslie Barcus, is also on the board of Humane Society International, which is part of the Humane Society of the USA (HSUS). This is classic Francione “guilt by association” stuff which has recently turned around and bitten him on the bottom when some animal advocates decided to apply Francione’s own criteria to Francione’s annual conference, the World Vegan Summit, organised by Bob Linden.
 
However, let’s go back to the fact that the VIP had a VegFund sign on its website. This is how ludicrous and out-of-touch Francione is. We have to imagine that someone goes to a VIP street event in Ireland, likes what they see and hear; then goes to the VIP website for a look-see; then sees the VegFund sign, then goes to VegFund’s website; then are interested enough to check their staff members; then they discover Leslie Barcus is employed by VegFund; and then they discover that she’s on the board of Humane Society International and make something of that information. We are asked to believe that this tiny possibility negates all the street work that was done on the streets of Dublin due to one VegFund grant in 2013!
 
Francione is talking out of his hat. If he had any experience of street campaigning, he would see how ridiculous his accusations appear in the real world.
 
However, we’re not done yet. The VegFund sign on the VIP website was NOT an internet hyperlink – in other words, one could not “click” on it and be transported to VegFund. No, interested parties would have to google “VegFund” to get their website address.
 
Contrast that with Francione’s World “Vegan” Summit. Its sponsors’ page has been discovered to contain lots of dodgy websites and internet links – which are, each and every one, hyperlinks and, thus, very easily accessible. It is far more likely that a person would find themselves in the arms of those organisations Francione hates by visiting his site rather than the one I’m associated with.
 
For example, until recently, the World “Vegan” Summit hyperlinked to Farm Fresh to You. A couple of clicks into their prominent recipes page revealed that they were recommending ingredients such as “fish sauce,” eggs, honey, dairy yoghurt, and at least two types of dairy cheese. This particular sponsor has now been removed after being there promoting animal ingredients for weeks and months past. Although both Francione and Linden are claiming that they weren’t aware of these recipes, they were easily accessible from the World “Vegan” Summit website – and a thousand times more accessible than tracing the Vegan Information Project to Humane Society International through convoluted scenarios.
 
Current Situation: More Bluster
 
Gary Francione appeared on the Go Vegan Radio show on 10th April, 2016, to discuss sponsorship of large conferences. Without naming me, or the VIP, Francione referred to the issue he has with me (see audio clip above). The context of the audio clip is the recent criticism of the World “Vegan” Summit. It was found that the Francione conference is promoting Farm Sanctuary via one of their sponsors, VegKids. Again, remember that this is Francione’s criteria being applied. In addition to his “guilt-by-association” standards, Francione also abides by a do-as-I-say,-not-as-I-do criteria. Therefore, it is no surprise that Francione thinks the World “Vegan” Summit has nothing to answer. Really?
 
If you listen to the clip, you’ll hear Francione first claim that Farm Sanctuary are merely “mentioned” via the VegKids website. A few seconds later, he corrects himself because VegKids are taking groups of children on trips to Farm Sanctuary. Just consider what Francione would say about any other group or organisation that was taking lots and lots of children to Farm Sanctuary. He would go ballistic – but not when it’s his own event in the stew.
 
You’ll also hear that Francione is once again focused on the alleged VIP “promotion” of Mercy for Animals. So let’s do our in-real-world test again. We have to imagine that someone comes up to a VIP event on the streets of Dublin. They like what they see and hear. Then, they decide to go to the VIP website; then they see the VegFund sign; then, because they cannot just click because there was no hyperlink, they must google VegFund and go to their site; then they see the Mercy for Animals connections – but wait, in the audio clip, you’ll hear Francione imply that VegFund mentions or links to MFA, “on every single page.”
 
I tested Francione's claims.
 

• VegFund Home Page. Mentions of MFA: ZERO.
• VegFund “About Us, Introduction.” Mentions of MFA: ZERO.
• VegFund “About Us, Results.” Mentions of MFA: ZERO.
• VegFund “About Us, Our Team.” Mentions of MFA: ONE, in connection to board member Matthew Goodman.
• VegFund “About Us, General FAQs.” Mentions of MFA: ZERO.
• VegFund “Grant Programs, Overview.” Mentions of MFA: ZERO.
• VegFund “Grant Programs, Food Sampling.” Mentions of MFA: ZERO.
• VegFund “Grant Programs, Video Outreach, Pay to View.” Mentions of MFA: ZERO.
• VegFund “Grant Programs, Video Outreach, Screenings.” Mentions of MFA: ZERO.
• VegFund “Grant Programs, Video Outreach, Online Campaigns.” Mentions of MFA: ZERO.
• VegFund “Grant Programs, Merit Awards.” Mentions of MFA: ZERO.
• VegFund “Grant Programs, Apply.” Mentions of MFA: ZERO.
• VegFund “Donate.” Mentions of MFA: ZERO.
• VegFund “Contact Us.” Mentions of MFA: ZERO.

 
Then there is a very disappointing section of the VegFund site, entitled “Why Veg,” with three subjections, “For the Animals,” “For the Planet,” and “For Your Health.” The title, “Why Veg?” does bother me – especially since it links to the MFA “Vegetarian Starter Kit.”
 
I would certainly like to see changes in that part of the site. A vegan starter kit, for one, and perhaps the links to MFA is not for the best. However, this immediately raises a question: how best to influence VegFund, attack them and call them names, Francione/Linden style, or engage with them asking for vegan changes?
 
However, I think my point is made. Francione is mistaken – BIG TIME – that MFA are mentioned “on every single page.” Do you think Francione lies like that because he’s never been placed under the same scrutiny that he places others in the other movement he constantly attacks?
 
Double standards anyone?
 
 
 
[1] Just a couple of recent examples. The all-singing “Grumpies” (both Francione FB page moderators) appeared on Go Vegan Radio not long after the show’s host, Bob Linden, had interviewed Sandra Higgins who had launched an amazing poster campaign in Ireland and new website based on abolitionist veganism. Linden was very excited by this campaign, so when the Grumpies appeared on his show, also from Ireland, he expected them to rave about the Go Vegan Ireland campaign. However, they seemed reluctant to do so, presumably not fully knowing whether Francione, their “leader,” would approve. Being too scared to speak up is not healthy. Similarly, Frances McCormack has a blog site which contains at least two statements to the effect that any mistake she makes in relation to Francione are not his fault. “Any errors in my understanding of that theory are unintentional…” from the “about” page and, “This page is indebted to the work of Gary L. Francione, but not endorsed by him. Any errors or misinterpretations in my attempt to apply Abolitionist theory to vegan advocacy are entirely my own,” on the front page. When McCormack appeared on a podcast, she was asked to outline the abolitionist position. She began with an apology! They, his own moderators, are bloody terrified of Francione. No social movement can function under such social control.
 
[2] There is some truth in this. I was never much of an academic and much more, first and foremost, an animal advocate who was fortunate enough to get involved with the academy for a while. When I entered prison on my 4-year sentence for “animal related activities,” I had no educational qualifications to my name. I was – and am – an animal rights campaigner, but I used my time well in prison and left there going straight into university. During the time when most high-salary academics like Francione are building their careers and wealth in their 20s and early 30s, I was either a full-time volunteer for various grassroots animal groups, or else in jail. None of that counts when Francione is on the attack.
 
[3] Possibly much longer. I went vegan in 1979, Francione claims that he went vegan in 1982. However, 14 years later, in March 1996, he published a paper in which he described himself as a “vegetarian” and says that he ordered a “vegetarian meal” in a restaurant. Now, this could be a language issue – lots of vegans in the USA would describe themselves as vegetarians, or “pure vegetarian.” I find it unlikely that Francione would (but it is possible). Only a few months later, Francione was featured in the Vegetarian Times, described then as a full-on vegan. So, maybe 1996 was the time when Francione finally went vegan, or near the time when he started to call himself vegan after 14 years of being one. Personally, I would never call myself a vegetarian. I mentioned in a VegFest Brighton talk that I was once arrested in the 1980s and the cops asked if I was a vegetarian. I said “no.” Of course not, I’m a vegan.