The article by Giuseppe Gagliano
Vegan philosophy – also defined as antispecist – represents one of the last frontiers, together with the antagonist and radical environmentalism, of that anarchist-inspired, socialist utopian philosophy which, like a real karst current, has crossed the entire history of ‘West with the aim of radically changing the economic and political order of the West.
Adriano Fragano and founder of Veganzetta magazine, co-founder of the counter-information campaigns project for animals and head of the Italian vegan map of Italy. According to the author, Anti-Specism (As) is nothing more than a philosophical, political and cultural orientation. Well, in a nutshell, what the antispecist program consists of
In the first place, the AS rejects discrimination based on the species because it argues that biological belonging to the human species cannot and must not justify on a moral and legal level the possibility of disposing of the life, freedom and body of another being. belonging to another species.
Second, anti-species activists struggle politically and legally to ensure that the primary needs of animals are considered as fundamental as those of humans.
Thirdly, the antispecists affirm that, having taken note of the fact that animals are also sentient beings and similar to humans, they must be defined as non-human persons and therefore must be given a status equivalent to that of people.
Fourthly, the anti-specists argue that, in the light of these theses, the relationship between human and non-human persons must profoundly change, a change that will lead to a radical rethinking and change in human society which will necessarily lead to animal liberation.
Fifth, the antispecist must take concrete action in order to influence human society in order to create a new, more just, horizontal, free and compassionate society. Precisely for this reason the antispecist activity does not intend to reform human society but intends to radically change it through the demolition of the ideology of domination that distinguishes it. From this point of view, the AS must be considered as a natural evolution of anti-racist and anti-militarist thinking. In a certain sense, the antispecist point of view is borrowed from the struggle for civil and human rights even if his commitment has particular peculiarities since it is aimed at the animal world.
Sixthly, the As consistent with its own principles can only practice a radical vegan choice on a concrete level. In concrete terms, the vegan antispecist not only does not eat meat and fish but also dairy products, eggs and honey; he cannot or must wear leather garments and above all he does not buy or sell animals.
But what is speciesism according to Fragano?
Specism can be considered a real ideology and practice of domination over animals. In fact, speciesism implements a total or partial control of the biological cycle of another living being until it loses its autonomy by reducing it to a resource.
From the historical point of view, therefore, all human societies that have practiced domestication – for example through breeding – and agriculture must be considered, according to the author, especially because they consider the human being superior or lord of nature. Among the political movements certainly closest to the anti-species movement or ideologies we have Thoreau’s anarchist individualism or, more simply, the anarchist movement which was among the first to move in this direction. Obviously, coherent anti-speciesism implies the acceptance of an equally coherent and rigorous pacifism as was that of Gandhi, Tolstoy or Capitini.
If animals, according to the antispecist perspective, are no longer to be structured as resources nor as substitutes or substitutes on an emotional level, they should be released on the territory or live in protected centers if not able to provide for their own needs independently. In concrete terms this means that dogs, cats, cows, pigs and chickens should return to wild life by ceasing to play any role assigned to them by human society in order to live free in nature.
Very interesting is the clarification that the author makes from a political point of view between a generic animalism that places itself in an attitude of dialogue with the institutions by making requests of a legal nature and the Antispecism that instead must have an anti-hierarchical and egalitarian vision by refusing therefore to recognize the institution as referent as this is the concretization of a vertical and hierarchical society. In other words, it is not a question of simply extending the rights of men to animals but of radically changing the political and social order by destroying the very concept of anthropocentrism. Precisely for this reason Anti-Specism is radical anti-capitalist since the capitalist ideology takes no account of the needs of the individual, of his fundamental rights.
But how should a future anti-species society be, according to the author
? simply subsistence activity and farming will disappear. Even the cities, as we see and experience them today, will disappear to give way to the village because it is more integrated into the environment. As for the management of current affairs, this will take place through the direct intervention of citizens through a criterion of direct and participatory democracy.
Author Melanie Joy compares the mentality that induces Western civilization to eat meat to racism and patriarchy. This mentality is called carnism. Therefore, the purpose of vegan philosophy – which the American activist states very clearly in a very short piece entitled “manifesto for animals” (Laterza 2018 edition) – is not only to radically change the Western mentality but of course also to profoundly change the capitalist economic system – specifically the agri-food industry – which allows the exploitation of animals.
Of course, the legal and moral hypothesis from which the vegan philosophy defended by the American activist starts is the one according to which animals have the same rights as humans and should therefore be treated as such. In this regard, it is significant that on page 14 of the essay the author compares the number of farmed animals killed to that of the victims of all wars in the history of humanity. Equally significant (page 16) that the author compares the carnist mentality to the slavery and stoning of suspected infidelity women that were practiced centuries ago.
In light of these analogies, the consequences to which the carnist mentality leads – that is the physical elimination of animals – is comparable to murder and rape which were considered ancient practices and therefore considered natural. In other words, the mentality that intends to oppose the author is one of the many variants of the violent ideologies that have characterized the history of human civilization. The author’s attitude towards this mentality is exactly the same as that of the activists of the 70s or the activists of the no global movement and towards the capitalist system. Her expressions regarding the need to challenge this system, to question it, to build a counter-system of values ​​that are aimed at achieving social justice are significant.
Of similar interest is the post-faction of the Italian scholar Leonardo Caffo according to which animalism is a variant of the traditional utopia aimed at the definitive conversion to a form of life without sovereignty and hierarchy as the anarchist movement has always supported. A typical example of intrinsic anti-capitalist mentality is given by Caffo’s assertion that the fact that the 10 large food industries linked to meat have a turnover of about 400 billion dollars a year represents an inadmissible and unacceptable insult in the face. to social and economic inequality. How closely linked the vegan ideal is with anarchist ideology, even from an exquisitely historical point of view, is demonstrated by a consideration of Caffi in the essay “Vegan. A philosophical manifesto “.
In fact, according to the author, in 1841 a utopian community was founded in New England inspired both by the vegan philosophy and coincidentally by the anarchist ideal. Therefore, terrorist drifts such as those of the militant Steven Best who promotes the possibility of an armed struggle in defense of animals should not arouse any surprise, even trying to personify their point of view as emphasized by the vegan Caffo in his essay on page 60.
Beyond the violent extremisms of the most radical American animalism, extremely significant is the fact that Caffo considers vegan philosophy not so much as a cultural system but rather as a real metaphysical system in which animals and ecosystems acquire a a completely new dimension compared to the one they have had up to now in the Western anthropocentric tradition.
In this perspective, the adhesion by the militant and vegan philosopher Caffo to pacifism and therefore for example to the reflection of Gandhi and Tolstoy is fully coherent. In the same way, in our opinion, it is equally coherent that two Canadian anti-species philosophers have recognized animals a real right of citizenship, even going so far as to suggest three different types of animal citizenship, namely a domestic, a wild and a liminal one concerning those animals, such as the pigeons of our cities, which should be granted a kind of residency without citizenship in the proper sense as Caffi states in his essay. Precisely from this point of view, the Italian scholar Paola Cavalieri had already claimed in 1999 that mammals, birds,
But the point of view of the Italian militant Caffi goes much further to affirm that it is necessary to radically question the distinction between man and animal: that is, we should “begin to live in a world devoid of domination by humans over animals, even getting used to it. to do without the same equivocal concept of animal, thus reaching a real zeroing of the categorical differences between humans and animals “(p.107).
Let’s now try to draw some conclusions.
As both Eric Denece, director of the Center Francais de Recherche sur le Renseignement have opportunely pointed out on several occasions, in the essay Ecoterrorism (Tallandier, 2016) and Christian Harbulot, director of the Ecole de guerre economique, in the essay Manuel d’intelligence economique (PUF, 2012) the implications on the agri-food industry plan would be devastating if the reflections of the Antispecismo were realized.
Precisely for this reason, in our view, economic intelligence must deal in a systematic and in-depth way with these political-cultural movements – both the first and second generation Antispecism – in order to prevent their unfortunate epilogues and for our industry that for the European one since this philosophical and political orientation does not theoretically contemplate the possibility of peaceful coexistence with the “carnivorous” mentality, that is with that typical mentality of capitalism and the agri-food industry but has as its explicit objective that not only to challenge the capitalist system from the inside but to change it by radically changing it as the extreme left movements of the sixties and seventies tried to do from time to time,the anarchist movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the radical pacifism of Gandhi, Capitini and Tolstoy and the profound ecology such as that of Arne Naess.
From this point of view, the vegan or antispecist philosophy, if you prefer, is basically nothing more from the historical point of view than a variant of an anti-anthropocentric and anti-capitalist system of philosophical and political thought – such as that of degrowth.
