THE NATURE OF ANIMAL RIGHTS ORGANIZATIONS

Dr. James Swan attended a Fund for Animals conference entitled
"National Wildlife Conference: Whose Wildlife Is It Anyway?" held in
southern California at the Redondo Beach Holiday Inn on November 6-7th
1993. Swan observed:

"There were about 150 people. Mostly women. Only two people of
color. The audience was exactly as the research on animal rights
groups predicts - white, urban, predominantly female, nicely
dressed. I saw some older ladies, but none wore tennis shoes. Everyone
seemed polite and proper, on the surface, like at a church meeting or
maybe a political rally, but there was a tension in the air that
suggested a hidden agenda behind the printed one." [p.101]

"In the meeting at the Redondo Beach hotel, animal rights was the
agenda, but the emotional undercurrent was anger and fear. People
talked about animals and cited statistics, but I heard no serious
discussions of ways to raise money for habitat restoration and rally
support for new and better ways to manage wildlife. As the meeting
progressed, pending legislation was identified and people were urged
to write their representatives for or against, without much attempt to
help people think critically about what the legislation was. People
were urged to join a group formed to protest others, to give money to
the group for reasons that were not clear, and to become vegetarians
as a political act. More than a meeting of minds for critical
problem-solving on today's serious wildlife issues - habitat
restoration and protection, endangered species preservation,
overpopulation of wild animals in urban areas, feral domesticated dogs
and cats, and poaching - this meeting, to me, came closer at times to
what Freud called a 'primitive group'.

According to Freud, the "intensification of the affects and the
inhibition of the intellect" characterizes primitive groups. People
are asked not to make up their own minds based on analysis of the
problems but to give up their individual critical thinking and follow
charismatic leaders. Political rallies and religious meetings are
'primitive groups', according to Freud's terms. So are mobs. Primitive
groups are based on strong emotions, passions. So, they don't last
long, usually, unless they have an enemy or some other agent to focus
on to keep the pot boiling. Hunters seem a convenient target for
attention." [pp.110-111]

James A. Swan. 1995. "In Defense of Hunting". HarperCollins, New York.
ISBN 0-06-251237-4. 290p.