“If a path to the better there be, it begins with a full look at the worst.”
(Thomas Hardy)
The Good…
I have the luxury of ‘time’ in prison, enabling me to read and study more than I ever have before. I have been absorbing theory like a sponge. I attend a philosophy class and we were asked an interesting question this week: ‘What good do you see in people?’ I tried to explain – confessionally – to the class that it is difficult for vegan animal rights activists not to view the majority of people with a certain amount of suspicion or disdain; often transforming into utter disillusionment.
These preconceived judgements are clearly handicaps to forging broad links with the vast majority of people, and we are talking about massive majorities. To put things in to perspective, of the 6.5 billion people on this planet there are perhaps 260 million vegetarians and vegans. 23o million of those vegetarians live in the Mumbai region of India. Even with this ethical contribution from Hinduism this leaves us in the west as a tiny vegan minority – exactly from where exploitative media messages are being most effectively broadcast.
Social movements…
Veganism is inherently ‘good’ but its practical application on a universal level may only be achieved through a sills-based educational revolution where we take it upon ourselves to connect with other people. I realized during the SNGP years that our strongest alliances can be made with those most inclined and predisposed to listen to our message, thus acknowledging there are those that are ‘good’ in other ways. These people are part of other “social movements” (a cultural phenomenon that any good sociology book will explain in more detail); be they anti-capitalists, ecofeminists or environmentalists. Uniting purposefully with these other social movements means to share ideas, visions, memes, practical policies and methods of action through public meetings and electronic forums – the ‘public sphere’. Understanding their history is intrinsic to understanding our own struggle. We all share that desire to dismantle patriarchal, economic and immoral systems of exploitation but where would the animal rights movement be without Emily Pankhurst or Rosa Parks for example? Other social movements appreciate the sources and causes of animal abuse, so it is important to forge these links and remind them that the top ten world’s most profitable companies include six animal killing pharma-giants that are all capitalist corporations, are all patriarchal and are all environmentally destructive: GlaxoSmithkline, Monsanto, AstraZeneca, Novartis, Roche and Aventis.
We are trying to evolve morality, to accelerate the process that will liberate animals from tyranny. This is a lengthy and difficult course of action. Creating these alliances to achieve that objective means working with others that are bound up in the same final aim: to stop the ideology of consumption that liberates all human action at the expense of all other natural forms and destroys animal life and habitats, from Oxford to the Amazon.
Neo-Liberalism…
It is important to understand that this anthropocentric ideology of exponential consumption has an ancient history and currently manifests most potently in the West in what economists call ‘neo-liberalism’. It is an aspect of post-industrial capitalism that was spawned in the 1970s and spearheaded today by institutions (tools of the trade) like GATT, NAFTA, IMP and World Bank and by the politics of Blair and Bush. One of its fundamental tenets is ‘possessive individualism’: that the person is the basic unit of moral, economic and political analysis and the sole possessor of rights. It is a utilitarian scheme that ultimately justifies the commodification, destruction and dispensability of all non-human life so long as the ends are the promotion of human desires and appetites.
Inherent value…
During Newsnight in July ‘Professor’ Aziz, a vivisector at Oxford University, coolly announced that he’d killed 150 primates but, by doing so, had ‘saved’ umpteen humans from suffering certain effects of dementia. In a moment of unadulterated propaganda he was reinvigorating this immoral neo-liberal agenda. It applies no inherent or intrinsic value to any other life form outside of their use to humans – in the lab, in the factory farm or in the biosphere. They are not ‘ends-in-themselves’; they are only the means to fulfill economic ends. In labs, for example, all life is privatized, commodified and patented and thus owned by that institution, be it HLS, Oxford or Sequani. Creating, genetically modifiying, patenting and owning animal life in the labs is a fairly recent phenomenon – a result of corporate legislation imposed by the US Supreme Court in 1987. But it has a long history in agri-business and it means the workers in all these institutions can do whatever they like to the animals they ‘own’. Numerous undercover exposes have exposed this tragedy in factory farms and labs across the world.
Yet to all those that abuse animals the numbers are irrelevant. Animal life merits no intrinsic value to the breeder, the factory farmer or vivisector. Animals are just a means to an end. ‘Professor’ Aziz could have said, ‘I have killed 3,000 primates’. It wouldn’t matter to him because when a single animal has no inherent value (is not an end-in-itself) then multiplying that still leaves no value: so 0 x 1 = 0 and 0 x 150 = 0 or 0 x 3,000 still equals nothing! When we wince at the vivisection victim statistics rising under Labour we should never be surprised by them. The ideology of the west has long established that animal life is meaningless and neo-liberalism is exacerbating those effects. A rise in animals killed in the labs from 2.6 to 3 million or from 10 or 200 million just wouldn’t matter to them. Once animal status has become ‘status-less’ – is bereft of all intrinsic meaning and value – it just doesn’t matter how many millions are involved: they are commodities and can be bred then dispensed of like beans or bacteria: like ‘meat’.
Human casualties…
Yet if the means are immoral then the ends will be inevitably flawed – lethal in fact. In vivisection, they are breaking new moral ground in two ways. Firstly, modern science has established that animals are incontrovertibly capable of feeling, of sentience – sharing a central nervous system as human-animals do. This is recognized in the UK Home Office’s 1986 Animals Scientific Procedures Act. Yet it still overtly legislated for hierarchies of pain that animals will endure throughout live experimentation. These include ‘mild’, ‘moderate’ or ‘substantial pain’: where ‘substantial pain’ leads to “significant morbidity or death.” (see Guidance on the Operation of the Animals Scientific Procedures Act 1986: www.archive.official-documents.co.uk/document/hoc/321/321.htm Unlike Descartes, modern science is no longer trying to absolve itself from accusations of cruelty by denying animals’ souls or sensation – but is plainly legislating for that pain.
Secondly, recent news articles remind us of the mounting human casualties of this industry. In April 2006, British Medical Association statistics (which included adverse drug reactions to animal tested drugs) concluded that “at least 250,000 people end up in hospital every year because of the damaging side-effects of the medicines they are taking and about 5,000 die.” (See The Times: ‘Doctors urged to be more vigilant over drugs’ side effects’: April 2006) Even if one ignores Peter Singer’s or Tom Regan’s arguments – as vivisectionists do – it is impossible to justify an annual death rate of c. 5,000 human beings. And these are the industries own figures – imagine what the numbers really are! No amount of moral model juggling can explain these statistics; they deny the inherent value of any life – collectively, individually, human or otherwise. The statistics from the ‘meat’ industry are as sickening – 1 : 4 adults and 1 : 5 kids in the UK are now obese; with all the related cancers, strokes and heart disease this epidemic brings. The abuse industries evidently transcend all moral approaches and should be condemned as an unjustifiable neglect of all sentient beings. They are a shocking adaptation of human tyranny. As a rule, the killing of members of our own species on this scale is only matched by governments at war – yet these industries clearly demonstrate that all life has clearly become expendable at all times.
The media…
It is essential we understand the function of the media that is used by all corporations and institutions with a vested interest in maintaining anthropocentric power and normalizing animal and environmental abuse. They include all mainstream Internet and TV channels, newspapers, magazines and radio stations. What we are up against is what Noam Chomsky so accurately called the ‘manufacture of consent’: as he says, “The mass media serve as a system for communicating messages and symbols to the general populace. It is their function to amuse, entertain, and inform, and to inculcate individuals with the values, beliefs, and codes of behaviour that will integrate them into the institutional structures of a larger society… to fulfill this role requires systematic propaganda.”
A key element of this systemized propaganda – that we have all no doubt witnessed – is the media’s role in displaying the acceptable, ‘smiley face’ of the institution of violence to the public – be it McDonald’s, Oxford University or BP. Representatives of that institution or corporation may parade their caring attitude through the media and tell us all how they love their kids and their ‘pets’ – and they might. Aziz, Blakemore, Cass or ‘Lord’ Browne may love their wives and their kids. Hitler loved his dog. But historically, institutional tyranny is the same and it is important to distinguish between the institution and the individual. As Chomsky says, “Slavery for example, or other forms of tyranny, are inherently monstrous but the individuals participating in them could be the nicest guys you can imagine – benevolent, friendly, nice to their children, even nice to their slaves… but in their institutional role they are monsters because the institution is monstrous.”
The Hope Really is in Us…
(1) If we perceive and investigate other social movements (anti-capitalist, ecofeminist or environmentalist etc) as positive sources of action, inspiration and change we will see they are hungry for sharing a collective identity and morally susceptible to influence by the Vegan method of living. Please explore other groups and social movements and invite them along to your own vegan/animal rights meetings and discussions.
(2) The dissemination and sharing of positive and ethical media messages is indispensable to the promotion of our cause and its purposeful integration with other groups. We have the ability. We have our media. We have our internet. Harnessing these capabilities is essential in an information age. Please sign up at a local college course and learn how to print magazines, fliers or design websites.
(3) The internet is perhaps the last bastion of mass informational freedom and a decisive educational tool – but be warned, all corporations are working hard to encroach upon its freedoms with their own neo-liberal message. Yet, I have had the privilege to watch many of the following documentaries whilst in a high security prison. I implore you all to ensure these downloadable documentaries and others like them clog up media highways whiled they still can:
‘The Manufacture of Consent’ – Noam Chomsky: DVD and book
‘Behind the Mask’ – Discourse on the ALF: DVD
‘Earthlings’– Joachim Pheonix’s animal exploration: DVD
‘The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power’ – JoelBakan: DVD and book
‘Hijacking Catastrophe’ – 9/11, Fear and Selling of American Empire.’ DVD
‘The End of Suburbia – Oil Depletion and the Collapse of the AmericanDream.’ DVD
Urge your MP to support EDM 92: see www.curedisease.net
For the Animals, For their Earth: Keep Hope Alive!
‘Fall Seven Times, Stand Up Eight!’
Jonny Ablewhite:
TB4885
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