THE JOURNALIST EXPOSED
Claudette Vaughan Speaks to Vegan Voice magazine

VV: Tell us about your views.

Claudette: Many people who join our movement want to work on nonhumans’ behalf and be vegans, and that’s great. In some ways I have gone the opposite. What the animal rights movement has done for me personally is strip me of a naturally inclined idealistic nature. It’s impossible to view life the way you would like it to be once you see things as they really are.

I’d like to elaborate on the issue of violence. On several occasions I have witnessed violence from the general public towards vegans. Once, at Paddington markets in Sydney, my friend Judith Greening, myself and other women were holding a stall on behalf of The Vegan Society. Judith Greening could be considered the most harmless woman you could ever hope to meet. Yet it was she who was picked upon, shouted down and berated for her beliefs by one ocker-type male from the general public. He was shaking with rage. He reacted as if all of his life “values” were being threatened by this woman who, in reality, was only offering him vegan chocolate cake and organic coffee!

Again, at a recent kangaroo demonstration a group of us dashed into the Adidas warehouse in Collingwood and held a candlelight vigil around their Predator boots made from kangaroo skins, waiting for the police to arrive to kick us out. Suddenly from out of nowhere a man came charging around the corner and started thumping one of the women protesters on the back with force. The police eventually arrived with the Riot Squad (pleea-ze, next they’ll be attending the vegan cake stalls!). Hurriedly I grabbed the megaphone and made out that the police had come for this guy. You should have seen the blood draining from his face. No longer was he the brave, fearless bully pushing women around. He skulked out of there with his tail between his legs. That one’s for you, Judith!

All these events have the same familiar ring about them. Either it’s part of an unspoken pecking order where uppity women must know their place in society, or maybe it’s a throwback to a prehistoric caveman mindset, territorial by nature and resistant to change at all costs.

VV: Direct action. You’re a great believer in it, aren’t you?

Claudette Yes. Direct actionists in Australia are more fortunate than those overseas so far. Nonviolent open rescues are the norm here. Nobody wears balaclavas and generally it’s the activists who ring the police to get themselves arrested and gain publicity for the cause.

This is the way it’s gone so far. Activists go into the sheds, the piggeries, the battery hen sheds etc, and do the rescue. They then ring both the RSPCA and the police to come out and see the cruelty for themselves. It’s only ever the police that respond to the call and then they arrest the activist. It either then goes to court or not, depending on the extent of the rescue, whether there was any property damage, whether media are present, or even just based on the mood of the cop on the day and what side of the bed he got out on. There have been times you could have knitted yourself a vegan-friendly jumper waiting for them to arrive.

I don’t want to underplay it, though. Things can get nasty out there and things can definitely get out of control. Violence is in the air and you’re in the middle of bloody nowhere with an irate farmer screaming at you and cops making it quite clear, from their body language and attitudes, that they will not step in and protect you against danger. Still, on the whole we have been fortunate and there have been few serious injuries to activists willing to put themselves on the line for another.

In my view the political climate of Australia and our siding with America in the so-called “war against terror” will have serious consequences for animal rights activists in this country. It is an astounding paradox that the animals already live in a world where real terrorism abounds. I hesitate to say it for fear of scaremongering but if there is an attack in mainland Australia this will change the whole internal structure/atmosphere for activists and we will be faced with new difficulties and challenges never before seen on these shores.

VV: Why is veganism important?

Claudette: Too easy. Veganism and vegan activists are important because we live in a Jerry Springer-esque kind of world. We are fed a continuous diet of trash food, trash TV, trash talk. After all the arguments for a healthy, organic, plant-based diet are put forth and have fallen on deaf ears, you almost have to wonder if there’s a concerted, conscious conspiracy against veganism taking hold in the world. This, in my view, is the real “new world order” working itself out for us. It’s not all about economics, or even the humans’ considerable stupidity, but it is about global domination. Its target is to kill off the natural world, both our inner and outer worlds. My experiences have always led me to believe so in human terms, and my animal rights work allows me to see it happening with nonhuman animals also.

Genetic engineering, for both humans and nonhumans is a perfect example of this. These life engineers are rearranging the genetic structures of the living world, crossing and intermixing species at will to create a new world (dis)order of gangrenous proportions. This is a world where diversity is the enemy and patented life forms the goal. The elements that make up life – air, water, sun, earth – are being mutilated, poisoned and slaughtered at a rate that takes our breath away. In its place is plunder, mayhem and murder. My concern and anger for our loss and the animals’ loss is not seen in passive acquiescence.

If you have ever gone inside an intensive piggery farm you’ll know what I mean. In this world there is no light and no consciousness. Pigs are standing in their own faeces and it is a world of sheer and utter misery for them. The sow stands in the corner waiting to be mounted the next day. The only food they are allowed to eat are pellets that are commercially engineered for maximum profit and lack any life force. Bizarre music plays throughout the night in the hope that it might cast the illusion that “everything is going to be just fine”.

The only “highlight” to a piggery visit is being confronted with a mother sow. Even though her situation is dire she will aggressively snort loudly at you as if to say, “What are you doing here?” Although she has no defences she remains to the end protective of her young. If you have ever read some of the Arabian Nights stories, this is often how the human condition is portrayed. In esoteric literature as well. The Buddha said, “All is suffering.” You don’t have to wonder why, once you have visited these places. The truth of the statement is obvious.

VV: What would you like to see the vegan movement do about it?

Claudette: One thing I would like vegans to do is to tackle subjects as diverse as “Food changes consciousness”. This would be right up our alley. Indian culture knows a thing or two about how food changes consciousness. In all their wisdom they have produced works where food, like other matter, may be classified as possessing three distinct qualities, or a mixture of these. These are Tamas, the quality of inertia and dullness; Rajas, the quality of action and excitement of the mind and body; and Sattva, the quality of goodness and harmony and the elevation of the spirit. Western vegans could produce versions for a campaign that would suit predominantly Western appetites.

VV: How on earth do you get the interviews?

Claudette: In some respects the interviews have a life all of their own. I believe doors have been opened for them because there is a need for them. Such is the generosity of the animal rights people, 99 per cent of them jump on board immediately. They want their stories and views heard and appreciated. As far as I can, I tailor the interviews to suit the person being interviewed. Some activists being interviewed want full control. Others couldn’t care less. There is a conscious effort on my part to ask the hard questions and activists don’t resent this at all. On the whole you get the feeling that they relish a good fight and that’s probably what makes them who they are and great fighters for the animals as well.

Brigitte Bardot is one case in point. She’s a hard-line animal protectionist doing the best she can and like most of us, under pressure too.

VV: What qualities do you bring to the movement?

Claudette: I don’t know. My energy, I suppose. Mark Pearson, executive director of Animal Liberation NSW once said of me that I was the only person he had ever met whose voice can be heard from one end of a battery hen shed to the other. Now that’s something!

VV: What are your religious beliefs?

Claudette: You know, one thing I would like to comment on is how our movement is helped from other sources. It’s like anything. Once you look for it, you see it everywhere. Take the Animal Liberation Front, for example. In all the years they have been operating, not once has anybody been killed. In my book this is no coincidence.

I read recently about a specific ALF rescue. The activist conducting the rescue commented at the time that, “not one of the 28 beagles barked as we hoisted them through the roof to safety. They seemed to realise they were being rescued.” Now I don’t know if you have ever been in a room with 28 beagles but it is near impossible not to have some of them barking, even just for the sheer joy of seeing you.

There are other things as well. In Sydney I met a man who used to shoot deer from a helicopter in New Zealand. I asked him why he stopped and he said he woke one night after an intense vision. A deer was cutting his throat, saying to him, “How do you like it?” He never went back to his job.

In the book Cattle – An Informal History the author speaks about her own epiphany. She had gone to a fairground specifically to see her friend’s hybridised gladioli entry and mistakenly entered a large barn. She said she was immediately struck by the nobility and beauty of the cattle there. By walking among them, she felt she was taken back to some place in antiquity. As she left she noticed a sign warning to wash hands with antiseptic soap in order to prevent life-threatening diseases such as E-coli. How did we get to the point, she thought, where these beautiful animals that humans have relied on for centuries, could now so innocently represent death to us? It changed her attitude from previously scoffing at bovines for their slowness and irrelevancy to respecting them. Another well-documented epiphany is Cheri Ezell-Vandersluis who owned an intensive-dairy farm, saw it for what it was and now runs a rescue sanctuary. These things are not happening in a vacuum and we’re only just beginning to scratch the surface of it all.

VV: What do you think about the current state of the animal rights movement?

Claudette: Our movement is full of people giving their all to saving animals’ lives. There is a tremendous amount of goodwill in our Movement. For example, Laurie Levy is one who gives his all. He mortgaged his home and all he had for his duck rescue campaign and it worked. Elsie Quinn is another. At the recent Asia for Animals Conference there was an abundance of people in one room giving their all for animals. People like this stand out from the crowd because they are driven by a fervor, if you like, a fire in their belly, that produces results regardless of the appalling circumstances often being faced with animals in the world today.

It is a fact, and one I often delight in, that one person can make a difference. Being around my own kind of people invigorates me daily and pushes me to do more for the animals.

VV: What campaigns are you working on?

Claudette: My work on the Abolitionist-Online continues. I completed some TV interviewing for a program called “Animals Matter”. If this interview is for any reason at all it’s just to show how one person can work for animals and still have their successes.

As recently as last week I had a work colleague tell me while munching his animal flesh sandwich that he considered giving a donation to the Korean Animal Protection Society but came to the conclusion all on his own that there is a surplus of dogs around the world and getting rid of a few won’t matter

My belief and mindset is when the personhood rights of animals is taken seriously then we will no longer have to listen to the dronings of people working against our cause, because these same people will be forced to obey the law. Yes, the animal rights movement is just as much for humans as it is for animals. It holds a mirror up for our society to look at itself in all its hypocrisy and ugliness. Unfortunately you have only to skim the bourgeois surface to view it in all its squalor. As Bobby Kennedy once said: "Our job is to try and tame the savageness of mankind."

VV: You went down to Melbourne to fight a new vivisection research facility being built. What happened there?

Claudette: The $5 million grant awarded to Monash University for their new research facility did not come through. Vivisection is a highly lucrative business. Not only are significant profits made from animal tested products but the animal breeders, transporters, food, cage and equipment suppliers and veterinary profession are all in for a slice of the pie dealt off the backs of animal suffering. I see what is being done to animals in laboratories today as one gigantic, black mass, sacrificial ritual.

Unlike most people, I do not think we live in a world of “good” with a few bad people like murderers and rapists tossed into the mix. I think we live in a dysfunctional world with a few good people working and willing to put themselves out on a limb for another.

Seen from this perspective, vivisection is an outrage, an assault, to what we call “being human”. I think there is a sub-species of human caught in a twil-light zone between half man and half savage who perpetuates vivisection. It gave me some degree of satisfaction to see beads of sweat form on one vivisector’s forehead as he said, “We don’t want the Australian anti-vivisection movement to go the way it has done so overseas.”

VV: What’s the future of the movement in your view?

Claudette: Our weakness in the movement has been that animal advocates, in general, have refused to work from the philosophy of animal rights for fear of seeming radical or absolutist. One campaign after another is waged, separately, and the same mistakes are repeated. Have we failed the animals and let ourselves down in the process?

There’s a good argument for a radically based animal liberation movement working upon personhood rights for animals and it’s indisputable. Speciesist language is another area we ignore at our peril. Most activists think language is a side issue to liberation. It can’t be. It never has been. If that were the case it would still be acceptable to call people of colour “niggers” or gay people “faggots” or physically or mentally challenged people “deaf and dumb”. Now if that is unacceptable why would the animal liberation movement be any different? It is not. If we are too timid to take up the relatively easy task to differentiate between rights and welfare, who else will do it for us? It is not enough to say, “I care for animals”. If it were, we would have achieved more by now.

Unfortunately I have to concede that perhaps the future holds the key for a more militant, gutsier, driven generation. The future of the animal liberation movement will depend upon it.

VV: Okay, so finally, a vegan said to me recently that she thinks paedophiles are more accepted in Australian society than vegans. What do you say to that?

Claudette: It’s a good question.

We live in unnatural times where black is called white and white is called black. It’s important as vegan animal rights activists though not to see ourselves as victims. By exposing what we know we have the ability to bring forth new ideas, new ways of seeing the animal holocaust. By refusing to partake of the blood rituals of mass slaughter understand this: We represent a psychic and political threat to those who strive to produce a climate where rape, dismemberment, torture, paedophilia and murder thrive.

The animal rights movement imploded upon the scene as the new revolution. By getting out from under the canopy of deception, we must refuse to be silenced by rules of polite, “reasonable” welfare discourse.

In our headlong rush to show kinship with the animals our aim in the movement has previously been to show the world that humans are animals too, different by degree, not type. Taking this to its extreme, Peter Singer has suggested that since humans are great apes, and therefore animals anyway, sex between humans and animals is not out of the question, as long as the non-human animal is willing.

Megalomania aside Peter, our movement needs to move in another direction. By all means, let’s talk “speciesism”, but let’s talk “rapism” as well. We are not castrated individuals. We are not in captivity like the animals. We have a voice.

To counteract the effects of the vampirising elements in life we need only remain mindful of our ontological yearnings that summoned us to the movement in the first place. In doing this we denounce the desecration of the Earth, her animals and ourselves, and make it crystal clear that this desecration will not continue unavenged.