Gary Francione has an essay out giving his preliminary reasons for opposing violence in the animal rights cause. He states in part:First, in my view, the animal rights position is the ultimate rejection of violence. It is the ultimate affirmation of peace. I see the animal rights movement as the logical progression of the peace movement, which seeks to end conflict between humans. The animal rights movement ideally seeks to take that a step further and to end conflict between humans and nonhumans...
Second, for those who advocate violence, exactly against whom is this violence to be directed? The farmer raises animals because the overwhelming number of humans demand to eat meat and animal products. The farmer raises those animals in intensive conditions because consumers want meat and animal products to be as inexpensive as possible. But is the farmer the only culprit here? Or is the responsibility shared by the rest of us who eat animal products, including all of those conscientious omnivores, the non-vegan “animal people” who consume “cage-free eggs” and “happy” meat, who create the demand but for which the farmer would be doing something else with her life?...
I think Francione misses a crucial point: Violence directed against humans is different categorically and morally from harming animals. If an animal is slaughtered humanely for food, for example, it isn’t wrong. If an animal is treated inhumanely, it is a different class of wrong than treating a human in the same way. (Thus, drowning an unwanted puppy is horrible act, but it is not the evil of infanticide.) But I welcome his essay and his stated intent to write more fully on this crucial issue. As I have always said, the best chance to avoid murder and mayhem in the name of animal rights is for the believers in the ideology to rein in the crazies of the movement.
Third, it is not clear to me what those who support violence hope to achieve as a practical matter. They certainly are not causing the public to become more sympathetic to the plight of nonhuman animals. If anything, the contrary is true and these actions have a most negative effect in terms of public perception.
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