{"id":777028,"date":"2024-11-25T07:33:37","date_gmt":"2024-11-25T12:33:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/?p=777028"},"modified":"2024-11-25T08:30:21","modified_gmt":"2024-11-25T13:30:21","slug":"a-political-movement-for-animal-rights-is-coming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/?p=777028","title":{"rendered":"THE AWAKENING: A paw-litical movement for animal rights is coming"},"content":{"rendered":"\t
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Millions mourned the murder of P\u2019nut, but no one thought twice about Eric Adams' brutal mass drowning of rodents in New York City in 2019. While Democrats condemned Kristi Noem for killing her dog, they were silent about the thousands of lab beagles subjected to surgical mutilation without anesthesia in blue strongholds like Madison, Wisconsin. What was missing in all of these stories was a political argument for animal rights. What explains this? Animal rights activists are notoriously bad at describing the opportunity presented by our movement. \u201cMy burger is more ethical than yours\u201d is not quite as inspiring as King\u2019s dream of racial equality. It should come as no surprise that the message has failed to inspire a political movement.<\/p>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/blockquote>\n\n

WAYNE HSIUNG:<\/strong> P’nut the squirrel was hardly a household name before election day, though he had an Instagram following of sorts. But since he was killed by New York\u2019s Department of Environmental Conservation on November 1 \u2014 the victim of a raid on a supposedly unlicensed wildlife rehabber \u2014 P\u2019nut has become a cause c\u00e9l\u00e8bre on the right. Donald Trump pounced on the opportunity to condemn Democratic bureaucrats for \u201cneedlessly\u201d murdering the creature in an act of overreach that he said needed to be \u201cavenged\u201d at the ballot box.<\/em><\/p>\n

Consider the numbers. A few days before the election, Kamala Harris posted that hip hop artist Cardi B had endorsed her presidential campaign, which earned an impressive 800,000-plus likes on TikTok. But Donald Trump\u2019s post in support of P\u2019nut on the same day got nearly double the amount of likes\u2014and was accompanied by a wave of similarly viral posts by Elon Musk, Donald Trump Jr., and others…<\/em><\/p>\n

That is, of course, speculation. But what is less speculative is that animal stories played a significant role in the 2024 election. From Kristi Noem\u2019s shooting of her dog Cricket to the false claims by JD Vance and Donald Trump that Haitians were eating Americans\u2019 pets, violence against animals went viral this electoral cycle. The concern about cruelty to animals in this election was heartfelt and real. But it was also unprincipled and politically quiescent. Millions mourned the murder of P\u2019nut, but no one thought twice about Eric Adams\u2019s brutal mass drowning of rodents in New York City in 2019.<\/em><\/p>\n

While Democrats condemned Kristi Noem for killing her dog, they were silent about the thousands of lab beagles subjected to surgical mutilation without anesthesia in blue strongholds like Madison, Wisconsin. Ezra Klein had a run of vegetarian guests on his influential podcast in the month before the election, but not a word was said about the ethics of killing animals for meat. What was missing in all of these stories \u2014 and in the public\u2019s response to them \u2014 was a political argument for animal rights.<\/em><\/p>\n

What explains this? The answer is not a lack of philosophical legitimacy. Sixty percent of moral philosophers say it\u2019s wrong to eat at least some kinds of animals (compared to just 19 percent of non-ethicists). When thought leaders are asked which practices our ancestors will most strongly condemn, the abuse of animals is routinely at the top of the list, by writers on both the right and the left.<\/em><\/p>\n

The answer is also not a lack of popular appeal. Large numbers of Americans care about animals. Indeed, it is one of the few moral issues that has massive bipartisan appeal, with around 80 percent of Americans (including 77 percent of Republicans) stating that farm animal welfare is a personal moral concern… the answer lies in… the animal rights movement\u2019s lack of vision, or a compelling story for change…<\/em><\/p>\n

And vision has been sorely lacking in animal rights. Even terrible cases of abuse, such as P\u2019nut\u2019s killing, are understood as one-off incidents of misconduct, rather than symbols of a broader moral crisis. And animal rights activists are notoriously bad at describing the opportunity presented by our movement. \u201cMy burger is more ethical than yours\u201d is not quite as inspiring as King\u2019s dream of racial equality. It should come as no surprise that the message has failed to inspire a political movement. We lack a compelling story for change…<\/em><\/p>\n

But these factors holding the movement back are shifting… A critical mass is coming out in support of animal rights across the globe, ranging from tech titans in the United States to courts in Argentina. In Silicon Valley, Google founder Larry Page broke with Elon Musk over the latter\u2019s \u201cspeciesism,\u201d or the favoring of humans over non-human species. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has publicly called meat consumption a \u201chorror\u201d and says that we should draw on \u201cbetter morals\u201d to stop doing it. In the U.K., one third of the population now approves of a vegan diet, and a number of the most prominent universities, such as Cambridge and University College London, have approved student resolutions to transition to 100 percent plant-based catering. An Argentinian court recognized that an orangutan named Sandra was a \u201cnon-human person\u201d who must be freed from a zoo cage. When a critical mass \u201ccomes out\u201d for a cause, change can happen very quickly, as more and more people say, \u201cHey, I believe that, too.\u201d This is the sort of cascade we last saw for gay rights\u2014and animal rights could be next.<\/em><\/p>\n

The animal rights movement\u2019s lack of vision is also reversing, as advocates find more compelling stories for change. Increasingly, animal advocates such as Yuval Noah Harari are describing the abuse of animals not just as unfortunate suffering but as one of history’s greatest crimes. The liberation of animals, moreover, is an opportunity to confront the deeper maladies in the human condition. In a world that is increasingly lonely, Americans are spending a record amount of time with their pets. And the animal stories have gone viral repeatedly in part because animals are the perfect victims; unlike human beings, their cries are never performative. Their exploitation is brutal and limitless and real. Perhaps only by defending these beings \u2014 and not just pets whose company we enjoy, but all animals, who will always be the most powerless in our society \u2014 can our political system convince the public at large that it will defend us all.<\/em><\/p>\n

And activists are already seizing this opportunity. In 2019, California became the first state in U.S. history to completely ban a major animal product, fur, on ethical grounds. In 2020, the first all-purpose federal animal cruelty law was proudly signed by\u2026 Donald Trump. And in 2022, I was acquitted by a jury in rural Utah after infiltrating a factory farm and rescuing two sick piglets from the largest pig factory farm in the nation. The animal rights movement is moving rapidly towards its most fundamental goal: recognition that animals are \u201clegal persons\u201d and not things. P\u2019nut, of course, will not see this opportunity. But, by the next presidential election, perhaps the nation will. Animal rights already has immense passion behind it. Soon, it will also be a political force. <\/em>SOURCE…<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

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