Kristofer Aberg: The radical notion that (vegan) Israelis are people

This is a response by Swedish animal rights activist Kristofer Aberg to an article by the Peace and Conflict Studies scholar Shawndeez Davari Jadali: ‘Vegan Killers: Israeli Vegan-Washing and the Manipulation of Morality.

The comment had initially been published on ‘Turkey Agenda’ as a response, but was removed again by the editors one day after publishing.

We asked Kristofer if we could share a copy of his comment on our blog, since this critique is important to be voiced, in support of our fellow Israeli activists and also because of the plurality that we need in the discussion of Animal Rights and vegan politics.

The radical notion that (vegan) Israelis are people

This text as a PDF

Shawndeez Davari Jadali wrote a couple of days ago about Israeli “vegan washing” in Turkey Agenda. Israel, Jews and Zionists have been subjected to a lot of lies and conspiracy theories during the years. Do we really need another one?

First of all: Is it really that hard to understand that you shouldn’t use collective punishments on Israelis just as you shouldn’t do it on Americans? How would Shawndeez Davari Jadali feel if she was to be blamed for the war inIraq, just because she lives in theUS? And that her attempt at peace and conflict studies is just a “peace washing” to make theUSimage better for the world?

The slogan “feminism is the radical notion that women are people” has shown to misogynous men what feminism is really about. It seems like people like Jadali need to be taught the radical notion that also Israelis are people! They are not propaganda machines for their government just as Jadali probably wasn’t a propaganda machine for the Bush administration. Israelis can have a life not connected to the conflict with the Palestinians. Jadali’s single minded attitude sounds like someone who has never met a gay person, and then stereotype that person totally. A Swedish comedian therefor said something like “I’m not just gay, I’m also a carpenter”, to point out that you are more than your sexuality. And you are also more than your citizenship. Israelis can be interested in veganism and queer politics just as Jadali or I can.

So where is Jadali’s evidence that it’s the Israeli state that is behind the vegan boom inIsrael? I have been active in the vegan and animal rights movement inSwedensince the 1990’ies, working with low budget grass roots campaigns. I would love to hear about the secrets on how to get your state to support these causes and make a vegan boom such as the one inIsrael! Also, inSweden, and probably in other places, most of the animal rights movement comes from the left/liberal/green side of the political spectra. InIsraelthere is a right wing government, so the conspiracy theory of them being behind the vegan boom seems even harder to believe.

What Javali is doing is to be categorised as the master suppression technique known as double bind – “damn you if you do, damn you if you don’t”. The same thing goes for the people using the “pink washing” theory to blame the Israelis for their liberal attitudes toward the LGBTQ community. IfIsraelwould have a lousy policy on veganism and LGBTQ issues, people like Jadali would have used that to blame them. Now when they are progressive, Jadali comes up with another way to be able to blame them. The same goes for Jadali’s criticism of the Israeli army providing non leather shoes for a minority (vegetarians and vegans). If they would refuse, Jadali would have just had the chance to blameIsraelfor discrimination against minorities. Some more peace and conflict studying of Norwegian social psychologist Berit As is recommended for her.

Also, why criticizeIsraelfor having a population that are progressive on vegan or LGBTQ issues in the first place? Why not take a moment and make the Palestinian side better? In many Arab countries, there is no such thing as a law against discrimination against non straight people, instead there are laws and even death penalty against homosexuality.

Jadali also blamed the Israeli animal rights activists for caring about animals. So why does she target progressive vegans around the world in the first place with her new “vegan washing” conspiracy theory? Vegans are blamed for this inSwedenas well – “how can you care about animals when the children inAfricaare starving” is a common argument from meat eaters. So in what way does eating meat help starving children? Quite the opposite, meat eating is really bad for the environment and for a global solidarity. And why are compassionate activists to be blamed for what they do with their spare time? Why not blame people who use their spare time to just watch soccer, driving cars or partying? Even though Jadali seems to want to label herself as progressive, what she is doing is being really normative, only seeing veganism as a political choice. Some more peace and conflict studying of another social psychologist is recommended for Jadali, this time Melanie Joy and her theories on carnism.

Jadali writes about solidarity with the oppressed and boycotting the occupation. Doesn’t she know that most Palestinians support Hamas, a gay and jew hating islamist terrorist group? They don’t just call the post 1967 settlements in theWest Bankoccupation, they call the whole ofIsraelan occupation.Israelwas founded as a safe haven for the Jewish people after persecution inEuropeandRussia, especially during the second world war. So why not take a moment to study the antisemitism of the world, and especially antisemitism from the Arabs and Palestinians? There is for surely a social psychologist for that as well, otherwise just check out Memri or Palestinian Media Watch.

Myself, I visitedIsraelfor the first time in September this year. The vegan food in Tel Aviv andJerusalemwas wonderful. Unfortunately I missed the vegan festival in October. But I wrote about it in a Swedish vegan magazine. And by doing so, apparently I became part of a worldwide Zionist conspiracy! As an ex student in journalism, I don’t understand how making the news valuation that the world’s largest vegan festival would be a correct event to cover, is an evalutation to blame. Rather, I think it would have been a huge mistake not to cover it. Many people want to hear about vegan news, especially from countries they didn’t think was big in these issues. Even a vegan movement in dictatorships likeSaudi Arabiawould be interesting to hear about. But for some strange reason,Israelapparently should be demonized and treated in a totally different way? Jadali, can we write about theUSvegan and animal rights movement? “Your” war inIraqcaused much more death and destruction during a couple of years than the conflict inIsraelandPalestinehas done for 100 years. And don’t get me started about the war inVietnam…

Jews or Israelis and especially not Israeli vegans should be demonized in the way that Jadali is doing. The progressive people all over the world should get our support. The largest problem as I see it in the conflict are the extreme right wing groups on both sides – not that less animals gets slaughtered or that the sale of tofu is sky rocketing in Israeli supermarkets. Jadali seems to have forgotten what her earlier studies was all about – hopefully creating peace. So to Jadali and all other readers of Turkey Agenda: Shalom and give peas a chance!

Kristofer Aberg, Swedish animal rights activist since 1995

(Links accessed 25. Dec. 2014).

Caring for others with the goal of justice

Caring for others with the goal of justice

If systemic oppression lead to you having to live a life under constant fear, if you were being tortured and eventually murdered, and your life and death was accompanied by ridicule and despise, and it was said that you’d only act upon instincts, no one would believe you, no one would in fact even understand you and your language and your ways, and they’d look upon your behaviour and dissect your brain, to explain to the rest of the world who and what you were – as if they knew. And the same that happened to you, was the same that millions and billions of those who were like you would have to endure like you, with you.

Which reaction of others, who weren’t in the place of your group, and who’d even belong to the oppressors group, and, who’d even have a say to some extent in that group, would you think was the most appropriate:

Empathy???
Compassion???
Mercy???
Justice???

Empathy
Google says it is ‘the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.’
Merriam Webster says it is: ‘ the imaginative projection of a subjective state into an object so that the object appears to be infused with it’, ‘the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner; also : the capacity for this.’

Compassion
Google says is the
‘sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others.’
Merriam webster says is
‘a feeling of wanting to help someone who is sick, hungry, in trouble, etc.’

Mercy
Google: ‘compassion or forgiveness shown toward someone whom it is within one’s power to punish or harm.’
MW: ‘kind or forgiving treatment of someone who could be treated harshly.’

Justice
Google: ‘just behavior or treatment.’
MW: ‘the quality of being just, impartial, or fair’, ‘conformity to truth, fact, or reason.’

The vegan habit of relativizing one form of speciesist praxis with the other one

The vegan habit of relativizing one form of speciesist praxis with the other one, seems to assume that a juxtaposition of two problems is in itself already a functioning argument against speciesism. Why do we have to compare one speciesist action with another one, when both occur in a different context and when both occur as specific variables on the horrid map of human speciesism?

It seems to be assumed that the roots and causes of speciesism are the same as what the arguments against it already convey, …

so that the equation would be: speciesism is speciesism is speciesism, and since speciesism is ethically wrong we’d thus have a magic exit from that complex problem.

Yet fellow vegans, think about this:

a religious reason to kill a nonhuman, is another one then a more ideologically driven one – in the one case you do it for God and your spirituality, in the other case you might do it in order to stay part of a more modern type system or community that believes that the size of the brain and it’s functions are all that matters …  you just idealize the human species sui generis. Equally a philosophical argumentation for speciesist biopolitics differs for example from an economical calculation of bodies as chattel, … and so on …

Realistically seen there are many forms of speciesism, and conflating everything only causes an unhelpful mishmash of unjust and tragic human errors that we might help prolonging by not digging deep enough and not differentiating enough within the contexts

Objectifying nonhuman animals takes various forms:

– in legal terms nonhumans are classified as property
– in religious terms the separation is being made spiritually, man is preferred and given the right to dominate all that is on earth
– philosophical schools may give an array of different reasons for why whichever form of speciesism might be ethically sound or a right view to maintain
– the natural sciences differentiate between beings driven by instinct, the lower forms of life, the higher forms and man with the supposedly most complex make up of mind and brain.
– carnism could be said to be a term for one form of speciesism that classifies domesticated farm animals only (or finally, as in the case of horses and some exotic animals that are eaten such as ostriches) as “meat” or suppliers of food.
– pets on the other side are. in spite of being loved by our society, also affected by speciesist views on them.
– wild animals are forced to make up the object for hunters and hunting culture’s needs to re-exercise continuously the idea of a primeval and supposedly ideal condition of man as the hunter and gatherer.
– but also wild animals are affected by argumentations that target them in terms of whether they are intrusive species or should be seen as protectable.

For every animal species we seem to get one or more forms of speciesist views, classifications, argumentations. In every aspect that defines the human view on his or her environment we seem to come across a derogative stance on nonhumans.

When we discuss speciesism we should bear in mind how complex and difficult to analyze the subjugative view on animal life is in our cultures and societies.

Liberation from “Total”

Dear fellow AR activist,

​I personally don’t know where even any total liberation activists stand in detail. Of course it’s decisively crucial that the interest in nonhuman-related-ethical-issues is continuously gaining momentum, and every event (or activity, or even thought) that is taking place to grow this momentum is an active expression of an overall ethical development evoluting in our societies. I believe in such developments, and I believe they are driven by many different forces and factors.

I am however generally suspicious of the internal structures of movements, for as long as an idea hasn’t taken ground and formed solidly enough in a society for it to be expressed pluralistically enough, so that you can argue with a full spectra of positions.

The canon of Animal Liberation or AR has strong tendencies to be unisono, and I blame that on the movements inner dynamics. And it is this narrowness within the movement why  I always try to double check what exactly is being practised and promoted beyond the bigger messages of any strongly idealistic event.

With total liberation events so far nothing seems transparent to me, structurally more than from the given goals and intentions.

I for myself prefer solutions to be less “total” and more sticking to the realities of the details.

Yours,
Just another fellow AR activist

Steve from the The Drag Hook about ethical veganism

Steve, vocalist of the vegan hardcoreband The Drag Hook from Cleveland, about ethical veganism:

Veganism is an important step on the road to acknowledging and ending suffering worldwide. The fact that the human body has evolved to run most efficiently on a completely vegan diet is a side benefit of living as close to a cruelty free life as is humanly possible in the world today.

Once we stop ignoring the fact that creatures with the capacity to love and enjoy their lives are being tortured and murdered every day in the name of gluttony and greed, we can start addressing this problem and every other form of needless destruction we inflict on this planet and all those we share it with.

We as human beings have a long history of doing terrible things to each other and to all of our fellow earthlings. We must right these wrongs or go extinct trying.

-Steve Osborne XVX
The Drag Hook

Ignorance Is Complicity

they live in the space you ignore
they die on the killing room floor
because they’re born for you to waste
they give their lives for the way they taste
this is real monstrosity
ignorance is complicity
Breed them in new mutated forms
so fat they cant lift themselves off the floor
dying in numbers too large to record
sold to your plate before they are born
this is real monstrosity
ignorance is complicity
everyone knows the difference
between chained and free
there will be a war
until every cage is empty

Not In My Name

let them suffer no more for me
let the walls that cage them topple over, let them be free
let the hand that grips the whip be severed clean
let eyes that witness and do nothing, no longer see
carry their cries out to every ear
let no one enjoy their pain without having to hear
Bread to be tortured and killed
raped into existence then fed to the world
this will not be my legacy
i wont go down with the rest of my species.

Both these tracks are from their January 2014 release: Lethal Dose.

The band is not active anymore in this formation. Their album ‘Lethal Dose’ can be downloaded in bandcamo under adrress however: https://suspendedsoultapesandrecords.bandcamp.com/album/lethal-dose

Band of Mercy, Texans, Veganocrats


Band of Mercy, courtesy toomanyweapons.com

Band of Mercy, Texans, Veganocrats

Singer, guitarist Daniel from theHoustonTXbased vegan hardcore Animal Liberation Band of Mercy told us about vegan effectiveness, possibilities of leading by example and basic intersectional veganism:

My main concern, at this point in my life (after being vegan for 8 years, and being an animal rights activist for more than 5 of those years), is the issue of promoting vegan culture. Of course, the basis of why someone stays vegan throughout their life usually comes from maintaining veganism as a philosophy based on ethics, as opposed to being a  lifestyle that affords them the most personal pleasure (let’s face it, most dietary vegans will make exceptions to what they feel is a restrictive lifestyle). Unfortunately, the ethics of veganism aren’t the most appealing aspect of veganism to most people. So what is our best approach to help the most animals and reduce the greatest amount of cruelty to them?

As activists, we must consciously remind ourselves that most people DO care about animals to some degree, and that most people do not wish harm upon them. Most people accept animal cruelty as an obscured part of our food system, fashion industry, clinical fields, and so on, simply because they think things have always been that way, and that they are powerless to change things. It’s not that they wish cruelty onto animals–rather, they feel their personal sacrifices to help animals would likely not be worth the effort.

What I have found has worked best for me, in my personal life with friends and family, as well as in my activist life, is to be an educated example of personal empowerment. I have taught myself how to thrive as a vegan, and I have made it a point that all those around me see how I am thriving as a vegan. After all, everyone wants to thrive in their lives. We must aim to show people that veganism requires more discipline than sacrifice– and more importantly, that the discipline we teach ourselves to live by will enhance and benefit our lives, not wear us down or limit our potential to have fun and be happy.

I have become stronger and healthier on a vegan diet. It requires some education to learn how to eat optimally as a vegan, and it does require some planning and discipline, but my physical and mental gains from eating optimally make my life more enjoyable, as I am able to do more activities that I enjoy for greater lengths of time, even as I get older. I eat a wider variety of foods, and I enjoy the rituals of eating more now than I did as an omnivore. Food is now a celebration in my life, not just something I must consume as a matter of hunger and convenience. Not only this, but many variations of vegan food and clothing are in fact cheaper than animal-based alternatives. Through veganism we all stand to gain physically, mentally, financially, as well as knowing the peace of mind that comes with thriving while causing the least amount of harm to others.

We must empower ourselves with the knowledge of how to live vegan in an optimal way, and then we must share that knowledge with those who are curious about veganism so that we may build vegan culture. For those who are not yet curious, we must live so boldly that we invoke their interest. We can not tear down the ways of old without offering the population newer, better ways to live. They will join us when they see us laughing, when they see us succeed and lead in the workplace, when they see us staying lean and healthy into old age, when they can see that our intellect is not just one dimensional–that we read books and make creative contributions to the world outside of the concepts of animal rights. We must show that we are well-rounded, well-developed individuals who have educated views.

While the ethical arguments are always abound in the world where people want to question us or be skeptical of us for not eating animals, and in this world of cruelty as the norm where protest is so often necessary, we must be able to shift our focus beyond the ongoing debates when necessary. We must become leaders who shed the light on a better, healthier, more positive way to live. In the end, that is how we will save the most animals.

Band of Mercy – Eat to Win

There is a war, and me must fight
But we won’t win if we don’t eat right
Billions are suffering, so we must prevail
You want Vegan Power?
You better eat KALE!!

Tofu, rice, and beans – BEANS!
And dark leafy greens – GREENS!
Fruits and nuts and seeds – SEEDS!
Partake of these to smash enemies

War is upon us, like it or not
No hippies or weaklings, we need juggernauts
‘Cause change never comes from asking nicely
You want Liberation?
You better eat broccoli!!

Tofu, rice, and beans – BEANS!
And dark leafy greens – GREENS!
Fruits and nuts and seeds – SEEDS!
Partake of these to smash enemies

Born to lose, eat to win!
Toughened by tempeh, strengthened by seitan
Born to lose, eat to win!
We scoff at the phrase “protein deficient” (HA!)

(“Where do I get my protein? What, are you a fuckin’ idiot??”)

Show them a vegan like they’ve never seen
Primed to deliver one million ass beatings!

Tofu, rice, and beans – BEANS!
And dark leafy greens – GREENS!
Fruits and nuts and seeds – SEEDS!
Partake of these to smash enemies

Connect via:

FB: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Band-of-Mercy-the-band/130053330369316
Bandcamp: http://bandofmercy.bandcamp.com

Davey xSABOTEURx on vegan AR intersectionality!

xSABOTEURx at the Asylum 2 – Birmingham, 8.04.2013

We asked Davey, the bassist of the former UK vegan band xSABOTEURx, about his view on ethical veganism and animal rights intersectionality:

Basically for me veganism has always been for the animals and that’s how I would imagine it would stay. The band tackled issues of homophobia and sexism too with our vocalist at the time being gay.

We also come from a background where there’s a lot of privilege and consumerism in hardcore and honestly that’s just never been what it’s about for us.

Our politics have always been about liberation, both human and animal, and that’s something that should always continue on for us.

xSABOTEURx – Reaction

“In a world that’s fueled by the suffering of others,
ignorance is no longer an option. I would rather see
the world for what it really is than blind myself with
excuses. No longer will I stand by and watch as the
innocent fall victim to selfish desires. No more.”
Abstinence from a culture guilty of atrocity,
industries that profit off other beings misery,
mind altering substances that keep thought distracted,
pay heed to our crimes,
this is my reaction.
How many more have to suffer?
I can no longer stand by and do nothing,
as life is destroyed by human consumption,
slaves to convenience,
faith in a bottle,
this is my reaction in a world so hollow.
VEGAN STRAIGHT EDGE
Rape,
Vivisection,
Murder,
Exploitation,
Suffering,
Misery,
This is my reaction,
I won’t stand still.
Won’t stand still.
Won’t stand still.

xSABOTEURx – Unjustified

Compassion for those you once called friends,
lost among false notions of survival,
tradition is delusion in a modern age,
where substitute can take deaths place.
Slaughter, unjustified.
Slaughter, unjustified.
Animals aren’t commodity
or ours to control
industry to industry,
all will fall.
The hunters hunted,
the demons exposed,
no compromise for those who oppose.
Mass liberation from the hands of moral corruption,
those who’d brand a currency on sentient life.
Now is the time!
Mass liberation
from the hands of moral corruption.
Righteous vengeance on those who oppress.
It’s time for us to recognize,
retribution of nature’s calling.
Every second that’s spent waiting,
leads to another demise.

Both track are from xSABOTEURx – Demonstration, released in May 2013.

Via FB: https://www.facebook.com/saboteurxvx

Wolf x Down on vegan Animal Liberation and intersectionality


Wolf Down at Ieperfest 2013

We asked Wolf Down about their position on ethical veganism and intersectionality

This text as a PDF (link opens in a new window)

Wolf X Down guitarist Tobi stated it for us:

Veganism to us is not just a diet, as declared by lifestyle vegans that see it merely as a way to stay healthy. It’s a conscious ethical decision of causing the least suffering and harm done to the planet and its inhabitants. Thus, we don’t feel that veganism is “giving up your favorite products and food”, as meat-eaters like to put it into question: “Don’t you miss xy?”. No and no. No, because there’s just about every delicious meal in a tasty cruelty-free vegan version and no, because there’s just no other way. It’s not a choice that is open to anyone. You’re not free to choose if you wanna hold yourself a slave or not, are you? So why do we think it’s everyone’s personal decision to exploit, torture and murder animals?

Despite all this, veganism is a means, not an end. We don’t think real change is to come from simply boycotting products and sharing your favorite raw food recipes. Be honest to yourself, veganism alone is not even saving animal lives. Thus, veganism is to be used as a stepping stone only. The consensus of our society about animal exploitation will not be broken without further action. If we want to achieve animal liberation, the animal rights movement needs to become a political and social movement just like the abolitionist one. The abolition of slavery and struggle for Black people was not won by boycotting cotton. To be successful, a movement needs a broad bandwidth of actions. And the direct actions of sabotage, property destruction and animal liberation carried out by underground ALF activists are just as vital as the clean-cut vegan on the TV talk show. So let’s raise our voices to be heard, and never forget, thousands of individuals are being tortured, mutilated and killed right this second: “I am aware, that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation. No! no! Tell a man whose house is on fire, to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hand of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; — but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch — AND I WILL BE HEARD. The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal, and to hasten the resurrection of the dead.” – William Lloyd Garrison, American abolitionist

In a wider context, veganism to us is part of a struggle for total liberation, including not only non-humyn, but also humyn animals. Just as humiliated womyn and people of color or of different ethnic and cultural backgrounds striving for true equality, the gay couple or queer- and trans-people striving for acceptance, people with disabilities for support, refugees for shelter and animals for a right to live without suffering and exploitation, we all aspire to be free and healthy. Not the same, but equal. Only by exposing the commonalities in the different forms of oppression and understanding the nature of the hierarchies and the mentality of the oppressing forces towards their subjects, we can find a way to mutually improve, amend and progress in fighting back, united and strong: “Unity of oppression”. When fighting our own separate fights, we may dismantle and maybe break out the one or two specific spokes that represent our pain in the wheel that is oppression, but it won’t stop the wheel from turning, it will still continue to roll over our comrades. Thus, to achieve our goal of true and lasting liberation, we need to reach hands and make it one common struggle for liberation, to build a unity of the oppressed and break all the spokes in this seemingly everturning wheel:  “So you can stay cool behind your window and choose the view you want to see. But as long as there are others held captive, do not consider yourself free.”

Wolf Down – No Silent Approval

while the blood drips off the blade the cries still resonate
estranged, cut into pieces – rediscovered on your plate
you stop at nothing for the privileg of taste
like a panel of judges you’re deciding their fate

born in misery, abused – got nothing to lose
exploited for profit therefore you breed by humyn greed
this machine that turnes lives to products is called tradition
your silent approval – what an imposition!
individuals – facing perversion by superior forces
social, sentient beings degraded to resources
you stop at nothing for the privileg of taste
like a panel of judges you’re deciding their fate

this is about freedom, this is about compassion,
abolish exploitation – animal liberation!
The time has come – to break this culture of death

From Wolf x Down’s 2013 album release STRAY FROM THE PATH.

FB: https://www.facebook.com/WOLFxDOWN
Bandcamp: http://wolfxdown.bandcamp.com/
Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/WOLFxDOWN
Twitter: https://twitter.com/WOLFxDOWN

stray from the path — escape prescribed conformity

We asked Per Aspera about ethics, veganism and its intersectional grounds

We asked Per Aspera from Chicago, IL, about their stance on veganism, and their thoughts on the “how to” of veganism’s intersectional condition

Per Aspera’s guitarist Nicholas Schmidt told us:

For starters, we strongly believe that it is gravely immoral to support and/or engage in the practice of murder, imprisonment, rape, and torture of living creatures. This applies not just to our fellow Homo sapiens sisters and brothers, but to all feeling beings.

The fundamental logic underpinning our decision to abstain from supporting the animal exploitation industry explicitly requires us to be opposed to all forms of systemic oppression that serve only the interest of the ruling elite. Hence our communal opposition to capitalism, fascism, patriarchy, racism, and environmental destruction are necessary components of responsible, honest, and consistent animal welfare activism.

With that said, engaging in any sort of radical political thought or action guarantees an intense amount of social baggage to encourage a placid and largely benign movement. When organizing in opposition to such mainstream and widespread power dynamics, it can be incredibly tempting to siphon off oneself or one’s small social clique from the rest of society. The antisocial message so common in punk and radical left circles serves to remove the possibility of organizing mass popular movements necessary to confront oppressive institutions across the whole of society. Furthermore, these tendencies offer no substantive vision and strategy for a society we are indeed capable of creating on this planet, as activism may be reduced to personal lifestyle decisions. Admittedly a somewhat ironic argument to hear from a DIY punk/metal band, we feel that the persistent drive to alienate left-wing struggles from working class culture resembles the same counter-productive prejudices that have plagued social justice movements for so long in regards to women, people of color, the natural world, and now with ever more increasing awareness, our fellow non-human companions.

The liberation of Mother Earth from the systemic diseases we have brought upon her is completely dependent on our ability to reach out, connect, and organize with all people who are experiencing the same oppressions, in whatever form, from our own backyards and neighborhoods, to the world at large. Ya dig?

Per Aspera – Shikata Ga Nai

We live with the lie that everything dies,
It’s only the spectres we perceive alive.
We personify existence in the natural world,
So we can mourn the proof of our own remorse.

I reject the notion that a desert of pain is the only universe that we have to explain.
As the memories of our families evaporate into space.

The hollow woman kicking blood,
Reminds us what waits in our blood.
As she cries for her slaughtered friends,
The vacuum of space hears no dead ends.

So I will cry when my friends die, and I won’t forget to live,
With passion, vigor, love, and fear of losing all that I hold dear.

Bandcamp: http://perasperapunk.bandcamp.com
Tumblr: http://perasperapunk.tumblr.com
FB: https://www.facebook.com/PerAsperaPunk
Contact: perasperapunk [at] gmail [dot] com

Anti-Speciesism, another angle

FRAGMENT

Making Anti-Speciesism itself a subject

We rightly want to ask people to do more than donate money to animal advocacy groups. We rather hope that people make others aware of veganism – in ethical terms. So only or mainly talking about vegan health and cooking (for instance) isn’t doing the job (far less is promoting vegan consumerism).

In which way to thematize speciesism?

1. By comparison …

A lot of the drawings of analogies are taken in reference to racism and sexism. In the discussions though the weight tends to lay more on the specifics of racist and sexist psychology, in those analogies, than on the juxtaposed speciesist type of psychological mindsets.

2. With cases …

On the other hand activists who discuss actual on the spot atrocities that are taking place and which mark those faces of speciesism, they do show the sheer extremes of killing, and those extremes again can’t be directly compared with other forms of discrimination. (At least we are confronted here with the fact that every category of an atrocity has own contextualities.)

How do you thematize speciesism?

In the frame of human anthropology? Or by comparing biological observations and findings on nonhuman / humans … ? Sociologically?

How?

My first suggestion is – cos I really do see that too little we describe how speciesism psychologically works in practice, is: let us have a look at the HOW’S of how speciesism manifests in basically many varying forms.

This is a highly fragmentary list for going into that direction:

QUOTE:

Many forms of speciesism

Objectifying nonhuman animals takes various forms:

– in legal terms nonhumans are classified as property

– in religious terms the separation is being made spiritually, man is preferred and given the right to dominate all that is on earth

– philosophical schools may give an array of different reasons for why whichever form of speciesism might be ethically sound or a right view to maintain

– the natural sciences differentiate between beings driven by instinct, the lower forms of life, the higher forms and man with the supposedly most complex make up of mind and brain.

– carnism could be said to be a term for one form of speciesism that classifies domesticated farm animals only (or finally, as in the case of horses and some exotic animals that are eaten such as ostriches) as “meat” or suppliers of food.

– pets on the other side are. in spite of being loved by our society, also affected by speciesist views on them.

– wild animals are forced to make up the object for hunters and hunting culture’s needs to re-exercise continuously the idea of a primeval and supposedly ideal condition of man as the hunter and gatherer.

– but also wild animals are affected by argumentations that target them in terms of whether they are intrusive species or should be seen as protectable.

For every animal species we seem to get one or more forms of speciesist views, classifications, argumentations. In every aspect that defines the human view on his or her environment we seem to come across a derogative stance on nonhumans.

When we discuss speciesism we should bear in mind how complex and difficult to analyze the subjugative view on animal life is in our cultures and societies.

-ENDQUOTE, source

I think taking a direct look at the cloaked psychology behind speciesism (itself), we can get closer to the framework that enables a speciesist society in the first place.

With ‘cloaked psychology’ I don’t mean a model such as it was discussed with the ‘carnism’-term, which focussed on two forms of speciesism basically: pets that are loved, yet have no rights, and so called farm animals that are being killed for “food”, and have of course also no rights.

With ‘cloaked psychology’ I mean questions of why as a fact human traits are valued over nonhuman animal traits, or the same goes for ‘interests’, features, attributes, realities, etc.

By breaking down the probably manifold components of the speciesist framework, we can find our way through a mess of a collective-psychological character, I think.