Exclusive Non-Violent Action: Its Absolute Necessity for Building a Genuine Animal Rights Movement

by Jeff Perz

Jeff Perz is an animal rights philosopher and activist. See his review of Joan Dunayer’s Speciesism, originally published in the Journal of Animal Law, on Abolitionist Online here or at http://www.speciesismreview.info

I have … not hesitated to say that it is better to be violent if there is violence in our breasts than to put on the cloak of non-violence to cover impotence. Violence is any day preferable to impotence.¹

- Mohandas K. Gandhi

Rod Coronado, the Animal Liberation Front activist who was jailed for freeing non-human animals and burning down a fur “farm” without physically harming anyone, states, “Even Gandhi said that nonviolence was only appropriate when used against an opponent who respects it.”² To the contrary, Coronado’s paraphrase is actually what Gandhi said about fasting in protest—not non-violent action generally. Regarding the latter, Gandhi firmly believed that anyone’s heart can be melted by non-violent action, including Adolph Hitler’s.³ The quotation from Gandhi that I opened this article with refers to impotence, or the inability to act or exercise power. In it, Gandhi says it is better to act violently than not to act at all in response to oppression, and I agree with that. Directly following this quotation, however, Gandhi says, “There is hope for a violent man to become non-violent. There is no such hope for the impotent.” Immediately prior to the above quotation, Gandhi asserts “But this non-violence has to be non-violence of the brave and the strong. It must come from inward conviction.” Gandhi knew that there is always an effective third way between passively doing nothing and acting violently.⁴ That third way is truth-force, or active non-violent resistance.

I have previously observed that a genuine animal rights movement does not currently exist.⁵ In building an animal rights movement, I strongly maintain that our actions must be strictly and exclusively non-violent if they are to be ethical and effective. Sincere animal rights philosophers, strategists and activists strongly disagree with this view. In disagreeing, they sometimes point to historical examples of human social justice movements and argue that violent resistance was both ethical and effective in these movements. So, they argue, in order to avoid being speciesist, animal rights activists must also accept the use of violent resistance. In answering this objection, I will take issue with both the historical analyses and ethical assumptions of those who object to the exclusive use of non-violent action.

Definition

Violence is the intentional infliction of physical or psychological harm upon a sentient being. Property destruction may or may not be violent, depending on the circumstances. If someone burns down another’s home and cherished possessions whilst the home is empty, this form of property destruction is psychologically violent towards the people who lived in that home; they feel extreme loss, anger and fear. On the other hand, if someone destroys a vacant construction site where a slaughterhouse was to be built, this act of property destruction is not psychologically violent. Some might object to this, perhaps arguing that the stockholders in the company will lose money, this will affect their ability to meet their needs and they will experience worry, panic or something else that could be described as psychological harm. This concern, however, is exaggerated. Whether an act of property destruction is psychologically violent is a matter of degree and is open to interpretation. Gandhi destroyed the property of the Government of South Africa when he burned the permits that all Indians in that country were required to carry. Although property destruction is not necessarily violent, it may nevertheless be counterproductive to building an animal rights movement at this point in history.

Social Justice, Violence and History

Consider the historical example of the Holocaust. Gandhi said in 1946:

Hitler killed five^[6] million Jews. It is the greatest crime of our time. But the Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher’s knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs. … It would have aroused the world and the people of Germany. … As it is they succumbed anyway in their millions.⁷

Although I agree with it now, when I first read Gandhi’s statement above, I felt shock and disgust. Gandhi’s view on the Holocaust can be better understood by considering what he said in 1938:

Can the Jews resist this organized and shameless persecution? … If I were a Jew and were born in Germany … I would claim Germany as my home even as the tallest gentile German might, and challenge him to shoot me or cast me in the dungeon. … If one Jew or all the Jews were to accept the prescription here offered, he or they cannot be worse off then now. The calculated violence of Hitler may even result in a general massacre of the Jews by way of his first answer to the declaration of [Jewish non-violent action]. But if the Jewish mind could be prepared for voluntary sacrifice, even the massacre I have imagined could be turned into a day of thanksgiving that Jehovah had wrought deliverance of the race even at the hands of the tyrant. … I am convinced that if someone with courage and vision can arise among them to lead them into non-violent action, the winter of their despair can in the twinkling of an eye be turned into the summer of hope. And what has today become a degrading manhunt can be turned into a calm and determined stand offered by unarmed men and women possessing the strength of suffering given to them by Jehovah. … The German Jews will score a lasting victory over the German gentiles in the sense that they will have converted the latter to an appreciation of human dignity.

…

“[Herman Kallenbach, Gandhi’s close Jewish friend] has an intellectual belief in non-violence,” Gandhi remarked, “but he says he cannot pray for Hitler. … I do not quarrel with him over his anger. He wants to be non-violent, but the sufferings of his fellow Jews are too much for him to bear.^[8] What is true of him is true of thousands of Jews who have no thought even of ‘loving the enemy.’”

…

It is highly probable that, as the [Jewish Frontier (a New York magazine objecting to Gandhi)] writer says, ‘A Jewish Gandhi in Germany, should one arise, could function for about five minutes and would be promptly taken to the guillotine.’ But that does not disprove my case or shake my belief in the efficacy of non-violence. I can conceive the necessity of the immolation of hundreds, if not thousands, to appease the hunger of dictators. … Sufferers need not see the result during their lifetime. … The method of violence gives no greater guarantee than that of non-violence. … Millions sacrifice themselves in war without any guarantee that the world will be better as a result or even that the enemy will be defeated. Yet who does not fiercely resent the suggestion that anybody die in deliberate non-violent sacrifice?⁹

George Lakey comments:

In the 1930s Gandhi was concerned about trends in Nazi Germany and wrote to a leading Berlin rabbi urging him to organize a resistance and to mobilize as many Jews and allies as possible against the threat. Wherever Gandhi saw passivity in an unjust situation, he urged that active nonviolent resistance replace the passivity.¹⁰

Now, recall again the quotation I began with at the beginning of this article. The inference is that, if European Jews during the Holocaust had only the choice of doing nothing or responding with violent resistance, Gandhi would have advised violence. From the above, however, it is clear that Gandhi saw a third – and less costly in terms of lives – way. Gandhi’s words are not empty: he practiced what he preached. On at least one occasion, Gandhi was beaten within an inch of his life whilst practicing non-violent action. He was absolutely prepared to die for freedom, but not to kill for it. This kind of action takes tremendous courage and strength of will. Gandhi advised the Indian masses to follow his example. They did so and the oppressive British colonists, with their vast and overpowering military machine, left India voluntarily.¹¹ Lakey rebuts Ward Churchill’s objections to this analysis.¹²

In answering the question, “Were the Jews murdered in the Holocaust nonviolent?,” Lakey rebuts Churchill’s claims in Pacifism as Pathology. Lakey argues:

The most extreme -- and painful -- result of confusing the words [“pacifism” versus “non-violent action”] is in Ward’s description of the Jewish experience of the Holocaust. First, he overstates how passive the Jews were in the face of the Holocaust. It’s really important that we honor the brave Jewish people who worked against genocide. [4 To learn more about strong nonviolent resistance to the Nazis by Jews, see Yehuda Bauer’s article in “Protest, Power and Change”…] Second, he says that the Jews who were intimidated into silence, or who were in denial about what was happening, were engaged in nonviolent action! “History affords us few comparable models by which to assess the effectiveness of nonviolent opposition to state policies, at least in terms of the scale and rapidity with which consequences were visited upon the passive.” [5 Ward Churchill, “Pacifism as Pathology” … p. 37.]

All of us who have engaged in nonviolent direct action know the difference between action and passivity. Join any discussion among workers who are deciding whether to go out on strike and you’ll hear the difference between the active ones and the passive ones. Join any community discussing whether to defend themselves against a new toxic waste dump, and you’ll hear the difference between active and passive.¹³

The Nazis used gradual socio-psychological manipulation when carrying out genocide. I have not studied this, but my understanding is that it began with a relatively small Nazi-controlled German military presence. This was followed by imposed rules such as curfews. Over time, the rules got more and more stringent such as Jews having to wear an image of the Star of David. Simultaneously, the Nazis conducted a sophisticated propaganda campaign. Eventually, ghettos were cordoned off with barbed wire fences. The repressive rules and atrocities continued to escalate within the ghettos. Finally, the Jews imprisoned in the ghettos were shipped via trains to death camps. This genocidal procedure of the Nazis is analogous to a slow death by boiling; the water starts at room temperature and the victim does not notice, or tolerates, the small changes until it is too late. Without having read Gandhi’s letter to the leading Berlin Rabbi that Lakey refers to, I would hypothesise that Gandhi would have, if fully informed, advocated mass Jewish non-cooperation and civil disobedience against the Nazis at every stage. Perhaps this would have involved the vast majority of Jewish people confronting soldiers, one at a time, and asking them to leave. Perhaps it would have involved unrelenting and frequent attempts to dismantle military posts without harming the soldiers. When met with arrest, assault and murder, Gandhi may have advised that every Jew accept this fate whilst simultaneously continuing their action until they were absolutely physically forced by Nazi-inflicted violence to stop. There would be no cooperation whatsoever. In masses, they would have refused to wear the Stars and carry the permits. They would have assembled in large groups and conducted large demonstrations, contrary to German law at the time. Again, they would have embraced the horrible Nazi responses to this, but openly, loudly and resolutely. In masses, they would have attempted to dismantle the ghetto fences as they were being built without acting violently towards anyone and despite being the victims of horrible violence themselves. As the truth became known, and as Gandhi suggests, perhaps they would have marched in masses, asking either to be killed, imprisoned or freed of the repression they were enduring—all before the general German public and at the earliest possible stage. All of this might sound bizarre, but, as Lakey points out, many Jews did employ non-violent action against the Nazis, and this should be honoured. Moreover, something relatively similar to Gandhi’s suggestion to the European Jews actually happened in India under British rule. The British colonists were not conducting genocide, so the two examples are not comparable on that level, but the British were exploiting India for all of its resources, causing millions to die of starvation, poverty and violence. This is relatively analogous to the current U.S. occupation of Iraq. Any opposition to the British occupation of India was met with arrest, beatings and murder. Whether in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s, India in the 1920s through early 1950s or anywhere, Gandhi advocated non-violent action that required the utmost courage, will and sacrifice. If and when this is actually done, it works brilliantly.

Lakey analyses many historical examples of non-violent action to further prove this point. He argues that governments, including military dictatorships, are unable to stop effectively run non-violent movements with violence. For example, Lakely points out that the late Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic was deposed by a non-violent movement, despite having overwhelming military power in 2000. The same is true of Philippines dictator Marcos in 1986 and the East German, Hungarian, Czech, and Polish dictatorships in 1989. Lakey notes that the Shah of Iran was non-violently overthrown in 1977 to 1979, despite his having one of the ten most powerful armies in the world, an extremely ruthless secret police force and U.S. support.¹⁴ “The opposition leadership [in Iran] chose to use a completely nonviolent strategy, which worked. How could it have? Nothing in Ward’s book explains how this is possible. It couldn’t happen, according to Ward, because militarily powerful states smash nonviolent movements. The foundation of the house of the Shah was the compliance of the people. When the foundation gave way, the house collapsed.”¹⁵

Lakey observes that, in Pacifism as Pathology, Churchill discounts people power, which is the main power that activists have access to, as compared with the massive resources and violence of nation states and multi-national corporations.¹⁶ Lakey gives many examples.¹⁷ In arguing that non-violent people power is a much stronger force than violence, Lakey gives the example of El Salvador in 1944:

…an armed uprising failed to overthrow dictator Hernandez Martinez. The government was strong enough to beat back armed struggle. So the students initiated a nonviolent insurrection, making a big point of the nonviolent part because of the defeat using violence. They threw Martinez out nonviolently -- “people power” succeeded where violence had failed. The students in neighboring Guatemala were so impressed that they initiated a nonviolent insurrection against the “iron dictator of the Caribbean” -- Jorge Ubico -- and Ubico was thrown out, too.

A number of liberation movements that used armed struggle in the Third World have now given up those means and switched to others. The Zapatistas of Chiapas [Mexico] are perhaps the best known example of this phenomenon. In the early 1980s the African National Congress realized that its armed struggle strategy was failing; it was woefully insufficient to defeat apartheid. It couldn’t even involve the masses of people in the cities who were eager to act for freedom. So, without formally^[18] giving up their guerrilla activity, they plunged into nonviolent struggle: boycotts, strikes, demonstrations of all kinds. The result was the end of apartheid despite a very well-armed state with a terroristic police force.¹⁹

In quoting a non-violent activist from the deep U.S. South, Lakey compares society to a house. The roof of the house is the state [or the corporation, or the animal exploitation industries] and its repressive mechanisms. The foundation is public compliance or cooperation. No matter how many weapons are piled on the roof, regardless of how destructive and advanced these weapons become, the state and its implements of violence collapse when the foundation of public cooperation gives way. This is why non-violent people power is much more powerful than military power.²⁰

Violent and Non-Violent Tactics Working Together?

Lakey supports the view that being open to both violent and non-violent tactics simultaneously is counterproductive with several examples. He notes that Denmark was taken by surprise when the Nazis invaded it in World War II. When this happened, the Danes used both non-violent and violent tactics, ranging from collaboration to petitions to sabotage.²¹ “The diversity didn’t work: some tactics worked against each other.”²² So, the Danes then tried another set of diverse tactics: labour strikes, non-violent demonstrations and sabotage.²³ “Again, the tactics undermined each other; each act of sabotage gave the Germans fresh excuse to come down hard on the workers and the demonstrators.”²⁴ Finally, Lakey notes that the Danes arrived at a strategy that was “internally consistent, and the tactics therefore supported each other instead of subtracting from each other.”²⁵ These included an underground press, major strikes—including a general strike, non-violent demonstrations, and smuggling Jews out of Denmark to refuges in Sweden and these tactics worked.²⁶

Lakey argues:

Diversity of tactics open to all possibilities is like trying to build a house without a strategy, a house that includes solar panels, a woodburning stove, a massive oil furnace, electric baseboard heating, huge windows facing north, asbestos insulation, a jacuzzi in every bedroom, a meditation room dedicated to simplicity, and so on. When we build a house we do make choices, guided by some overall concept. That’s what makes sense when building a house or when building a revolutionary movement.

…

The last time in the U.S. that many activists talked seriously about “revolution” – the late ‘sixties – the socialist activist and writer Martin Oppenheimer found himself in public discussions with activist leaders who were advocating violence but could not put a strategy together. To assist them and himself, he wrote a book, “The Urban Guerrilla”, (2) in which he developed two different strategies using armed struggle and tested them in the book in terms of likely consequences. Pragmatically, both of the armed struggle strategies led to disaster for democracy and justice.

…

The overwhelming commitment of most progressive leaders in North America is to conventional methods like electoral campaigns, lobbying, lawsuits, petitioning, letter-writing, public relations, and the like, instead of to nonviolent action. This has always been true. When Martin Luther King first emerged as a civil rights leader, the established groups hoped he and his nonviolent tactics would disappear: their confidence was in lawsuits and lobbying.

…

In the U.S. nonviolent action is used mostly by the working class and poor, more by people of color than whites, and more by younger people than by older people. While the bulk of nonviolent action in the U.S. is done by working class community-based organizations, important uses have been made by unions, lesbians and gays, people with disabilities, environmentalists, students, and others.²⁷

Exclusive Non-Violent Action and Building an Animal Rights Movement

I have argued that the view that violent resistance has advanced human social justice movements – in terms of their long-term success – is questionable. Indeed, violent tactics may be counterproductive in themselves and undermine any non-violent tactics that accompany them. So, to be effective and consistent in furthering justice for non-human animals, animal rights activists must reject completely the use of violent tactics. Much more important than tactics, however, are the ethical assumptions that guide them.

I agree with Gandhi’s view that, in circumstances of personal self-defence where there genuinely is no other option, it is ethically acceptable to use violence. I also agree with Gandhi that if, when seeking to create positive change at the level of society, we were forced to choose either (a) violence now or (b) slowly achieving little to nothing, then we should choose violence. This choice, however, is always a false dichotomy on the level of societal change – as Gandhi and countless others have argued and proven through their stellar successes. The same is true of animal rights activism. Since it ignores the third way of active non-violent resistance, the use of violent tactics is always seriously unethical.²⁸

When a vivisectionist believes, correctly or incorrectly, that vivisection should be used in the struggle against human disease, the vivisectionist must necessarily treat her or his next victim as an object that is dispensable. Similarly, when an animal rights activist believes, rightly or wrongly, that violent tactics should be used against a vivisectionist, the activist must necessarily treat the sentient being behind the surgical mask as a mere object that is dispensable. In both cases, the person in question is using someone else merely²⁹ as a means to some supposed greater good; an object to be treated as such. This is unethical because it ignores the inherent value and fundamental rights of the sentient being who is being treated as an object.

It might be objected that it is ethically acceptable to use violence against a vivisectionist or another oppressor and, in so doing, treat her or him as an object because – unlike the victims of vivisection – the vivisectionist is guilty. In situations where there is a third option between responding with violence and doing nothing, does someone lose her or his basic rights and moral value simply because she or he is in the act of doing harm, or intending to do harm? An example of why the answer to this question is “no” is as follows. Imagine that a convicted three-time murderer is sitting in a prison cell with the door open. You are 50 metres away and have your finger on a button that will automatically close and lock the cell door before the prisoner can get out. The prisoner picks up a knife, says “I’m going to kill you” and slowly but determinedly starts walking in your direction. Should you push the button and lock the prisoner in the cell or should you shoot the prisoner in so-called self-defence? Obviously, it would be unethical to shoot the prisoner because there is a highly effective third option between passively waiting to die and using violence.³⁰

Gandhi had the spiritual belief that everyone has inherent ethical value and an inner core of pure goodness, even Hitler. Due to extreme ignorance and other complex factors, Hitler and other oppressors did and do horrible harm to their many victims. Underneath that abhorrent violence and tremendously deep ignorance, however, shines someone who – like everyone – has inherent ethical worth. Whether or not you agree with this spiritual basis for the exclusive use of non-violent action, it still remains true that someone does not lose her or his rights because she or he is doing or intending to do harm in situations where it is possible to stop the harm non-violently, as shown by the above prisoner example. Thus, the ethical assumptions behind violent tactics are questionable. This is especially true in the case of animal rights activism, where there are extremely effective non-violent methods available.

Non-Violent Radical Animal Rights Tactics: Now and In The Future

Vegan education saves more lives and ends more pain and suffering than all other methods of animal rights activism combined and multiplied ten fold. The reason why this is so is the fact that 50 billion birds and non-human mammals (and who knows how many billions of aquatic animals, bees, etc.) get killed for food every year. Not including aquatic animals and bees³¹, the lives of 1135 non-human animals are saved when just one 20 year old goes vegan in Australia.³² Including aquatic animals but not bees, the lives of 4022 non-human animals are saved when one person is vegan from birth in Britain.³³ If an activist helps five people move towards veganism per week, which is entirely possible³⁴, that adds up to multiple hundreds of thousands of non-human animals saved in just one year. Over ten years, it becomes multiple millions of lives saved. Compare that with what violent animal rights activism could achieve.

If a vivisectionist is murdered, she or he will no longer harm however many animals. But then the vivisectionist will be replaced by another and no lives will be saved. It is objected that the murder of a vivisectionist would instil fear in all vivisectionists, motivating them to seek a change of career. This claim has been proven false by the murder of doctors who perform abortions of human foetuses; the vast majority of these doctors have not been scared off by the murder of their colleagues. To the contrary, the vast majority of them have become more resolute. Security at hospitals and abortion clinics has been stepped up. Regarding violent animal rights activists; governments and the media use them as excuses for instituting more repressive laws that remove civil liberties. Can any violent animal rights activist match the funding of a government or corporation? If not, who will be the likely winner of a guerrilla war between the two – as witnessed by the corporate media? War and violence beget more war and violence. Gandhi’s words, “An eye for an eye only makes the whole world blind”, could not be truer. It is much more effective, and much more ethical, for an animal rights activist to save thousands of non-human animals by helping just one person go vegan. Again, this could be turned into billions of animals saved if only all animal rights activists committed all of their resources to abolitionist vegan education.

At this point in history, sacrificing one’s life in the service of non-violent animal rights activism is neither necessary nor effective. In the future, however, when the percentage of vegan animal rights supporters is much higher, non-violent animal rights activists sacrificing their lives will be appropriate. For example, if 50 percent of the population were vegan and believed that non-human animals have basic rights and that their exploitation ought to be completely abolished, a large and committed group of activists could blockade a slaughterhouse. They would attempt to stop living non-human animals from entering and dead ones from leaving. They would attempt to give all the living non-human animals on-site emergency veterinary care and transport them to sanctuaries.

In a social climate where 50 percent of the population is vegan and believes in animal rights, the government and the animal exploitation industry would feel very threatened by the above action. Thus, when faced with the prospect of the demise of their industry, the likelihood of a violent response to non-violent action is greatly increased. Employees, security guards, police or military might assault or kill activists as they persist with every last bit of strength they have in continuing the blockade, without fighting back and instead simply taking the fists, clubs, teargas and bullets. This would have a profound affect on those actually committing the violence, as well as on the public that sees the images in the media.³⁵ All support for the animal exploitation industry and the consumption of animal products would dwindle and the 50 percent would soon become 99. If, instead of responding with beatings and killings, the government or animal exploiters responded with arrests and imprisonment, the 50 percent population base of vegan animal rights supporters would allow many similar actions to take place until all the jails were filled to capacity. Then more actions could continue unencumbered. If the exploiters did not respond at all, this is a great outcome because the blockades will have saved all the animals destined for the slaughterhouse. The job of the active non-violent resister is to provoke a response.³⁶ Clearly, this requires much more courage and strength of will than what a sniper shooting a vivisectionist – or someone putting razor blades or talcum powder in a letter – has.

Conclusion

Like Gandhi, I have no quarrel with the anger of those who are deeply concerned about the oppression of others. Indeed, I share in that anger. I would simply like to see that energy channelled into an ethical and effectively arrived at outcome for non-human animals. The above scenario of non-violent animal rights activists sacrificing their lives will only become relevant in the future, when there are many more vegan animal rights supporters than there are today. Currently, our job as animal rights activists is to make that future possible by doing the hard yards of helping more and more people embrace abolitionist theory and practice—including a vegan lifestyle. As a result of our efforts in abolitionist vegan education now, fewer and fewer non-human animals will be eaten, killed or otherwise harmed. This will lead to the eventual abolition of all non-human animal exploitation. Exclusive non-violent animal rights activism is ethical, realistic and absolutely necessary to create the world we are seeking. Let’s do it!

NOTES: