Well, it comes out every year: American for Medical Progress, a group dedicated to fighting “animal rights extremists,” publishes a wrap-up of the national animal rights conference. (I was pleasantly surprised to see that the worst they had to say about me, for the second year, was to label me “activist and self-proclaimed ‘independent journalist.'” I’m not sure why a reporter supporting the First Amendment is an “activist,” or if that’s even a bad thing, and I never “proclaimed” myself anything, but whatever…)
What I thought was particularly interesting is how much they went out of their way to play up this idea that the conference was wrought with scandal and conflict and controversy, and that there are deepening divisions between “abolitionists” and “welfarists” (AMP of course favors the latter) and between direct action and legal tactics (AMP of course favors the latter). There’s certainly a degree of truth to that, I’ve seen, which is reflected in the split off conference Taking Action for Animals which is taking place this weekend in D.C. However, I’ve been writing about these movements for about 8 years, and that’s certainly nothing new.
It is, however, very similar to how the Red Scare operated: label people as “extremists,” threaten them in the courts and Congress and the press, reward others who “name names” and pledge loyalty oaths (whether it be to the United States and capitalism, or to legal, reformist-oriented activism), and then sit back and comment on how the communists, I mean, “animal rights extremists,” are so divided.