Non-Violent Action: Perz reply to Peyser

[Jeff]

* Please cross-post widely *

In "Exclusive Non-Violent Action: Its Absolute Necessity for Building a
Genuine Animal Rights Movement", Jeff Perz argues that the only ethical and
effective tactics open to non-human (and human) animal rights activists are
non-violent. In his essay "Response to Perz's 'Exclusive Non-Violent Action,"
Daniel Peyser objects to the arguments and historical evidence Perz presents.

Perz considers Peyser to be an abolitionist and Perz has written a friendly,
yet rigorous, reply to Peyser. If you are an animal rights advocate and you are
interested in the ethics of non-violent action, this article is a must-read.

Short version:
http://theveganbus.com/2008/10/13/non-violent-action

Long version:
http://theveganbus.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/nonviolence_perz.pdf

[Karin]

Brilliant reply, Jeff. Thank you for writing it. Your writing (I always read the respecitve unabridged version :.-) is among those works which make me happy.

The only thing that is not clear to me is why you consider Daniel Peyser a fellow abolitionist.

[Jeff]

Thanks for your praise, Karin; I'm glad you liked my article.

From his posts on the Vegan Freaks forum and from his former Abolitionist Radio podcast, Daniel Peyser is abolitionist.

Jeff

[mountainvegan]

I read the short version, figuring if I needed more clarification, I could venture onto the long version, but I found I understood immediately and completely. Jeff, you are spot on – excellent short version. Capitalism is amoral. Participants in capitalism are not amoral, and it is the participants who count. Non-violent action is the only way to move abolition forward at this time in history.

[James]

Excellent reply, Jeff. I am profoundly in sympathy with your stance on nonviolence.

[Jeff]

Thank you, Mountain Vegan and James.

It's good to know there are other activists out there like yourselves who are creating a progressive abolitionist movement.

[Luis]

The problem is always what you mean by violence.

[panthera]

Luis, your comment prompted me to reread the article, to see if they define "violence." I didn't see it in the abridged response. However, one of the comments caught my eye. Gary (Francione) says,

Moreover, those who promote violence do not understand that such action has no coherent social meaning in a society in which 99% of the population thinks that it is acceptable to impose pain, suffering, and death on 12 billion animals annually (53 billion worldwide not counting fish) because they “taste good.”

It occurs to me that this statement undermines Jeff's claim that continued violence in the face on non-violent resistance will erode popular support for the perpetrators of that violence. But if most of society has no problem with wholesale violence towards patently undeserving persons (people?), why would they have a problem with reactive violence towards possibly deserving ones?

To the extent that they would, it would be due to their speciesistic attitude that says that violence towards certain non-human animals is not violence at all. Is this what Gary means by "coherent social meaning," that there is no consistent reaction to it? I think it's fairly consistent, just speciesistic.

That said, I do agree that this needs to be a non-violent movement! For me it's a matter of internal consistency.