Enbion Micah Aanby Enbion Micah Aan
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Photo Credit: Enbion Micah Aan
ON MARCH 28TH, 2026, a group of around 100 animal rights supporters gathered at the Sun Yat-Sen Memorial for the Animal Liberation March. The demands are what one would expect from animal rights supporters to reconsider our relationship with non-human beings. Notable public figures and personalities also joined forces in the march, including singer Kimberley Chen, and vegan influencer, Bailong.
The march was lively and energetic, with chants, striking visuals, and even a chicken. However, to long term observers, the past few years, it seems like animal rights activism, at the street level, has lost some steam worldwide, and Taiwan is not insulated from this apparent decline. For example, the same march that took place in 2018 had 400 attended, while the 2026 march had 100. Recent mainstream articles have also sensationalized how veganism has “failed”.
Photo credit: Enbion Micah Aan
There are many reasons why globally, this trend seems to be true, but there are structural reasons as to why. First, the mainstream emphasis on veganism and a plant-based diet took much of the radical edge off animal rights. As soon as diet becomes the emphasis, as opposed to liberation of other species, the goal changes to maximizing plant-based diet consumption. To that front, there has been success in the form of the rise of “flexitarians”. Secondly, social media’s algorithm has seen dramatic changes where people are siloed into their own corners, so it has become difficult to reach out to other pockets of the population. It has become more difficult for animal rights themes to become viral on social media platforms. Third, the non-profit industrial complex structure is also largely responsible for shaping animal rights activism, for example, pushing animal rights activism into consumer activism, lobbying, and other less disruptive tactics.
Photo credit: Enbion Micah Aan
The critical framework of the Non-Profit Industrial Complex was developed by INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence in the form of a 2007 book by the name of The Revolution Will Not Be Funded. This seminal text was probably one of the most biting critiques of NGOs and NPOs in that it dismantled the angelic public image of philanthropy, arguing that the non-profit structure, in fact, is a form of controlling dissent and coercing activism to fit existing power structures. The book warned us that professionalization of activism also means the cooptation of radical ideas, loss of accountabilities, and prioritization of funders over those in need.
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The criticism was not directed at animal rights activism, but it is certainly prophetic in this respect. Animal rights observers would easily recognize how, in a few short years, animal-related activism has become dominated by well-funded NGOs, and the space for radical action has not expanded much. Ironically, the very philosopher whose ideas is credited to have fostered the modern animal rights movement, is also the same philosopher whose ideas is credited with the NPIC that INCITE! warned us about. (Just for historical context, radical animal activism feels like a distant memory, but we’re not that far removed from radical animal activism. For example, SHAC was only a couple of decades ago).
I am, of course, talking about Peter Singer.
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But first, a bit about animal rights – it is not a monolith. The mainstream NGO-driven Animal Rights (think PETA) dominates the scene, discourse, and just about everything animal-related, but the animal rights movement has its modern roots in socialist England. Due to the development of leftist discourse making a Marxist turn (Marx was not particularly interested in the welfare of animals and was dismissive of leftists who were) – concerns for non-human animals in leftist spaces were once normal or even expected, and gradually became marginalized in the leftist space.
Kimberley Chen at the march. Photo credit: Enbion Micah Aan
So, lefty animal rights people are squeezed into a very tight corner. On one side, the leftists marginalized animal rights advocates, constantly accusing them of being reactionary. On the other hand, in the animal rights space, the mainstream, the much more well-funded professional activism dominates.
In other words, the animal rights space has the structural issues that made it particularly vulnerable to the effects and woes of NPIC.
Photo credit: Enbion Micah Aan
Peter Singer, the very author of Animal Liberation, a foundational book to modern animal rights activism, is also the very thinker who legitimized NPIC through his advocacy for Effective Altruism. Effective Altruism, put simply, is an emphasis of utilitarianism in how nonprofit organizations should be managed, by way of maximizing good. And in practice, this means a constant need to quantify for efficiency.
Certainly, Singer, being one of the most consistent philosophers, had clear through lines in both Animal Liberation and his discourse around Effective Altruism – that pain should be minimized and the greatest good should be prioritized.
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Yet it is when activism functions within Utilitarian constraints, the effects that INCITE! warned us about are becoming the most acute. The solutions found from NPIC will be top-down, not community-centered, pro-capital, and, in other words, not radical or leftist. But most damning, of course, is that it will not change things at the foundation. In leftist terms, the social relations will remain the same.
I am not here to paint Singer as a villain. Far from it. I attended his retirement party. I consider it an incredible privilege to have met him twice in my life. Singer is arguably one of the greatest living philosophers right now. Fundamentally, his enduring Utilitarian idea stems from his famous 1971 paper, Famine, Affluence, and Morality. Singer wrote this paper when he was still in his 20s, and it is still considered an important paper today.
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In this paper, his most vivid and compelling parable for utilitarianism is a drowning child. It is a metaphor to illustrate that there is simply no possible moral reason not to save a drowning child from a shallow pond if the person can do so without endangering themselves. The child serves as a metaphor for giving to philanthropy. Just because a child is far away, it does not mean the child is morally irrelevant, so affluent societies have the moral duty to “save the child” by way of philanthropy. The paper, essentially, argued that by not doing good, we are, effectively, immoral.
Singer’s argument has always played a role in my thinking, as he challenges us, whatever ideas we might have about morality, the actual practice of morality matters more – his core idea, to me, isn’t simply pragmatism, but actually respecting reality.
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In the paper, Singer mentioned that one could always argue to fix the pond, so a child will not drown, but the problem is that now, the child is drowning.
Singer certainly presents a very compelling, rigorous, and clear view. However, as always with utilitarianism, it falls short of being emancipatory and transformational. I want my pond fixed.