Like all movements in the first phase of their existence, the Isa movement is struggling seeking its own identity.
Of course animal rights movement began as and remains so, but at the same time, goes beyond the narrow limits of classic animalist or bestiality, because it believes that the exploitation of animals is not due solely to an attitude of social behavior more or less common but a matter of system, that is a structured organization that generates and is in turn supported by the ideology of domination.
This lack of a clear identity inevitably leads to a number of issues of identity, both "internal" (there is some confusion among those who - at least in words - profess Isa) and "external" (i.e. how the movement is perceived by society).
The lack of unity in practical initiatives (i.e. strategic and tactical), is well complemented with a cultural isolation, social, political and also due to the difficulty of even a fruitful dialogue with other potential carriers of partially overlapping claims.
As if that was not already a source of much concern at this time must be added a growing interest in the animal question from some quarters of the right (more or less extreme), which entails the risk of further fracture with other anti systemic movements.
The silence of the left
While there is getting used to the noisy silence coming from the center-left, accompanied by the superficial indifference of too many anarchist groups, the extra-parliamentary left, or, more generally, antisystemic, we must now also compare, on the one hand, with some activism for animals by some members of the government, the other with the emergence of neo-fascist groups that combine the traditional environmental message (deriving from the classic concept of "blood and soil ") as instances of purely animal rights.
The parliamentary group and the Future and Freedom, for example, devoted an entire issue of its bimonthly magazine 4 "Charta Minuta" to the animal question. The leitmotif of the transversality of the animal rights struggle is evident from the first page: In his editorial introduction to this monograph entitled "On the side of animals, " says Adolfo Urso fact that it is necessary to dispel the "cliché according to which the protection and protection of animals are the prerogative of the left ... There are issues of right or left, but solutions and proposals that adapt in space and time and give answers to the needs that mature (1).
The goal? To convince the gullible readers to consider this animal issue as a problem apolitical, only to underline the great care that the right shows respect in order to attract the sympathy (and the consents and finally the votes).
Even more to the right of Future and Liberty were formed neo-fascist groups that combine anti-capitalist message to a claim against animal exploitation and propaganda of veganism, so far as to define Isa, or as they say "anti-spe. "
A superficial reading of this phenomenon by certain realities of the animal rights movement could lead to the conclusion that this is not only there is nothing wrong, but that the greater cross-fertilization because of the animal, the greater the force that the movement will succeed to express in favor of the Animals.
In fact, the discussion is more complicated and involves the Isa movement that has to question how it is possible that groups ideologically linked to conservative ideas, or even fascist or neo-Nazi could declare themselves Isa. Or rather, they define this Isa is conceptually possible or not?
To articulate a response to these questions is complex, not so much for your answer in itself that is without any shadow of doubt "no, there can be no right Isa," but because to reach this conclusion one must go beyond the superficial interpretation that often given to the concept of Isa, which leads to ensure that the explanation often given is at least questionable.
For Singer in fact "The speciesism ... is a prejudice or attitude of prevention in favor of the interests of members of their own species and against those of members of other species" (2). Singer demonstrates that each moral argument (rationality, language, being moral agents, self-consciousness, soul, etc..) introduced to justify the different treatment solely for the animals may eventually be reduced to mere membership in the humans is the use of the marginal case of human beings and the reporting of a double moral standard (a valid one for the Humans and Animals) launched a challenge to philosophical classic.
This provocation has been accepted by some who have said that marginal humans is due full moral respect because they are human, that is, members of our species. Pressed on why the membership of species is a morally relevant fact, the inability to provide an answer for them is no concern. This is speciesism as we have learned from Singer. It is no doubt from this reflection that has begun to speak of speciesism. Starting from this perspective, the work of Singer is limited to (re)develop an ethical theory that comes to include some non-human animal in the circle of individuals who are due moral consideration, he does not process any new "value" but denounces contradiction that characterizes our society when he refuses to extend its values to the non-human animals.
Isa, racism, sexism
Such are the consequences that reach even the American philosopher Tom Regan, while criticizing the arguments of Singer, he formulates a theory of moral rights that requires a simple enlargement, in his case, the subjects of law. Neither questions the structure of Western society today, this is the real main limitation of their work. Their reflections are limited in time and space because, in addition to accepting the premises of Western metaphysics, never put into question the social structure, economic and political results. The proposal, from both theoretical and practical point of view, is not a serious critique of modern human society.
From the relationship between values and society, necessarily a two-way relationship, they consider only one aspect of human society as if it were not simply the product of the values that represents (3). And it is always within this horizon that Singer, having defined speciesism, says analogy (4) with other forms of interspecific discrimination such as racism and sexism. Singer does not explain what kind of relationship existing between speciesism, racism and sexism, the only similarity is found that for both the racism and sexism, speciesism as two individuals who otherwise do not differ in morally relevant aspects can be treated differently because of their race, their sex or species. From this point of view that the outlook is similar.
Here Singer stops the analysis (5) and, unfortunately, stopped even the reflection of many animal rights activists.
In fact if Isa was limited to denounce the arbitrary suffering of the animals because of their belonging to a species other than human, that is discrimination based solely on biological grounds, that is not sufficient, for example, to exclude the possibility an Isa right. You could be right Isa (ie racist and sexist) without falling into contradiction with the above definition.
What is lacking, in fact, is still a step consisting of analysis of the second part of the aforementioned correspondence between values and society. In other words, speciesism is not just an idea, something theoretical, but also a practice. To understand how this practice is born and has evolved it is necessary to carry out historical research in order to understand the real conditions in which this discrimination has grown, that is really how the form taken by our social structure has influenced the thinking speciesist .
The insights of Singer and Regan therefore require having to enter the world of ideas to reality, and doing so allows us to understand what all those barriers whose removal is the conditio sine qua non for such transfer will occur.
Some believe that this shift is something unfair, instrumental, the allegation is to use the fight Isa for "political purposes" which puts them to overshadow the importance of this animal issue.
fictitious and irrelevant differences
It must be admitted, in effect, that this danger exists, but no such analysis should be avoided, otherwise the inability to fully understand the phenomenon under discussion: it is therefore not something unfair, but rather necessary. And that is not a force it can be seen, for example, by comparing with racism.
Racism is nothing more than "the preconceived belief that the human species is subdivided into biologically distinct races characterized by different physical features and different intellectual capacities, and the resulting idea that you can determine a hierarchy of values that a particular breed can be defined as "above "or "inferior " to another " (6).
This brief description shows us how impressive the similarities (historical and cultural) between racism and speciesism: both are forms of discrimination based on fictitious and irrelevant differences (biological first, then gradually declined in a more refined way), designed to preserve certain benefits by of those who profess to have a similar cultural justificationism a systematic practice of exploitation of those being considered hierarchically "lower".
It is clear that only the study of history that can be learned such as those theorized by Singer similarities only at the cultural level have occurred in reality, making that practice functional operation of the society.
But Isa goes beyond anti-racism. It goes beyond not because it represents a more general concept, or because for the first time that the subject does not match the free liberated (7) subject, but because we "forced" to question the origin of all forms of discrimination, which covers both the analysis cultural aspect that the historical practice, i.e. how effectively they have developed the first company organized in hierarchical sense. Finally, it is over because it introduces the animals in our reflection. And this is crucial for at least two reasons.
First, because the concepts of humans and animals are inextricably linked because they circumscribe and define each other, because despite the enormous efforts made by our species to free themselves from their origins, we are and remain animals.
Second, because historically been studying how the human-animal split ontological, we discover that it is the result of a process that has lasted thousands of years, man in fact, it was not always perceived as superior to other animals (or, at least, any more than they felt towards other human beings do not belong to the tribe). It is only with the transition from nomadic to the sedentary, along with other aspects of spiritual-religious, that have formed the first organized societies. It is to exercise his dominion over the earth that some men have begun to enslave other humans and some animals.
The exploitation of nature, animals and some human is something that can neither be separated nor divided in chronological order, weaving instead a sort of vicious circle.
Slavery, exploitation of peoples and species, genocide, denigration of women, all are governed by the same crazy idea of domination. A desire to dominate which is, however, from age to age, masked and justified on moral and cultural heritage through the development of an ideology that depends on the needs and concerns of the masses of the moment.
This can push us to consider that man's journey is full of episodes that led him to become the tyrant and we all know that the power relationship between our species and the other has changed over time well to the benefit of the first and especially thanks to the technological and scientific discoveries that have - along with religion - contributed to the elevation of the Human beyond the threshold of naturalness.
It is honest to admit that what we are comes from a part of us, our whole being, and that science, technology and religion have functioned as a buffer causing the immense expansion of our ego that has dominated everything. On the other hand it is quite clear that we are not "only" this, but much more and, consequently, we can really rethought and reinvented, also rethinking and reinventing our society.
The Isa is not only a claim for extension of moral consideration or rights to more people as a form of genuine liberation from all forms of domination. Without revisiting the very foundations of our life in common, our social and economic organization, this will never happen. It is the very structure of society based on discrimination, economic exploitation, the role of repression and state control that must be questioned.
The Isa was born as a movement whose goal is animal liberation. In order that this objective can be achieved it is necessary to break down those cultural and material barriers that prevent the principles of equality, fairness and respect, which is a carrier, to be able to spread freely. But because these are the same barriers that still allow the continuation of the exploitation of the Human on the Human, that's their destruction will, together with the liberation of animals, including that of real Humans.
Attempts to customs clearance
That's why animal liberation and human liberation are the same, that is why the slogan that is most cited by Isa is "Animal Liberation, Human Liberation".
When asked what could be the difference today between right and left, Marcello Veneziani said: "We must say that indeed they are confused right and left, in recent times. But, wanting to be more precise, what distinguishes left from right now is that the right believes very roots, the values of a grounding, while the left believes very values of liberation, emancipation. I think this is the watershed" (8).
We can not agree that just the simple fact that Isa is the bearer of the ideals of liberation and emancipation from the society domain (for humans and animals) in which we live and as such it is certainly a willingness to break with the past and the status quo. By contrast, the right and fascism are clearly an expression of protection of continuity and tradition, protection as a result to be achieved mainly through the opposition to individual and collective freedoms. It is also why there can not in any way be an right Isa: this would be an oxymoron.
Yet attempts to clearance of a right and even animal Isa and there are more and more. Everything is done surreptitiously and by means of a smokescreen that surrounds and confuses ideas, a sort of haze that flattens and levels not allowing clearer identification, but causing an incredible and absurd mingling of ideas, principles and intentions. At a time when the right honors figures like Che Guevara, his fringe "animal rights" and photographs dedicated spaces in memory of Barry Horne (9) are going to take, sometimes, the same symbols: the two overlapping bands, one green and the other black, albeit with some changes, modeled the symbols of the array of anarchist Isa.
If all this is added then the other made from the capitalist point of contact that seems to be mirrored and is certainly shared by the extreme right and extreme left, is inevitably easy to confuse the message using the usual game of the apolitical nature which increasingly has been recognized since the collapse of ideological opposition of the twentieth century. Behind this lies the alleged apolitical, in fact, the subtle desire not to lay down principles useful in clarifying possible to distinguish and identify authoritarian, xenophobic, racist and fascist trends.
The apolitical and transversality used as a synonym for universality of the animal rights message is then used to remove all criticism and opposition to any groups or factions of authoritarian array. There is no doubt that within the animalists there is a certain ignorance, mixed with misinformation and disillusionment, it prevents a proper evaluation of the different animalists realities in the area.
The concept that whatever is useful to save the animals has caused more harm than good: in the name of the action immediately and now, without a necessary theoretical development, and particularly without a strategy without a clear shared purpose, the concept has resulted in the training a generation of totally devoid of analytical tools and critical knowledge, so that nowadays seems to be apolitical to declare a title of respect, a statement of alienation from all that is rotten and corrupt, a sort of new virginity. The reality is far more bitter, because it almost always is confused with political party system while you forget - or even ignored - that political activity is the foundation for all activities that affect the society really intends to trigger the change. What you can do to prevent this deviation?
Urge clearly the spread of a new awareness of the definition of principles and models that can help activists, groups and associations to embark on a journey together - even with distinctions and differences - really revolutionary. The lack of theoretical elaboration and adoption guilty uncritical and unaware of the only vegan practices, has created the situation we are facing. What we can not allow is that the message can be libertarian and radical of the Isa reborn annihilated and absorbed by authoritarian forces, while avoiding to sell off hard-earned Isa autonomy.
anno
41 n. 360
Luca Carli e Adriano Fragaro