Warcry Communications – förlag

Together in one professionally-bound book, for the first time.

The Militant Vegan was a low-production-value, limited-circulation, photocopied publication that ran from 1993 to 1995, and never enjoyed a wide audience. This is the complete collection of the animal liberation zine covering direct action, animal rights activism, and the Animal Liberation Front (ALF).

To understand The Militant Vegan is to understand the historical context from which it arose: By 1993, the Animal Liberation Front had carried out its most strategic campaign to date, targeting weak points in the fur industry in a multi-state liberation and arson spree called Operation Bite Back. The media was all but silent. There was no internet, so activists outside the small media markets where these raids happened were unaware this campaign was underway, and many of the raids weren’t reported by the media at all. The Animal Liberation Front (again, pre-internet) had little-to-no platforms to which they could disseminate their communiques, rally the movement to join them in taking action, or let the world know of their victories.

It was from this void The Militant Vegan emerged. To quote issue #1, “The Militant Vegan is being released because there has been a media blackout on direct action on behalf of enslaved animals.”

Before the internet, animal liberation news could only be spread through photocopied documents like The Militant Vegan, distributed person-to-person, and seen by few.

While dominated by re-purposed material (such as ALF primers and newspaper clippings), there is also notable content, ALF history, and other direct-action themed rarities contained in these pages. Some of it never to be found elsewhere.

The Militant Vegan published some of the first publicized fur farm addresses - several of which would go on to be raided by activists. A communiqué for the Malecky Mink Farm arson (also part of Operation Bite Back) is a rare piece of ALF history. And even the grainy newspaper article reprints can’t be downplayed, in a time when to not live in an area where an ALF action had occurred was to never know it happened at all - were it not for The Militant Vegan.

In the mid-1990s, reading The Militant Vegan was like a window to a secret history you watched unfold in its pages.

The original Weather Underground manifesto, in its original layout.

Prairie Fire was a 188-page political manifesto published by the Weather Underground in 1974, articulating the radical splinter group's ideology, and endorsing revolutionary violence.

"Prairie Fire" was distributed in radical bookstores, food coops, headshops, on college campuses and many other places that movement activists met. It was met with a combination of strong emotions throughout the Left. Ultimately, the ideological arguments articulated in "Prairie Fire" led to a new split in the Weather Underground, with some gravitating toward the "Prairie Fire Collective," which favored mass-based, above-ground revolutionary politics, and the "May 19th Communist Organization," which remained underground and pulled off the infamous Brinks robbery in 1981.

In 1974 when "Prairie Fire" was written the Weather Underground had realized the shortcoming of there underground tactics in the previously stated sense. So "Prairie Fire", called for the creation of both mass and clandestine, or underground, organizations. The clandestine organizations would be in charge of the development and early creation of a people's militia, as well as carrying out previous underground tactics, and raising consciousness. That mass organization would support and encourage armed action to the mass of the public, in a more legitimized fashion. Under this ideology The Weather Underground could facilitate a far larger mass fallowing, while still advocating for a violent militant revolution.

The name for the manifesto was derived from the writings of Chinese Communist revolutionary, Mao Zedong. In his "Little Red Book," he wrote, "a single spark can set a prairie fire" as an analogy for revolution. The manifesto encourages a mix of mass-organizing and clandestine revolutionary violence. "Never disassociate mass struggle from revolutionary violence," the author's argued. "To leave people unprepared to fight the state," they said, "is to seriously mislead them about the inevitable nature of what lies ahead." 

Abbie Hoffman publicly praised Prairie Fire and believed every American should be given a copy. The manifesto's influence initiated the formation of the Prairie Fire Organizing Committee in several American cities. Hundreds of above-ground activists helped further the new political vision of the Weather Underground.

Essentially, after the 1969 failure of the Days of Rage to involve thousands of youth in massive street fighting, Weather renounced most of the Left and decided to operate as an isolated underground group. The decision to build only an underground group eventually caused the Weather Underground to lose sight of its commitment to mass struggle and made future alliances with the mass movement difficult and tenuous.

By 1974, Weather had recognized this shortcoming and in Prairie Fire detailed a different strategy for the 1970s which demanded both mass and clandestine organizations. The role of the clandestine organization would be to build the "consciousness of action" and prepare the way for the development of a people's militia. Concurrently, the role of the mass movement (i.e., above-ground Prairie Fire collective) would include support for, and encouragement of, armed action. Such an alliance would, according to Weather, "help create the 'sea' for the guerrillas to swim in".

The Prairie Fire Collective faction started to surrender to the authorities from the late 1970s to the early 1980s. The remaining Weather Underground members continued to attack U.S. institutions.

This is the complete text of Prairie Fire, in its original layout.

A history of the Hardline movement - the vegan straight edge offshoot born from the late-1980s Hardcore music scene.

Starting in the early 1990s, the Hardline scene drew from British predecessors to pioneer Earth and animal liberation in the US hardcore scene. With bands such as Vegan Reich and Raid that inspired Earth Crisis and helped spark the vegan straight edge scene, Hardline has remained under-analyzed and under-discussed. They pre-dated Extinction Rebellion by far but few listened. Hardliners and people inspired by Hardline engaged in numerous animal and Earth liberation direct actions in the 1990s. They founded CAFT (Campaign to Abolish the Fur Trade). They also caused enormous controversy within punk, hardcore, and straight edge scenes.

This book draws from a wide range of sources to present and discuss a history of Hardline. People have accused Hardliners of fascism, sexism, racism, and misogyny without pointing toward evidence. In turn, Hardliners have, after the fact, downplayed the extent to which the movement agitated against abortion, threatened abortion doctors, and made anti-homosexuality a key pillar of their scene. Some have labeled Hardline a "sect," a "religion," or a "cult" -and, considering that the two follow-up groups to Hardline, Ahl-i Allah (People of God) and Taliyah al-Mahdi (Vanguard of the Messiah) openly identified as Shi'a while drawing from Rasta, Jewish, Taoist, and other traditions, one can understand perhaps why.

Yet, until now, no one has really tried to collect the relevant sources, documents, and texts that begin a coherent and comprehensive conversation about Hardline. To what degree did they actually support a vegan dictatorship? How did they relate to The MOVE Organization (supposedly a major inspiration for the scene and a group with whom they shared a nearly identical philosophy)? How many people organized under the Hardline mantle? What did they accomplish? Why did they die out (....or did they die out)? And, perhaps most importantly, what can people working for Earth and animal liberation learn from Hardline's successes and failures?

This book explores those questions and more, ultimately asking, where do you stand... and what will you do?