Vegan Philosophy Adventure/AAD
Your Positions
We should all be vegan. Animals should never be exploited, because they are sentient and have the capacity to suffer. (Start over)
Buying leather, honey, meat, dairy, and sweatshop-produced goods is never OK. Paying to go to a circus or zoo for the purpose of entertainment is never OK. We should be more-or-less devoting our lives to protesting and working against these practices, even when it makes other people feel bad or comes with personal sacrifice. (Go back)
We should only use peaceful resistance, including sit-ins, exposés, public demonstrations, direct animal rescue, and legal advocacy. We should never use physical violence or destroy property, but we should not shy away from causing psychological distress in omnivores by portraying the realities of animal exploitation. (Go back)
Things to Consider
Some would argue that peaceful protest only works when there is an underlying threat of violence or more extreme actions. When forced into a choice between listening to Martin Luther King Jr., or Malcolm X and the Black Panthers, of course the government would choose to recognize the legitimacy of MLK Jr. But it’s up to debate whether he would have been as effective if the government was not afraid of an all-out race war. If you consider actions like the March on Washington, where hundreds of thousands of people gathered at the Lincoln Memorial to protest for civil rights, it is in some sense a show of force: all these people are unhappy, and are willing to do something about it to bring about change. The purpose is to get a seat at the bargaining table. To make a comparison, you can ask, “Why are US diplomatic negotiations with other countries so successful?” Is it because American diplomats are really smart and good at coming up with compromises, or is it more because there is a huge threat the US military will go in and fuck shit up for you if you don’t come to the bargaining table in good faith? Of course, being civil and peaceful during diplomatic negotiations is a good idea, but their effectiveness is based on the amount of raw power you have backing you up, and the entire thing is ultimately based on the threat of violence.
Taking the perspective of the government, what interests are they weighing here? In the civil rights movement, they needed to weigh a potential backlash from white Americans who would oppose integration. In fact, the national guard was required to prevent violence in many places when schools were forcably integrated. We might hope that the government would do the right thing, no matter the difficulty, but we shouldn’t bank on it. Politicians weigh the potential consequences, and usually take the course of action which is most likely to get them or their friends re-elected. Civic unrest is a bad look, and when there is going to be some degree of chaos no matter what decision they make, they have strong incentives to go with the option that maintains the peace to the greatest extent possible in the short term (regardless of whether it is right or wrong).
The current situation with animal rights is that there are far more people willing to use violence to defend animal agriculture than those willing to use violence to defend animals. Let’s try to imagine what might happen if the government were to institute an outright ban on raising animals for meat and dairy. Of course the CEOs of large factory farms are not about to strap guns and head out to the streets themselves. But how many militia groups are there out there who believe it is their God-given right to eat meat? Would they interpret this ban as a reasonable policy designed to protect the interests of animals, or would they view it as proof of a totalitarian government, and use it as justification to violently overthrow it?
All long as this threat from the omnivore population continues to outweigh the threat from the population trying to defend animals, the government is under some pretty extreme pressure to uphold the current norms around animal exploitation. In fact, the government is under some pretty extreme pressure to uphold even the most brutal systems of factory farming, because people get really pissed off just from the price of something they take to be “essential” rising. Look at how people have reacted to gas prices rising. Even when there is a convincing case that the current practices are causing immense harm overall, as there is with fossil fuel consumption and global warming, people unfortunately tend to vote according to their immediate economic interests.
Given all of this, its important to consider what audience you are trying to convince. Are your protests meant to convince moderate liberals to move away from meat/dairy consumption to get a solid base of people on your side who would not object to an outright ban on animal farming? Are you trying to get more people on the far left to adopt a radical vegan philosophy, to increase the level of threat to the government from people advocating for the end of animal exploitation? Are you trying to convince conservatives to break their association of meat consumption with conservative values, to temper whatever violent reaction there might be to a total ban on meat and dairy consumption? Are you trying to convince politicians, hoping that they can push through gradual reform making meat/dairy more expensive, giving people more experience with eating non-meat/dairy products, and opening the door for more serious reforms later?