No seriously. Why did veganism and animal rights activism seemingly die out entirely from the left?
I’m old enough (38) to remember when veganism was practically a litmus test for determining if you were a principled leftist or not, especially in anarchist and Maoist spaces. Nowadays it seems like no one under 28 is vegan anymore, or gives a shit about animal rights.
Having become an anarchist as a teenager in the early 2000s, I fully remember how interwoven the radical left was with the animal rights and vegan movements. Gen X and xennial comrades in particular were very dogmatic about this issue, arguably more than they were most issues concerning US imperialism. But the younger generation doesn’t seem to care at all. Why?
For the record, I was never vegan and I eat an omnivore diet now, but still.
129 posts and 11 image replies omitted.>>2805903B12 is extremely cheap, you can get a year supply for couple bucks.
>>2805710that's a shit deboonk. the real deboonk is that consumer power is lib nonsense and the real solution is vegan
vanguard vegan vanguard vegan vanguard >>2804648Judging by that video, of what use is veganism to capitalism though? Temperance and anti-consumption that Protestantism used to champion was useful to capitalism in the beginning, but why would veganism ever be useful for the capitalist system in the same vein?
im just going to interject here by saying that if you are a vegan and believe that eating a shrimp is murder and then you can't possibly justify first-trimester abortion as anything but murder
>>2806167Shrimp are sentient, first trimester fetuses aren't.
>>2805742Blah blah copium copium
It's a fact that animals are brutally tortured in the billions to make food and other products. And many of these animals feel pain and fear and are just as capable of feeling love and forming bonds like you do with your dog or cat.
Now obviously there's no objective morality and I won't even pretend there's an objectively correct reason to be vegan, in fact there is no objectively correct reason to be anything at all, like communist or liberal or fascist. But what is objectively correct is that billions of animals suffer extreme pain, fear and live deeply unnatural lives as a result of humans, and you either saying you don't give a shit about that or you lie and claim that that isn't happening.
I'm not sure I agree with the premise that vegans have gone, there's more vegans now than ever.
But with regards to leftism, leftists stopped making change in the world and wanted their treats, iPhones and sweatshop goods, so stopped acting in the real world and convinced themselves that they just needed to read more theory and things would work out.
Then they called vegans 'lifestylists' for the temerity of advocating for actual change.
>>2806167Abortion is question of bodily autonomy, its about right of a woman, whether or not killing a fetus is "murder" is irrelevant. The same way I wouldnt expect someone to starve in order to not harm animal, I wouldnt force a woman to go through the physically and psychically grueling process of pregnancy. Not to mention framing conversation of animal rights around mere killing completely ignores the context of the entire modern animal agriculture, which is an infinite circle of industrialised rape and torture.
>>2806223>Abortion is question of bodily autonomy, its about right of a woman, whether or not killing a fetus is "murder" is irrelevant.sayeth satan
consider the following:
> vegans
< lack basic humanist values
< can't eat a cheeseburger
< make eyebrow raising statements likening humans to livestock
< israel is the center of their culture
> israelis
< lack basic humanist values
< can't eat a cheeseburger
< make eyebrow raising statements likening humans to livestock
< israel is the center of their culture
vegans are spiritually israeli.
>>2806250finally a good sociological analysis
>>2806250Carnists are the ones that make migrant workers work in filthy slaughterhouses in diapers so they can fill their fat bellies
>>2806275As a proud carnist I want all those migrant workers to be working from air conditioned homes in comfy useless IT jobs, and for our current crop of bankers and government officials to be doing that instead.
>>2806289Nice fantasy about how meat eating could theoretically be more ethical but actually isn't, which is all you guys have to offer
>>2806295Non-exploitative meat-producing agriculture exists in Vietnam, Laos, China, North Korea, Belarus, and Cuba. Vegans literally live in the West so they think every other country is also using a slave migrant labor workforce to harvest their crops.
>>2806297Beyond delusional.
>>2806306>Vegan ran out of argumentsThe intellectual capacity of a vegan is always limited because their limited palate results in brain shrinkage from lack of essential nutrients.
>>2806313have you considered that the fact that only people in nations that have been subjected to endemic poverty whilst being sanctioned or strip mined to hell don't eat much meat means that it's not a luxury there's people that need to be fed?
>>2806315don't he'll get a stiffy
>>2806275Plenty of migrant workers work in agriculture and are paid pennies to harvest tomatoes, peaches, strawberries, etc. Honestly this is why I find veganism silly, at least if it's posturing as a political movement rather than a personal choice. Obviously it would be more ethical to refrain from meat and animal products, or replace them with some kind of substitute (lab grown meat, genetically engineered unconscious meat slabs like
>>2806315 etc), plus the environmentalist arguments. But with the amount of evil and suffering our society currently inflicts on human beings, it seems like an absurd waste of time and resources to focus energy on solving the problem of animal cruelty. Get your priorities straight. If you believe that human life is more important than animal life, then creating a mainstream vegan food system can and should wait until we've created a society that at the very least treats humans ethically.
>>2806325I've worked for an org that provides legal representation to migrant workers in labour/immigration cases against their bosses. They are paid shit and sometimes not at all, if they complain, try to organize, or do anything to irritate their bosses they can be fired, deported, and blacklisted. This often puts their families back home in dire economic straights since they depend on the income from migrant work. I once worked on a case where two Jamaican migrants worked for six months without being paid.
>>2806275>>2806325Vegans are truly the most jewish niggers of all
I like meat, and I am unconvinced on ethical arguments regarding animal sentience. it's a load of nonsense to me. however, you can persuade me with arguments that address environmental sustainability; if those problems could be solved without sacrificing meat, then I am fine with that. animals are not people. in terms of health, meat is good for you, which is something that vegans want to staunchly deny, but it is scientifically proven fact. yes, eating meat is pleasurable, but that's not the only or even the primary reason that people consume it.
if you're vegan I bear you no ill will but you should respect my perspective, I will not abstain from meat for your moral crusade, and until you can produce a machine that lab grows meat or can outright clone living organisms so we can have a cheat code for infinite meat, the industry surrounding it will continue to churn despite human rights violations and environmental concerns. the world is not fair, it is what it is.
>>2806349there's no ecological insensitive to be vegan
>>2806349Reminder: this is the person calling you treatler in other threads.
>>2806349Based. After The Revolution™ you will be placed in charge of a re-education camp to fix all these retarded vegans and to force them to start eating meat again. They will complain and whine and try to rebel but because they're vegan they will be weak and physically unable to overpower anyone so you won't have any issues.
If the USSR under Stalin enforced veganism, Hitler would have won. Kill all vegans. Vegans are counter-revolutionary bourgeois scum who want to make proles weak and unable to fight. Revolution requires strength.
>>2806369Hitler was vegan, thoughbeit. Maybe that was a contributing factor to why the Soviets won. Germans were soyboys.
>>2806313yeah the highly meat eating countries of Kazakhstan, Bolivia, and Cuba are super rich
>>2806330oh cool so you make a living working for NGOs (no mystery who funds them) to get scabs to come in and do work and expect that the bosses who hire these scabs are going to treat them fairly? Like they would with native organized labor? The whole reason they hire scabs is because they don't have any rights or recourse.
Imagine if it wasn't ag-workers, but H1B software engineers. You think we give a fuck about those scabs either? Same deal, these people get ripped off and fucked around with, but because they aren't the chosen browns picking my salad, the NGOs don't want to take their cases lol.
>>2806344Fuck you bitch, you think I like having some amigo not be able to use a bathroom so he has to shit in the field, wipe his ass with his hand and keep on working. There are outbreaks of disease every day because of this shit. Maybe you're the jewish nigger for defending the status quo.
>>2806643You are Kaczynskist, ending the meat industry to end the exploitation of the workers is a stupid position
>>2806651Even if you genuinely dont give a shit about suffering of animals, you do see connection between massive wastefulness and environmental destruction of animal agriculture and economic conditions of less privileged people, right?
PETA was a successful psyop that painted vegans as incredibly insufferable.
>>2806673And we should care about whether you find us insufferable because…?
>>2802186trve, veganism is associated with rich white yuppies and gentrifiers. white people who smell bad and have dreadlocks.
Other thoughts:
Veganism feels like an all or nothing sort of thing, probably due to the majority of vegans being moralists. It's not really about sustainability. I think it's probably easier to get people to only eat meat 4 times a week instead of everyday, but this messaging would be against the moralistic believes of the majority of vegans. This is why the concept of pescetarian or vegetarian went away. A vegetarian meal might still have dairy, a pescetarian might still eat mussels, oysters or tinned fish. Both of these are obviously significantly better than eating beef every meal twice a day, but neither are compatible with veganism.
Veganism itself isn't compatible with food deserts. If your meals are cheap hotdogs and whatever you can get at fast food and corner stores? You can't reasonably be a vegan. Veganism has also become a luxury product, sorry but moralism doesn't work when Beyond Meat is $7.99 per pound and ground Turkey is 2.99 per pound.
>>2806682PETA is controlled by the meat industry to paint vegans in a specific way to make them less appealing. You're defending people using the thing you support to psyop others into eating more meat.
>>2806699source uyghur
>think it's probably easier to get people to only eat meat 4 times a weekWhy? If there is no ethical principle here, why the fuck would you bother? Vegan dont want reduce factory farm population from a trillion to 800 billion, but to stop it.
Also vegan diet is cheaper both per calorie and per protein, pick any measure you want.
>>2806643>oh cool so you make a living working for NGOsI was a volunteer.
>no mystery who funds themThe group I was with was funded by donations, mostly from migrant workers themselves.
>to get scabs to come in and do work No, the workers are brought in as part of a government program. What the org does is help them protect their rights which are frequently attacked by their bosses. Are you saying protecting the rights of migrant workers is a bad thing? That they shouldn't be able to sue their bosses for wage theft, harassment, unsafe conditions, etc? They're also not scabs because they aren't crossing a picket line. Learn what words mean.
>The whole reason they hire scabs is because they don't have any rights or recourse. Again, they arent scabs. Scabs are people who are hired to replace workers that go on strike. In fact the right to strike and organize is one of the issues that the org I worked with helped defend. Technically they have all the same rights as native workers, the problem is their immigration status is tied to their employment, which their bosses can terminate for any reason. Legally they have to pay them severance or give reasonable notice, however once they've been fired they can be quickly deported. Once that happens their only option is to try and sue their bosses from their home country, which means spending huge amounts of money they don't have to navigate an unfamiliar legal system in a foreign country hundreds of kilometers away, often in a language they dont even speak. It's basically impossible. The whole point of the org was to get them legal representation to defend their existing rights under the law before they can be deported. Alternatively they also act to represent them even after they've been sent home to get them lost wages or other damages. This is all done for free. Idk what kind of brainworms it takes for you to think that helping migrant workers stand up to their bosses is a bad thing. I guess you're okay with people being forced to work for free for months at a time.
>>2806703It's easier to go
"Meatless Fridays" -> "Meat only eaten four times a week" -> "Meat is a special meal" -> maybe we don't need meat. by making it a black and white "do or don't" "with or against" narrative, you're creating ideological conflict, it's piss poor propaganda. literally just read any book on ruling over a population of people or how propaganda operates.
If we want to beat climate collapse our entire food network will need to be rethought, from the ground up, with a focus on agroforestry. Something that has already been shown to be incredibly effective by the DPRK.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/pafo.12222If you don't believe that eating animals is inherently wrong (I don't) then the moral argument of veganism falls apart. But the moral argument really has nothing to do with sustainability, because ignores non-plant food sources, which are often key for agroforestry (ie sustainable crawfish farms, mussel farms as coastal restoration, hunting as necessary for environmental stewardship, etc). This is never where the discussion is though, it's usually about shaming individuals into making better consumer choices which is the epitome of neoliberal "everyone is navigating the market" mindset.
Showing something the brutality of a factory farm via one of the countless documentaries that have the leaked footage doesn't change the fact that you need a car to get to the whole foods, which is going to cost more than 'food mart' corner store, which is already overpriced, and since you can't access the whole foods anyway, you are stuck with what they sell at the 'food mart' and they sell hot dogs, processed frozen chicken patties, gallons of milk, lunch meat, and bread. There are millions of people who simply do not have access to things like fresh produce.
The solution is a total rework of our food networks focused on locally available foodstuffs. Local varieties. In season produce. Agroforestry instead of monocultures. Real systemic change like that would do infinitely more to actually prevent that which vegans oppose than shaming individuals ever could.
Veganism makes people leak because it basically makes people admit that morality is an idealist constructions and that there is no objective right or wrong. In any situation whatsoever.
People finally have to abandon all their retarded moral idealism just because they don't want to give up eating meat lol. And that's a good thing. Moral ideology is as damaging as religion to materialist thinking.
>>2806775 (me)
See :
>Genocide is bad<Why?>[answer]<Now why doesn't that answer also apply to beings that don't look human but still feel pain, fear, and are capable of love and happiness?>incoherent screeching and leaking >>2806781Nothing is ever good or bad, they just are
I am going to eat meat right now just to spite these autists.
>>2806781because animals are as stupid as they are nutritious. they can't conceive of their predicament or enact their liberation. they can lead a 90% happy life if you raise them outside in something akin to their regular habitat.
workers have been resisting their enslavement with varying levels of sophistication for as long as there has been civilization.
There’s one way to sustainably eat meat, it’s do it rarely and to hunt for it yourself, we have plenty of overpopulated and invasive species running around causing havoc. Why should I let the meat from 17 pigs rot in the sun when they destroy the land? Just snip the needles off the lionfish, who gives a fuck
Unique IPs: 25