1. No, personal consumer choices change nothing. This is the main criticism leveled against the mainstream animal rights movement by animal liberationists. The mainstream animal rights movement spends a considerable amount of time, effort and money on promoting veganism and ethical consumerism in the hope that once enough people opt out of eating animal products these industries will collapse.

Such a view does not take into consideration the myriad of ways our consumer choices indirectly support animal exploitation or the fact that the nature of capitalism means that by supporting one ethical company, you are often supporting several unethical companies in the process (good examples include "animal friendly" brands like Alpro, who are owned by the world's largest dairy processor or Swedish Glace which is owned by notorious animal tester Unilever).

1. The term animal liberation is often used to differentiate itself between animal rights and animal welfare. I agree that the term makes little sense, when we speak of black liberation or queer liberation, we are referring to the struggle by oppressed people against their oppressors. When we say animal liberation: We mean a movement of humans fighting to "liberate" non-human animals.

I consider myself an abolitionist, which means I fight to abolish the property status of animals. As a communist I see this as part of the wider struggle against capitalism. I personally cannot see this happening within the context of capitalism, and I believe that we need a social revolution to dismantle capitalism and the way we view animals so we can build a new society.

In the meantime though, we need to struggle against all forms of exploitation: This means shutting down animal testing laboratories, sabotaging hunts, liberating animals, protesting shops that sell fur etc. This process, while not revolutionary, creates a group of people with the skills necessary to carry out the task of reshaping the way we think about animals. "Creating a new world in the shell of the old", if you will.

2.1. Why should animal liberation limit itself to building solidarity with the environmental movement? Animal exploitation causes ecological damage, that is true, but the workers inside slaughter houses are often migrants who are forced to work in terrible conditions, why aren't we building links with worker and migrant rights movements? The environmental movement may seem the most logical ally for animal liberationists but there are other bridges to be built, ones that maybe force us to enter territory we're not as familiar with.

To answer your question though, just look at my answer to question 1. Consumer choices make no difference, what matters is how you act. I'd value a meat eating environmentalist who gets stuck into organising and direct action over a militant vegan who does nothing but buy expensive meat substitutes and talks shit about meat eaters any day.

1. I don't particularly like the term speciesism. It feels like an attempt by the animal rights movement to gain legitimacy for itself by adopting the terminology of other liberation movements. We are always going to assign different values to animals from other species: We're not going to give dogs the right to vote in general assemblies are we? There are basic fundamental rights that should be awarded to all species and all forms of life should be given equal consideration but to say that any sort of difference between humans and non-humans should be abolished is, in my opinion, absurd.

2. I'm no longer a anti-civ anarchist, so I'll leave this to them to answer!