Fur Commission, USA’s Teresa Platt has a fascinating article about Animal Rights 2003 East, held earlier this summer. Platt discusses a conference workshop called “What Price Animal Liberation” where activists in attendance were given a survey to gauge their attitudes about the morality and effectiveness of various illegal tactics. Platt presents the results of the survey, which I’ve reproduced in the table below:
|
Moral |
Effective |
|
|
1.
Civil Disobedience |
100 |
100 |
|
2.
Unmasked Animal Liberation (ex. open animal rescues) |
95.7 |
87 |
|
3.
Masked Animal Liberation |
91.3 |
82.6 |
|
4.
Unmasked Property Destruction of Equipment |
82.6 |
73.9 |
|
5.
Masked Property Destruction of Equipment |
69.9 |
56.5 |
|
6.
Property Destruction as Economic Sabotage |
52.2 |
34.8 |
|
7.
Threats against People as Destructive Sabotage |
52.2 |
30.4 |
|
8.
Threats against People as Intimidation (death threats) |
26.1 |
26.1 |
|
9.
Physical Assault |
26.1 |
21.7 |
|
10.
Political Assassination |
21.7 |
17.4 |
Unfortunately, Platt doesn’t say how many people attended this session, so we don’t know exactly how big of sample this is. And, of course, it is clearly not a random, scientific sample of activists in general. Still, as Platt notes it is disturbing to see such extremely high support for property destruction, and significant support for threats and violence against people.
Source:
AR2003: Been There, Done That, Bought the T-Shirt. Teresa Platt, Fur Commission USA, August 12, 2003.