On Human Relations with Other Sentient Beings
  • Home
  • The Blog

The Mistake of Single Issue Militancy and the Need for a Deep Radicalism Instead

2/20/2022

0 Comments

 
Picture
In February 2022, in the lead-up to his 50th veganniversary, Ronnie Lee (who became vegan in Spring 1972) and Wenda Shehata released a video that looked into some of the history of the vegan and animal protection social movements. Amongst a whole range of issues, Ronnie and Wenda looked at the issue of movement take-off, an interest of sociologists like myself who look at social movement theory, and the concepts of “militancy” and “radicalism.”

Ronnie and Wenda’s discussion can be viewed on the Forward to Animal Liberation Facebook page - https://www.facebook.com/110009078121280/videos/470017964600001


Ronnie identifies what he now sees as grave mistake of the modern animal protection movement: the failure to see the potential and thus bring into being widespread grassroots-led vegan education. Remarkably, almost unbelievably, the vegan social movement was not engaged in vegan education until the beginning of the 21st century. In Ronnie’s view, this was at least 25 years too late and, had this move occurred earlier in the history of the movement, the mobilisation for animal liberation would be further advanced now than it is presently. I agree with Ronnie's analysis, as would Gary Francione, who has been an advocate of vegan education as the major MO of the animal movement since the 1990s.

Ronnie notes that when direct action arose in Britain - starting with the Hunt Saboteurs in the 1960s, the Animal Liberation Front in the 1970s, followed by the liberation leagues and SHAC in the 1980s and 1990s, several national groups were already campaigning on single issues such as vivisection, hunting, and intensive (factory) animal farming. With an influx of younger people into the movement, there began a shake-up of these “conservative with a small c” organisations. Some responded to the demands of the younger generation, or were taken over by them. One major change was that largely inactive groups that traditionally merely asked members to send them donations and write to their member of parliament became campaign and protest groups which were staffed by vegans. The vegans who were part of a large increase in veganism Ronnie observed in the 1970s. In addition to the transformation of existing groups, new campaigning groups such as Compassion In World Farming (1967), Animal Aid (1977), PeTA (1980), and Vegetarians International Voice for Animals (VIVA! - 1994) were formed. Ronnie says that, although the animal protection movement was changing, it’s conservative welfarist base remained: “To some extent, it carried on being welfarist but, like, militant welfarist shall we say.” The movement also remained dominated by national groups that keep a fairly firm grip of its financial resources. Indeed, as can be seen, the number of such organisations grew at this time. 

In relation to events such as "World Day for Laboratory Animals" (initially organised by the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection or The National Anti-Vivisection Society), which are attended by about 700-800 people in the modern day, these marches attracted 10,000-20,000 in the 1980s, both Ronnie and Wenda remember. Similarly, tens of thousands of people would attend “save the seals” and “save the whales” events in those years. For Ronnie, the fault line in the movement was revealed by the fact that, although “there were vegans in these organisations campaigning on all these different issues, nobody was campaigning for veganism.”

I think this is one of the strangest things for 21st century vegans to try to grapple with. A social movement that had significant and growing numbers of vegans within, nevertheless largely ignoring veganism in terms of its campaigning focus. How does that make sense? In the US, for example, although PeTA began as an animal rights group in 1980, by the early 1990s, its “president” Ingrid Newkirk took up the fight for animal welfare and for “the regulation of atrocities” against animal rights philosopher Tom Regan, and animal rights lawyer Gary Francione who were, respectively, advocating for rights-based animal rights, and veganism as the movement’s moral baseline. In 1993, the Vegan Outreach organisation was founded but, by 2005, its founders were regretting having the word “vegan” in its title. In 2011, co-founder Matt Ball, complained that “vegan” meant reduced donations: “Foundations and rich non-vegans give to groups with similar philosophies and approaches, but they won’t give to “vegan” outreach.” Ronnie’s summary of such times amounts to this: “In some ways the movement became more radical, but in many ways it stayed just the same.”

However, Ronnie adds: “Probably ‘militant' is more accurate than ‘radical' because militant describes a form of action, [whereas] radical is more about philosophy.” Radical means getting to the root of the problem and clearly, until very recently, and often due to the movement’s corporate nature and the number of wages they thought they must finance, prime movers in the animal movement were absolutely resistant to making veganism the moral baseline of the movement. They often put about the idea that veganism was “a scare word.” Ironically, it was a scare word for them - they thought their incomes would drop if they used it, so they favoured words such “veg,” “veggie,” and even “veg*n” instead - however, it turns out it isn’t much of a scare word from the general public’s point of view, or for the manufacturers of plant-based foods and products. It appears that even the national groups in the movement are no longer petrified of the dread 'V' word. For example, VIVA! (Vegetarians International Voice for Animals) now declares itself, “The Vegan Charity." 

The status of The Vegan Society has always remained something of a puzzle in this story. Ronnie and Wenda noted that it wasn’t seen as a campaigning organisation - it wasn’t (and isn’t) an “on the street” group like Animal Aid, for example. I doubt that most of the large influx of vegans in the 1970s onwards ever bothered to join The Vegan Society. I have never been a member despite being vegan since 1979. I also doubt that their membership has risen massively even in the wave of vegan popularity currently being seen. As far as I can tell, the only engagement modern-day vegans have with The Vegan Society occurs when they quote (and often misquote) the official definition of veganism.


The Two Garys.

At least as far back as the publication of his 1996 book, Rain Without Thunder: The Ideology of the Animal Rights Movement, Gary Francione has argued that the promotion of veganism should be the central plank of the activities of the animal advocacy movement. History will likely remember him as very influential in moving the animal movement (finally) to adopt veganism as its moral baseline. However, he will still argue that the movement has failed to do that and, instead, promotes veganism as merely one option that will reduce animal suffering among other things like reducing the consumption of animal bodies and their secretions, and taking part in things like “Meatless Mondays.” For him, as for many vegans, being vegan is a moral imperative if one adopts the philosophies of veganism and animal rights. Francione will also say that there is no animal rights movement in reality, just an animal welfare movement bearing its name. He may point out that, for example, national groups like Mercy for Animals and Animal Equality spend millions of dollars per annum on animal welfare “cage-free” campaigning instead of vegan campaigns (see the Open Philanthropy Project grant database). Gary Francione has left the movement but is still active in what he calls a “counter-movement” known as Animal Rights: The Abolitionist Approach.


Many people relatively new to the vegan movement will tell you with a straight face that Gary Yourofsky started the vegan movement and has created more vegans than every other vegan activist combined. That may or may not be amusing to Ronnie, since Yourofsky was two years old when Ronnie became a vegan activist (he was 9 years old when I became vegan). Although veganism wasn’t promoted to the public in those early years, it certainly got around the activist communities, which is why Ronnie claims that there was a big increase in the numbers of vegans in the 1970s. By the 1980s, I’d say the majority of animal “militants” were vegan (although some will have been vegetarian for sure). Yourofsky’s first impact was the launch of his website in 1996 but that ended up in a financial disaster forcing him to resign. PeTA stepped in and offered him a paid job as their "national lecturer," and so the college lecture tours he became famous for began. By 2010, he had given the same talk hundreds of times so he was good at it. His talk at Georgia Technical College in the Summer of 2010 was filmed and was subsequently heavily promoted within the animal movement. 

A year later, in 2011, I was part of the Animal Rights Zone team that asked Gary Yourofsky whether he was prepared to retract talk of his extreme violence fantasies, part of which involves regularly wishing for humans to be viciously sexually assaulted until they were disabled for life. Yourofsky replied in something of a rant, saying he “adores” his violence essays, while defending his drugs use, and attacking “animal rights people:” Yourofsky has said that he hates humans, apparently including himself. “Most animal rights people LOVE their families and worship humankind,” he said. By this token alone, and despite repeated claims in the modern movement that he has made more vegans than anyone else, ever, Gary Yourofsky clearly does not understand vegan philosophy very well. While he hates humans, and calls us all “parasites,” the pioneers of the vegan social movement remained optimistic about humanity believing that the widespread adoption of a vegan mindset would mark their moral evolution, leading to a less-violent humanity. Social movements are, after all, made up of human beings. Yourofsky has since bailed out of the vegan movement and “retired,” leaving the other animals to their fate after a mere 21 year’s involvement.

Of the "two Garys," I'm sure that movement historians will regard Francione's as the much more significant contribution.



How We Got to Where We Are!

Social movement theorists often talk about movement cycles, waves, and stages. In terms of the latter, social movements may emerge, grow, professionalise, and die (they may die because they’ve done their job, by the way!) It can be a rocky road for social movements, and there are certainly likely to be highs and lows in their journeys. In Bill Moyer’s social movement action plan, there are eight movement stages including “take-off” which, as the name suggests, can be dramatic and, for some, an overnight phenomenon. The stage before “take-off” will intrigue those who know the history of the vegan social movement, since it is called “ripening conditions,” echoing something Donald Watson wrote in November 1944 in the very first Vegan Society newsletter. Moyer’s theory dates to 1987. He writes: 


“The ’take-off’ of a new social movement requires preconditions that build up over many years. These condition include broad historical developments, a growing discontented population of victims and allies, and a budding autonomous grassroots opposition, all of which encourage discontent with the present conditions, raise expectations that they can change, and provide the means to do it.”

Of course, not all of that “fits” exactly with any actual social movement, not least the vegan movement, but the broad outline seems pretty solid. It further appears evident to me that the preconditions that Moyer speaks of, related to the present-day vegan movement, rely on the fault line Ronnie Lee identifies having being rectified. In other words, the recent growth of the vegan movement has depended on the groundwork for decades before but, in particular, the widespread, if delayed, establishment of veganism as the moral baseline of the animal advocacy movement. From all of this, we should not get the idea that the present surge in the movement is a product of the recent “influencers” in the movement, including Yourofsky, but owes its origins to the late 1960s onwards. Rather than creating the present “vegan wave,” those who came into the movement in the last 10 years are riding the wave that “built up over many years.” Ironically, as suggested above, some of the main conservative resisters of the move to establish veganism as the movement’s moral baseline, those in the national groups, have finally (by and large) abandoned their “veg,” “veggie,” and “veg*n” claims-making in favour of talking directly and openly about veganism. 

It would not make any sense to the current generation of vegan activists to talk about anything else other than the need for veganism. Wenda and Ronnie reiterate that had the rather obvious fact of the vegan movement focusing on veganism as its campaign been much earlier, then things would be better for other animals than they are now. The movement “missed a trick,” says Ronnie, “of tackling the oppression of other animals at the most fundamental level;” while Wenda says that, sadly, we must regard what actually happened within the vegan movement as a tactical and philosophical “oversight."

Technology.

The advance of technology has undoubtedly been part of the story of the advance of veganism. Before the internet, for example, much of the movement’s literature was 4-time-a-year magazines or the more regular zines, often simply photocopied. The Cranky Vegan - Jake Conroy - notes that, for many modern-day vegan advocates, if it’s not on an high quality video, it may as well not exist. One example of that is an old VHS recording from 1988 of a Tom Regan’s speech at an anti-vivisection rally in North America (see https://youtu.be/oruKMOR7krw). At the time, the video was regarded as the “best animal rights speech ever given,” but its quality is admittedly poor. At the same time, the speech is incredibly rousing and can make the audience really feel that they are attending the rally. As a consequence of its low quality, the speech is not well known in the animal movement, and I do not think because it should be regarded as totally out of date.


Perhaps the advent of smart phone technology, resulting in thousands of high-quality video now available, hinders recent members of the movement from researching the movement’s history, to the extent that they are interested in doing so. Consequently, I have noticed that many recent activists unfortunately hold a rather distorted view of the vegan movement’s development and some really do believe that it began in the 1990s!


0 Comments

Tom Regan on Go Vegan Radio (2006)

1/22/2021

0 Comments

 
Picture
Tom Regan, author of The Case for Animal Rights, and the originator of rights-based abolitionist animal rights, appeared on Bob Lindon's seemingly now defunct Go Vegan Radio, which ran weekly from 2000 to 2020.

This show was from September 24th, 2006, by which time Regan had split from his collaborations with Gary Francione and Anna Charlton and was trying to influence the animal movement from within.*


* Francione and Charlton went off to form Animal Rights: The Abolitionist Approach, which enjoys an "outsider" status with regard to the animal movement and sees itself as a counter-movement.

​

0 Comments

60-70,000 Animal Advocates March in North America

6/11/2019

1 Comment

 
Almost 30 years ago, on June 10th, 1990, thousands of people turned out for a "March for the Animals" in Washington DC. Interviewed in 2007, Tom Regan, author of the The Case for Animal Rights, the book that kick-started rights-based abolitionist animal rights in the 1980s, estimated that between 60,000 and 70,000 people attended. It remains the largest march that the animal advocacy movement has ever organised.
Picture
Regan can be seen to the right of the lead banner of the 1990 march.

Tom Regan says that this time was one of "great optimism in the movement" and the 1990 march enabled and ennobled its participants. In 1996, a second "March for the Animals" drew only 3,000 people. Regan declared it "a disaster." One explanation that Regan offers to explain this fall-off within six years was the firming up of the "sharp divide" between animal welfarists and animal rightists.

The Gary Francione countermovement offer the same analysis. See HERE. It seems that the welfare corporations grasped back the initiative in the animal movement. For example, between the two marches, the once radical People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PeTA) began their deradicalisation into a large welfare corporation. In 1992, for example, PeTA's Ingrid Newkirk took the reformist line against the abolitionism of Regan and Francione in a famous Animals' Agenda article - see HERE.

In the 2007 interview, Regan still held a critical view of how the animal movement had developed, saying that the most powerful national organisations had adopted a "corporate business model." He called for the democratisation of the movement away from the dominance of the national groups.



1 Comment

The Working Relationship Between Tom Regan and Gary Francione

8/13/2018

2 Comments

 
Picture
Here's a recent vlog (video blog) I recorded about the relationship that existed in the 1980s and 1990s between Tom Regan, the author of The Case for Animal Rights (1983) and Gary Francione who runs a counter-movement to the animal movement called The Abolitionist Approach.

The Case (as the 1983 text is known) is not well known in the animal movement. Few animal advocates will have heard of it and fewer still will have read it.

The fact that Regan's book - which is the foundational statement of rights-based animal rights is virtually unknown in the movement that calls itself the "Animal Rights Movement" is beyond odd - but Regan has been marginalised and treated appallingly by the animal movement.

​So --- what would the modern day animal advocacy movement look like if Tom Regan had received the respect he deserved? I explore this question through the lens of the relationship Regan had with Gary Francione, the events that they were associated with, and the fact that stopped working together at an important time in the history of the movement.

2 Comments

The Vegan Movement: Have We Been Sleepwalking Into Crisis?

5/22/2018

1 Comment

 
Picture
​​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.”

1 Comment

Charlton/Francione/Linden Countermovement on Tom Regan

8/12/2017

0 Comments

 
Picture


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


0 Comments

Countermovement Analysis of The Animal Advocacy Movement

6/28/2017

0 Comments

 
Picture

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).


0 Comments

Take Heart!

6/26/2017

0 Comments

 
Picture
The rise of the reducetarian movement seems to be an interesting challenge to the vegan movement, especially since it seems that in order to promote their position, reducetarians apparently feel a need to attack, or mock, vegans (as purists and extreme) and veganism (as too radical). Some of them use ableist rhetoric to emphasise the point, stating that consistent vegans are "crazies."

There are lots of animal advocates, of course, who subscribe to - or at least understand - the notion of different strokes for different folks. However, it is not acceptable if the reducetarian movement somehow requires the denigration of vegans and veganism.

So, what have we seen so far in this regard? I think we could pull out from the reducetarian crowd a number of examples of them mocking vegans and veganism. Brian Kateman, president and co-founder of the Reducetarian Foundation and editor of The Reducetarian Solution does it in a TED talk, Matthew Ball, who works for One Step for Animals and, until very recently, Farm Sanctuary does it in a video suggesting that many vegans are rude and fanatical, and "rightly" seen as akin to Hezbollah; Sebastian Joy, who runs the German Vegetarian Society, does it in talks at animal rights conferences, and "the 'vegan' strategist," Tobias Leenaert does it whenever possible.


I'll just concentrate on one: Matt Ball. His position is based on distortion. In a recent video inciting people to eat the flesh of cows rather than that of chickens, he cites Peter Singer's Animal Liberation as a main reason for the abject failure of vegan education. Why? Singer isn't a vegan, and writes in Animal Liberation: "I do not, on balance, object to free-range egg production." Singer, like Ball, is a supporter of the reducetarian movement. To cite Animal Liberation in this context is nothing more than propaganda.

Ball then cites PeTA! Seriously, a useless sexist, racist, and ableist organisation that gives awards to slaughterhouse designers ain't doing it for the vegan cause? Big surprise there.

The truth is, vegan education has only just begun. In THIS CENTURY only has the animal movement begun to see veganism as the moral baseline, to the extent that it has of course. There is push back from careerists in the movement to seeing veganism as the moral baseline. Melanie Joy is not keen, for example, but then she writes in her famous book: "it's possible to procure eggs and dairy products without violence."

Do vegans actually read these books before they pronounce that their authors stand for veganism?


So, vegan education has only just begun - check out this audio clip from Ronnie Lee, the co-founder of the Animal Liberation Front who went vegan in 1971. Ronnie has effectively "seen it all," and he certainly knows that vegan education is, historically, brand new.

Think about this - did you know that "Mr. Vegan Education," Gary Francione was still writing about himself as "still very much a vegetarian" in 1996, even though he says he went vegan in 1982? Moreover, in the index of his 2000 book, Introduction to Animal Rights, "vegan" is not mentioned once in the index but "vegetarianism" is at least 8 times, along with this little line from page 17: "The suggestion that taking animal interests seriously requires that we become vegetarians may seem radical."

That's only 17 years ago. Repeat after me: VEGAN EDUCATION HAS ONLY JUST BEGUN. Listen to Ronnie!!!

If you are an animal advocate doing street work for veganism, take heart. This aspect of animal campaigning has only just begun and I bet you have seen a great deal of progress in just the last 5 years, right?

Finally, I, along with the ARZone team, interviewed Matthew Ball in 2011. Then, he suggested that they regretted having "vegan" in the Vegan Outreach title. Doesn't bring in the donations, apparently. Ball was asked: "Matt, if you had to do it all over again, would you still call it Vegan Outreach?" to which he replied: "Good question. We actually had a serious question about this about six years ago. For a variety of reasons, we didn’t change the name. But I know having "vegan" in our name hurts us in different ways, most clearly on fundraising."


Repeat after me: BEWARE OF CAREERISTS! and VEGAN EDUCATION HAS JUST BEGUN!!

​

0 Comments

What Do You Mean, Gary Francione is Not Part of the Movement. Says Who?

5/8/2016

0 Comments

 
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!
​

0 Comments

The Vegan Information Project and the Francione Countermovement

4/12/2016

2 Comments

 
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.
2 Comments
<<Previous

    Roger Yates

    Dr. Roger Yates is a rights advocate and sociologist

    Archives

    March 2023
    October 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    September 2021
    June 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    November 2020
    October 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    November 2018
    October 2018
    August 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    November 2017
    October 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015

    Categories

    All
    1980s
    Aaron Yarmel
    Ableism
    Ableist Language
    Abolitionising Single Issues
    Abolitionising Single-issues
    Alliance Politics
    Always For Animal Rights
    Amnesty International
    Anarchy
    Andrew Linzey
    Angela Barnes
    Angus Taylor
    Animal Aid
    Animal Equality
    Animal Liberation
    Animal Liberation (book)
    Animal Liberation Front
    Animal Pity
    Animal Rights
    Animal Rights Conference (Luxembourg)
    Animal Rights Movement
    Animal Rights Philosophy
    Animal Rights Show
    Animal Rights Zone
    Animals Property & The Law (book)
    Animal Welfare
    Anna Charlton
    Anthony Giddens
    Aph Ko
    AR2012
    ARCNews
    Arthur Ling
    ARZone
    A Sociology Of Compromise
    Autobiography
    Avoiding Unpleasure
    Award
    Backlash
    Barbara DeGrande
    Barbara McDonald
    Barbara Noske
    BBC
    Being Dogmatic
    Bernard Rollins
    Bloom Festival
    Bob Linden
    Bob Torres
    Brian Kateman
    Bristol
    Bruce Friedrich
    Buddhism
    Calf Food
    Capitalism
    Carl Cohen
    Carnage (film)
    Carol Adams
    Case For Animal Rights (book)
    Chris Powell
    Christie Davies
    Christopher Lasch
    CIWF
    Claims Making
    Claims-making
    Commodore
    Consequentialism
    Counterforce
    CRC Radio
    Critical Theory
    Cruelty
    Cultural Speciesism
    C Wright Mills
    Dave Callender
    Dave Wetton
    David DeGrazia
    David Lee
    David Nibert
    Declan Bowens
    Defending Animal Rights (book)
    Dehumanisation
    Depersonalisation
    Direct Action Everywhere
    DIY Politics
    Donald Watson
    Dorothy Watson
    Dr. Koichi Tagami
    Dublin VegFest
    Earthlings Experience Dublin
    Eden Farmed Animal Sanctuary
    Elizabeth Collins
    Elsie Shrigley
    Emotional Lives Of Farm Animals (film)
    Encouraging Vegan Education (EVE)
    Erik Marcus
    Ethical Vegetarian Alternative
    Eva Batt
    Fairness (concept)
    Farm Kind
    Faye K Henderson
    Federation Of Local Animal Rights Groups
    Frankfurt School
    Freshfield Animal Rescue
    Freud
    Friedrich Engels
    Friends Of The Earth
    Funding
    Funding Appeal
    Fur
    G Allen Henderson
    Gandhi
    Gary Francione
    Gary Steiner
    Gary Yourofsky
    Geertrui Cazaux
    Geertui Cazaux
    Gender
    George Herbert Mead
    George Paton
    Gerry Kelly
    Ginny Messina
    Go Vegan Radio
    Go Vegan World
    Govinda's
    Grassroots
    Hannah Arendt
    Hans Ruesch
    Harold Brown
    Harold Guither
    Hazleton Action Group
    Hazleton Laboratories
    Henry Salt
    Herbert Marcuse
    Herbivores
    Horse Ripping
    House Of Fun
    Howard Newby
    HSUS
    Humanitarian League
    Human Liberation
    Human Rights
    Human Rights Watch
    Humour
    Internet Age
    Intersectionality
    Interviews
    Introduction To Animal Rights (book)
    Irish Times
    Jackson Katz
    Jake Conroy
    James Rachels
    Jeremy Hess
    Jill Phipps
    Jim Mason
    Joan Dunayer
    John Bussineau
    John Fagan
    John Robbins
    Jon Hochschartner
    Jordan Wyatt
    Josh Harper
    Julian Groves
    Jurgen Habermas
    Justice
    Karin Ridgers
    Karl Marx
    Kath Clements
    Kathleen Jannaway
    Kay Henderson
    Keith Akers
    Keith Mann
    Keith Tester
    Keith Thomas
    Kim Stallwood
    Knowing Animals
    Language
    Lauren Ornelas
    League Against Cruel Sports
    Leslie Cross
    Let's Rage Together Podcast
    Linda McCartney
    Lynne Yates
    Macka B
    Mainstream
    Mammals
    Marjorie Spiegel
    Mary Midgley
    Mass Media
    Matt Ball
    Matthew Cole
    Maureen Duffy
    Max Weber
    McDonaldisation
    McDonald's
    Meat Free Monday
    Meat-free Monday
    Meat Reducing
    Media
    Media Sociology
    Melanie Joy
    Mercy For Animals
    #MeToo
    Michael Dello-lacovo
    Milk
    Milton Mills
    Moral Baseline
    Moral Maze
    Movement Crisis
    Movement For Compassionate Living
    Movement History
    National Animal Rights Association
    National Anti-Vivisection Society
    Neil Lea
    Neil Robinson
    Neville The VIP Van
    Newsjack
    News Quiz
    Newstalk Radio
    "New Welfare"
    Nick Fiddes
    Nick Pendergrast
    Norman Fairclough
    Numbers
    NZ Vegan
    Palm Oil
    Patreon
    Patriarchy
    Patrice Jones
    Paul McCartney
    Paul Sauder
    Paul Watson
    Paul Willis
    People For The Ethical Treatment Of Animals
    PeTA
    Peter/Brigitte Berger
    Peter Singer
    Philosophy
    Piaget
    Piers Beirne
    Pigeons
    Pippa Evans
    Plague Dogs
    Plamil
    Podcast
    Poetry
    Pornography
    Poverty Of Ambition
    Power
    "professionals"
    Progressive Podcast Aus
    Prostitution
    Purity
    Rachel Carson
    Racism
    Radicals & Revolutionaries
    Radio 5 Live
    Radio Debate
    Rain Without Thunder (book)
    Real Veganism
    Reducatarianism
    Reducetarianism
    Resilience Of Orthodox
    Richard Adams
    Richard Gale
    Richard Ryder
    Rights (legal)
    Rights (moral)
    Rights (natural)
    Robert Garner
    Ronnie Lee
    Rosemary Rodd
    RSPCA
    Ruhama
    Ruth Harrison
    Sandra Higgins
    Scandals
    Sea Shepherd
    Sebastian Joy
    Sexism
    Sex Roles
    Sexual Politics Of Meat (book)
    Sex Work
    SHAC
    Simon Amstell
    Simon Redfearn
    Siobhan O'Sullivan
    Slaughterhouse
    Slaughter Of The Innocent
    Social-change
    Social-constructionism
    Socialisation
    Social-justice
    Social-movements
    Social-movement-theory
    Sociology
    Speciesism
    Stacia-leyes
    Stanley-cohen
    Stanley-milgram
    States-of-denial-book
    Stephen-clark
    Stephen-clarke
    Stephen Nolan
    Steve Best
    Steve-christmas
    Steve-kangas
    Steven-sapontzis
    Subjectsofalife
    Sue-coe
    Tavs
    Teagan-kuruna
    Ted-benton
    Thanksgiving
    The-animals-film
    The Bloody Vegans
    The-case-for-animal-rights-book
    The-now-show
    The-species-barrier
    The-vegan-magazine
    The-vegan-news-1944
    The-vegan-society
    Thrive Vegan World
    Tik Tok
    Tim-barford
    Tina Cubberley
    Tobias Leenaert
    Tom Regan
    Tom Warby
    Total Liberation
    Trafficking
    Turkeys
    Unnecessary Fuss
    Utilitarianism
    Vegan
    Vegan Buddies
    Vegan Education
    Vegan Education On The Go
    Vegan Information Booths
    Vegan Information Day
    Vegan Information Days
    Vegan Information Project
    Veganism
    Vegan Outreach
    Vegan Pioneers
    Vegan Pioneers Rock!
    Vegan Radio International
    Vegans
    Vegan Social Movement
    Vegan Society
    Vegetarianism
    Vegfest Express
    VegFestUK
    Victoria Moran
    Victor Schonfeld
    Video Talk
    Violence
    Wayne Hsiung
    Wendy McGovern
    World Vegan Summit
    You Caring
    Zami
    Zoos
    Zygmunt Bauman

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.