Francione typically speaks as if he invented veganism, and sycophantic followers such as Roger Yates claim that a bona fide "animal rights movement" only began in 2006 with the ascendant influence of Francione's work.[4] But Francione mostly returned to Watson's original teachings, albeit often in diluted form that retains the ethical vision linking food choices to moral commitments to oppressed nonhuman animals, but without a consistent political commitment to working against all forms of oppression and exploitation. Abolitionist approaches toward speciesism began within the nineteenth century feminist-antivivisectionists, were deepened in Watson and emerging vegan societies, informed the hunt saboteur movements in the UK from the 1960s to the present, and were advanced in historically momentous ways in 1976 when Ronnie Lee founded the Animal Liberation Front.
While Francione advanced a forceful critique of "welfarism" and took animal rights philosophy to a new level, he has nonetheless proved to be bereft of political vision and incapable of forging a genuine resistance movement that can evolve beyond the marginalized position currently embraced by less than one percent of the human population. In Francione's religious, tepid, and apolitical rendering, vegan abolitionism remains an elitist, white, Eurocentric consumerist lifestyle easily co-opted by capitalism and dominant ideologies. Moreover, Francione has spawned a cult-like following - "Franciombes" - who parrot his fundamentalist, rigid, bellicose, and Manichean positions; with slavish devotion to their Master and his hostile manner, Franciombes defame his critics in a style more suited to Machiavelli than Jains.
III.
The Guru and his disciples come together in a dance of doctrine and dogma. Like Christian fundamentalists, Francione and his followers believe they possess the Truth while all others struggle in error. As Francione argues there is literally "no alternative," only chaos and ruin, except for their approach based on obedience to law, peaceful education, and focus on individuals and consumption habits over institutions and productive imperatives stemming from global capitalism. For them, the world is black and white, answers are cut and dry, and complexity is reduced to the Procrustean bed of either/or, rather than enlivened through the dialectical logic of both/and.
According to the pacifist party line, militant direct action (MDA) tactics such as economic sabotage are ALWAYS wrong and NEVER effective. Excusing themselves from the work of analyzing the complexities and unique specific situations, Franciombes fashion a handy a priori "truth" and apply it mechanically to every action that has happened or will happen. Their ignorance of history is matched only by their mental rigidity. For over three decades, in dozens of countries throughout the world, in countless thousands of actions, liberators and saboteurs have freed hundreds of thousands of captive nonhuman animals; permanently shut down numerous breeders, "fur farmers," and vivisectors; and convinced countless numbers of individuals to find gainful employment in careers other than nonhuman animal exploitation, while inspiring people worldwide to join the animal liberation movement.
In all this, Franciombes see no value or gain and, despite operations closed forever, they can only repeat the baseless claim that all damaged property is rebuilt and all liberated nonhuman animals are "replaced." This may happen in some cases, but in light of the many operations shut down for good, this clearly is a false claim; even when animals are replaced and property rebuilt and restored, rising insurance costs are enough to weaken and jeopardize the viability of small and moderate operations at least. Whereas dogmatic pacifists hide under the cover of ignorance and denial, corporate exploiters themselves have testified to the effectiveness of ALF actions.[5]
By vilifying sabotage tactics as "violent," and by conflating attacks on property with assaults on people, Franciombes adopt the reactionary discourse and position of the FBI and the corporate-state-media complex. They needlessly and divisively pit education in opposition to illegal tactics (even open rescues), as if the two tactics were irreconcilably opposed rather than complimentary aspects of a revolutionary process.
Despite some talk of capitalism, commonalities of oppression, and alliance politics, Francione ultimately pushes a simplistic, single-issue "go vegan" approach pitched to a white, affluent, privileged, Western audience, with no intent to engage people of color, working class families, the poor, or China and India - the world's most populous nations now in rapid transition from maintaining traditional plant-based diets to embracing Western diets rooted in consuming "animal products" including flesh, milk, and eggs.
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