THE SUPREMACIST SYNDROME

An animal rights advocate explores the connections between supremacist ideas and the mistreatment of animals.

With a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a long history of animal rights advocacy that includes previous writing that challenges the use of population-control killings in animal shelters, Marsh is well aware of humans’ violent tendencies. Here, he writes, “human history has been a continual story of supremacists slaughtering and enslaving people,” from Alexander the Great to the Rwandan genocide. These supremacist attitudes have laid the foundation for a “type of supremacism that encompasses all others” across cultural divides, which is the notion that humans are “superior to other animals and are entitled to take whatever we need or want from them.” In a novel, convincing argument, Marsh claims that the process of “moral disengagement” employed to justify the harsh treatment of animals is similar to reasoning used by supremacists throughout history to justify genocide and oppression. Examining three case studies of historical supremacists, the first half of the book outlines the moral rationalizations used by the Nazis to murder Jews in Hungary, by King Leopold II and Belgian forces who essentially enslaved millions of Congolese under a system of mandatory labor, and by 19th-century British misogynists who opposed women’s fight for equality. Marsh analyzes the excuses used by these historic supremacists as well as the history of resistance. For example, in Nazi-controlled Europe, Raoul Wallenberg, Maximilian Kolbe, and others sacrificed their own lives to save Jews. In Britain, journalist E.D. Morel led a crusade that successfully pressured Leopold into giving up his personal claim to the Congo, and John Stuart Mill stood up to his colleagues in the British House of Commons when advocating on behalf of women’s rights.

Though this narrative leans heavily on White-male–savior tropes and doesn’t offer new insights into these well-traversed historical terrains, it provides an effective context for the book’s second, more intriguing, half, which connects supremacist attitudes to the maltreatment of animals. These chapters blend the research of social scientists—who, for instance, have found that individuals with racial or sexist prejudices are more likely to “condone the exploitation of animals”—with a philosophical and ethical case against the slaughter of animals. Particular attention is given to the brutality of factory farms and the intelligence and sensitivity of the animals bred and killed by people as products. The book’s climactic final chapter, “Overcoming Supremacism,” focuses on practical ways that readers can oppose all forms of supremacism that exist in the 21st century, from helping organizations that serve refugees to working with children’s educational programs that teach environmental and humane values. Backed by solid research and impressive endnotes, this is an erudite, well-written book bogged down only by its unnecessarily lengthy historical chapters whose deluge of pages distract from, rather than complement, the case for animal rights. However, accompanied by an ample assortment of photographs, maps, charts, and visual aids, the book is written in an engaging, accessible prose that makes an effective case against the “supremacist syndrome” that continues to distort human moral reasoning.

A convincing case against supremacism in all of its cruel manifestations.