I recently saw "Your Mommy Kills Animals", a documentary on SHAC (Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty) and well-rounded discussion of the animal rights movement. It's a pity that it's a Right Wing propaganda piece.

SHAC is a bit of a legend in activist circles. They believe that animals should be afforded the same rights and liberties that humans are and make the argument in terribly compelling ways. But beyond that, they use extremely effective but very controversial means to make their issue heard. It might mean visiting the personal residences of scientists that perform cruel animal testing and shouting at them with megaphones all day and night. It might mean protesting the New York Stock Exchange with such vehemence as to cause Huntingdon Life Sciences to be de-listed on NYSE. It might mean taping two pieces of black paper end-to-end in a circle and faxing it to Huntingdon Life Sciences, just to use up all of their fax paper and toner.

Ironically, it was this last act that they were finally busted for. Facing a heap of charges from destruction of private property (toner!) to conspiracy, the SHAC 7 were all convicted on felony charges. When asked why they did all of this to save a few animals, they said "I'm sure people through-out history were asked the same question—all this for a Black? Or all this for a Jew? Yes, all this for an animal."

I went with several other activists to see "Your Mommy Kills Animals" (named for a brochure distributed by PETA) to learn more about SHAC. What we got was an exposé on how animal rights groups all hate eachother and destroy property a lot. However, it was just subtle enough to masquerade as a critical look into what strategies work and which don't.

The first clue that there might be something awry were these two talking heads that the documentarians kept interspersing right before or after potentially compelling arguments from the very eloquent SHAC 7. They seemed to subtly undercut the logic of the protagonists. The first was David Martosko, of the Center for Consumer Freedom, and the second Iain Murray, of the Competitive Enterprise Institute. These are Right Wing think-tanks that basically get paid to spew bullshit for video cameras. CEI, as I may have mentioned before, are the brains behind those fabulous "Carbon Dioxide: They call it pollution, we call it life!" commercials.

It turns out the producer of "Your Mommy Kills Animals", Curt Johnson, has also produced "Michael Moore Hates America" back in 2004 and his next film is called "Devil's Weed", described as "a documentary that examines the loss of civil liberties associated with the public smoking ban in Minneapolis, Minnesota." Co-producing is Maura Flynn of the David Horowitz Freedom Center. Yes, a loss of civil liberties... We all recall Amendment 7: "Congress shall make no law preventing you from smoking in bars." I wonder if we lost that with the Patriot Act?

There were other moments that made me doubt the film's sincerity, like the poor music choices (I'm sorry, busting out Rage Against the Machine for a movie supposedly made in the last few years?) and the repeated use of the most violent and confrontational footage they had. It all came unraveled when I was talking to two animal rights activist friends who had wanted to go see it and asked me about some parts of the movement that I soon realized were obviously glaring omissions in the documentary. Clearly, its point was not to plant the seeds of knowledge in those looking to learn more about animal rights, but to sow the seeds on dissent within the movement itself. To the animal welfare people, it showed a crazy and out-of-control animal rights faction. To the animal rights people, it showed a hypocritical and ineffectual animal welfare industry. The Sea Shepherds hate SHAC for being young punks, SHAC hates PETA for selling-out, everyone hates ALF because they threaten people's lives.

This is not the case, while I'm sure that everyone gravitates to organizations most in line with their own politics, most of the organizations I know more than casually understand the "spectrum theory" of activism. More radical groups need less radical groups to act respectable in order to negotiate, less radical groups need more radical groups to provide pressure to bring power-holders to the table. The animal rights movement is the same way. Even if "Your Mommy Kills Animals" tries to deceive you into thinking they're at each other's throats, if you go to the SHAC site and check out their links page, the very first one is to PETA.

This is the first of a few posts I'm robo-blogging from Burning Man. I wrote it last week and set it to go off today.