History demonstrates that animal advocacy as a cause cuts diagonally across the political spectrum, either from left to right or right to left. The animal rights movement, as it has existed for the past half century, emerged as a fusion of several much older causes, coming from starkly different directions, as often in conflict with the political 'left' as with the 'right', and still fundamentally in conflict with any ideology that puts human interests first, other than the interest we share with animals in staying alive.
MERRITT CLIFTON: The venerable Eric Mills, among the oldest, longest involved, and still most dynamic of politically left-leaning animal rights activists, was among the first to forward to ANIMALS 24-7 an August 7, 2024 Vox opinion piece entitled “If the left is serious about saving democracy, there’s one more cause to add to the list: Animal rights must become a core issue for progressives.”
Mills may be credited with the perspective of time, having lived approximately as long as the combined ages of the Vox authors, Astra and Sunaura Taylor, 44 and 42, respectively.
And Mills, along with many much younger animal advocates, may agree with much that the Taylors say.
But that scarcely means that animal advocacy can be accurately considered a “left” or even “progressive” cause, any more than it could be considered a “right” cause.
The animal rights movement, as it has existed for the past half century, emerged as a fusion of several much older causes, coming from starkly different directions, as often in conflict with the political “left” as with the “right,” and still fundamentally in conflict with any ideology that puts human interests first, other than the interest we share with animals in staying alive.
The most direct ancestor of the animal rights movement was of course the humane movement that emerged in the mid-19th century, whose leaders had mostly been anti-slavery abolitionists before the U.S. Civil War…
A second major ancestor of the animal rights movement was the vegetarian movement, strong and growing throughout most of the 19th century and the early 20th century.
The vegetarian movement, however, became so inextricably intertwined with the temperance movement, associated with the spectrum of Protestant religions, that it largely collapsed and all but disappeared after the end of Prohibition in 1933.
Vegetarian organizations were only just beginning to recover by the early 1970s. Largely through the influence of the late Nellie Shriver and National Animal Rights Conference series founder Alex Hershaft, most of the leading animal rights groups of the past several decades spun off from veggie advocacy beginnings…
The third major ancestor of the animal rights movement was the antivivisection movement… Antivivisectionism in the U.S., in the 19th century and today, has from the beginning remained deeply rooted in Christian fundamentalist rejection of evolution, in favor of Biblical creationism.
Animal rights advocacy in the late 20th century also spun off, to a considerable extent, from the rise of the environmental movement, which from several decades followed a parallel course before mostly returning, philosophically, to hunter/conservationist origins, focused on protecting huntable habitat…
Indeed, the only major figure in the late 20th century rise of the animal rights movement who had significant “left” credentials was Henry Spira, who hosted Peter Singer while Singer wrote his opus Animal Liberation (1975) and founded Animal Rights International. The genius of Henry Spira was that he managed to cobble together the animal rights movement as we know it today from a constellation of often sharply conflicting political perspectives. The other early “animal rights” leaders of note ranged from mild liberals to far right Republicans.
To this day, among the “animal rights” leaders who have espoused partisan political views on other topics, there appear to be approximately as many Republican conservatives as liberals, leftists, and self-described progressives, a category of belief chiefly noteworthy––in animal advocacy circles, anyhow –– for their ability to get into fights with each other…
“To build a successful progressive movement, one that can challenge animal industries’ extraordinary corporate malfeasance,” the Taylors argue, “the left needs to resist this strategy of divide-and-conquer. It’s often said in animal rights circles that the movement needs buy-in from the broader left to succeed. We agree, but we also believe the reverse is true: For progressive movements to win, they need to incorporate animal rights.”
Perhaps. But conversely, one could substitute the words “political right” for the words “left” and “progressive” in that passage and the same would be true, in the perspectives of conservative animal advocates such as Dominion author and former George W. Bush administration speechwriter Matthew Scully.
History, meanwhile, demonstrates that animal advocacy as a cause cuts diagonally across the political spectrum, either from left to right or right to left. SOURCE…
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