Today it was announced that the radical animal rights and environmental movements have decided to part ways once and for all.
It’s been a long time coming. Though the two movements have worked together on campaigns, supported political prisoners from their respective struggles, and shared space side-by-side in numerous publications, tension has been growing around their seemingly insurmountable moral and strategic disagreements. For decades the partnership has been plagued with arguments over what items one should purchase from ecocidal supermarkets, whether it’s more urgent to campaign for animals being tortured in cages or animals whose habitats are being destroyed, and whether it’s cooler to wear black or camo—and on what occasions it’s appropriate to wear both.
With such fundamental ideological differences tearing them apart, one wonders how anyone in activist circles tolerated this shaky relationship in the first place. Well, luckily for all those seeking refuge from the cold wind of the dominant imperialist-consumerist culture in a shelter built from social capital and call-out points, the alliance has finally ended, and all involved will be forced to choose sides.
It is reported that the final straw in the eco-animal feud came when an animal rights activist witnessed an Earth First!er drawing what they described as “Yet another large carnivore wielding yet another over-sized monkey wrench between it’s teeth.” A coalition of animal rights groups responded to the sketch by declaring that depictions of non-human animals holding human tools are anthropomorphizing, anthropocentric, and boring.
“I mean, it’s obvious that a movement that does a lockdown at every action has some problems,” said Patrick, a vegan leafletter from Chicago, “but if you’re running out of ideas, make sure the ones you keep using aren’t speciesist to begin with.”
Rando, the EF!er responsible for the drawing, was on a train somewhere in the desert when the announcement was made, and couldn’t be reached for comment. But co-organizer and long-time roaddog Normie responded to the ripple effect his friend’s drawing had caused. “Look, everyone knows wolves are cool, and monkey wrenches are cool, so obviously this was a pretty sick sketch.”
Others didn’t think it was so sick. “We don’t know what wolves think, so it’s wrong to speak for them,” said Cheryl, a protester working on anti-vivisection campaigns in New York. “Drawing a wolf with a monkey wrench is suggesting that that wolf identifies as a green anarchist, rather than an anarcho-syndicalist, Marxist-Lenninist, or any of the other myriad political affiliations this wolf may have. We aren’t supposed to speak for the wolves—we’re supposed to fight for them.”
A few fence sitters urged the eco and animal activists to talk to one another, but this proposition was declared preposterous by most, who preferred to air their grievances to people who already agreed with them on the internet. After a crushing wave of comment threads, each side officially renounced the other.
Some say this is poor timing for such a split—occurring just when the movement is picking up steam again, and when each side has been working together and gaining strength from one another. But neither the eco-radicals nor the animal liberation activists seem too concerned about the decision.
“It makes sense that we finally resort to isolating and purifying the language, ideology, and participation in our struggles,” said Treebark Branchblossom, an environmental activist who’s quite frankly a little tired of vegan potlucks. “We’ve been doing it already with all the other social justice movements, and there’s something to be said for playing to your strengths.”
http://www.earthfirstjournal.org/newswire