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To those honest and sincere in their principles for justice and compassion, “animal liberation” is not just a fashionable slogan worn on a T-shirt, the concept around which their social circle gravitates, nor the incorporated organization which issues their paychecks. Animal liberation and the fight for it is a revolutionary social movement of unmeasured proportions.

Animal exploitation is the most socially ingrained prejudice on the face of the earth. Billions of animals die every year, and entire industries, economies, and societies depend on their suffering and death. Our palates are conditioned to crave their flesh, our fashion dictates that we wear their skins, and we are entertained by once proud animals, stripped of their dignity, forced through hoops of fire or onto specialty bicycles. Speciesism is a form of violence and oppression unlike any other in history, in magnitude and pervasiveness.

If we are to achieve animal liberation, we must embrace the idea that this fight is a revolution, one of the heart and mind, and ultimately, one of forceful change. To believe that animal rights can be won without sacrifice, confrontation, or engaging in and/or embracing methods we may otherwise find unsavory or abhorrent is dangerously naive and wrongly places the animal rights movement out of context with any other successful social justice cause in history. To deny animal rights activists the range of tactics that fall outside conventional forms of activism is to lock this movement in a vacuum away from the rest of social justice history—a history that has taught us the valuable lessons of the guerrilla tactics used in the overthrow of the South African apartheid government, how economic sabotage in the Boston Tea Party ignited our country’s fight for independence, and the illegal liberation of slaves through the underground railroad that made heroes out of ordinary citizens.

If potlucks and picnics alone could win animal liberation, we’d only be a few more veggie burgers away from victory. The reality of the matter is, however, the resistance to our cause of compassion knows no bounds and requires a wide range of approaches.

The argument about the fight for animal rights always wrongly revolves around whether or not these approaches are justifiable. When direct tactics and strategies are condemned—almost invariably by an overtly biased media and donation-hungry organizations—direct action inappropriately becomes the point of contention. No part of animal rights activism is controversial however, by mainstream societal standards. Most people do support liberations, property destruction, violence, forms of terrorism, and even murder. But they support them for different principles and pursuits, other than for animals. Mainstream people have supported such violent tactics in the crushing of the Third Reich, the establishment of fair labor practices, and even currently in the quest to kill Osama bin Laden. Winning animal rights is what is so threatening and “terrorizing”—not the way in which it is fought—for the prospect of such principles being accepted would undermine a great many cultural, economic, and societal institutions which depend on animal oppression for their survival.

If those within this movement who cling to comfortable pacifist means of advocacy were honest with themselves and owned up to their own internalized speciesism, they would be in for a troubling surprise. Pretend for a moment that it were not pigs being bound, mutilated and slaughtered for their muscle tissue, but instead, say men and women in Liberia—most would be outraged enough to support a violent war to end such an atrocity. If they owned up to their own secret racism and nationalism, and pretended that it were white, middle-class, kindergartners from Kansas being pumped full of bleach and anally-electrocuted, without question, most would likely be ready to take up arms themselves to end such a nightmare.

But because the victims are nonhuman animals, we do not. Social change requires society to recognize the prejudices upon which their discriminatory and oppressive behavior is based. The prejudices that keep pigs on dinner plates and rabbits wearing mascara are the same prejudices that support the (ir)rationale of otherwise politically conscious animal advocates when they condemn direct action, and now, violence.

We Live in a Violent World
Vindictive, vengeful, selfish, and destructive violence is condemnable. This is different though, than violence engaged in for the greater good and/or for survival, like that of the Allied troops violently dismantling the Nazi empire or that of a lioness and her antelope prey. The U.S. court system even recognizes this difference; violence is excusable if for self-defense. For our movement to universally condemn all violence is to engage in simplistic intellectual dishonesty and does no service for the animals dependent on this unrestricted fight for their survival.

Whether violence is necessary is the subject to debate. Often, the same results can be achieved with nonviolent tactics as with violence. Considering the risk of severe backlash, apprehension of activists, and drains on already limited resources for the animal rights movement, the violent approach is often inappropriate. The Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) campaign against the animal testing lab Huntingdon Life Sciences serves as an example of this. Outside of one isolated incident, the campaign has been free of actual physical violence, but is revered and feared by its opponents just the same. Three a.m. home demonstrations of company executives, mock beagle graveyards erected in the front yards of lab employees, red paint splattered on the doors of companies that contract HLS’s services, and stink and smoke bombs clearing whole office towers of HLS affiliates all act as economic and psychological deterrents to the use of vivisection, without physically harming any individual. Trepidation has been sent through the entire vivisection industry, and incredible long-lasting financial damage has been wrought by small acts of vandalism and intimidation tactics. And as few, if any, serious laws have been broken, the SHAC campaign has not been a top-agenda item for law enforcement. Had injurious harm or death befallen anyone, the case would be quite different.

Every issue within the animal rights debate is different and requires individual attention. Whereas SHAC tactics have been successful against the pharmaceutical industry, they may not be the best approach to farm animal advocacy. Likewise, violence may work in certain circumstances, and could someday be the only option to win animal liberation, but at the present moment it seems by and large unnecessary. Arguments for its justifiable use do not translate into a tactical need. The animal rights movement has made great strides in the last 30 years and before justifiably resorting to violence in this struggle, all other nonviolent means should be exhausted.

Framing the debate on the use of violence around its efficacy is the most fair, logical, and critically appropriate way of addressing such a hot issue. Too often, the discourse surrounding “violence” is set by organizations, individuals, or ideologies that stand to lose from its acceptance as a legitimate tool for the cause. Unfounded criticism, culturally imperialistic and historically naive arguments underlie the derision. Much-needed healthy dialogue and fruitful strategy discussions give way to comfort levels and fundraising prospects of those opposed to the use of physical confrontations.

Worry over uncontrollable backlash and a public relations nightmare cause much of the real concern facing those opposed to the use of physical confrontation. This concern, and the increasing allowance given to corporate media outlets like Fox News to set the tactical agenda of the animal rights movement, is a dangerous trend. Such transfer of power undermines the very fact that advocating for animal rights is hard, contentious, and anything but a social hobby for a privileged few. Additionally, such worries over negative public opinion disempower a movement from controlling its own image, and ultimately its own fate. When the nonviolent liberation of a few tortured beagle puppies from an insidious lab can be publicly cast as a “terrorist” act, the animal rights movement has only itself to blame for failing to understand and employ the same “Madison Avenue” media techniques of our opposition.

The use of violence as an appropriate tactic is not done out of a love of causing destruction or harm, but rather because it is the tactical hand that has been dealt to a given social movement. Nelson Mandela and those ANC activists fighting to overthrow the apartheid government did not resort to violence as a tactic because they were insincere in their passion for peace or could not convincingly articulate an argument for their liberation, but because their oppressor would not listen to any other medium. Mandela summarized this political and moral debate over tactics as such: “nonviolence is not a moral principle, but a strategy, and there is no moral goodness in using an ineffective weapon.”

Is it inconsistent to employ violence in pursuit of a nonviolent principle? It is an awkward position for any peace advocate to find him/herself in, but is a forced position and not one of choice. A far more egregious inconsistency is the comfort-prone adherence to nonviolent tactics at the expense of a far greater violence that cannot be stopped by the benign peaceful strategy.

The debate over the use of violence is a hot-button issue, and it should be, as long as it remains open to debate. Silencing and censoring the discussion reaps more damage to the efforts to help animals than the alleged backfire that opponents so dread. Reason and principle, coupled with history, shift the arguments about violence and direct action away from the sensationalized, fiscally-driven and comfort-prone motivations of a vocal few. There is no mathematical equation to how we will succeed. One part protest and two parts education does not always equal social change. Only when we are honest in our understanding of the use of violence and our role as a social movement will we begin to know not only where violence can be applicable, but if it is even necessary.

Kevin Jonas is a campaign coordinator for Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) USA. Since 1999 he has been a full-time volunteer in the international effort to close down the notorious animal testing lab. He has led demonstrations and spoken out against vivisection in over 15 states and several countries, and has been featured in scores of media interviews. Kevin is a firm believer in the “every tool in the tool box” approach, but has a particular fondness for the monkey-wrench.

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