A Movement That Moves Backward

When I wrote “Rain Without Thunder: The Ideology of the Animal Rights Movement” in 1996, I argued that the animal rights movement was becoming a “new welfarist” movement. That is, the movement claimed to embrace animal rights and abolition but it promoted the idea of using traditional welfarist reform to get to abolition. I argued that new welfarism was unsound both as a moral and practical matter.

It is now clear that the “movement” rejects abolition and maintains, as did the classical welfarists of the 19th and early- to mid-20th century, that animal use is not itself morally objectionable and that we can use and kill animals as long as we do so “compassionately.”

So the “movement” today is not even new welfarist; it is not taking the position that animal exploitation–however “humane”–is itself morally wrong. The “movement” has rejected veganism as a moral baseline. The only difference between now, and, say, the “movement” in 1940 is that in 1940, there were few, if any, people making a living from being “animal activists.” Now, there are thousands making a living off the back of animal suffering and death as they peddle the insidious notion of “happy” or “compassionate” exploitation.

It’s going backward.

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If you are not vegan, please go vegan. Veganism is about nonviolence. First and foremost, it’s about nonviolence to other sentient beings. But it’s also about nonviolence to the earth and nonviolence to yourself.

If animals matter morally, veganism is not an option — it is a necessity. Anything that claims to be an animal rights movement must make clear that veganism is a moral imperative.

The World is Vegan! If you want it.

Learn more about veganism at www.HowDoIGoVegan.com.

Gary L. Francione
Board of Governors Distinguished Professor, Rutgers University