No, I will not stand with you.

“I wish everyone could put aside their differences and come together for the animals.”

No.

Fuck no.

This sentiment is often expressed in the animal protection community, by those bemoaning a perceived lack of unity, or low numbers at public events. It is centrist. It enables the steady creep of fascism through movements. It undermines the revolutionary potential of grassroots organising.

And it endangers the lives of already deliberately marginalised individuals.

Pretty self explanatory.

“We can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist.” -James Baldwin

Centrists demand disabled and immunocompromised people stand alongside those who deny the severity or existence of diseases that may be mild for most, but are potentially life-threatening and further disabling.

Centrists demand trans and gender diverse people stand alongside those who deny their existence, who wish to deprive them of necessary care, who claim them to be perverse, predatory, a contagion in society.

Centrists demand non-white communities stand alongside white supremacists whose very ideology is one of violence and extermination.

Centrists demand that women should stand with misogynists, that the working classes should march under their exploitative bosses, that victims and survivors of abuse should stand with known abusers.

So long as it is “for the animals,” the centrist does not give a fuck who is standing in the crowd.

People whose very existences are threatened or denied by the centrist’s demand for unity at any cost fall away from movements, disillusioned and endangered. They pull back into safety, or at least to the spaces they feel are safer. The bigot, the abuser, the supremacist, they creep further into the vacated space. The space becomes a haven for those who espouse far right talking points and harbour outright hatred for members of the most vulnerable members of society. Their friends and supporters enable them. The centrist welcomes them. The space is taken.

“Centrism is the engine that makes the will of the Right palatable.” -Egberto Willies.

The use of animal welfare and rights by the Right as a filter over their more controversial and anti-human ideologies is a well established practice. In the lead up to the 2015 Queensland election One Nation senator, leader and rampant pillock Pauline Hanson campaigned on a platform that promised the banning of halal certification of products in Australia. In 2017 One Nation’s policy platform claimed that halal certification was funding the Islamisation of Australia , including the mythical imposition of Sharia Law. Later that year, Hanson stated in a Senate hearing that under halal certification, animals were being subjected to cruel slaughtering methods. According to her alleged sources “…animals are still alive when their throats are slit.”

Who fucking knew?

Dickhead in Chief Pauline Hanson, supporting a “Freedom” rally midway through the pandemic.

Halal slaughter is frequently misrepresented by the Right as a means to demonise Muslims and justify xenophobic anti-migration and refugee policies. The vast majority of halal slaughter is performed with stunning prior to the cutting of the animal’s throat. The only difference is that the stunning must not be the cause of the animal’s death. It is neither more nor less cruel than standard slaughtering procedures. Especially when viewed alongside the thousands of hours worth of footage from slaughterhouses and animal exploitation facilities exposed by animal rights groups across Australia, mostly non-halal.

And both methods entirely deny the autonomy of the individual animal and their right to their own life. But that is not the point of the Right’s insistence on making an example of halal slaughter methods. It is entirely to promote Islamaphobia by claiming Muslims are primary perpetrators of animal cruelty.

At the risk of invoking Godwin’s Law, this use of animal welfare by the Right to demonise an entire section of the community is a direct play out of the Nazi handbook. Laws on animal slaughter were established that directly accused the Jewish community of animal cruelty. A preamble to a law on the use of stunning (anesthesia) in animal slaughter explicitly referenced Kosher methods as a practice that most German people objected to, thus placing Jewish people directly at odds with popular sentiment regarding animal welfare. In 1933 Herman Goering banned the use of animals in experimentation, stating the intent to imprison those who used animals like “inanimate property in concentration camps.” Who replaced those animals? Dehumanised human prisoners in the concentration camps; Jewish people, disabled people, members of the LGBTQI community, Romani, political dissidents, all rendered inanimate property.

“The “animal” category manifests itself in the human species when dominant groups subjugate marginalized people. When people are viewed as animals, objectifying, and harming them becomes justified actions.” -Malina Tran.

This is how the Right utilises animal welfare as a mechanism to render its more anti-human ideologies palatable to the broader community, and to portray a specific group as a social threat. And the centrist provides the doorway through which the Right may enter spaces to which it may seem ideologically opposed.

No, this is not up for debate.

As the animal protection movement does not exist within a vacuum, transphobic narratives and ideologies have become pervasive within the community. Multiple vegans and animal protection activists have made explicitly transphobic posts online; have been sighted attending rallies coordinated for UK transphobe, white supremacist, and walking soup bowl Posie Parker; and been seen supporting the anti-lockdown, covid-denying, Trump loving “Freedom” movement amongst which strong transphobic sentiment was fomented. This movement, supported by some vegans, targeted then Animal Justice Party MP Andy Meddick, his family, and his staff with extreme violence and explicit transphobia for his stance on community health policy during the pandemic, and for proudly supporting his transgender children publicly.

This is very same movement of people who verbally attacked myself and another animal activist whilst we were waiting to set up for an animal rights action just this weekend gone. They wore blatant white supremacist dog whistles on their hoodies and t-shirts such as “pure blood” and “unvaccinated lives matter” (mocking the Black Lives Matter Movement) whilst marching under the image of Trump. They deliberately targeted those who they perceived to be weak (two women seemingly alone). And they hurled transphobic insults at me when challenged.

Trumpists and “pure bloods” march for an end to lockdowns that no longer exist and against being silenced, as they march through the Melbourne CBD without a permit and without being arrested for not having a permit, yelling at volume through megaphones.

Organisations have drawn ranks around transphobes who have deliberately weaponised misgendering and who espouse biased and inaccurate transphobic talking points. Individuals continue to support activists who use manufactured panic over trans children accessing life saving medical care and the presence of drag queens in public to whip up further opposition to gender diverse people in the community. This rhetoric has swung from concern trolling (the act of disingenuously expressing concern to promote a particular ideology or derail a legitimate conversation) to the labelling of trans people, especially trans women, and supportive parents of trans and gender diverse children (including myself) pedophiles, groomers, and abusers.

And you want us to stand with them?

Calls for unity from centrists only serve to create platforms from which this hateful and violent rhetoric may shouted at volume. Calls for unity “for the animals” from centrists endanger lives. Calls for apolitical unity force marginalised and vulnerable people into the position of having to choose between supporting the movement or leaving for their own health and safety.

And thus the movement becomes divided. But it’s never those who make spaces unsafe who are blamed. Rather, people who are struggling to survive in an increasingly right-aligned and hostile world are blamed for letting “identity politics” trump the fight for animal rights. Their experiences and traumas are dismissed online as “drama.” They are expected to hide who they are, silence their own voices, and stand with those who wish to see them disappeared or dead. And the movement becomes dominated by Right wing stooges who wouldn’t know liberatory politics if they kicked them in the arse.

The Right wing infiltration of the animal protection movement will not lead to the revolution everyone says they want for animals but are so blatantly ill-equipped to actively pursue. Further, this Right wing incursion into the liberatory space is deeply exploitative of the plight of animals.

“The unborn are a convenient group of people to advocate for. They never make demands of you; they are morally uncomplicated, unlike the incarcerated, addicted, or the chronically poor; they don’t resent your condescension or complain that you are not politically correct; unlike widows, they don’t ask you to question patriarchy; unlike orphans, they don’t need money, education, or childcare; unlike aliens, they don’t bring all that racial, cultural, and religious baggage that you dislike; they allow you to feel good about yourself without any work at creating or maintaining relationships[…] You can love the unborn and advocate for them without substantially challenging your own wealth, power, or privilege, without re-imagining social structures, apologizing, or making reparations to anyone.” — Pastor Dave Barnhart.

The words of Barnhart apply equally to the conceptualisation of other animals within the animal protection movement, as an amorphous mass of “voiceless” victims for whom we may advocate without risk that they may espouse their own ideals and opinions on the world. Advocates are not challenged by those they “speak” on behalf of. They are not required to consider their own complicity in social structures that uphold exploitative industrial complexes. “The animals” are made passive objects, silenced by those claiming to be their only hope.

Anyone who says animal are voiceless clearly have not spent much time with them.

This is a strategic objectification of animals that exists on the same spectrum as that used to justify the exploitation of their bodies and lives for human consumption. It must be opposed in the strongest terms possible, as an anti-liberatory message that harms both humans and non-humans alike, fractures movements, and undermines revolutionary potential.

When you ask marginalised and vulnerable people to set aside their differences “for the animals” you are asking them to be silent and to place themselves, their communities, and their families in danger. This abject apolitical centrism only serves to promote the Right and undermine liberatory messaging. It harms the animal protection movement, and it harms animals. It is as vapid as it is dangerous.

And to that I say again, fuck no. I will not stand with you.