Disclaimer: I am in no way affiliated, allied, aligned, or connected with
the Transformative Studies Institute, the Institute for Critical Animal
Studies, Anthony Nocella II, or Richard Kahn. While I am a press officer for
the North American Animal Liberation Press Office and am an associate of
Jerry Vlasak and Steve Best, I am penning this piece independently of NAALPO
and all of my allies. This essay is philosophical in nature and is not
intended to incite or encourage illegal or violent acts.
Immersion in an emotionally intense experience impacts the human psyche in a
poignant and profound way. Marginalized as we are by the war my fellow
activists and I are waging against the dominant culture, it's an elating and
uplifting experience to meet and engage those fellow activists, comrades,
and allies. My six days of nearly constant interaction with similar-minded
individuals and the chanting, shouting, and raging at primate torturers and
their enablers at the nexus of the UCLA vivisection wars in a raucous,
vociferous, militant demonstration served both as a cathartic outlet and a
source of potent spiritual and intellectual inspiration.
I've plenty of time to muse and contemplate as I journey home from those six
days at the Animal Rights Conference in Los Angeles, a city that is rife
with animal liberationists and vegans-at least relative to my home in Kansas
City. It's a bit disheartening to be returning to that barren outpost that's
nestled in the heart of the Bible belt and farm country, riddled of course
with fundamentalist Christian churches galore, techno-hells known as factory
"farms," and numerous "meat" purveying establishments that serve seared
rotting flesh slathered in spicy sauce. Hardened speciesists, hunters, and a
vast array of animal enslaving and exploiting business entities and
individuals abound. Yet there I shall remain, at least for a few more years,
to press forward with Bite Club of KC (
http://biteclubkc.wordpress.com/),
the grass roots activist group I founded. If we have a prayer of success
with the animal liberation movement nearly every town needs at least a few
zealots.
There's little to do but reflect and bang out my thoughts on my laptop as
the incessant droning of the plane's jet engines reverberates in my ears,
annoying in one sense and yet soothing in another, as the cicada-like hum
provides reassurance that we're surging toward our destination rather than
hurtling toward a fiery and instantaneous death. Sifting and sorting through
the collage of memories forged over the last week, it occurred to me that
I'd seen, felt, heard, and generally experienced a pretty comprehensive
cross-section of the groups and people whose goal it is to abolish the
slavery of nonhuman animals-to liberate the billions of nonhuman animals who
suffer excruciating agony at the hands of their self-absorbed, empathy
deficient human exploiters and oppressors.
Most of the hundreds of people whom I met proclaimed to be passionate and
dedicated vegan abolitionists. Yet despite enough professed love for
nonhuman animals that Jesus and John Lennon would have experienced spasms of
ecstasy simply from "feeling the vibes," the debate over direct action and
"how far is too far" raged throughout the conference. In my vernacular, love
is a verb and this absurd debate was over before it started. If a bully is
abusing the weak or defenseless, it's morally laudable to knock the shit out
of him-with a ball bat, a metal rod, or any weapon at hand if he's a "bad
ass." Those of us who are truly committed to animal liberation need to
employ, support, or, at the very least, respect militant direct action of
virtually any kind. Billions of our nonhuman friends are shot, stabbed,
eviscerated, beaten, starved, skinned alive, hunted, mutilated,
electrocuted, boiled, raped, confined, cooked and eaten every year in a
hideous speciesist greed and murder-fest-and those of us who claim to love
them have a moral obligation to fight for them by any means necessary, "each
according to his ability."
Obviously the true enemy in this war is the system. The pitiless, soulless,
murderous machine of capitalism and industrial civilization inculcates,
indoctrinates, entices, bribes, and coerces nearly everyone to participate
in its bloody, rapacious, and relentless assault on the Earth and its
sentient inhabitants. Even those of us who recognize its malevolence and are
struggling to skewer the heart of this wretched beast have to use the
sociopathic master's tools if we've a prayer of dismantling the master's
house of horrors.
Despite the fact that we need to direct most of our rage and actions against
the system, there are those individuals within the system who are so
sociopathic, such hardened speciesists, and so incorrigible that they are
immune to education, persuasion, propaganda and polemics, political
pressure, financial pressure, changes in laws, protests, boycotts, or any of
the myriad other aboveground and legal actions that our movement utilizes.
These are fine methods, and I'm not suggesting for a moment that we abandon
them or that those who engage in them are wasting their time. It is
essential that we wage this war holistically and contextually, but
non-violent, legal means are not effective in every situation and they alone
will not empty the cages and stop the intense suffering.
Philosophically speaking, if we love nonhuman animals enough and truly want
to win their liberation-including their basic rights to live free of
human-inflicted suffering, torture, exploitation, oppression, and murder-the
most heinous and most culpable perpetrators of the nonhuman animal holocaust
will need to start looking over their shoulders and fearing the wrath that
nonhuman animals would rain down upon them if they had the means and the
opportunity. Call it extensional self defense. Call it justifiable homicide.
Call it vigilante justice. A rose is a rose by any other name and it's time
for that flower to blossom in the AR movement. One of the master's principal
tools to maintain power, domination, and affluence is violence or the threat
of violence-be it physical, psychological, social, political, or economic.
Why do we endow the master with the exclusive right to use one of the most
powerful tools on the work bench?
Consider this. Hideous as their agenda may be to some of us,
anti-abortionist activists love embryos and fetuses enough to utilize
violence as a form of extensional self-defense on their behalf. The question
isn't, "Do we agree with their agenda?" The question is, "Have they been
effective?" Their record speaks for itself. Assassinations of doctors who
performed abortions have nearly eliminated the practice of late-term
abortions in the US. Food for thought.
As a movement, we also need to give serious philosophical consideration to
numerous other tactics which have been successfully implemented by radical
social movements throughout history.
Hunting accidents are a beautiful manifestation of karma. Nearly every US
citizen in the animal liberation movement has the same 2nd Amendment right
to bear arms as hunters and probably loves the outdoors as much (if not more
than) those who hunt. Wouldn't it be unfortunate if there were a sudden
epidemic of hunting accidents?
Corporate executives and politicians who are instrumental in the animal
holocaust receive innocuous protest letters from animal rights protestors
frequently. Presumably they smirk and casually toss them into their refuse
bin, or if they're "green" shred them for recycling. However, if said
letters were contaminated with a biological warfare agent or some wicked
poison like ricin, they would be much more difficult to blithely ignore.
Our beloved animal industrial complex hammers our collective psyche with the
best propaganda money can buy to convince us of the safety and necessity of
eating "meat," drinking "milk," and vivisecting nonhuman animals. Imagine
the panic and economic backlash if someone countered their reprehensible
mendacity with some major black propaganda. Widespread and effectively
orchestrated rumors of massive quantities of BSE-infected "meat," millions
of gallons of "milk" tainted with melamine, thousands of people experiencing
horrific side effects and dying as a result of taking the latest
pharmaceutical that was deemed "safe" via animal testing.
Infrastructure is another vulnerability our movement could, in theory,
heavily exploit. Cyber attacks on large corporate entities involved in the
wholesale maiming and mutilation of our friends could put a much-deserved
hurt on them. Frequent, coordinated strikes at multiple targets could
seriously cripple these horrendous fiends, leaving them flailing helplessly
like the "downers" they hoist into the slaughterhouses via forklift or the
monkeys they bolt into chairs to "map" their brains. Flailing yet grasping
for their bloody lucre to their dying gasp, much like HLS. Attacks on the
utilities powering their butchery and bloodshed and on the communications
systems enabling them to plot their maleficent strategies to wring more
profit from the bloody carcasses of our nonhuman friends could also strike
serious blows against these rotten-to-the-core serial abusers.
Lastly, but probably not least in terms of potential efficacy, a prominent
figure in the animal exploitation complex in the hands of intelligent
underground activists could probably fetch a significant ransom. Say perhaps
the release and subsequent re-wilding (or provision for their humane
guardianship) of all the nonhuman animals enslaved by the entity, or even
the industry, which that person represented..
While these are hypotheticals wrested from the wandering mind of a militant
vegan confined to a cramped commercial airliner full of speciesist
necrovores for three hours, they could potentially become realities for our
movement. Sometimes moving from the abstract to the real can be as simple as
steeling one's determination and taking Nike's advice to "Just do it."
As my little exercise in critical thinking unfolds here, I'm finding myself
plagued and perplexed by a number of contradictions and inconsistencies that
I'm struggling to reconcile.
For instance, what is preventing our movement from unifying in support of
the underground direct action that is already taking place and why isn't the
animal liberation movement upping the ante in response to intensified animal
exploitation?
Are we so afraid of "public perception" that we won't engage the enemy on
its own terms? As you read that question, thousands of those we profess to
love so much were murdered. And we're going to let the speciesist system
have a monopoly on harming sentient beings AND imprison our fellow activists
for chanting and chalking a side-walk? Maybe there's some redneck mentality
left in me, but where I come from that's called being a pussy. Yes we're
vastly out-numbered, but that's why those who currently engage in direct
action do so anonymously and use asymmetrical tactics. Our friends in the
cages, labs, and abattoirs certainly don't give a fuck how the public
perceives us-their defenders. And were they the moral agents and we the
moral patients, I feel confident that they would take the fight to our
abusers any way they could. My validation for this belief is that when I
look into Chico's eyes (he is the pit bull for whom I'm the guardian), I
KNOW that he would die fighting for me.
Or perhaps we're closet speciesists, thus able to psychologically minimize
the overwhelmingly immense suffering our friends endure and the incalculable
gallons of blood they spew? Maybe at some level of our psyches we reject our
own rhetoric about the sanctity of nonhuman animal life. Do we truly believe
in our own cause?
Or are we so repulsed by the dominant culture of death that we will "battle
not with monsters, lest we become a monster?" How sane is it to give this
concern a second thought when thus far speciesists have slaughtered
trillions of our friends over the centuries and vegan militants have not
killed a single sociopathic human animal?
Each of us who sincerely loves nonhuman animals and seeks their liberation
needs to ask ourselves these questions and at least two others.
"In the face of unspeakable evil, is it even possible for me to go too far?"
And finally, "What am I willing to do to help stop those who are principally
responsible for perpetuating the 10,000 year holocaust that has killed
trillions of nonhuman sentient beings?"
---
Jason Miller is a relentless anti-capitalist, vegan straight edge, animal
liberationist, and press officer for the North American Animal Liberation
Press Office. He is also the senior editor and founder of Thomas Paine's
Corner and founder of Bite Club of KC.
