- cross-posted to:
- vegan@anarchist.nexus
- cross-posted to:
- vegan@anarchist.nexus
You must log in or # to comment.
120 upvotes, 250 comments
I’m a lefty but when it comes to animals I’m a far right fascist who believes in human superiority. We’re the top of a food chain in which animals consume each other.
That said, industrialized ranching techniques are gross and I wish people would hunt their own meat.
Me, furiously searching the sacred texts of leftism for the part where they talk about animals and not workers
The ML cultist thinks there’s sacred texts, how befitting.
As someone who is exploring veganism right now, this extreme stance is kind of a turn off. Like I’m still going to eat plant based, but this makes me not want to talk to people who call themselves vegan or even call myself vegan either.
Edit: It’s strange that the response I am getting to this is to call me right wing and white, of which I am neither. But I am someone who is just trying to eat plant based.
I’ve cut my meat consumption to a third. I realise I don’t even like meat that much unless it’s ultra processed lol. I think vegetables and tofu are bloody bangin but for now I’m happy with meat 2 days a week, whether that’ll go down further I dunno
Reminded me of this
Is this saying I am not going to be vegan because I am annoyed with vegans? Because I am not sure how this applies, unless you are grouping me with the vegans who are annoyed with vegans.
It’s the “this extreme stance” as a response to the meme “leftism leaving people’s bodies as animal exploitation is brought up.” This is a super milquetoast critique and it gives the same vibe of “please be respectful to people of all kinds” getting a big reaction.
E: also most vegans are annoyed by other vegans so its pretty accurate
Are you exploring veganism or plant based? They are not the same thing. Veganism is much more radical and has a real focus on ending animal suffering.
I am doing the one where you don’t eat any animal products or use any animal products. The reason I chose to do this is personal, I am not adopting any ideologies.
Either is a step in the right direction and reduces animal suffering.
Stop gatekeeping
Sincerely
a vegetarian of 11 years
Careful, you’ll trigger the VERVs (vegetarian-exclusionary radical vegans).
I’m anti-slavery. I went from owning 7 slaves to 1 house slave and I only lightly beat them. Stop gatekeeping demanding I end all slavery, what I do is ethical.
Sincerely,
A vegan.
This is exactly why people don’t associate with vegans btw. I’m entirely plant based and have been for years, but if you call me a vegan I will actually fight you.
No, husbandry and agriculture are not anywhere near slavery. Vegetarianism is no where near slavery.
If you released any domesticated animal into the wild they would die and/or destroy the ecosystem killing billions of people and animals.
Insufferable
Your achievements in cutting animal products out of your lifestyle are overshadowed by the people you almost certainly have persuaded not to try
Yeah, it’s called white veganism.
What makes you think OP doesn’t support other leftist ideals?
I do not understand what you are saying here.
It’s a type of veganism that focus superficially on animal rights and use exclusionary language.
The opposite is intersectional veganism.
Thank you for this.
You’re welcome:)
I have altered the leftism Pray that I dont alter it any further
This just in: progressives continue to progress. More news at 11.
Emancipation is a great goal. Like any goal we do not flip a switch to get there. We need better and more accessible technology to free animals from bondage.
Emancipation is currently impractical. Human athletics require large quantities of protein and calcium. Animal products are the current common source.
I have grown plants for some time. I kill animals that eat my plants. I don’t even eat the animals I kill. I need to eat.
We’re humans. We’re awesome. We can come up with better alternatives.
The source of all protein in your food web is plants. The source of all calcium is the Earth itself, mainly as harvested by plants. Animals only add inefficiency; they are not what enable “human athleticism”, they only make it more expensive and harmful.
Neither of those points address the ethics or politics of harvesting vulnerable individuals for flesh and secretions. Doing so clearly requires stepping outside of values like compassion and fairness, and so requires stepping outside the leftist political sphere. Consuming animals is an exception to leftist politics, not some kind of special case.
Leftism isn’t purity politics but by god there are some people doing their best
What do you think about indigenous people who is eating meat? Should they also stop eating meat?
Are you one?
Indigenous? No. Why?
Then I’m not really sure why it’s relevant.
It kinda seems like you’re just using them as a talking point.
Are we supposed to ignore the fact that indigenous peoples exist? Inuits? Do they not exist?
Are we supposed to bring them up in every discussion about anything, even if it’s almost completely irrelevant?
“I oppose militarism and the war in Iran, people should avoid joining the military,” “Oh yeah? What about indigenous people who have traditional roles for warriors? Pretty chauvanistic of you to dictate what another culture should and shouldn’t do.”
It seems like just trying to sidetrack the conversation.
I’m not the OP, but it’s not irrelevant.
I’d agree that it would be irrelevant in your example here because you mentioned militarism and the war in Iran, which means it would be obvious bullshittery to interpret “people should avoid joining the military” as “people should never join any military”. But if you had said “people should never join any military”, then perhaps a few follow-up questions might not go amiss, because that’s quite a contentious statement.
In this case, it’s not unfair to infer a blanket statement of all animal exploitation is bad. In which case, what about the Inuits? If it applies to the them, then you would presumably suggest that they should abandon their traditional (and provably sustainable) lifestyle and integrate into mainstream Canadian/Russian/etc. society. In which case; congratulations! You’re (arguably) doing a colonialism! If it doesn’t apply to them, then you’re conceding that animal exploitation isn’t always wrong, which means when it is or isn’t is now up for debate.
I’m not interested in these extremely niche cases like tribes or deserted islands or dumpster diving. Something like 99% of the choices of 99% of people reading this are going to be what you buy at the grocery or order off a menu. Those are the cases that are actually relevant to our lives, in existing reality.
What you’re trying to do is bring up this extremely niche case in an effort to discredit the people advocating the idea in order to dismiss the idea, which is textbook ad hominem and bad faith. Even if there are some colonialist vegans, that does not discredit veganism any more that a trans person doing a bad thing would discredit trans rights.
It’s literally just a trick, and you spell out the trick rather plainly. You want me to concede that “not all animal exploitation is bad” so that you can make a rule from the exception an take that extremely rare case that’s completely unrelated to your own situation, and use it to justify your position and behavior.
But in fact, I don’t have to give you either concession. I simply recurse myself from the question, because I have no authority to weigh in on their affairs, as I have no experience with them. “No investigation, no right to speak.” To say that animal exploitation is moral in that situation would mean that, if a member of such a tribe believed in veganism and advocated for the tribe to change their ways, I would have to tell them they’re wrong and that the tribe should continue their old ways, which in my view, is just as colonialist. That’s for them to work out.
Should I ever become shipwrecked or survive an airplane crash in their lands, then I’ll have a reason to ponder the ethics of that particular situation. Until then, it’s naval-gazing at best and a bad faith distraction/attempt at ad hominem at worst.
I’m not sidetracking. I have a very clear stance on animal welfare.
The machine is the root cause to animal suffering. Causing systematic and chronic torture of animals. We need to dissolve the machine to bring an end to it.
We do not bring an end to animal suffering through purist veganism.
No, but we can certainly reduce the harm caused by the machine through veganism. As for dissolving it entirely, veganism is essentially a prerequisite, because you discredit any advocacy or any criticism you make by refusing to engage in an actionable step to reduce harm.
deleted by creator
Everyone should.
Do you think animals being murdered for culture is more acceptable?
I think it’s a bit rich for anyone in “modern” society (or however you want to call it) to be giving moral guidance to societies that proved that they can actually live sustainably and relatively peacefully for thousands years.
It is not meat eating that is the unwellness. It is the machine.
The machine causes life long suffering of animals. We should not equate the machine mass torture of animal with indigenous hunting of animals. The first impose unnessecary suffering in the name of efficiency especially through overfeeding, while the other is done out of need and prevents suffering to the degree it is possible.
By being purist in animal rights, we shift the blame of animal suffering away from might towards people. Putting even more preassure upon indigenous who are preassured by the machine.
That is not to say that we shouldn’t eat less meat. We certainly should! But we can do this by dissolving the machine and practice independence.
I have no issue with eating more plant based, i think meat should be something special, we only eat once in a while instead of this perversion we have now. Dairy at least doesn’t kill the animal, but its also pushed to extremes.
Dairy absolutely does kill the animal, they just get raped several times first and have to live with their children (whom they are emotionally bonded to) being torn away from them each time.
The oldest cow we know about lived to 48 years. Dairy cows are slaughtered for meat at SIX YEARS OLD. The children are also slaughtered, except for a few who are kept to be milked and then slaughtered like her mother was.
Yeah but they taste better younger.
We can eat Roadkill.
Lets massproduce roadkill steak then.
You can. My brain tells me not to
I think being offended by this meme means that one isn’t wholly comfortable with one’s own cognitive dissonance
It’s simplistic and implies leftism as a monolith. That being said, it’s a meme not an essay. Starting an argument from a talking point devoid of context invites dissent. As well as ridicule.
Wanting to enjoy animal products and a great deal of the types of food ever made by humans does not inherently necessitate animal exploitation, and therefore isnt necessarily cognitive dissonance.
Factory farms and legitimate animal abuses are horrific, but the vast majority of human relationships to animals and animal products in history has not been anything like that. I dont take issue with actual husbandry or hunting, its the circle of life.
One of the great failures of activism in this area is that vegans conflate horrific animal abuses like factory farms with any form of eating animal products, which most people would not agree with, and it makes it easy for people to write off any activism to close factory farms and things like that as just “crazy vegans” or whatever.
I would love to see lab grown meat and other things that mean we could move beyond killing animals for consumptive purposes, and eventually we will. In the meantime, we can have ethical farming practices that ensure quality lives for animals that will be eaten. There is no cognitive dissonance in that. I dont think the majority of people believe there is an ethical issue with eating animals at large, just that there are unethical ways to raise animals to be eaten. I dont take issue with anyone believing that eating any animal products is unethical, but I also do not believe that there is some universal ethical truth to that idea whatsoever, nor that people eating meat is purely a social construct. Humans are omnivorous animals, we evolved to eat animals. If anything, veganism is far more of a socialized construct than biological evolution.
Beyond that, there are plenty of animal products that vegans refuse to eat even though taking them doest harm the animal or cost its life. Eggs, dairy or butter, etc.
What in the cope did I just read
Well, clearly you didn’t read it, since you see it as cope…
How do you eat the body of someone who doesn’t want to be eaten and think it isn’t exploitation. Do YOU even listen to the words you are saying, or are you just distracting yourself from rational thought until the bad feelings go away?
We can tell you’ve never thought seriously about the subject in your entire life because you make claims like eggs and dairy don’t harm the animals producing them. That’s so ignorant, you have to be going out of your way to avoid learning about where your food comes from. But you have paragraphs of arrogant shit to shovel down our throats. Read a fucking book, okay?
How do you eat the body of someone who doesn’t want to be eaten and think it isn’t exploitation
I take it you never heard about eggs or milk…?
We can tell you’ve never thought seriously about the subject in your entire life because you make claims like eggs and dairy
Ah, no, you have! So why do you only and specifically associate “non-veganism” with “eating the body of someone who doesn’t want to be eaten”?
That’s so ignorant, you have to be going out of your way to avoid learning about where your food comes from.
Let me guess: your argument is the cage-locked, industry scale production, yeah?
But you have paragraphs of arrogant shit to shovel down our throats. Read a fucking book, okay?
Are you capable of taking a deep breath and not spazzing out here, or is that out of the question and we won’t have a conversation?
to be fair, the person that responded to me isn’t the same that wrote the initial response I responded to (???) but I share your sentiment wholly
There’s a massive difference between industry-scale production and free-range, small-scale production. The former can never be ethical, by definition. The latter: absolutely can. It requires humans to cut down on animal products consumption drastically, so campaigning and education is necessary, but equating ALL non-veganism with animal cruelty does more harm than good to that goal.
what in your mind makes it ethical to do the things to a chicken that would not be ethical to do to a human? you can’t just say “it’s ethical;” that is the entire debate.
You are ignorant of the realities of “free range” ranching, but that is not really relevant yet so we’ll ignore it.
Free range, small-scale “production” (disgusting word to use in this context imho) - why would this be any less exploitative than what animal AG is doing in the billions? Sure, the animal is treated better, which is good in a vacuum, but the animal still can neither consent nor object to being exploited. At best, it’s a chicken laying eggs for reproduction or for its own sustenance and is robbed of these, at worst it’s a cow that’s being force-impregnated to give milk, to sustain its calves which it can’t, or it’s killed for meat. The end result is, whatever way you wanna spin it, a dead or exploited animal.
All these hypotheticals of people having “small-scale productions” or, for some reason not being part of the larger issue at hand just because they raise their own animals, is ultimately just cope to justify cruelty and exploitation. Accept that fact and move on, but at least be aware of what you’re doing, or change something about your perspective.
Veganism explicitly mentions to reduce the exploitation of animals in all facets of life, more or less. If you’re dependent on animal products because you’re living isolated and have no access to other nourishment - sure. I doubt the average Lemmy user is in such a predicament, however. Thus, it’s absolutely within the realm of reason to assume that living as a vegan is possible and should be strived towards - especially if you’re a self-proclaimed leftist.
eggs and dairy dont harm animals because the animals want to produce eggs and dairy and have been designed to do so
How do you know that cows do not want to be eaten?
Beyond that, there are plenty of animal products that vegans refuse to eat even though taking them doest harm the animal or cost its life. Eggs, dairy or butter, etc.
You should do some research on what industrial scale dairy and egg farms are like. It’s not much better, and in some cases worse.
Common practices include:
-
Throwing live freshly born male chicks into blenders
-
Chickens being confined, thousands at a time, in small dark spaces where they spend all their lives. Often dying to wounds from fighting each other due to being kept in such unnaturally close proximity
-
Due to a variety of tactics to maximize eggs per chicken, they often deplete their calcium, meaning they break their bones when attempting to stand
-
Dairy cows often spend most of their ‘useful’ lives (4-5 years) in concrete boxes barely larger than their own bodies, head pointed to food, and grates behind where waste can flow
-
The calves taken from dairy cows (necessary for them to begin lactation) end up in the same meat industry if male
-
Dairy cows, once out of their prime, end up in the same meat industry
I dont get my meat nor dairy nor eggs from factory farms shrimple as that
You should do some research on what industrial scale dairy and egg farms are like. It’s not much better, and in some cases worse.
And you should maybe read the entire comment before responding? OP clearly addresses these issues…
OP addresses it by simply saying it’s not exploitation and the animals are not harmed. Both things are false. OP has nothing further to say to sustain that view. So what the fuck more are we supposed to have read?
OP addresses it by simply saying it’s not exploitation and the animals are not harmed.
In some cases.
Both things are false
In the cases OP isn’t talking about.
So what the fuck more are we supposed to have read?
Everything the other guy listed is the standard industry-scale production. What you should’ve read is that there are alternatives that ensure the animals are happy and taken care of.
It is a fallacy to say there are alternatives that ensure the animals are happy and taken care of. That is simply not true from an ethical point of view, which isn’t really concerned with your subjective measure of another individual’s “happiness.”
There is no ethical way to create an individual with the preformed intention of forcing that individual into a state of life-long dependence, where you are its only means of survival. That on its face is already profoundly unethical, it’s a truly monstrous and selfish thing to do to another individual.
The animals we create are morally equivalent to our own children. They are entitled to the exact same unconditional love and protection.
There is no ethical way to create an individual with the preformed intention of forcing that individual into a state of life-long dependence, where you are its only means of survival. That on its face is already profoundly unethical, it’s a truly monstrous and selfish thing to do to another individual.
By that logic, having a pet dog is somehow deeply unethical, and the fact that humanity created dogs from wolves over tens of thousands of years is an abomination
Does that actually make sense? I would say no, I dont believe pet dogs suffer through their existence if they are well treated and cared for. I dont think having a dog is unethical, even though I have never had one
Yup, see this response.
-
beans are alright but pulses
are what i swear by. god damn i fuckin love lentils 
Ah, purity tests, here we fucking go again.
I pretty much gave up on trying to please people for this reason. There’s always something they find flawed about you.
It’s literally impossible to please everyone.
This is why i try as hard as i can to phrase things as “i really think you should consider not doing XYZ” or if it’s really severe “So: you doing XYZ is objectively quite shitty, i hope you can accept that and be motivated to stop doing it because it makes you feel bad, but also i don’t hate you for it it just makes me sad”
Like with veganism we should all eat as little meat as we can. Eating meat is bad in so many ways but obviously it can be quite difficult to stop, so i don’t judge people for eating meat but i will judge people for ignoring that it is bad and refusing to even consider changing their habits, just try to eat less meat or at least switch to meats that are less bad.
If only I could fool my family into believing they are eating meat.
This seems like rage bait in its entirety. Gatekeeping that you can’t be left if you aren’t a vegan as well.
Nah, the meme says people who believe in meat eating (carnists) can be leftist on other issues, but they just can’t bring themselves to be progressive about animals.
Which is 100% bullshit.
I used to eat meat once every blue moon. Then I got a diagnosis that my body has a super hard time retaining iron and plant-based iron sources are more difficult for the body to process, so I need to eat more red meat.
I want that meat to be sourced without animal harm - ideally through lab-grown stuff. But that’s just not available anywhere where I live.
Read the comment you replied to again. You are not among those mentioned.
But they eat meat and are progressive about animals, which is impossible as per that comment, how are they not among those mentioned?
As the other user mentioned here - from the OP it seems like I am very specifically among those mentioned.
Also what a vegetarian looks like when they learn that plants react to damage in a way that’s analogous to pain.
Takes more dead plants to feed animals to eat than to just eat directly.
That will be ignored because it doesn’t help rationalize cruelty and needless violence.
iff (all leftists agreed)(either)(to be vegans)(or)(veganism has nothing to do with leftism) then (I would just go with the consensus and do the vegan thing)
since the majority of people, and, presumably, the majority of leftists don’t agree to be vegans, we should probably stop using it to divide the left.
I don’t think you’re using parentheses correctly.
do you think you understood what I was saying?
You can use this talking point for any leftist topic because, guess what, the left is already divided. People use this to argue against anti-racism or anti-imperialism because “the Left has to be united”, “no war but class war”, led by the most privileged of the oppressed groups
vegans aren’t being repressed. their argument is that animals are being repressed.
Lol how many times have I heard vegans say, “oppressing minorities isn’t as bad as animal agriculture”
Like I def know vegans who are bad ass leftists, my own leftism was inspired by veganism, and when the conditions of my life make it easier to eat vegan I will switch my diet back.
But there are lots of people who are vegan for health reasons, which is a perfectly fine reason to be vegan. But they don’t tend to be especially left wing. The owners of a vegan hot dog restaurant/manufacturing in my city are like MAGA vegans. I had an ex girlfriend who was vegan, who never had sympathy for homeless people or any social causes before we got together.
I think what veganism and leftism have in common, is that many people are motivated by deep sympathy or empathy to make changes to themselves, in the hopes that in doing so we will make a change in the world. If we change enough people’s minds, and they change themselves, eventually it will lead to a shift in the real world.
But leftism is not “my way of life is better and you’re a bad person if you don’t think and act like me” which is the attitude of many vegans. That isn’t vegan leftism, it’s vegan centrism. Checking product labels isn’t political, and alienating people for their diet isn’t leftist.
Leftism does not equal “having sympathy outside of my self”. Sympathy and empathy are like senses. These senses allow us to identify objective truth, particularly injustice, by allowing us to sense pain in others. When this motivates us to make change to ourselves or the world, to resist injustice, that is leftism.
Every dividing issue has a political left and right. There are moderate and hard right conservatives, progressive and centrist liberals, left and moderate socialists. Left vegans are like some of the best people in society, and a conservative or centrist vegan is likely closer to the left on some social issues, if I had to guess.
But maybe that’s not the point of the meme. Maybe veganism is like a litmus test for performative leftism
I mean isn’t it something like 300 million animals going through factory farming per year? A lot of that is essentially actual torture, so I would say pretty much nothing is on that level. That’s the entire population of the US every year going through factory farming.
Idk what would be performative about it? Many vegans are crazy, that doesn’t mean supporting factory farming is “just a diet choice” any more than supporting trump is “just politics.”
Animal agriculture is objectively an absolute horror show on any level. Boycott and abstention are legitimate political tactics.
The problem, is that many vegans divide society up into two camps, people who eat meat, and people who don’t. The people who do eat meat are willfully destroying the environment and causing great suffering; the people who don’t eat meat are not contributing to the suffering, simple as. Q.E.D. veganism is not just a healthier and more sustainable way to live, which it undeniably is, but people have a moral imperative to abstain from consuming animal products.
But, that imperative to act is based on many contradicting assumptions. For one, it implodes the entire issue of the ethics of production, down to a individual personal choice. The choice to follow an ethical vegan diet is one of many factors that might decide what people eat and why. Ignoring differences in social culture and perspective, also ignores economic causes and effects. These vegan centrists don’t care about more ethical kinds of farming practices or actually campaigning for change politically and economically.
I think there are chill vegans who feel good knowing they don’t contribute to animal cruelty, who believes that injustice to animals doesn’t excuse injustice toward humans, those people arent just comrades, they’re disciplined through and through. I admire the commitment and discipline and the organized left needs more of it!
But condemning an individual when the system is largely to blame, is absolutely devoid of a coherent theory of change. This approach creates an abstraction of animal agriculture based in righteous outrage against immense suffering; and another abstraction of the individual and their “choice”, but never bothers with any actual specifics. To me, this amounts to telling people to go vote with their dollars. It’s accepting a literal market solution. And market solutions don’t fix problems, they exploit problems for profit.
You know who most often calls for market solutions to structural problems? Political centrists.
Furthermore, there’s no theory of how ideas spread, which stems from no theory of power. People act like they can just debate people into changing their behavior. Actually, change only comes from organization, because power is made of individuals all working together. Without real power, centrist vegans can’t berate a mass of people into agreeing with them. All they can do is make other people feel judged, and more likely to reject even the many beneficial aspects of veganism. So the approach fails, and being totally impractical, actually hurts the goals of veganism. Textbook campism and sectarianism.
I know that there are very committed, busy activists who are also militant vegans. If that person wants to yell at me, I’d accept the abuse, I’ll take that L. And if you’re a vegan who is like “that’s gross, I’d prefer if you didn’t eat meat around me,” I would consider whether altering my behavior is even worth it. Because if we are friends I’ll def abstain. If not, fuck off. Funny how that works, being friendly.
Monopoly capitalist corpos, and animal agriculture are brutally bound up in one another, unevenness of access to nutritious food, and oppressive living conditions driven by capitalist class war economics, have well documented effects on people’s culture (how regular people determine what is true and ethical) but also their decision making. Vegan views are based in reality, but not in many peoples reality because in our society, we are alienated from the natural world. Vegan centrists aren’t bad people, they subscribe to thinking the way that many people do. It just happens to be a way that hides real causes of suffering while professing to be an enemy of real suffering.
It isn’t that vegan centrists are objectively wrong, but like all centrists, they are too abstract in thinking, because they’re too far away from the particulars, and so they can’t name the actual problems.
That was a good read. Thanks for sharing :)
I know a catholic anti-vaxxer vegan and a bisexual lumberjack vegan so the field is pretty wide open.
there’s also, like, an entire gargantuan country of people who are largely vegan simply because they can’t afford meat
I’m sure many indians see this discourse and go “wow imagine being so rich that you can just casually eat beef every week, what a wonderful thing to be able to complain about”
