In yer face

The eternal question for animal rights activists is how to touch people. It sometimes seems impossible to find a way to make an impression, and as each of our attempts fail we can become more desperate. Scarcely able to conceal our rage the protests we organise can come across as aggressive and even violent, often seeming to have a why-can’t-you-fuckin-well-listen approach. It’s not a good look. People are put off by it. What ever good will they might have had to our arguments disappears when they see how ugly we look, shaking our fists and waiving our angry placards. For our part, we feel justified in making strong statements – that’s our perception. Their perception comes from the first impression of angry people shouting about something. They don’t get as far as finding out what that something is.
Our in-yer-face approach plays right into the hands of our detractors, The authorities are pleased to label us agitators or even, when there’s violence, terrorists. However justified we may feel at the outrageous cruelty perpetrated on animals, if we want support from large numbers of people this aggressive image is probably a mistake. We mean well by trying to ignite a sense of guilt in people, which we want to stimulate a sense of responsibility and get them to agree with us. But it probably doesn’t work that way for the majority of onlookers. We need to be more subtle, less crude, more persuasive. Because we are so few in number we have to find more inspired ways of persuading.