Francione thereby reinforces the dismal elitist, classist, and racist stigmas attached to activists for nonhuman animals since the beginning of "animal protectionism" in the early nineteenth century, and he further isolates veganism and animal rights from progressive movements and the social mainstream. Unable to articulate a structural theory of oppression, exploitation, and ideological hegemony, and mired in Western dualisms and the construction of false oppositions such as between production/consumption, individual/social, and psychological/institutional, Francione exculpates the logic and global machinery of capitalism to lay the entire burden of blame and responsibility on individual consumers.
Certainly, humans do have agency and need to take responsibility for transforming their personal lives, such as by engaging the ecological and ethical imperative to go vegan. But politically and pedagogically it is also crucial for citizens to recognize the formidable power of the structural forces in their lives and the ways in which sedimented economic and political institutions pose profound obstacles to teaching, learning, and progressive ethical and social change. Psychological and ethical change is a necessary but not a sufficient condition of the large-scale social transformations needed for creating viable democratic and ecological cultures.
Internalizing the capitalist ideology of liberal individualism, this pseudo-abolitionist offers nothing but the most banal and tepid reformism which is no more effective in changing the overall social relations of domination than "welfarism" is in breaking the chains of speciesist oppression. Rather than advancing on Watson's formulation, Francione offers a regressive and hollow version of a rich ethical political ideal opposed to all forms of exploitation and hierarchy.
IV.
Franciombes eliminate complexity and ambiguity from the social-political picture, and reek of arrogance, dogma, and condescension. They cling to the religious conviction that any approach to veganism, animal rights, or abolitionism other than what Francione has set in stone is false, reactionary, and "welfarist." They promiscuously deploy the phrase "new welfarist" to discredit others in the movement, much as McCarthyites hurled the epithet of "communist" and post-9/11 patriots terrorize with the discourse of "terrorism" to discredit their opponents as irrational extremists.
Indeed, in McCarthyist fashion, upon receiving alleged death threats from supporters of confrontational or illegal direct action, Francione made reckless accusations and named names of anyone (including avowed pacifists) remotely connected to such a devious terrorist plot. Moreover, Francione routinely brands his opponents as "mad" or "insane," as if disagreement with his divine teachings were evidence of psychological impairment and oblivious to the normalizing and ableist implications of crude dichotomies of sane/insane and rational/irrational.
Unable to grasp the root causes of hierarchical domination and ecological crisis, blaming individuals over institutions, Francione is hardly positioned to grasp the nature of the problems afflicting other animals and the planet let alone to offer potential solutions and viable tactics. And thus we get nothing beyond the hopelessly vague, liberal pseudo-panacea of "vegan education." Apparently limited to blogging and podcasting to the choir, Francione & followers are bereft of politics, and, in fact, they lack even the most rudimentary elements of a theory and practice of education - more than a small problem for an approach seeking change through vegan education. Their outlook is utterly delusional in the conviction that veganism is the main vehicle and catalyst for individual enlightenment and, thereby, for social change. These pugilistic pacifists cling to a Christian-like faith that somehow, someday their insular polemics and feeble "education" efforts will transform the heart and soul of humanity and, thereby, change society as a whole. Oblivious to the threshold we are about to cross, they promote slow, incremental change amidst rapid, systemic ecological breakdown.
Incredibly, as global ecological and social crises rapidly mount, Francione ignores the most crucial events of the day - human overpopulation, species extinction crisis, deforestation, global climate change, and the destructive growth imperatives inherent in the capitalist economy. The chaos theory model Franciombes use to buttress their collective hallucination of a "vegan revolution" is far more applicable to the exponential growth of flesh consumption in China and India. For every person who becomes vegan, a thousand flesh-eaters arise in these rapidly industrializing societies and elsewhere such as Brazil and South Africa. The Franciombe concern over "replacement" of liberated nonhuman animals seems to elude them as it applies to their own single-issue approach, which fails to realize that for every vegan convert they celebrate, armies of necrovores are continuously born and raised.
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