Let's Be Honest

"Let's be honest. The animal rights movement as we now know it will never become a revolutionary struggle because the representatives of the oppressed enjoy enough privilege from the system they oppose to prevent them from supporting, let alone engaging in actual revolutionary activity that would risk those comforts."
- Rod Coronado -

"People involved in a revolution don't become part of the system; they destroy the system."
- Malcolm X -

Love Does Not Imply Pacifism

"Tactics based solely on morality can only succeed when you are dealing with people who are moral or a system that is moral."

- Malcolm X -

“Non-violence is not a moral principle but a strategy. And there is no moral goodness in using an ineffective weapon."

- Nelson Mandela -

“The Jews who participated in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, even those who went on what they thought were suicide missions, had a higher rate of survival than those who did not fight back. Never forget that."

- Derrick Jensen -

To Mistake the Symptom for the Disease

"Animal exploitation and murder are no more the result of a particular belief system, political system, or economic system than are human exploitation and murder. To think that they are is to mistake the symptom for the disease. The disease is selfishness, greed, arrogance, and a lack of compassion. As Lord Acton told us, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Human history demonstrates that whenever a system (economic, political, religious, whatever) is installed that is designed to end, or at least ameliorate, human oppression, it is fairly quickly corrupted into a new mechanism for the same old oppression. Communism, is one example, institutional Christianity another. Political and economic democracy slow the process by distributing power widely enough to prevent its concentration while placing a significant share of it in the hands of those most vulnerable to oppression. As Winston Churchill reminded us, "Democracy is the worst system of governance ever devised except for all of the other systems that have been tried from time to time." Radical social revolutions simply put a new class of oppressors in charge. I wish it were not so, but it is."

"To put it bluntly, we enslave and murder animals because it is in our self-interest to do so and we have the power to get away with it, not because of capitalism, liberal democracy, the Judeo-Christian dominionist tradition, or any of the other reasons so commonly given. These are merely after-the-fact justifications. We enslave and murder animals because we can and we enjoy the results. Change the political or economic system, and that fundamental fact will still be operative, and the enslavement and murder of animals will continue unaffected except that it will now be justified by a different set of theories, one that is compatible with the new system."

- Norm Phelps -

Until there are no beings whom we still define as "other"

The Problem: The Human Species Itself

"Animal liberation is the most difficult liberation struggle of all because speciesism is primordial and universal. Speciesism is arguably the first of any form of domination or hierarchy and it has spread like a deadly virus throughout the entire planet and all of human history. The problem is not limited to Western culture or to the modern world, such that there is some significant utopian past or radical alternative to recover. The problem is the human species itself, which but for rare exceptions is violent, destructive, and imperialistic. Universally, humans have vested interests in exploiting animals and think they have a God-given right to do so. To change these attitudes is to change the very nerve center of human consciousness. That is our task - no more and no less."

- Steve Best -

The Walls of the Slaughterhouses are Already Transparent

The animal rights movement is "breaking" the walls of the slaughterhouses for more than 30 years. The walls of the slaughterhouses are already transparent.

You tell them the facts, and you show them the horrible reality, and it doesn’t help.

We will never understand how people can eat the flesh of someone that has been bred in misery and pain but they do.

Most humans don’t even understand what we are talking about.

Humans’ moral rule is "Do whatever you like as long as you can get away with it".

Not anymore! This is a call for the annihilation movement to rise.

* Text taken from the Only One Solution website.

Violence and Control are a Part of Us

There is a reason why humans see leather as cool and sexy.
Violence and control are a part of us.

You can fight it and explain to people that it is wrong and that animals suffer for it.
You can tell people that they can buy synthetic materials instead.

But leather is a lot more than a material that jackets are made of.

Leather is status. it is a symbol.

Trying to convince people to buy synthetic fabrics is not how you change things.

Synthetic fabric is synthetic revolution.

Humans want leather because it is a symbol of power and domination. The problem is internal and there is no jacket in the world that can ever change that.

* Text taken from the Only One Solution website.

Trends

The campaign against fur was once considered to be the most successful campaign ever by the animal rights movement. But after almost a decade of being branded politically incorrect, fur is back in fashion, coming in all colors, shapes and sizes.

The Fur Council claims that in 1985 only 42 fashion designers included fur in their collections. 20 years later the number has risen to more than 500.

The fur industry resurgence in the last 5 years is an irrefutable evidence of the sole significance of trends in human behavior and public political views.

It is not empathy, rationality, concern and ethics that dictate humans’ behavior, it is fashion, in this case ambiguously speaking. It is trends, not rational and practical compassion.

In spite of Al gore, Cindy Crawford, the Atkins diet, super size me and so many other trendy examples, activists still rely on trends and on celebrities to carry on moral and social justice campaigns.

Animal rights activists know just as we do how provisional and arbitrary trends are and that the same people that are against slaughtering animals for their fur, turn around and eat their flesh, or wear their skin.

Disappointment after disappointment, but the activists never learn.

They cover their eyes and ears because they can't control their urge for a short term goal.

The expectation that the same principle of action only using the good celebrities in a smart and sexy way will change the world is false and ridiculous. The same methods that are responsible for so much of what is wrong with the world can’t be the solution too.

Instead of looking for the current trends and how to use them for their goals, instead of dividing the world to good and bad celebrities.

Animal rights activist should ask themselves what are the chances for a vegan non-speciesist world when the moral message becomes a minor by product of the current trend and the mega celebrities’ reputation improvement efforts.

* Text taken from the Only One Solution website.