Humane Research: @VincentJGuihan - A series of personal attacks and a blog with closed comments. Hmmm... #cowardice"Lulz. So, what's the next step? A duel at dawn? Or maybe a glaring critique of my Web site design. Who knows.
Humane Research is Che Green (c.f., my previous article). Now, in the interests of full disclosure, I didn't expect an �OMG UR RITE, Do00D!!1one�, but I suppose it was misguided to hope for a thoughtful reply to a thoughtful (and frankly, fairly even-handed) article on Che Green's recent post at Humane Research with all of its flaws. But this is a clear personal attack. I'm not sure why it was necessary or helpful. It also seriously misrepresents my position and the tone of my blog, which were not a series of personal attacks, just pointing out the obvious.
As far as hosting comments on my blog goes, lulz, I know some people are new to the Internet, but that's entirely my prerogative. My blog is my blog. I don't have any obligation to provide a platform for others to post silly missives and personal attacks late on a Saturday night. It's my personal space, my home on the Internet, and frankly, I don't want a lot of silliness in my front room every night complaining. If anyone has a problem with what I write on my blog, then Blogger, WordPress, LiveJournal, and many others provide them for free. Fill your boots!
More to the point, though, everyone reading this should note that it's bad public relations and ineptly bad marketing to start an Internet feud with your prospective customer base. In Che Green's defense, I suppose it was a bit harsh when I wrote that Che Guevara must be spinning in his grave given his namesake's misunderstanding of political economy. A man's name is his name, and in his family, it may have very personal significance. I really shouldn't have made light of that. I even wrote as much in my first article. For that, I do sincerely apologize: I'm sorry, Che Green.
On the other hand, while I'm not sure why rational arguments based on facts correlate to cowardly behaviour, it does seem clear that I hurt Che Green's feelings with the rest of my post as well. Che Green, I'm sorry my post correlated with your hurt feelings. Now, I'd make a remark about how Che Green's posting this passive-aggressive missive to my Twitter feed late on a Saturday night correlates with the behaviour of those angry vegans protesters he complains about in his blog article, but I think those kinds of stereotypes correlate with silliness.
I could also go on a bit about how 'it correlates with a shame, but I often find that when people are faced with serious and thoughtful criticism, it correlates with their personal attacks in response', but I think most of us in the animal advocacy movement know this song and dance already. Rather than respond with personal criticism, chest pounding and other silly (and yet also, apparently, very serious machismos), though, I'm going to clarify my previous post. I'm not really the kind of person who deals in rumours and innuendos, mostly statistics, facts, rational arguments, etc. So, I hope you'll also forgive me if what follows is a bt dry. Some thoughts:
In his original blog, Che Green represented himself as a social scientist who was an expert on the human/nonhuman animal question. Not at the end, with a �oh, and by the way, I'm also a social scientist!� but up-front. Seriously. The very first sentence. The very first words. If he holds a doctorate in a social science, or even if he's a PhD candidate, has ever taught a full-length class at an accredited college or university, has published a single reviewed paper in a reputable academic journal, all he has to do is provide the citation.
Otherwise, according to Che Green's publicly available CV, Che Green holds a BA in business administration (not psychology, not anthropology, not sociology, not cultural studies, not political economy, not law, not criminology, not behaviourism, not economics, not statistics�business). I'm not saying business is not a field of study. I'm saying that it's a real stretch to imagine that my degree in English makes me an expert on robotics. Che Green may also have a heart of gold and manly, brave biceps, but that's neither here nor there; these things also do not correlate in a statistically significant way with anyone being a social scientist.
That's not a personal attack. It's just intellectual honesty.
I didn't even call him out for just how intellectually problematic this kind of behaviour is; I just remarked, appropriately, on the facts in front of me. Just imagine if I walked into a hospital, claimed to be a doctor and started giving medical advice about humours and ethers. It would be bad for medicine, bad for patients, and bad for doctors. It is similarly bad for anyone who takes nonhuman animals seriously to misrepresent themselves as an academic expert on this question if they are not. It's bad for advocates, bad for other animals and bad for the movement. I'm sorry if that correlates with anyone's hurt feelings. I'm not calling anyone a fake or a charlattan, but we should take the moral obligation we owe to nonhuman animals seriously.
Furthermore, marketing new welfare as a new approach, whether by Martin Balluch or by Che Green, is like marketing a 1996 Ford Fiesta as a 2009 Tesla Roadster. I'm also very troubled by what looks like Che Green's use of another theorist's work without proper citations, representing it as though they were his own ideas. To be clear, I'm not making any accusations. I'm saying that his blog post correlates with some of Martin Balluch's work, which is equally flawed by the way. (Martin, if you're reading this, no need to call me cowardly on Twitter for disagreeing with you -- I've already been briefed!). New welfare is, for all practical purposes, indistinguishable from traditional welfare. What's wrong with welfare? These articles can explain it better than I can:
Francione on the problems of the welfare approach:
http://www.abolitionistapproach.com/the-four-problems-of-animal-welfare-in-a-nutshell/
Francione's reply specific to Balluch's essay:
http://www.abolitionistapproach.com/a-very-new-approach-or-just-more-new-welfarism/
I should say, new welfare is not new. Francione's Rain Without Thunder is devoted to debunking the idea that 'there is no divide between welfare and abolition', a view he describes as 'the new welfare position.' RWT was published in 1996. Many of the points in Che Green's blog also correlate with some ideas on the Vegan Outreach Web site (c.f., my previous blog: Why does Matt Ball Keep Picking on Me?). That's not a surprise given the make up of Humane Research's board. But it remains intellectually problematic. I didn't call Che Green out too much in my original blog for just how problematic it is to lift someone else's marketing. In marketing, as distinguishable from academic social science, that kind of behaviour is pretty commonplace. But in a field dominated by serious social scientists, it's a faux pas to introduce yourself as an academic expert, and then reproduce someone else's arguments as though they were your own.
In virtually every blog article I write, I mention Gary Francione (and I am not a social scientist, nor do I claim to be an authority about anything -- I often take pains to point this out). It's not just because I like Gary (although I do � he's a pretty nice guy, and a brave one, unlike me -- I'm mean and cowardly). It's because my work would be completely intellectually impossible without his work. It's both right and appropriate for me to acknowledge that. I'm not saying every blog article ever written needs to be fully cited. I'm saying that when you represent yourself as a social scientist, writing as a social scientist, on a social scientific-related topic, properly citing the ideas of others is intellectually and professionally required. Roger Yates and Bob Torres, both social scientists and blog authors, do a bang-up job with this.
Mistakes happen, of course, but given that Che Green wrote blog articles in May 2008 on Balluch's work, he really should give Balluch credit when he reproduces Balluch's ideas, even if it's just: "I got some of my ideas for this blog from Martin Balluch." It's both a matter of giving credit where credit is due and it makes it possible for those of us in the community to respond to the arguments. I'm not going to go on at length about this, because, as we all know, the phrase �as an advocate, I believe...� correlates strongly with rewording what someone else has written. To complain about any individual instance is about as meaningful as saying that �George Bush made a bad decision.� Still, "social scientists" should cite their sources when they use them.
Far more important, though: welfare still doesn't lay the ground work for abolition. It still doesn't make a meaningful difference in the lives of nonhuman animals. It's still morally problematic. It still provides a solution to the problem of easing consciences about animal slavery, not ending slavery. I assume that all of the statistics citing the repeated and wide-scale failures of welfare that Che Green included in his blog article were accurate.
Where I disagree is in the belief as to what caused those failures and the argument that more welfare reform work will result in anything other than more failure for nonhuman animals. The solution to the moral problem of animal use is to stop using nonhuman animals and to encourage others to do the same, and to focus on that exclusively -- not to say in one powerpoint slide that abolition is the answer and in the next say that we can keep on using animals. These views are opposites, mutually exclusive.
Further, 30 years of organized welfare activism, as Francione argues in RWT, has correlated with a rise in use. It's morally problematic, and it doesn't work. Whether I am tall, short, fat, skinny, good looking, hold a PhD, or a mop and a bucket, the facts of this don't change. If someone could provide different, scientifically sound evidence, there's be something to debate, but in the meantime, this is like arguing about gravity.
In closing, I'm disappointed by the attempts of welfare advocates to mischaracterize a serious difference of political views as a personal one. The endless personal attacks on abolitionists by welfare advocates must stop. The Republican Party and the Communist Party may hold rallies, may write news letters, and may claim that they want to help voters, but they do not share an objective or a strategy in any meaningful way. It's not a personal attack to point that out. It is a personal attack to imply someone is cowardly for doing so. I hope the difference here is clear. Welfare advocacy promotes a reform of the system of slavery. Abolition promotes an end to that slavery. There is no overlap.
We don't have to be 'social scientists', or even just BBAs, to know that if a strategy and tactics don't achieve anything, or are designed not to achieve anything, they're not worthwhile. Wishing on a star and good spin doesn't change that. Furthermore, no one needs a doctorate in anything (except common sense, I suppose) to know that these kinds of personal attacks have no place, either in professional life or in a serious, adult social justice movement.
Che Green's personal attack on me, on Gary Francione, and on other advocates on Twitter (and perhaps other places � I have no idea) do nothing to promote an organized and cohesive movement that speaks loudly and clearly on behalf of nonhuman animals. They're unprofessional. They're intellectually problematic. I'm not going to ask for a full and formal apology, but I think Che Green owes Francione and a number of the other folks on Twitter an apology for his misrepresentation of their views.
In closing, what's important is that if you're not vegan, and you're reading this, don't let yourself get put off by this kind of silly drama. Yes, it's strange to wake up to someone pooping on your Twitter like this, but all I'm asking you to do is take the rights of nonhuman animals seriously and go vegan. Today's a wonderful day to start. If you're vegan already, and not an abolitionist, no one wants you to stop working. We want you to start working on things that will make a serious difference in the lives of nonhuman animals; that's abolitionist veganism. You can learn more about the approach at Gary L. Francione's Web site: www.abolitionistapproach.com.
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