Abstract
David Naguib Pellow’s Total Liberation: The Power and Promise of Animal Rights and the Radical Earth Movement explores the origins, beliefs, and actions of—as well as backlash against—radical animal-rights and environmental activists in the United States. Using in-depth interviews with 100 activists, fieldwork at animal-rights and environmental conferences, and content analysis of activist-created materials, Pellow paints a vivid picture of these movements. His compelling writing style emulates investigative journalism instead of dry academic jargon, and he easily grabs the reader’s attention.
In addition to providing a thorough history of radical animal-rights and environmental activist organizations—which he defines as those seeking change at the roots, rather than reforming social problems—Pellow investigates the links between these radical movements and other movements about social inequality. He also explores the origins of the “Green Scare” and the media, corporate, and government backlash and repression of these activists. Pellow claims in Chapter One that the primary reason for these radical movements’ origins was frustration with the limited scope and tactics of mainstream organizations, who were more willing to compromise and collude with corporations and government authorities. Many radical activists also left the mainstream movement because of its racism, sexism, homophobia, and classism. The animating belief system behind these radical movements is that of “total liberation,” which has four main parts:justice/anti-oppression, anarchism, anti-capitalism, and direct action.
The justice and anti-oppression elements of these movements are explored in Chapter Two, where we see how these radical activists recreated the exact same oppressive elements that drove them away from the mainstream in the first place. Pellow shares story after story that will make readers cringe, such as Earth First! activists describing people of color as “backward and primitive” (p. 62) and singing songs about human extinction with lyrics such as “Ebola’s our salvation” (p. 63). The chapter then goes on to describe the transphobia of Deep Green Resistance and sexual assault at animal-rights conferences. Pellow acknowledges that while some radical activists embrace the focus on oppression, many actively resist it and are limited by a “(non-human) nature first” narrative (p. 62). It is refreshing to seethese issues addressed, even if anti-oppression remains more of a goal than a reality for these movements. Pellow does share some stories here, and in other chapters, about successful coalitions with people of color, which help to somewhat counterbalance these examples.
Anarchism and anti-capitalism receive slightly less attention than the other two pillars of the total liberation framework, sharing space in Chapter Three of the book. Pellow wisely notes that any social movements that reject hierarchy are likely compatible with anarchist politics, and his critique of citizenship ties in nicely with animal-studies scholars in noting that “humanness is an unearned privileged status used by the state” to privilege some and exclude others from the benefits of full citizenship status (p. 97). Pellow cites overproduction as the first contradiction of capitalism, and he goes further to describe environmental degradation as the second contradiction of capitalism: “capitalism self-destructively deteriorates the conditions required for its existence” (p.112). The numerous quotes from activists and movement artifacts show the movements’ belief that capitalism is indeed at the core of all exploitation of animals and the environment.
The bulk of the book’s analysis focuses on direct action, the “Green Scare,” and activists’ responses to government oppression. All 100 of Pellow’s interviewees said they supported direct action, and he views it as one form of prefigurative politics—creating the changes activists wish to see, rather than waiting for them to be enacted by the state, corporations, or other authorities. To understand the state’s repression of activists, Pellow cites a laundry list of laws passed that target radical animal-rights and environmental activists and the discourse of “ecoterrorism” that pervades any discussion. These “cultures of repression” (p. 166) include both explicit and implicit discourses that work to discount and devalue social movements in the public sphere. More than just ideological repression, activists are given incredibly harsh sentences for crimes such as arson, because they are seen as acts of “terrorism.” Despite this backlash by the government, these radical activists enact myriad forms of resistance, such as security culture, prisoner support, and coalition building with other movements.
Radical animal-rights and environmental movements are largely composed of white activists; thus an important strength of the book is Pellow’s inclusion of the perspectives and actions of people of color and indigenous peoples on environmentalism. Race features prominently in how the government uses a racialized discourse of terrorism against these predominantly white activists and how these activists’ white privilege can be revoked by the state. The author also clearly outlines the ways in which the state uses the same types of repressive treatment against animal rights and environmental movements as it does against radical liberation movements of people of color, such as AIM, MOVE, and the Black Panthers. White protesters are now also seen as enemies of the state. While denied some of their white privilege, imprisoned radical activists did receive some benefits of their racial and class privilege—for example, having the money to hire private attorneys.
Pellow’s racial analysis of the movement is a necessary one. However, the book would have benefited from more discussion of gender and class issues as well. Perhaps the government patterned their repressive practices after their treatment of movements of people of color, but they took their motivation from capitalism, as demonstrated by ALEC’s corporate underwriting of the AETA (Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act) legislation and other new anti-environmental activist laws. Gender politics underlie much of the book, though they are not always directly addressed. Pellow notes the rampant sexism of many organizations’ founders and current members and the movements’ emphasis on direct action which is, at the same time, deemed “masculinist” (p. 140). I was also struck by the gender imbalance of the participants—only 31 of the 100 interviewees were women, although women make up the bulk of the animal-rights movement. Returning to the origins of these movements, if racism, sexism, and classism (among other oppressions and issues) drove radical protesters to form groups outside of mainstream organizations, then what can the author offer us as to why these groups recreate those same oppressions?
Total Liberation provides a much-needed, in-depth look at radical environmental and animal-rights activists, whose progressive politics and formidable repression by the U.S. government have gone relatively unnoticed by academics. More attention needs to be paid to this issue, and future research could address this topic in a comparative study between radical and mainstream movements, or in a comparison between these movements in different countries. This book, with its gripping topic and its fluid, compelling style, will be of use in both undergraduate and graduate classes on environmental sociology, animals and society, social movements, and political sociology.