“Animals and the Earth can't wait – get off your ass and fight!”

Abstract

This qualitative analysis of online documents compiled from the North American Animal Liberation Press Office examines how Animal Liberation Front (ALF) activists in Canada, Mexico and the United States speak about their motivations, goals and role in the broader context of animal liberation and ecological crisis. As a clandestine, direct action, extremist movement, ALF activists are often labelled as violent, angry, misanthropic radicals and have been targeted by industry lobbyists, legislation, and law enforcement officials to suppress their activism. In this chapter, I demonstrate how activists perceive themselves as the hands of justice in a deeply unjust, damaged, and anthropocentric world. The ALF rightly perceives that humans are to blame for the ecological crisis, which is greatly exacerbated by intensive animal agriculture and the destruction of ecosystems for industrial, commercial and residential development. Yet, they do not seek to harm people, but rather to cause economic harm to animal industries in order to make it more difficult for them to profit from the use of animals. By engaging in vigilante justice, ALF activists pursue a broader goal of liberating all animals from captivity, violence and death, and destroying the industries and hierarchical structures that continue to exploit them at the cost of environmental destruction.