Everyone, so far as I’m aware, creates narratives in their head explaining how past versions of themselves connect to the current one. It’s reasonable to ask how accurate these stories we tell ourselves are, but I imagine they at least have a hint of truth. I mention this because sometimes I wonder how, as an animal activist, I’ve gone from someone who backed underground and quasi-underground groups to someone who seeks to accelerate the development of cellular agriculture through the political process.

I first became interested in the nonhuman movement around 2005. Animal Liberation Front activists like Peter Young and Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty campaigners like Kevin Kjonaas, Josh Harper, Lauren Gazzola, Jake Conroy, Andrew Stepanian and Darius Fullmer were the toast of the American grassroots movement as they faced prosecution for their efforts. In retrospect, this seems like the last gasp of a hyper-militant strategy inaugurated by the New Left. Increased government repression showed this to be a dead end.

There are lots of stories I could tell about how I changed from someone who uncritically supported groups like the ALF and SHAC to the activist I am today, who advocates for increased state and federal funding of cultivated-meat research. Perhaps, for instance, I have less of a psychological need for the macho posturing so often associated with revolutionary violence. However, the story I actually want to focus on here is one of continuity. In what ways are the strategic assumptions I held two decades ago similar to those I hold now?

Most clearly, the militant approach and the technological approach share an underlying cynicism about the ability of ethical arguments alone to create significant change for animals. Both, to a certain degree, viewed economic pressure as a powerful force capable of doing immense damage to animal-exploitation industries. Where the former sought to drive such businesses into bankruptcy through sabotage, the latter seeks to do the same by developing an identical, cheaper product that doesn’t rely on violence against nonhumans.

To be honest, I’m not sure how much I truly believed the militant approach could be successful beyond low-level targets. Maybe I would have felt differently if I’d come to the movement in the 1970s, when that approach seemed to have unexplored promise, but I didn’t. I feel much more optimistic now about the ability of cultivated meat to weaken animal-exploitation industries than I ever did about sabotage. Even very low adoption rates of the protein would save countless nonhumans from suffering and premature death.

Something I find concerning about the continuity of my strategic assumptions is that cynicism about the effectiveness of moral arguments could also lead to a very conservative-minded welfarism. I don’t have the same dogmatic opposition to welfarist goals the New Left-inspired grassroots did. For instance, I’d rather work on a welfarist campaign capable of impacting billions of animals than an abolitionist campaign capable of impacting thousands. Still, I trust the Baby Boomers’ dogmatism didn’t emerge from nowhere.

Rather, I think these activists were responding to the animal movement they inherited, which the New Left felt had become so lost in welfarism its victories were increasingly meaningless. I’d like to avoid that, even if I recognize some compromise is inevitable when engaging in real-world politics. Still, as much as activists might know history, we’re all trapped by it. I have no doubt future campaigners will criticize now-emerging strategies for their various shortcomings. All we can do is try our best in the circumstances we’re given.

Anyhow, this is the story I tell myself about how I evolved from a supporter of underground and quasi-underground action to public funding for cellular-agriculture research — in other words, how I went from an advocate of balaclavas to bioreactors. It’s fair to question how accurate these self narratives are. However, beneath differences in the militant and technological approach, I believe there are tactical beliefs held in common, about the limitations of ethical argument and the power of economic pressure.

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