Is the Radical Animal Rights Movement Ethically Vigilante?

Following contentious debates around the status and justifiability of illegal direct actions by animal rights activists, we introduce a heretofore unexplored perspective that argues they are neither terrorist nor civilly disobedient but ethically vigilante. Radical animal rights movement (RARM) activists are vigilantes for vulnerable animals and their rights. Hence, draconian measures by the constitutional state against RARM vigilantes are both disproportionate and illegitimate. The state owes standing and toleration to such principled vigilantes, even though they are self-avowed anarchists and anti-stat-ists-unlike civil disobedients-repudiating allegiance to the constitutional order. This requires the state to acknowledge the ethical nature of challenges to its present regime of toleration, which assigns special standing to illegal actions in defense of human equality, but not equality and justice between humans and animals.