UPDATE: Generally, I don’t delete posts once I’ve published them – I prefer for my mistakes to stand as reminder to me that I need to work hard to get things right. However, I should not let those mistakes go uncorrected and so I have written a new post re-examining what this post is about. Please read Steve Best’s Idea – Revisited.
Steve Best describes himself on his website as an “Award-winning writer, noted speaker, public intellectual and seasoned activist” and he’s well known in the animal advocacy movement as a vocal supporter of MDA – Militant Direct Action. Last year, Best gave an interview wherein he said a number of sensible things, and make a number of reasonable observations about animal rights and the animal advocacy movement. There was one question he answered, though, which makes no sense and which ought to be reasonably rejected.
Here is the question, and his answer, in its entirety, as it is published as part of that longer interview on the “Nettverk for Dyrs Frihet” website. A short analysis follows.
Q: Some claim, like Lee Hall, and I guess Francione too, that aggressive confrontative militant actions scare people away from the movement and the message. And that they get the main attention in the media as opposed to the animal rights message. How would you answer that?
A: Number one, some of these actions are not necessarily reported, so the public may be completely unaware of what’s going on. And number two, the real target and purpose of the action is to encriple an exploiter, and that’s more important than what the public opinion might be, should there be a public opinion. So if one can strike at a fur farmer and shut down that fur farm and parts of the public are alienated by that or think that is radical or extreme, is that really so important what they think? Because their opinions might not be to important in the long run anyway, if they’re not involved politically or if their influence is insignificant. But number three, this is why there is a press office, an animal liberation front press office, is to try to have some control over the meaning of these actions, so that if there’s a bombing attack on a laboratory van at UCLA, the press will call up, the media will call up the press office and say, why was this attack done, what are your views on this? And there’s a change to contextualize this to explain it, so that if there is media coverage, they will get another side, another perspective to consider if it is objective reported. So there are ways to control the message that are important, and that’s why there’s a press office. But I mean, look, it’s important to undertake these actions and hope for the best and it’s not the whole of the movement, you see. An important part of the movement has to do with education, it is to do with some of the mainstream work, it is to win people, is to be influential on people and to win them to a favorable position on animal rights. And there are whole sectors of the movement working on that, there’s no reason why there can’t be other kinds of actions, underground, happening elsewhere, a compliment to these action. And if the public is alienated? Well, again I think it’s more important that the actions are effective. And in very many cases they have been effective, so I think they are worth doing. It’s also how you do the actions, like if you write on the wall with spray paint “Die vivisector scum!”, and a picture of that gets in the paper, that’s not going to have a favorable impact on to many people, but if you write instead a little more positive message, like “animal experimentation is bad science”, something to that effect, and that gets printed in the paper, then the public have something to think about, so it depends on how the action is done. But that is one of the most controversial issues in the movement, and it will remain so.
The question is, do acts of property destruction against animal exploiters hurt the cause of animal rights by fostering in the mind of the general public the idea that all animal rights advocates are dangerous extremists?
Steve Best doesn’t seem to really know.
At first, he says that some acts of MDA go unreported, so the public is unaware of, and can’t truly understand, what is going on. Second, he says that what the public thinks doesn’t, or shouldn’t, matter. MDA is about disrupting the exploitation, he says, so, when it comes to the public, “is it really all that important what they think?” Considering this, I’m not sure why he bothered making the first point. If it isn’t really all that important what the public thinks, what does it matter that they may be unaware?
The third point Best makes is that activists must make sure they provide the public with information about their actions in order to add the proper context to them. It is important that a “bombing attack on a laboratory van at UCLA” be viewed in the best possible light. This too seems to contradict his second point, that what people think doesn’t matter. Best seems to realize that his answer is going astray when he then says: “But I mean, look, it’s important to undertake these actions and hope for the best and it’s not the whole of the movement, you see.” It’s too much to ask, I guess, that one would undertake a bombing attack on a lab van with a better plan than just hoping for the best, but since it’s not the whole movement, that’s all Best seems to require.
And what else is part of the movement? Best tell us it is “education, it is to do with some of the mainstream work, it is to win people, is to be influential on people and to win them to a favorable position on animal rights.” But didn’t he also tell us that it might not be really important what people think? It seems that if people disagree with the tactics of MDA, their opinions might not matter, but otherwise they will. I’m not too sure we can be so selective with the understanding of others. It almost sounds as though Best wants to use others to advance his own agenda, as if they were merely the means to his own ends.
But again, Best seems to realize that his answer is wandering into dangerous territory and he begins to correct its trajectory. He says: “And if the public is alienated? Well, again I think it’s more important that the actions are effective. And in very many cases they have been effective, so I think they are worth doing. It’s also how you do the actions, like if you write on the wall with spray paint ‘Die vivisector scum!’, and a picture of that gets in the paper, that’s not going to have a favorable impact on to many people, but if you write instead a little more positive message, like ‘animal experimentation is bad science’, something to that effect, and that gets printed in the paper, then the public have something to think about, so it depends on how the action is done.”
That makes sense. “Die vivisector scum!” written on the wall with spray paint would probably not paint a favorable picture of animal advocates or their advocacy in the minds of the general public. Better to use a softer, less inflammatory message for sure. It does depend on how the action is done.
Unfortunately for Best, it is this final example of his which gives lie to the whole notion of MDA; a notion he has taken such contortions of rhetoric to support. How exactly, one has to wonder, does one undertake a bombing attack on a laboratory van at UCLA using “a little more positive message”? How exactly could such an attack be repainted so as to have a “favorable impact” on people? Of course, no-one can undertake a bombing attack with a positive message and such an attack could never have a positive impact on the general public.
In the car business, unscrupulous dealers will slap a new coat of enamel on an old junker to pass it off as something of value. Steve Best has a lemon of an idea and he knows it. Repainting it won’t help, and, in this case at least, no-one should buy what he’s selling.
12 Comments
Great commentary!
Thanks Mylène!!
Violence is the problem – how could it be the solution?
Another great essay, Tim!
I thought you were very fair and thorough. Well done!
Steve provides a taxonomy of what is termed militant political violence (usually by those in some form of opposition to it).
His first point addresses the fact that the media spectacle around acts of animal or earth liberation (what the right named “ecoterrorism;” and let’s be clear that this was in fact a term that originates from the political right-wing and so is politically slanted) does not constitute a critical journalistic account or accurate historiography of the movement’s praxis. This is important because it means that the very adjectival modifiers attached to militant work in the question asked of him (e.g. aggressive; confrontational) need to be challenged and contested. If lots of work is going on completely beyond the public imagination, then there is no way to know what it looks like — to narrowly define militancy by the iconography of the media portrayals is an ideological error that plays into the political hands of the right (because it equates militancy with ecoterrorism).
Steve’s second point is that it is an analytic error to assume that militant acts that ARE spectacularly confrontational or even self-identified as violent are undertaken by activists in what historically has been known as “propaganda by the deed.” Some may be (which gets to his third point) but some may be undertaken simply as a vital moral response by local actors in response to gross local injustice. Thus, the question of whether it hurts the movement or not begs the more primary question of what the movement is and who gets to define it. Such vitalistic responses, Best suggests, may be movement eruptions that prove its multidimensionality and strength…and if not incorporated into the movement’s self-understanding of itself but instead expunged by some within the movement as monstrous perversions of the movement’s purity, then this again constitutes a rightist invasion of movement ideology (such demonization politics is a hallmark of the right).
Finally, Best correctly identifies that militant action has been and in some cases still is propaganda by the deed. Here, he critically and soberly notes that in targeting the media as a tool for propagating emancipatory messages, this is a dangerous game (because media institutions have tremendous hegemonic power — we have a media industrial complex now, owned and used by the corporate-state, which post 9/11 has instituted what media scholars now call an unprecedented “media emergency”). Thus, his point is that activists who do seek propaganda by the deed must take every precaution to not play into the hands of the media’s shock doctrine and counter-revolutionary messaging apparatus). Further, he correctly notes that even militant actions (or any activist campaign really) that do not self-consciously seek propaganda by the deed have been and will be turned into such by the media establishment for counter-revolutionary ends. Hence, he identifies something like the Press Office as a potentially crucial place that works to propagate information and movement context for animal advocacy, thereby producing an alternative message that can contest the mainstream media’s own. Ideally, this counter-messaging should take the form of what he and I have termed the “animal standpoint” — an ideological position that diagnoses history from the perspective that is intolerant of the domination of animal kind (in either its overtly violent or repressively tolerant forms).
When Best notes that actions either self-or-otherwise identified as propaganda by the deed do not constitute the entirety of the movement, this is an important fact worthy of remembering when sensitivities become shrill, but even more so as we undertake its deeper meanings through pedagogical reflection.
The movement is diverse. A multitude which seeks to realize itself. But this understanding until such time that it should complete its aim, is always partial and limited. Thus, meanings and messages are contested. Here, when the question is does propaganda by the deed scare people away from the movement or otherwise limit the understanding of what animal rights is and desires, Best’s answer is a cautious but ultimately vehement, no. And this is correct because of the caution.
If the majority of the movement itself allows counter-messaging to infiltrate its self-understanding and so fails to take up the democratic challenge of identifying the diversity of agents propagating messages (their interests and aims) then we would have to say that such militancy becomes used by the hands of the larger powers that be as a sort of coup-de-gras to kill an already dying movement (one that is anti-democratic and colonized by the ideology of the hegemony). Note, this would not be the fault of the militants per se, they would not be the invisible hand hurting the movement; in fact, it would be majority of others in the movement who would have allowed their thinking to become perversely one-dimensional and co-opted who would be the greater engines in such a tragedy.
In other words, Best is suggesting that if large segments of the above ground movement are educational vehicles for reaching out to a broader speciesist public and creating in roads for them to begin a movement of larger social reform, then the so-called militant direct action wing of the movement acts in such a way to educate the educators. Their pedagogical role is not to target the speciesist public, but to provide a mirror of self-reflection for the mainstreams of the movement — to remind them of their true nature and its historical openness based in a contest where the stakes are the very viability of the movement itself (regardless of the myriad dominated beings with which the movement stands).
Thus, the pedagogical emphasis in Best’s message is not that it is ultimately central as to whether the militants (or those identified as militants) can defend themselves as doing the movement good or ill, but rather whether what is of greater importance is if those not undertaking such actions can understand the contested terrain that is their occupied consciousness. When mainstream activists raise the question of the meaning of militancy as part of an engagement with an attempt to identify the strengths and limitations of their own work, this is in some ways an extremely healthy thing to do…as long as it is epistemologically serious — meaning that it is done as part of a process of trying to decolonize one’s own mind in the open space where the question of what it means to be a human being is altogether undecided (and perhaps undecidable). But when mainstream activists raise the question of the appropriateness of movement militancy as a sort of flippant public performance that really serves to ritualize their fear through a demonstration of their self-assuredness, self-aggrandizement, and false-hearted righteousness…in which militants are thereby committed to sacrifice on the altar of the undeniable “good” or otherwise banished from the equally undeniably “lawful” and “just” polis in the name of all that is fundamentally right and beyond question, well this is an act of unlearning.
For me, as a scholar of education, the good news is that such unlearning can always be challenged and so the dream of an education for liberation will not end. Still, as I consider the widespread corruption and violence that have become the historical conditions for our debates, there is some measure of me that grows more and more uncomfortable with every act of unlearning that our movement undertakes. For it is, as I have suggested here, diagnostically a symptom of our movement towards death — our defeat…at least at this time.
A Luta Continua!
—————————
Richard Kahn, Ph.D.
Core Faculty in Education
Antioch University Los Angeles
http://antiochla.edu/
Phone: 310-498-8684
Web: http://richardkahn.org
Publications:
1) Critical Pedagogy, Ecoliteracy and Planetary Crisis: The Ecopedagogy Movement (Peter Lang, 2010)
**** American Educational Studies Association Critics Choice Book Award 2010 ****
– http://www.smalllinks.com/M6J
2) (with Tyson Lewis) Education Out of Bounds: Reimagining Cultural Studies for a Posthuman Age (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010)
– http://www.smalllinks.com/M6K
3) Ecopedagogy: Educating for Sustainability in Schools and Society (Routledge, 2011)
– http://www.smalllinks.com/M6L
4) Green Theory & Praxis: The Journal of Ecopedagogy
– http://greentheoryandpraxis.org
Richard:
Thank you for your comment. You have given me much to think about, and have cast a light on Best’s answer that I had not seen on my own. I will consider what you have written, as it obviously deserves that. I appreciate very much that you took the time to weigh in here.
tim
Hello again Richard,
I’ve taken some time to think about your commentary and offer these thoughts, not as a scholar, obviously, but as someone interested in discovering truth.
Adjectives (or if you prefer, adjectival modifiers) such as “aggressive” and “confrontational” as applied to militant work need to be challenged, because they play into the hands of the political right.
I would ask why then does Steve Best talk in the interview of a “strike against a fur farmer” and a “bombing attack” on a lab van? Why does usually he employ the phrases “By Any Means Necessary” and “Negotiation is Over”? Why, in the Manifesto at negotiationisover.com which bears his name, does he say “Thus, we need education and agitation, mainstream and militant tactics, peaceful resistance and confrontation and sabotage, and aboveground/legal and underground/illegal means of weakening speciesist capitalism.”? Indeed, why does the entire manifesto read like an angry and self-indulgent screed against nonviolence?
Perhaps defining militancy narrowly does play into the hands of the reactionary right, but since, according to Merriam-Webster, the word “militant” itself means “engaged in warfare or combat” or “aggressively active” and since Steve Best likes to use terms which are themselves aggressive and confrontational, this critique of others rings hollow.
Your second point is that some militant direct actions are not “propaganda by the deed” but are instead “vitalistic” “movement eruptions” by locals in the face of local injustice. I understand the point, but in the desire to have proof of the movement’s multidimensionality and strength, certainly there must be some eruptions that shouldn’t be incorporated into the movement’s self-understanding. For example, the arson against a supplier of rabbits in England which resulted in the fiery deaths of eight rabbits in a burning van can’t be evidence of any kind of multidimensionality and strength in any movement for animal rights, welfare or protection.
Is the expunging of arson and bombing attacks as tactics in the struggle really only about some quest for purity? Is so, what other acts of destruction are also to be condoned in the alternate quest for multidimensionality? Is nothing beyond the pale?
As far as the Press Office goes, yes, it makes sense that if one is going to engage in overtly public acts (such as bomb attacks) then one ought to try to provide context to those actions whenever possible. I don’t know why Best thinks it better to self-censor some acts instead. It seems to me that if he can suggest that graffiti artists ought not to paint “Die vivisector scum” on a wall, then he can also suggest that those militants who engage in “propaganda by the deed” ought to refrain from bombing attacks. The latter would certainly send a less positive message, would it not?
And so, it is necessary for the militant direct action wing of the movement to educate the majority of the movement, and that is the real power of their “propaganda by the deed”. Because if the majority doesn’t condone militant acts of property destruction, then the majority will be allowing the larger powers that be to use that very militancy to kill the movement. By rejecting acts of sabotage as a tactic, “one-dimensional” thinkers hand the corporate-state an effective weapon – the corporate-state will use the movement’s rejection of destructive acts against exploiters, to kill the movement.
But what of the opposite case? When the movement, in a moment of self-reflection and in acknowledgement of its true nature, condones, accepts, promotes or merely looks the other way at acts of property destruction, then the powers that be will not use that against them? That would have to be the case, wouldn’t it? If it is true that in rejecting militant acts of property destruction we cause our own demise, then our future must lay in embracing them. Supposedly, we will gain the respect of the corporate-state, and take away their power, through acts of militant direct action, and without those acts – or even if the mainstream movement just rejects them – we will lose. I’d like to know what empirical evidence there is to back up such a claim. Best likes to claim that certain exploiters have gone out of business as a result of MDA, and I accept that as true, but I haven’t yet seen any claims that any government has quivered in the face of those kinds of actions.
In any case, your argument presupposes that a rejection of the tactics of MDA is a result of the movement allowing “counter-messaging to infiltrate its self-understanding” suggesting that you think that if only it weren’t for the reactionary right and their media cohorts that no-one would have a problem with acts of property destruction. I don’t know why anyone should accept that as true.
But, here is Best’s point: The movement is dead and dying if it embraces nonviolence and rejects sabotage.
I understand the argument, I’ve understood since the first time I heard it. You’ve written well, have used many impressive words, and I appreciate your erudite sales pitch on Best’s behalf, but I’m still not buying it.
Accepting that bombing attacks on laboratory vans are a necessary part of what is essential a peace movement isn’t something I am willing to do. No-one has yet made a good argument why I should. Furthermore, you may “have to say” that by rejecting acts of property destruction as a tactic that I am playing into the hands of the corporate-state powers that be, but you’ve not offered any reasons why that it so, and, anyway, I don’t have to say it. In fact, I have to say the opposite.
Committing acts of property destruction, and/or condoning or legitimizing them, plays into the hands of the existing power structure. Most people, rightly or wrongly, consider acts of property destruction to be wrong, just as most people consider the use of nonhuman animals as right. When some in the movement commit what are seen as wrongful acts, it reinforces the notion in the mind of the general public that those committing them are not to be taken seriously. We don’t take thieves or rapists seriously, we aren’t likely to take bombers or arsonists seriously either. The power structure plays off these assessments, and it is because of the public’s views about property rights that the corporate-state is able to exploit militant direct actions, and those who commit them, to their benefit. When the movement embraces such actions, it marginalizes itself and causes itself to not be taken seriously.
Finally, as I continue to try to decolonize my own mind, which I guess has been colonized by the hegemony of the movement (did it come ashore on my cerebellum in Spanish galleons?), and as I continue in my own struggle to decide the meaning of my life, I will still seek to know what is “good” and what is “just”, not as part of any flippant public performance, or ritualization of fear, or as a demonstration of self-assuredness, self-aggrandizement or false-hearted righteousness, but as part of a quest to know and to do what is best for those, including myself, who I can best be of service to. If that is an act of unlearning, then I guess I can live with that.
Hi,
I don’t have the time for a lengthy debate but will try to respond to the various points in the coming days as I have the time. Whatever I am able to say in return, I’m more happy Tim for you to have the last word; not only because it is your blog but because my point here is not to win an argument but to raise larger questions about the nature of liberation-oriented political action and unsettle hard conclusions about Steve’s work, which is (when taken as a whole over the past 20 to 30 years) quite complex and sophisticated.
In response to the first question about Steve’s language and the nature of militancy –
Yes, etymologically a militant is a soldier…of the military.
Further, I think it is undeniable that in much if not all of the language in the NIO writings, Steve’s rhetoric has been overtly militant and emphasized the need for a more aggressive and confrontational posture, of course.
But that is why the first point in the interview you selected is important, so as not to reduce Steve’s position and mis-characterize it. Again, the point is that radical actions are taking place in ways that aren’t reported, or even seeking to be reported. Such actions potentially take a myriad of forms and should not be confused with the spectacular images of arson or other forms of property destruction that the police and media have successfully implied are the be all and end all of animal and earth liberation politics.
The idea is that such politics are multidimensional and take a multitude of forms. Some will be confrontational and aggressive; some will not. When organized together in the name of winning victories for peace, joy, liberty, beauty for all beings, the movement not only becomes more powerful, but it also transcends the focus on militancy as an aggressive force. So, in a sense the larger project within the movement is learning to name and define militancy in a way that accords with the production of peace and love, not war and hate.
If Steve’s NIO writings are aggressive and confrontational, they should not be confused with arguing for violence as opposed to nonviolence. Instead, it is a performance to try to break through the cognitive stranglehold on many activist’s minds that the world is a neutral place in which we can choose to be either violent or not violent — and that it is clear what violence and nonviolence look like when confronted with them. But this is exactly wrong. The world is NOT neutral — it is an unfolding history, and this history is one of perpetual war…not just between nations, but more decidedly between the dominant and dominated classes. So-called nonhuman animals are arguably the greatest of all dominated classes in the history of life as we know it. And so, we enter into the arena of politics already VIOLENT and AGGRESSIVE — we are the oppressors, not the oppressed. Yet, not entirely — and our demonstrated freedom to side with the oppressed allows us the opportunity to become organized with counter-valences of history in which people have actively worked to end the history of war against life on the planet.
Steve’s NIO performance is to challenge in as outrageously straightforward manner as possible the notion that nonviolence is congruent with the liberal privilege of, for lack of a better term, white new age-styled spiritual pacifism….that we can enshroud ourselves in some kind of holiness of peace and kindness and “be this change we want to see in the world” without actually taking apart and destroying the heavy machinery of death that allows us to be who we are (that is, in some real sense — us).
So he is actually not attacking nonviolence as a platform in favor of violence, but is attacking the reductionist understanding of what a nonviolence politics and spirituality actually looks like and acts like.
In closing, then, one must read his major statement in Terrorists or Freedom Fighters on the relevance of the idea of “just war” to the movement. Therein it is argued for reasons suggested above that it is wholly mistaken to perceive property destruction as a violent act. It is part of a larger movement for the cessation of violence. Further, acts such as the destruction of property are not to be idealized as essentially right or wrong (in all places and at all times)…rather, they are historically situated and part of the necessary challenge we face now as liberationists — the war has been BROUGHT TO US, as it has to all of the oppressed. If a response to this war looks more like a purely militaristic response, then — and let’s remember, this is not therefore the only coherent form of response — it is not because of the love of war but the love of peace. It is a dire statement erupting that says the totality of war has almost completed itself. We approach a time when the opposition to war is threatened seriously with annihilation.
So what really constitutes confrontational and aggressive politics in this light? This is a problem that is worthy of movement consideration, not abstract and quick answers. We must live with this question like a demand that plagues us every day — because, in reality, it does…
A Luta Continua!
—————————
Richard Kahn, Ph.D.
Core Faculty in Education
Antioch University Los Angeles
http://antiochla.edu/
Phone: 310-498-8684
Web: http://richardkahn.org
Publications:
1) Critical Pedagogy, Ecoliteracy and Planetary Crisis: The Ecopedagogy Movement (Peter Lang, 2010)
**** American Educational Studies Association Critics Choice Book Award 2010 ****
– http://www.smalllinks.com/M6J
2) (with Tyson Lewis) Education Out of Bounds: Reimagining Cultural Studies for a Posthuman Age (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010)
– http://www.smalllinks.com/M6K
3) Ecopedagogy: Educating for Sustainability in Schools and Society (Routledge, 2011)
– http://www.smalllinks.com/M6L
4) Green Theory & Praxis: The Journal of Ecopedagogy
– http://greentheoryandpraxis.org
PT. II answer — on vitalism. Yes, Tim, for sure there are actions conducted within any movement that (at least for some) go beyond what seems acceptable or condonable. The point here was not to say that a priori anything and everything is permissible. Rather, in returning to the original question of whether militant direct action hurts the movement by scaring people away, who is asking this question and in what context? As I said, who is the movement? There is no central committee who gets to sit around and decide what is a movement action or not. There is movement debate and disagreements can be registered and this will advance the movement’s cognitive praxis for the future. But in terms of vitalistic militancy — in this case, political actors are not acting to try to gain media attention and convince people that the movement has a wing that is seriously intolerant of animal abuse. Rather, it is a more immediate situation of people confronting abuse in their lives and responding as they will see fit to do. Again, this does not mean that you or I or anyone else must concur with those who take such actions. But the point is that they have acted and are the movement, no less so than one who has not acted save to critique their actions in the name of the movement, and perhaps more in fact. If their actions, then, scare people away, is this a judgment that is fairly made upon them or should those who are scared rather be the targets of movement judgment? In mainstream debates, it is always the former that is held accountable but hardly ever the latter. While this is not necessarily inappropriate, it cannot be lost on anyone with the least philosophical training that it accords strongly with what Nietzsche termed nihilism, or the instantiation of the truth of the weak against that of the strong. As Nietzsche documented with the histories of Platonism and Christianity, as well as the rise of the modern German state, the history of nihilism required a revaluation of all values in order to liberate the truth. So, if this logic is at work in the animal rights movement, perhaps it too needs a revaluation of all values?
PT. III — the rest of the response to my original post is too lengthy to take up i’m afraid and so I will sign off and allow it to have the last word. I think there is a mischaracterization of my position and Steve’s, however. In short, my point is not that the mainstream has to be taught by MDA that its tactics are sound and the mainstream is misguided or colonized. No mainstream activist has to decide that any illegal tactics are correct. Steve’s interview cited originally, and my position, is that the movement is a democratic multitude that admits of many different forms of understanding and activity. This being said, it is grounded in the material reality of an unfolding history of genocide, ecocide, and what I term zoocide. That is, the context of the movement is that for all its growth and popularization, on the whole we are losing and losing badly. There is more death and destruction on the face of the planet than ever before. Mass extinction of animals is our historical reality, and as Leonard Cohen has written aptly, “I have seen the future, brother — it is murder.” In the face of this future, the movement tries to realize itself under extremely difficult conditions. To decide, at any given time, that as an activist one is not comfortable with a particular tactic or strategy is a testimony of where one identifies within the movement and is a place for further educational work in understanding the positive elements of one’s identity and the limitations it also brings with it. When activists believe (wrongly) that they can decide FOR THE MOVEMENT that certain tactics or strategies ARE NOT MOVEMENT born or bred, this is another thing and it is this that I am saying is the kind of state of exception logic that is the hallmark of the right. The movement is diverse and occupies all manner of tactics and strategies — we should not waste valuable energies and time doing the work of the oppressors by self-censoring and worrying about who belongs. We should, rather, name in an ongoing manner what our situation appears to be, the nature of its problem, and then act in whatever manner we can to transform our relationship to that problem in such a way that freedom and peace is emboldened further.
[For those who will read this exchange, let me say for the record as I have said to Tim off-blog, my comments here never were a flame war at him. While the transcript may suggest that there was a personal argument at stake here at times, for me (and I believe that for Tim too) this never was the case. Cheers, Richard]
Richard,
I have read you replies and I want to understand what you are saying. If I do, finally, think I know what you are getting at, then perhaps my criticism of Best is misplaced.
To simplify what you have said, is it not the case that those advocacy groups which both Francione and Best identify as working hand-in-hand with animal agriculture interests are a stark example of the kind of “doing the work of the oppressors by self-censoring” (and worse) which you describe? From there, then is it just a matter of degree in how other animal advocates are, perhaps unwittingly, also doing the work of the oppressors?
Thanks for giving me something challenging to think about.
tim
I think the problem isn’t so much the definition of MDA; I think the problem is the definition of “the general public.” We all know that if just a few high profile media makers and politicians agreed with Steve Best and weren’t afraid to say so, “the general public” would be on board too.
Personally, I’m unwilling to condemn any nonviolent animal activism on the basis that it’s “counterproductive” unless there’s some actual proof that the activism is counterproductive.
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