Animal Rights, Multiculturalism and the Left
An Animal Rights Article from All-Creatures.org

FROM

Wil Kymlicka and Sue Donaldson, Direction Action Everwhere
December 2014

Animal advocates are “orphans of the Left”, championing a progressive cause that is shunned by other progressive movements. Animal rights may receive a passing ritualized mention before being promptly ignored.

In shorthand summaries of the preferred causes of the progressive Left in the past 40 years, one often finds a reference to animal rights, alongside gender equality, gay rights, the disability movement, and the rights of immigrants, racial minorities and indigenous peoples.

All are seen as paradigmatically progressive causes, fighting to emancipate historically subordinated and stigmatized groups, often subsumed under the label of “social justice struggles” or “citizenship struggles”.

Yet the inclusion of animal rights in this list is misleading: the reality is that the animal question is virtually invisible within the Left.

As Boggs notes, “Apart from its marginal leverage within the radical-ecology movement, animal rights discourse has scarcely entered into or altered the work of Left/progressive groups in the United States” (Boggs 2011: 73).

Animal advocates are “orphans of the Left”, championing a progressive cause that is shunned by other progressive movements. Animal rights may receive a passing ritualized mention before being promptly ignored. Nor is this a new phenomenon: the same pattern held for the old Left, in the 19th and early 20th centuries. As Sanbonmatsu notes, “the Left with few exceptions has historically viewed human violence towards other beings with indifference.”

PLEASE READ entire article with references here (PDF).

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