Revisiting the debate between Steven Best and Gary Francione

In late 2009, I returned to the animal movement after a few years away in omnivorous apathy. American grassroots activists were largely divided, at the time, in my perception, between two camps, led by Steven Best and Gary Francione. The rival academics disagreed on a number of issues, but perhaps the most significant of these was the question of support for underground groups like the Animal Liberation Front.

I imagine much of this debate will appear unintelligible to those who have come to the movement more recently. After all, in their own ways, both of the two major players have left the scene. Best, so far as I can tell, has burned out on politics and retreated to private life. Meanwhile, Francione has gotten swept up in right-wing hysteria about transgender rights, all but forgetting his prior commitment to nonhumans.

Further, while I don’t have empirical evidence to support this, groups like the Animal Liberation Front seem significantly less active than they were in the past. At a minimum, their place in the activist imagination seems much smaller today than it was. In my view, this stems from increased government repression of those engaged in such actions, and new possibilities to confront animal exploitation through the political process.

I don’t take this state of affairs to be permanent. From my amateur study of history, different activist strategies seem to appear and disappear almost cyclically. It would not surprise me in the slightest if, when I’m significantly older, groups like the Animal Liberation Front are reinvigorated, as memories of government repression fade and electoral progress for nonhumans appears to have stalled out.

A great deal of Best’s work was focused on providing an intellectual defense of underground anti-speciesist groups. As I recall, he made sure to distinguish between violence against property and violence against human exploiters, and only endorsed the former, but his arguments could very easily be used to defend both. Francione, on the other hand, was a strict pacifist, opposed even to violence against property.

I was torn in my loyalties. Best was one of the first animal activists I encountered, when I joined the movement in the mid-2000s, who sought to connect the nonhuman struggle to the broader left. As I returned near the end of the decade, though, I was finding Francione’s philosophical work to be very helpful in shedding some of the utilitarian baggage I carried from my prior reading of Peter Singer.

On the specific question of support for underground groups, however, I was in Best’s camp. I was not a strict pacifist. I reasoned that if I was willing to back violence in support of political aims benefiting humans, it would be speciesist not to back the same in support of political aims benefiting animals. After all, animals were exploited far more severely and in almost infinitely greater numbers than humans were.

Thinking about this debate years later, I wonder if the manner in which Best and Francione approached it might have predicted the ways in which they left the movement. Best’s defense of underground violence was frequently angry, if not misanthropic. In my experience, such an outlook is difficult to sustain emotionally. Extreme, years-long burnout might just be an inevitable consequence of that perspective.

For his part, Francione was so rigid in his opposition to violence and welfarism that he became opposed to just about all forms of activism besides abstract philosophical argument. Perhaps Francione painted himself into a corner and rather than admit a mistake, he moved on to a new cause, in this case, a right-wing one. We might see some of his earlier rigidity in his vociferous disapproval of transgender rights.

More broadly, though, I’ve come to believe Best, Francione and their respective readerships, which included me, were largely asking the wrong question. The discussion was far too theoretical. Whether or not violence on behalf of animals could be morally justified in an imagined circumstance is less important, at least to me, than whether it’s strategic in a specific instance or historical moment.

I don’t mean to sound unconcerned with the morality of violence. As I’ve grown more interested in religious leftism, I’ve become increasingly suspicious about the use of force. Still, I understand violence as a sometimes necessary evil. Like most people now and throughout history, I’m not a strict pacifist. In fact, one can make a compelling case that many people who define them as such aren’t really either.

For instance, at a basic level, government requires the use of force. Even good laws, like those taxing the rich or banning guns, are backed up by a threat of violence. If you flout these laws, agents of the government will force you to comply. Maybe this kind of objection to strict pacifism is an example of making the perfect the enemy of the good. However, I think at least acknowledging these facts is worthwhile.

So, in the abstract, I reluctantly support this violence, as well as more widely-acknowledged forms of the same, intended to prevent greater evils. And if force is ever necessary, surely it’s justifiable to reduce animal suffering, which is significantly larger than any human suffering, past or present. But again, whether it can be hypothetically justified is a different question from whether it’s strategic here and now.

We’re all formed to a certain degree by our time and place. That includes the circumstances under which activists enter the animal movement. For instance, if I joined in the 1970s, when underground action seemed to have a decent amount of popular support and unexplored promise, I’d probably view it differently than I do now. However, as previously mentioned, I came to the animal movement in the mid-2000s.

Animal campaigners were popularly understood, at best, as a joke. At worst, they were perceived as dangerous threats. The most dedicated activists were serving longer and longer prison sentences for smaller and smaller offenses. The courage of these figures was undeniable, but it was becoming increasingly difficult to see how their individual rescues and attacks would lead to wider societal change.

In short, their activity wasn’t very strategic. With hindsight, I think that’s the best criticism to make at this historical juncture of violence on behalf of animals, whether that’s against human exploiters or their property. Unfortunately, the debate between Best and Francione seemed primarily to be a theoretical one, focused on if such force could ever be justified, which was a less helpful question in my view.