Animal rights movement

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The animal liberation or animal rights movement is a social movement which, according to its self-image, advocates the liberation of animals from “conditions of exploitation” or for animal rights.

Basic theoretical attitudes

Main article: Animal rights

Almost all activists have a vegetarian and in many cases a vegan diet and lifestyle in common. There is also a broad consensus in the rejection of traditional animal welfare . While animal rights activists usually assume that humans are allowed to use animals within a certain framework, animal rights activists reject this unequal treatment between humans and other species, as well as the categorization as farm animals or pets . While the romantic animal welfare originally comes from the bourgeois, conservative part of the population, most animal rights activists see themselves as "left" and "progressive". Some of their masterminds place the movement in a row with historical liberation movements such as the anti-slavery movement or the emancipation movement of women . However, the Austrian Office for the Protection of the Constitution sees no institutionalized connections to the left-wing extremist scene.

Theoretical precursors and beginnings of the movement

Fist and paw as a symbol of today's animal liberation movement

“Hardly any other emancipatory demand went so unheard in the course of history as the call for the liberation of animals”, says the author Matthias Rude. According to him, it is a "tradition that goes back much further than is commonly assumed". According to Rude, forerunners of the animal rights and animal liberation movements can already be identified in the English Civil War, in the anti-slavery movement and in the French Revolution.

Contrary to what is sometimes perceived by the public, the theoretical pioneers of the animal rights and animal liberation movement are not to be found in the last third of the 20th century ( Peter Singer or Tom Regan ), but pioneers are already historical personalities such as the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau , Fighters against slavery like Benjamin Lay or revolutionaries like John Oswald (1760–1793), Louise Michel or Gustav Struve .

Great Britain

An animal rights movement already existed in the 19th and early 20th centuries; one therefore speaks of a “first” and a “second” movement. She was particularly strong in England. Henry Stephens Salt was a defining figure in this movement ; his Humanitarian League had 550 members at its weddings.

In 1907, protests against animal testing led to street riots in Britain, the so-called Old Brown Dog Riots , in which "both women and workers found symbols of their own oppression in animal testing." The British animal rights movement was at the beginning of the 20th century heavily overlaid with the feminist movement. Medical students at the University College who protested against the erection of the vivisection monument from 1906 on, equated anti-divisection and women's suffrage movements: They disrupted numerous events of the latter in order to take action against the former. Even feminists like Clara Wichmann saw at the beginning of the 20th century a substantive link between women's and animal rights.

German-speaking area

In the German-speaking countries, in the course of developments in England in 1907, Magnus Schwantje founded the Society for the Promotion of Animal Welfare and Related Endeavors , renamed in 1918 as the Bund for Radical Ethics . It was modeled on Salt's Humanitarian League and had about 850 members at its heyday. Politically, it combined various left-wing political fields of action with the idea of ​​animal rights, and there were also close ties to the peace movement of the time. In the anti-fascist resistance, the International Socialist Combat League founded by Leonard Nelson was an organization that combined the class struggle with the idea of ​​animal rights.

The time of the two world wars marked a break in the development of animal rights and animal liberation. In an interview Matthias Rude says: “Between the two world wars there was a break in consciousness, after which the first period of activity was no longer connected. I think it's important to dig up this tradition and make it fruitful for today's discussions. I have found many ways of reasoning that had to be laboriously worked out again in the 60s, 70s and 80s, although everything had already been thought through. Much potential has been wasted on this. If this tradition had been made fruitful earlier, we might be further today. "

Today's animal rights movement

The beginnings of today's movement can also be found in Great Britain, where images of hunting sabotage were first disseminated by the media in the 1960s . The predecessor organization of the Animal Liberation Front , inspired by the concept of urban guerrillas and the radicalizing counterculture of the time , was founded (under the name Band of Mercy ) in 1972. In the USA, too, after the Second World War, animal experiments and factory farming became the impetus for a growing animal rights movement; in Germany, the second movement started in the 1980s, initially under the self-name “autonomous animal protection.” The German name Tierbefreiungsfront was first used in 1984.

Sometimes a connection with the nature conservation debate is identified by some as the cause of the radicalization of part of the animal protection movement. It is said that the differentiation of a more radical animal rights movement resulted in a paradigm shift that was closely related to the fundamentalization of the ecological conflict in the late 1970s.

Forms of action

The protests of animal rights activists are often directed against certain forms of animal use such as hunting or animal experiments . An attempt is being made to gradually influence legislation or the behavior of private individuals and companies. The Austrian Animal Welfare Act (2005) and the German amendment to the Basic Law (2002) are cited as successes. A special strategy of the movement consists in the campaign work , in which protests are directed against the practices of individual companies, for example the trade in fur products, over a longer period of time. Organizations dedicated to targeted campaigning are the Offensive Against the Fur Industry (OGPI) and Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC). The exits of various companies from the fur trade are rated as successes, as well as the breaking off of business relationships with Huntingdon Life Sciences by several financial institutions as a stage win .

Central organizations of the movement are PETA (international), SHAC (Great Britain and Ireland) and the Austrian association against animal factories . The Animal Liberation Front (international) is sometimes counted as a foreign name; its term as “organization” is controversial.

Many authors admit to open breaches of the law in their actions. You justify the procedure with the fact that, from a historical perspective, many changes that are perceived as positive today were achieved in this way; for example in the American civil rights movement, the Indian independence movement and the European environmental or women's movement. In 2014, the BKA counted more than 2,000 criminal offenses in Germany over the past ten years.

Balluch and Garner, for example, argue in a somewhat more abstract way that otherwise the political opponents would obscure the background and essential information of their actions, use money to deal with democratic decision-making processes and manipulate public opinion with money. There is a lot of experience of how the asymmetrical balance of power between civil society movements and companies has been undemocratically exploited by the latter.

Theoretically, all authors located in the animal rights movement exclude actions that involve direct harm to humans or non-human animals. There is no known case in the German-speaking area that violated this principle.

  • Protest for animal rights

  • Anti-hunting demonstration in Spain. The banner translates as “ There was enough violence - no to hunting - freedom! "

  • Protest march in Berlin under the motto " Kick Escada from the fur trade ", approx. 500 participants (November 2008)

  • Demonstration against animal testing in Wickham, Hampshire (September 2007)

  • Demonstration of the VGT against the arrests in the Wiener Neustädter animal welfare process and ( criminal organization ) in Vienna (June 2009)

Legal evaluations of "direct actions"

In 2018, the Naumburg Higher Regional Court acquitted three animal rights activists from Animal Rights Watch who broke into a pig farm in 2013 to film. The court had "considered the accused acts to be justified" and stated that "animal welfare is a legal asset that is superior to the violated domestic law". The judgment is considered groundbreaking.

According to Hans-Georg Kluge , who, as a lawyer, represented a client who had broken into a turkey farm, animal rights activists often had no other option than to break into stables if they wanted to prove that there was maladministration there. The Heilbronn district court , which negotiated the case in 2019, did not join in. Citizens have "not the right to react to supposedly unjust circumstances as long as the legislature, the majority in parliament, does not remedy the situation". The case has since been heard by the constitutional court for the state of Baden-Württemberg . A judgment is not yet available.

In April 2018, the Federal Court of Justice ruled that film material that had been secretly recorded in chicken coops to document grievances could be shown by television broadcasters. In this case, the public's interest in information should be rated higher than the interests of the company. In March 2019, a pig farmer was sentenced to three years imprisonment by a court for "cruelty to animals in factory farming", which animal protection activists had uncovered in 2016. The case against the activists, who had secretly filmed, had been discontinued for unauthorized access after paying a fine of 100 euros.

The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security see the animal rights movement as a threat to internal security in the United States due to eco-terrorism . The Austrian authorities mention the movement in the report for the protection of the constitution (2009) as “ growing both in the legal area and with regard to criminal offenses ”, especially in the area of ​​fur. In the United States , the Animal Enterprise Protection Act was enacted in 1992 in response to animal liberation movement activities . In 2006 this law was tightened and renamed the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act . In the United States, regarding the application of the terrorism concept on the part of the animal rights and environmental movement from the Green Scare , from the Greens fear following the Red Scare spoken during the Communist persecution Some authors assume that the legislation on internal security in many Western states were motivated to deliberately restrict the animal rights movement's options for action. In the so-called " animal welfare case " there was a heated social debate in Austria on the problem. Some authors see civil society resistance in general under attack by the legislature and the executive branch.

Controversies within the movement

In the background of the differences of opinion within the movement there is often a fundamentally different view of whether the animal rights movement should only devote itself to the core issue or convey a broader social criticism. Specific issues such as related to the collaboration with the religious community Universal Life , which is rejected by a variety of assets or practices of the organization PETA , which parts of the motion partly because of using the drawn in some spectra of movement Holocaust comparison criticized is, see Animal Holocaust . In addition, PeTA's campaigns are sometimes criticized as sexist .

In the meantime, a part of the movement that wants to see itself as an animal liberation movement is developing criticism of the concept of animal rights .

Veganism and Abolitionism

The discussion about the extent to which pragmatic concessions should be made to a speciesist society is summarized under the term of the abolitionism debate.

On the one hand, it is argued that improvements in animal welfare and vegetarianism are not only much easier to achieve than an understanding of the arguments put forward by animal rights activists, but that public awareness of the problem is growing along with animal welfare regulations and the availability of vegetarian products. A society in which plant-based meat substitutes are inexpensive and widely available in stores and in which there is a certain degree of compassion for animals is a prerequisite for meaningful discussions about veganism and animal rights.

Others, such as B. the US animal rights activist Gary L. Francione , on the other hand, criticize the fact that animal welfare or vegetarian campaigns that are not explicitly aimed at a vegan society marginalize the possibility of imparting non-speciesist treatment of animals. The paradigm of human interests influencing animal life from outside would remain unaffected or even strengthened. Alleged successes in legislation would have contributed to partially better conditions in a fundamentally continued exploitation of animals and to a greater social acceptance of the same. Such concepts, so the criticism, are up-to-date and populist . They paralyzed the willingness of those responsible to take more consistent steps towards serious efforts to promote animal rights and veganism.

In addition, the opinion is expressed that animal protection and animal rights movements do not necessarily have to be mutually exclusive. Helmut F. Kaplan regards the abolitionism debate largely as a sham debate: "The appropriate answer to the unbelievable exploitation of living beings capable of suffering that surrounds us is not reform or abolition, but reform and abolition"; we would simply have to do everything possible at all levels to reduce suffering and end injustice.

Helmut F. Kaplan points out the following current and fundamental handicaps in the animal rights movement:

  1. In connection with the production of meat and other animal products, terms such as “smallholder structures”, “bio”, “eco”, “species-appropriate” or “respect” are increasingly playing down the actual handling of animals. 
  2. In the same context, the philosophical or political concept of animal rights would be increasingly confused with the relevant legal provisions, i.e. with animal protection laws. 
  3. Even within the animal rights movement, there has been no agreement up to now on what should be concretely understood by animal rights, only paraphrases or rough versions of the concept of animal rights embedded in heterogeneous theoretical contexts. 
  4. Compared to all other social movements, the animal rights movement has the major and fundamental disadvantage that those affected are unable to fight for their rights themselves. 

literature

  • Susanne Harringer: Some animals are the same. Concepts of animal protection, animal liberation, animal rights and animal defense and their political claim. Vienna 2003.
  • Peter Köpf: A heart for animals? About the radical animal rights movement. Bonn 1996.
  • Mieke Roscher: A kingdom for animals. The history of the British animal rights movement. Marburg 2009.
  • Karl-Werner Brand with the assistance of Henrik Stöver: Environmental movement (including animal protection) In: Roland Roth , Dieter Rucht (ed.): The social movements in Germany since 1945. A manual. Frankfurt am Main 2008. pp. 219–244.
  • Susann Witt-Stahl (Ed.): Soften the stone heart of infinity. Contributions to a critical theory for the liberation of animals. Aschaffenburg 2007.
  • Leo Tolstoy, Clara Wichmann, Elisèe Reclus, Magnus Schwantje u. a .: End the slaughter! On the criticism of violence against animals. Anarchist, feminist, pacifist and left socialist traditions. Heidelberg 2010.
  • Aiyana Rosen: From moral outcry against animal testing to radical social criticism. On the importance of framing processes in the emerging animal rights movement in the FRG 1980–1995. In: Chimaira - Working Group for Human-Animal Studies (ed.): Human-Animal Studies. On the social nature of human-animal relationships , pp. 279–334.
  • C. TraÏni: Animal Rights Movement . In: The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social and Political Movements . Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2013, ISBN 9780470674871 (Retrieved February 1, 2013).
  • Klaus Petrus: Animal Rights Movement - History, Theory, Activism . Unrast , 2013, ISBN 978-3-89771-118-1 .
  • Matthias Rude: Antispeciesism. The liberation of humans and animals in the animal rights movement and the left . Butterfly Verlag , 2013, ISBN 3-89657-670-4 .

See also

Web links

Footnotes

Remarks
  1. ↑

    “While Amnesty International recognizes the need to adapt the Criminal Code in line with the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, it has done so. E. in a disproportionately far-reaching manner that goes beyond the requirements of this UN Convention. Amnesty International already stated with regard to the draft opinion on Section 278 of the Criminal Code that crimes such as resistance to state authority or serious damage to property are undoubtedly not socially appropriate behavior in a democratic society and should in any case be prohibited by criminal law. However, it seems inadequate, for example from the appointment of several demonstrators to want to offer resistance, to want to construct a group of organized crime. In its statement on the Criminal Law Amendment Act 2002, Amnesty International warned that the new catalog of offenses on organized crime and terrorist offenses was worded excessively. "

    - Parliamentary inquiry (PDF; 42 kB) : from Johannes Jarolim and Dietmar Keck (both SPÖ) and comrades to the Federal Minister of Justice , citing a statement from Amnesty International's section Austria
Individual evidence
  1. ↑ Scott Plous: Signs of Change Within the Animal Rights Movement: Results From a Follow-Up Survey of Activists  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 562 kB)@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.michelle.ryan.socialpsychology.org   , 1998, Department of Psychology, Wesleyan University.
  2. ↑ Peter Köpf : A heart for animals? About the radical animal rights movement. Bonn 1996. page 53.
  3. ↑ Peter Köpf: A heart for animals? About the radical animal rights movement. Bonn 1996. page 60.
  4. ↑ Karl-Werner Brand with the assistance of Henrik Stöver: Environmental Movement (incl. Animal Protection) In: Roland Roth, Dieter Rucht (ed.): The social movements in Germany since 1945. A manual. Frankfurt am Main 2008. pp. 219–244. P. 233.
  5. ^ Austrian Constitutional Protection Report 2007 (PDF; 1.3 MB), Federal Ministry of the Interior, Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and Fight against Terrorism (BVT), Vienna
  6. ^ Matthias Rude: Antispeciesism. The liberation of humans and animals in the animal rights movement and the left . Butterfly-Verlag, Stuttgart 2013, p. 10.
  7. ↑ ibid., P. 19.
  8. ↑ cf. the table of contents of the book: http://www.schmetterling-verlag.de/download.php?id=3-89657-670-4&mode=1 .
  9. ↑ Mieke Roscher introduced this distinction in her work on the history of the British animal rights movement: Mieke Roscher: A kingdom for animals. The history of the British animal rights movement, Marburg 2009.
  10. ↑ Judith Baumgartner, Vegetarisch im 20. Jahrhundert - a modern and sustainable diet, in: Manuela Linnemann, Claudia Schorcht (ed.), Vegetarismus. On the history and future of a way of life. Erlangen 2001, p. 120.
  11. ↑ http://www.grundrisse.net/grundrisse47/eine_doppel_verschwiegene_Geschichte.htm .
  12. ^ A b Renate Brucker: Peace Movement, Social Progress and Animal Rights. Lecture at the "Animals in History" congress of the German Historical Institute, Washington DC, 18.-22. May 2005 in Cologne.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.magnus-schwantje-archiv.de  
  13. ↑ http://www.schattenblick.de/infopool/tiere/report/trin0013.html .
  14. ↑ Schubert, Sebastian: Until every cage is empty! - Introduction to the animal liberation thought. In: Liberation doesn't stop with humans! Perspectives from the animal liberation movement. Berlin 2005. (PDF; 3.2 MB)
  15. ↑ Typology of current animal ethical positions. In: Marcus Düwell, Christoph Hübenthal, Micha H. Werner: Handbuch Ethik. 2nd Edition. Stuttgart 2006. p. 288.
  16. ↑ Karl-Werner Brand with the assistance of Henrik Stöver: Environmental Movement (incl. Animal Protection) In: Roland Roth, Dieter Rucht (ed.): The social movements in Germany since 1945. A manual. Frankfurt am Main 2008. pp. 219–244. P. 220.
  17. ↑ http://offensive-gegen-die-pelzindustrie.net/wordpress/
  18. ^ P. Singer: Democracy and Disobiedence , 1974, Oxford University Press
  19. ↑ Christian Fuchs: Animal Law: With paint, explosives and fire accelerators. In: Zeit Online. October 10, 2014, accessed November 25, 2016 .
  20. ↑ M. Balluch: Resistance in Democracy - Civil Disobedience and Confrontational Campaigns , 2009 Promedia
    • R. Garner: Animals, Politics and Morality , 1993, Manchester University Press.
  21. ↑ N. Hager, B. Burton: Secrets and Lies - the Anatomy of Anti-Environmental PR Campaign , 1999 Craig Potton Publishing Nelson
  22. ↑ Criminal Code Section 278 a
  23. ↑ Christoph Richter: Sieg für den Tierschutz , Deutschlandfunk, February 23, 2018
  24. ↑ Ulrike Mix: Trespassing or Animal Welfare? In. Deutschlandfunk, February 21, 2019
  25. ↑ TV channels are allowed to show illegal recordings of factory farming , Zeit Online, April 10, 2018
  26. ↑ Pig farmer has to go to prison for cruelty to animals , Zeit Online, March 16, 2019
  27. ↑ FBI report ( memento of October 2, 2002 in the Internet Archive ) from 2002
    [1]
  28. ↑ Bujok, Melanie: Totalitarian Economy, New Security Architecture and Green Scare. How to explain state attacks on the animal liberation movement. In: Tierbefreiung issue 63, June 2009 p. 4-12 pp. 4th
  29. ↑ http://www.greenisthenewred.com/blog/green-scare/
  30. ↑ B. Steven : Terrorists or Freedom Fighters? , 2004, Lantern Books. ISBN 159056054X
  31. ↑ Website of the Animal Liberation Congress 2009  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / kongress.antispe.org  
  32. ↑ UL distancing
  33. ↑ Peta-Kritische Animal Rights Page
  34. ↑ Heubach, Andrea: Der Fleischvergleich - Sexism Critique in the Animal Rights / Animal Liberation Movement In: Chimaira - Working Group for Human-Animal Studies: Human-Animal Studies - About the social nature of human-animal relationships . Transkript, Bielefeld, 2012, pp. 243-278
  35. ↑ Rogausch, Günther: Tierrechte - Sold by PeTA ... and betrayed ?! In: Animal Liberation. The current animal rights magazine. Issue 34, 35, 36.2001 / 2002.
  36. ^ Website of the Berlin animal liberation campaign
  37. ↑ Balluch, Martin. Abolitionism versus Reformism VGT March 2008
    Cf. also Do animal rights activists have to be vegans? Article by Helmut F. Kaplan.
  38. ^ Hall, Lee. More industry reform ... or the vegan paradigm? ( Memento of the original from June 18, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.abolitionist-online.com archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , abolitionist-online , May 2008.
    Francione, Gary L. A “Very New Approach” or Just More New Welfarism? , The Abolutionist Approach (blog), April 9, 2008.
  39. ↑ Kaplan, Helmut F. Funeral feast. Ethical reasons for a vegetarian diet. Books on Demand. Norderstedt 2011. p. 176.
    Cf. Barbara Hohensee . Prolegomena. Animal protection work in the TR movement working group animal rights and ethics (AKTE), accessed February 2, 2012.