where do you stand on the welfarism – rights debate?
I think this question was directed to us.
It is needless to discuss the old and worn out all or nothing debates and welfarism vs. liberationism arguments to say the least, because both are not relevant in this website as both are totally chanceless in stopping the suffering. However, regardless of the fact we are sure a non speciesist society is even theoretically not possible, and I think that explaining why a sufferingless world is not an option is even more needless, we are against welfarism because we want strong and confident activists who constantly think how to abolish all forms of animal exploitation, and welfarism, also as a mean and not as a goal still doesn’t challenge anthropocentrism and severely weakens the movement. Not declaring a fight against speciesism is preserving it.
Speciesist activists can and do initiate activities which in the short term ease animals’ pain and suffering, but in the long run welfarism, trendism, celebritiesism and sexist activism only frame speciesism and animal exploitation.
The solution won’t come from them so it is much more interesting and more important to notice that many
non speciesist activists are constantly initiating and taking part in
speciesist activities, holding speciesist signs, wearing speciesist T-shirts. It all comes from one place- despair and disbelief, before they even tried.
What more than the T-shirt "VIVISECTION KILLS HUMANS TOO, WE ARE ALL VICTIMS!" do you need?! It is the hopelessness T-shirt!
In the discussion about the suffering argument – the article about animal experiments someone expressed his disgust of the horrible connection between humans and non-human victims in the experiments industry and I highly identify with what he wrote.
In
even the most selfish argument and in the slideshow
rodents and in many other places we wrote that activists don’t believe there is a chance to change reality using moral messages and so they turn to anthropocentric, egoistic and speciesist messages.
I really liked what you wrote Euthanasia brigade and I totally agree. What do the activists say by concentrating on the human victims? "We know that you know that meat is a dead animal and you probably know as most people do today that the animals are raised in horrible conditions suffering all their lives until they are brutally slaughtered, but we don’t expect you to do anything because of this but because it hurts you. Never mind that you are willing to let them suffer, the world hunger to continue and the destruction of the environment to prolong, but hurting yourself? That’s really crazy!"
I can understand why these activists are desperate from the attempt to uproot speciesism, the problem is that they waive their true ideology and compromise their goals. The worst expression of the speciesist activism is the attitude not the slogans. If reality can’t be changed conventionally you don’t compromise your morals, you act unconventionally. Reality doesn’t change for the better when people don’t listen, don’t change their opinions and consumption habits, on the contrary. So the rational thing to do is to go the extra mile not to compromise.
There is no doubt that welfarism is speciesism, but not all welfarists are speciesists.
Desperate liberationists too can take part in welfarism and again I can understand that, but what I can’t understand is the built-in axiomatic approach that it is humans’ decision. It is as plain as the nose on one's face that the animals’ fate is in the hands of humans and the activists’ role is to try their best to convince all mighty humans to make the right decision and not hurt the animals… if they may of course.
The conception that there is no choice, if humans don’t listen to us when we talk about their victims’ interest, then we got to talk about their own interests, is the extremist form of speciesism.
The speciesism is in the head of the activist who thinks his one and only duty is to convince the abusers to stop abusing and not to stop the abuse.
As far as most activists think, their variety of options is expressed in persuasion methods only. The basic approach is hardly ever questioned. Convincing people to divert their diet is the only option, the differences are in the way to do it. Years of failures and the activists are still sure it is something with the way they deliver their message.
If something didn’t work they will try another but all the options have the same in common, they all are different tactics with the same strategy to convince the abusers to stop abusing.
There is parallelism between the anti-vivisection advocacy and the vegetarian/vegan advocacy since in both cases the approach is convincing humans that eventually they are the ones getting hurt, whether it’s high cholesterol, water pollution or deadly drugs. This is as low as it gets, no where else to sink to once an activist turns to reliance on the selfishness of humans.
Activists can try to justify the choice to use speciesist messages through the spectrum argument - in the short run it is speciesism but in the long run this use can turn more people to be less speciesist. But the speciesism starts from within. It is the human choice axiom that is the harsh speciesism and which I wish to deconstruct. Explaining to activists that it is not the torturers’ choice whether to stop torturing or not, is our challenge. It is the tortured choice and unfortunately they don’t have a way of defending themselves so it should be our job. Stop the torture and not convincing the torturers to stop is what should be the goal. It may sound obvious to some of you, so why is it that so many activists focus all their efforts on the oppressors and so little on the oppressed? The focus is on humans and it shouldn’t be like that because they are not the issue and because it didn’t work a single time for a single struggle all along history even when the victims were other humans. Please read our article about slavery
more than ever before in history for that matter.
Your confusion with our believes is I guess because we don’t believe it is possible to change the world in any meaningful way so how come we are so furious with other activists who like us act as if it is impossible. Well besides the obvious that it should have made them choose to try to find a way to annihilate the world, we realize that some will need some time in more conventional activism first, one of our goals is to create a shortcut. We hope this website will inspire as many activists to start their own stopping all the suffering group and of course a welfarist approach may suppress the ambitions and aspirations of the soon to become O.O.S activists.