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Sea Shepherd activists hurling bottles at Japanese whaling ship. Photograph: Ho/Reuters
When there are compassionate people in a society, a disturbance in the animal world will inevitably bring a disturbance in the human world.
Thus, if the Home Office wants peace, it must grant justice to animals. And until it does, the state and animal exploiters in particular can expect a shattering of the peace – of their peace – and ever greater firestorms of fury.
The End of Free Speech
“Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.” Thomas Paine
Free speech is a lie and myth on the same order as “democracy” itself – a vicious fiction peddled to gullible publics in the land of corporate plutocracies such as the UK and the US. The right to free speech exists only until you begin to use it and speak out against the prevailing powers, and once you do, especially if you are effective, you smash you, or kill you. Even more shocking than my own ban, in 2008 the Home Office wrote former ALF prisoner and now vegan educator, Gary Yourofsky, a Letter of Exclusion based on some of his pro-ALF writings. As Yourofsky has never been to the UK and never intended to go, this was similar to the movie Minority Report, where the cops bust for even thinking of doing something wrong, before you can do it. But it’s even worse, for Yourofsky never even thought once about going to the UK in his life! And apparently the Home Office has have done away with nicety of offering a response before they ban you.
Clearly, with so much money at stake in the multi-billion dollar vivisection industry, the animal rights movement in England has become not only an ideological and political threat, but, far more seriously, an economic threat.
Just as human slavery was once a huge part of modern capitalist economies, so animal slavery is fundamental to capital accumulation today. The state can no longer ignore a movement that has discovered its power lies not in the vote but rather in the ability to shut down production. The direct action movement has transcended the largely meaningless gestures of protest – such as letter writing, demonstrations, and lobbying – pre-approved by the state, as it unavoidably awakens the system’s wrath and vengeance.
And thus, as I write, brave animal liberation warriors rot in the prisons of the UK and US, and I speak of friends and comrades such as Kevin Jonas, Josh Harper, Lauren Gazzola, Gregg Avery, Natasha Avery, and Heather Nicholson. But the movement they helped to build, and today continue to inspire, is growing globally.
The animal rights movement has rocked the core of the British establishment and the Home Office has taken extraordinary measures against it, but this righteous force cannot be stopped or defeated. The menacing cops and laws of the UK dictatorship are not enough to stop the children, youth, families, mothers, and grandmothers from marching in the streets and knocking down walls to free animal prisoners. England is a barometer of the kinds of political storms one can expect in the US and elsewhere around the world as the struggle over animal rights moves to entirely new levels.
Every justice struggle up to the present has been relatively easy. Now it gets hard. We are involved in a serious battle — a war — that will be lengthy, protracted, costly, and most likely violent as it heats up (exactly like earlier struggles to end human slavery). Animal liberation is the most difficult liberation struggle of all because speciesism is primordial and universal.
Speciesism is arguably the first of any form of domination or hierarchy and it has spread like a deadly virus throughout the entire planet and all of human history. The problem is not limited to Western culture or to the modern world, such that there is some significant utopian past or radical alternative to recover. The problem is the human species itself, which but for rare exceptions is violent, destructive, and imperialistic. Universally, humans have vested interests in exploiting animals and think they have a God-given right to do so. To change these attitudes is to change the very nerve center of human consciousness, and thereby to change the totality of society itself. That is our task – no more and no less.
Dr. Steve Best is TPC’s associate editor. Associate professor of philosophy at UTEP, award-winning writer, noted speaker, public intellectual, and seasoned activist, Steven Best engages the issues of the day such as animal rights, ecological crisis, biotechnology, liberation politics, terrorism, mass media, globalization, and capitalist domination. Best has published 10 books, over 100 articles and reviews, spoken in over a dozen countries, interviewed with media throughout the world, appeared in numerous documentaries, and was voted by VegNews as one of the nations “25 Most Fascinating Vegetarians.” He has come under fire for his uncompromising advocacy of “total liberation” (humans, animals, and the earth) and has been banned from the UK for the power of his thoughts. From the US to Norway, from Sweden to France, from Germany to South Africa, Best shows what philosophy means in a world in crisis.
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