Abolition Then and Now: Tactical Comparisons Between the Human Rights Movement and the Modern Nonhuman Animal Rights Movement in the United States

Abstract

This article discusses critical comparisons between the human and nonhuman abolitionist movements in the United States. The modern nonhuman abolitionist movement is, in some ways, an extension of the anti-slavery movement of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the ongoing human Civil Rights movement. As such, there is considerable overlap between the two movements, specifically in the need to simultaneously address property status and oppressive ideology. Despite intentional appropriation of terminology and numerous similarities in mobilization efforts, there has been disappointingly little academic discussion on this relationship. There are significant contentions regarding mobilization and goal attainment in the human abolitionist movement that speak to modern collective action on behalf of other animals. This article will explore the human abolitionist movement and discuss possible applications of movement organization, tactical repertoires, and goal attainment to the current nonhuman animal rights movement. Specifically, the utility of violence and legislative activism in the antislavery movement are discussed as potentially problematic approaches to abolishing nonhuman animal exploitation. Alternatively, the nonhuman animal rights focus on consumer resistance and nonviolence represent an important divergence in abolitionist mobilization.

Contemporary animal advocacy in Italy

“…Thus, summarising with a brief discourse about animal advocates’ ‘careers’, a certain intersectional trend appears to emerge, above all from 2010 on. This once again confirms the ‘change’ brought about by the second wave of anti-speciesism, which focused on pointing out the necessity to unite the struggles for the rights and liberation of human and non-human animals (Best 2014; Wrenn 2014) and whose founding moment is considered by many to be David Nibert’s 2002 volume Animal Rights/Human Rights , just as Animal Liberation by Peter Singer (1975) is normally taken as the milestone and the starting point of (first) anti-speciesism.…”

“…The literature about the ideologically ‘progressive’ position of animal advocates (Nibert 1994; Munro 2012) was confirmed by our data. This is also deduced from the inclination for commitment to various issues, a typical characteristic of contemporary mobilisation (Della Porta and Diani 2015), and from the search for a link between human and animal liberation (Wrenn 2014).…”

“…Furthermore, a rather intense relationship emerges between multi-membership and age: it is mostly younger individuals who are not satisfied with only one group reference in animal advocacy and belong to more than one group. Although this is in part explained by the fact that they have more time available, the data can be interpreted in the light of the larger political awareness of new cohorts, and of a general endorsement of the change brought about by the so-called second wave of anti-speciesism, which identifies specific connections between human exploitation and animal exploitation, and pursues the intersection with other social issues (Nibert 2002) and liberation struggles (Wrenn 2014). On the other hand, a further gradual transition towards a third wave of anti-speciesism seems possible: this is based on the notable importance given to LGBTQ rights, above all in the anti-speciesist area (Simonsen 2012).…”

The individualization of political activism

“…One is represented by the dichotomy welfarism vs antispeciesism [1] (that is itself divided into animal rights, animal liberation, abolitionism, anarcho-primitivism, etc.). The other contraposition, strictly related, is between: those who consider the activities of face-to-face propaganda and the investment on individual lifestyles ( Joy, 2011) to be more effective, and those who are not satisfied with an approach supporting individual attitudes and moral behaviors, insisting instead on the necessity of political collective actions and bridging animal questions with other relevant social issues (Nibert, 2002;Taylor and Twine, 2014;Wrenn, 2014;Best, 2014).…”

“…Veganism, in fact, is one of the main examples of those that have been defined as lifestyle movements (Haenfler et al, 2012), in which the insistence on direct actions and collective political identity has been flankedand sometimes substitutedby strictly personal forms of engagement (diet in this case) and everyday life engagement (V eron, 2016). In the same way, the relation between the internet and animal advocacy has been analyzed in detail in different national and transnational contexts (Gorski et al, 2019;Herzog et al, 1997;Herzog and Golden, 2009;Sneijder and Te Molder, 2005;Swan and McCarthy, 2003;Wrenn, 2014).…”