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You Don’t Support the ALF
Because Why?
Dr. Steven Best
“The world only
goes forward because of those who oppose it.” Goethe
I support the Animal Liberation Front
(ALF). I support property destruction against industries that massacre
animals and rape the planet. Since when do implements of death and
devastation fall outside the range of legitimate attack? I do not believe
that property destruction is violence, but even if it is, violence is
defensible in certain cases and I will always defend the lesser over the
greater violence.
Origins and Philosophy of the
ALF
“We are a
non-violent guerilla organisation, dedicated to the liberation of
animals from all forms of cruelty and persecution at the hands of
mankind.” Ronnie Lee, ALF founder
“Not to hurt our humble
brethren is our first duty to them, but to stop there is not enough.
We have a higher mission — to be of service to them whenever they
require it.” St. Francis of
Assisi
The ALF grew out of the hunt saboteur
movement in England in 1970s. Activists turned from legal tactics of hunt
disruption to illegal tactics of sabotage when they grew weary of being
assaulted and jailed and sought more effective tactics. A hunt sab group
known as the Band of Mercy broadened the focus to target other animal
exploitation industries such as vivisection and began to use arson as a
potent tool of property destruction. Two of its leaders were arrested in
1974 and released a year later. One turned snitch and left the movement,
the other, Ronnie Lee, deepened his convictions and began a new
ultra-militant group he called the Animal Liberation Front that would
forever change the face of direct action struggle. The ALF migrated to
U.S. in the early 1980s and is now an international movement in over
twenty countries.
The ALF is a loosely associated
collection of cells of people who go underground and violate the law on
behalf of animals. They break into and enter prison compounds
(euphemistically referred to as “research laboratories” and the like) to
rescue animals, and they also destroy property in order to prevent further
harm done to animals and to weaken exploitation industries economically.
Official ALF guidelines are: (1) to liberate animals from places of abuse;
(2) to inflict economic damage to industries that profit from animal
exploitation; (3) to reveal the horrors and atrocities committed against
animals behind locked doors, and (4) to take all necessary precautions
against harming any human or nonhuman animals. Anyone who follows these
guidelines – and who is vegan -- belongs to the ALF.
Despite the incriminations of animal
exploitation industries, the state, and the mass media, the ALF is not a
terrorist organization; rather they are a counter-terrorist outfit and the
newest form of freedom fighters. They are best understood not by comparing
them to the Al Qaeda or Saddam Hussein’s republican guard, but instead to
the Underground Railroad, the Jewish anti-Nazi resistance fighters, or
current peace and justice movements. By providing veterinary care and
homes for many of the animals that they liberate (vs. those like mink that
they release back from cages into the wild), the ALF models itself after
the U.S. Underground Railroad movement that helped fugitive slaves reach
Free states and Canada. ALF members pattern themselves after freedom
fighters in Nazi Germany who liberated war prisoners and Holocaust victims
and destroyed equipment such as gas ovens which the Nazis used to torture
and kill their victims. Similarly, the ALF has important similarities with
some of the great freedom fighters of the past two centuries, and are akin
to contemporary peace and justice movements in their quest to end
bloodshed and violence toward life and to bring justice to all
species.
There are indeed real terrorists in
today’s world, but they are not the ALF. The most violent and dangerous
criminals occupy the top positions of U.S. corporate and state office;
they are the ones most responsible for the exploitation of people, the
massacre of animals, and the rape of the planet.
A Tale of Two Systems
"Power
concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will"
Frederick Douglass
“Even voting
for the right thing is doing nothing for it. It is only expressing
to men feebly your desire that it should prevail. A wise man will
not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail
through the power of the majority.” Henry David
Thoreau
American history has two main
political traditions. First, there is the “indirect” system of
“representative democracy” whereby citizens express their needs and will
to elected local and state officials whose sole function is to “represent”
them in the political and legal system. The system’s “output” – laws –
reflects the “input” – the peoples’ will and interests. This cartoon image
of liberal democracy, faithfully reproduced in generation after generation
of textbooks and in the discourse of state apologists and the media, is
falsified by the fact that powerful economic and political forces co-opt
elected officials who represent the interests of the powerful instead of
the powerless.
From the realization that the state is
hardly a neutral arbiter of competing interests but rather exists to
advance the interests of economic and political elites, and that
“pluralist democracy” is the best system that money can buy, a second
political tradition of direct action has emerged.
Direct action advocates argue that the
indirect system of representative democracy is irredeemably corrupted by
money, power, cronyism, and privilege. Appealing to the lessons of
history, direct activists insist that one cannot win liberation struggles
through education, moral persuasion, political campaigns, demonstrations,
or any form of aboveground, mainstream, or legal action alone. Direct
action movements therefore bypass efforts to influence the state in order
to immediately confront the figures of social power and oppression they
are challenging.
Direct action tactics can vary widely,
ranging from sit-ins, strikes, boycotts, and tree sits to hacking
web-sites, email and phone harassment, home demonstrations, and arson.
Direct action can be legal as with home demonstrations against a
vivisector, or illegal, in the case of the civil disobedience tactics of
Mohandas Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Illegal direct action,
moreover, can be nonviolent or violent; it can respect private property or
destroy it.
Whereas indirect action can promote
passivity and dependence on others for change, direct action tends to be
more involving and empowering. In the words of nineteenth century
anarchist Voltairine de Cleyre, “The evil of pinning faith to indirect
action is far greater than any minor results. The main evil is that it
destroys initiative, quenches the individual rebellious spirit, and
teaches people to rely on someone else to do for them what they should do
for themselves. People must learn that their power does not lie in their
voting strength, that their power lies in their ability to stop
production.”
Anyone quick to condemn the tactics of
the ALF needs a lesson in history and a logical consistency check. As
writer James Goodman points out, “The entire edifice of western liberal
democracy – from democratic rights, to representative parliament, to
freedom of speech – rests on previous acts of civil disobedience. The
American anti-colonialists in the 1770s asserting ‘no taxation without
representation’; the French revolutionaries in the 1780s demanding
‘liberty equality fraternity’; the English Chartists in the 1830s
demanding a ‘People's Charter’; the Suffragettes of the 1900s demanding
‘votes for women’; the Gandhian disobedience movement from the 1920s
calling for ‘Swaraj’/self-government; all of these were movements of civil
disobedience, and have shaped the political traditions that we live with
today.”
From the Boston Tea Party to the
Underground Railroad, from the Suffragettes to the Civil Rights Movement;
from Vietnam War resistance to the Battle of Seattle, key struggles and
movements in U.S. history employed illegal direct action tactics to
advance human rights and freedoms. Rather than being a rupture in some
bucolic tradition of Natural Law guiding the Reason of modern men and
women to the Good and bringing Justice down to Earth in a peaceful and
gradual drizzle, the contemporary movements for animal and Earth
liberation are a continuation of the American tradition of rights,
democracy, civil disobedience, and direct action, as they expand the
struggle to a far broader constituency.
Moral progress does not work through
gentle nudges or ethical persuasion alone. Society is inherently
conservative, and change is blocked either by the corruption of the
powerful or the apathy of the powerless. Sometimes society has to be
pushed into the future, and justice has to be forced past the barricades
of ignorance and complacency by the most enlightened people of the time.
Within this framework, direct action and civil disobedience are key
catalysts of progressive change.
The Rationale of Resistance
“The Earth
Liberation Front realizes the profit motive caused and reinforced by
the capitalist society is destroying all life on this planet. The
only way, at this point in time, to stop that continued destruction
of life is to by any means necessary take the profit motive out of
killing.” ELF website
“We’re very
dangerous philosophically. Part of the danger is that we don’t buy
into the illusion that property is worth more than life. We bring
that insane priority into the light, which is something the system
cannot survive.” David Barbarash, former spokesman for the
ALF
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. referred to
direct action as the “marvelous new militancy” of the civil rights
movement in the U.S. In his celebrated 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech, he
blasted the “tranquilizing drug of gradualism” and urged immediate and
forceful non-violent direct action. Having been assailed so many times
with the label of “extremist,” King learned to wear it as a badge of
honor, turning the tables on his accusers and proclaiming himself an
extremist in love and a passion for justice.
The defense of direct action and civil
disobedience rests on the distinction between what is legal and what is
ethical, between the Law and the Right. There are textbook cases where
legal codes violate codes of ethics and justice: Nazi Germany, U.S.
slavery, and South African apartheid. In such situations, not only is it
legitimate to break the law, it is obligatory. In the words of Dr. King,
“I became convinced that non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral
obligation as is cooperation with good.”
The true forces of ethics and justice
have involved groups such as the Jewish Resistance, Harriet Tubman and the
Underground Railroad, Gandhi and the Indian independence movement, the
Suffragettes, Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King and the civil rights
movement, and Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress. All of
them broke the law, destroyed the enemy’s property, or committed violence;
they were beaten, jailed, killed, and denounced as extremists or something
like terrorists.
Yet who will argue that their actions
were wrong? Today we lionize Nelson Mandela as a great hero, but he and
the ANC used violence to win their freedom. People forget that the
much-heralded Suffragettes in England and the U.S. used arson and bombs to
help win the emancipation of women. No movement for social change has
succeeded without a radical fringe, without civil disobedience, property
destruction, and even violence -- so why should one expect it to be any
different with the animal liberation struggle?
Following the nonviolent philosophy of
Gandhi and the U.S. civil rights movement, the ALF believes there is a
higher law than that created by and for the corporate-state complex, a
moral law that transcends the corrupt and biased statues of the U.S.
political system. When the law is wrong, the right thing to do is to break
it. This is often how moral progress is made in history, from defiance of
American slavery and Hitler’s anti-Semitism to sit-ins at “whites only”
lunch counters in Alabama. By destroying the property of animal
oppressors, the ALF helps to prevent future destruction to life as it
weakens – and in some cases, eliminates – industries by making their
bloodletting more costly.
Opponents of direct action, typically
those with vested interests in the status quo, believe that illegal
actions undermine the rule of law and they view civil disobedience as a
threat to social order. Among other things, this perspective presupposes
that the system in question is legitimate or that it cannot be improved
upon. It also misrepresents direct activists as people who disrespect the
law, when arguably they have a higher regard for the spirit of law and its
relation to justice than those who fetishize political order for its own
sake. Champions of direct action renounce uncritical allegiance to a legal
system. To paraphrase Karl Marx, the law is the opiate of the people, and
blind obedience to laws and social decorum led millions of German Jews to
their death with almost no resistance. All too often, the legal system is
a structure to absorb opposition and induce paralysis by delay.
Thus, it is important to recognize
that direct action is not a carte blanche for political “anarchy” in the
stereotyped sense of complete lawlessness and disorder. Thoreau’s maxim
that one ought to obey one’s own conscience rather than an unjust law is a
good start toward critical thinking and autonomy, but it can also provide
a formula for violence and legitimate killing for a cause. The ALF is
guided by the belief that however righteous their anger, no human being
must ever be harmed in the struggle for liberation of others; rather, only
property is to be damaged as a necessary means to the end of animal
liberation. Despite zeal for its cause, the ALF is quite unlike radical
anti-abortionists who kill their opponents and the differences should
never be conflated.
Let’s be honest: the real lawbreakers
are corporations such as Enron and the U.S. government itself, which not
only breaks particular laws, but is now in the process of shredding the
Constitution itself in the name of Homeland Security. For those seeking to
uncover contemporary currents of anti-Americanism, turn away from the ALF
and look toward the highest legal brokers of the land -- Attorney General
John Ashcroft and President George W. Bush.
Direct Action and the ALF
"The pump
don’t work 'cause the vandals took the handles." Bob Dylan,
“Subterranean Homesick Blues”
Activists from the ALF and ELF draw
from and expand the noble traditions of direct action and property
destruction in U.S. struggles for freedom and democracy. In addition to
anti-globalization forces, the hottest battles today are over the politics
of the natural world. There is new social turmoil in the U.S. because the
animal rights and environmental movements have found their own “marvelous
new militancy.”
The new direct action movements have
emerged because of an ever-worsening situation for animals and the Earth,
in addition to dynamics of increasing radicalism within the animal and
environmental movements. In the animal advocacy community, one sees a
movement from welfare to rights to the ALF; in the environmental movement,
there is a path from reforms to radical ecology to the ELF. Moreover, new
factions are developing in each movement that now openly advocate
violence, as we saw in the 2003 bombings of Chiron and Shaklee
corporations by the Revolutionary Cells who warned that “this is the
endgame for animal killers, there will be no more quarter given, no more
half-measures taken.”
We are witnessing the dawn of a new
civil war between those who will kill every last living thing for power
and profit, and those prepared to fight these omnicidal maniacs tooth and
nail. This is a guerilla war, fought by ecowarriors who go underground,
don masks and balaclavas, operate at night, and strike through sabotage.
As evident by the Vietnam War and the current war in Iraq, it is not a war
that the U.S. government knows how to fight and perhaps one it cannot win.
Through guerilla warfare, David can defeat Goliath.
The ALF argues that animals have
rights, and these rights trump property rights. Hence, the ALF does not
“steal” animals from laboratories because they never were anyone’s to own.
The true theft occurs when exploiters steal their freedom and lives from
them, whereas the ALF rescues, restores, and liberates. The ALF does not
commit a wrong; it rights a wrong against life. For the ALF, whenever
property is used to injure or take a life, it is legitimate to destroy the
property in order to protect that life. This is not vandalism or
hooliganism because it has a high moral purpose -- it is ethical
sabotage.
For the ALF, life has more value than
property, whereas in the capitalist worldview property is sacred and life
is profane. Animal and Earth exploitation industries can massacre billions
of animals and tear down the rainforests as respectable businessmen, yet
anyone who challenges their right to do this is vilified as a terrorist.
Throughout the nation, new laws are being created to make videotaping
animal abuse in laboratories or factory farms a felony crime, but
legislators find barbaric cruelty to animals perfectly acceptable and
defend the right of industries to torture and murder their living
“property.”
According to official FBI definition,
“Eco-terrorism is a crime committed to save nature.” It speaks volumes
about capitalist society and its domineering mindset that actions to “save
nature” are classified as criminal actions while those that destroy nature
are sanctified by God and Flag.
On the grounds that animals have
rights and these rights trump property rights, I argue that the ALF are
not the terrorists that are demonized by animal exploitation industries,
the state, and mass media, but rather counter-terrorists and the newest
form of freedom fighters. Like the Nazi resistance movement, they destroy
equipment used to torture and kill; like the Underground Railroad, they
rescue slaves and transport them to freedom. Like any current human rights
struggle, they seek peace and justice.
Whereas white abolitionists reached
across race lines in empathy and solidarity, so the ALF reaches across
species lines. Because of entrenched institutions of exploitation and
speciesism, this will be the most difficult liberation struggle ever
fought. But it is unquestionably the most important one because the stakes
transcend specific group interests to involve all species and the future
of life on this planet.
On Violence and Terrorism
“It’s a
strange kind of terrorist organization that hasn’t killed anyone.”
The Observer
“A man that should call everything by
its right name would hardly pass the streets without being knocked down as
a common enemy.” George Savile, first Marquess of Halifax
But isn’t the ALF a violent
organization? Doesn’t it in fact perpetuate terrorism? The terms
“violence” and “terrorism” are almost never defined by ALF critics, and
when they specify their meaning to any degree, the definitions are
blatantly biased and self-serving, such that the real violence and true
terrorism – acts committed and supported by the corporate-state complex—
are ruled out of consideration by shabby semantic tricks.
If violence is the intentional
infliction of bodily harm against another person, then how can one “hurt,”
“abuse,” or “injure” a nonsentient thing that does not feel pain or have
awareness of any sort? How can one be “violent” toward a van or be a
“terrorist” toward brick and mortar? How does one harm or terrorize a
laboratory or fur farm with spray paint or a firebomb?
One simply does not – unless someone
owning or associated with the property is adversely affected. People whose
homes, cars, or offices are damaged suffer fear, anxiety, and trauma.
Their business, livelihood, research, or careers may be ruined, and they
are harmed psychologically, economically, professionally, and in other
ways.
Admittedly, none of this is good from
the point of view of an ALF victim such as a vivisector, foie gras chef,
or fur farmer. But is it sound to call sabotage “violence”? Perhaps, if
one relied on a general psychological definition involving something like
“mental trauma,” but one could just as well argue that sabotage is the
lesser violence compared to what it tries to prevent, that it simply is
not violence, or that violence, including physical attacks against human
persons, is acceptable and legitimate in a war against the
warmongers.
If any definition of violence is
warranted, it should be in our understanding of a “person” – any being
that is sentient and the “subject of a life.” Since animals are not only
sentient, but also psychologically and socially complex beings, they are
subjects in every significant way human beings are. Thus, every injury to
an animal ought to be considered injury to a person, and hence
violence.
Like the term “communism” in the
1950s, “terrorism” is the most abused word in the English vocabulary
today. In the era of the Patriot Act where all forms of dissent are
denounced as terrorism, and terrorism is defined as an attempt to
intimidate or influence government, the term is in danger of losing any
meaning whatsoever. Objectively defined, terrorism involves three key
conditions; there is: (1) an intentional act of physical violence (2)
directed against innocent civilians, non-combatants, or “persons” (both
human and nonhuman) (3) for ideological, political, or economic
purposes.
Typically, those who vilify saboteurs
as “violent” leap to the conclusion that they are “terrorists,” failing to
realize that there is an important difference insofar as one can use
violence in morally legitimate ways in conditions ranging from
self-defense to a “just war.” The ALF is not a terrorist organization
because (1) they never physically injure people, and (2) they never target
anyone but those directly involved in the war against animals.
Truth be told, one can use violence in morally legitimate ways in
conditions ranging from self-defense to a “just war.” One could plausibly
argue that the ALF are acting in defense of the defenseless, that they are
combatants in a just war, and that animal exploiters are legitimate
military targets. Pacifist arguments assume that nonviolent methods of
resistance can solve all major social conflicts (they cannot) and that a
human life has absolute value (it does not). Philosophically speaking, one
has to wonder what kind of absolute value is attached to the life of a
vicious killer such as a member of the infamous Safari Club who wins
prizes for “bagging” endangered species in comparison to the life of the
rare elephants, lions, and gorillas the bastard kills. Why ought the human
“right” to kill be protected over an animal’s right to live through a code
of nonviolence?
Regardless, the corporate-state
complex uses terms such as “violence” and “terrorist” as smokescreens, so
that they can mask the real violence and terrorism directed from their
headquarters and legitimate their war against dissent. Once the state
captures its target in the semantic crosshairs, they can pull the trigger
of political repression.
Against Hypocrisy
“In our time,
political speech and writing are largely the defense of the
indefensible.” George Orwell
“The question
is not whether we will be extremists, but what kinds of extremists
we will be. The nation and the world are in dire need of creative
extremists.” Dr. Martin Luther King
Jr.
Crimes of enormous proportion are
committed against animals that the legal system ignores and only so much
good can be accomplished through education and legislation. The ALF exists
because peaceful dialogue alone does not work to bring about needed social
change; they are people who distrust the system, who hurt when life hurts,
and who feel the urgency of the crisis and want immediate effect and
change.
Would you be content to write letters
to your congressperson or newspaper if your family members were locked up
and tortured in a laboratory? Would you not break in and free them if you
could and destroy the property so that others would not be tortured? Would
you not liberate your neighbor’s dog if it was being abused and the local
police were indifferent? Would you not seize and destroy traps set by a
local sadist who was killing cats for pleasure? Are you truly opposed to
Paul Watson’s destruction of miles of driftnet used to kill everything in
the sea including dolphins?
Do you want to find fault with the
Jewish resistance fighters who killed every Nazi and destroyed every gas
oven they could? If you support that kind of struggle and property
destruction, why do you not support the ALF? Is it because that was the
1940s and this is now? Is it because that was Germany and we are the U.S.?
Or is it because those acts defended human persons while the ALF defends
nonhuman persons? Is it because you are a speciesist who privileges human
interests over nonhuman interests without any logical grounds for doing
so? Is it the tactics you really disagree with – or the species that is
defended?
Just as carnivores pay the
slaughterhouse workers to do their dirty work for them, animal rights
activists have the ALF doing the dangerous work for them. The ALF ought to
be respected and appreciated for the brave soldiers they are.
Meaningful social change will not
result from the use of one or a few tactics alone -- all strategies and
tactics are needed. The animal rights movement needs people to write
letters, work with local and state “representatives,” educate students, do
vegan outreach, demonstrate and protest, and so on. And it also needs
underground direct action.
If you care about animals; if you care
about the values of peace, freedom, and justice; if you care about human
moral progress; if you value logical consistency, you should support the
ALF.