I escaped the Reddit regime a little while ago. I consider myself a marxist-leninist-MZT. Vegetarian and vegan for a few years. I've a lot of thoughts on how marxism and veganism are connected. Never wrote them down. I'd like to start smth like a club for marxist vegans to develop our own proletarian theory. Most vegan theory I found is either openly bourgeois (Francione is a literal TERF) or revisionist (anti-China, anarchist, libertarian). How about fixing this?
My thoughts are that is perfectly fine. About a year ago I started eating less meat myself and am transferring over to a more vegan diet. Grocery stores where I'm at are abysmal in terms of making decent dishes or the spices necessary so I end up growing a lot of my veggies and fruit when every season. cardboard shroomie farms had me switching a lot of my protein base with tofu and mushrooms like oysters and lions mane. I fucking love mushrooms.
I also think the whole "carnist" thing and any form of aggressive proselytization should be left at the door. What do I mean by aggressive? Well, I put "carnist" in quotes because I have first hand seen the bend that some people can have. To me, it is no different than purist leftcoms. Doctrine purity combined with a complete lack of knowledge of the conditions the person they're talking to is going through. I've seen the massive struggle sessions on Hexbear and the points darkcalling made ring true.
What's actually been the most helpful to me is an actual community that posts good recipes (once again, mushrooms), one that understands that people can and have struggled with transitioning diets and one that doesn't beat you over the head with insults and a general demeaning nature. If someone doesn't wish to switch to a vegan diet, that's a shame, but it's something that you should just accept in the sense of "Well, if they aren't interested in actually changing, what is the point of causing a flame-war on a unrelated or even tangently related topic?". Hexbear's Vegan community front, smack-center is already two inciteful, divisive shit. "Carnists are deeply unserious people". Once again, to me it's no different than a leftcom being like "Ah, the poor simply haven't actualized the potential of the intelligentsia for the revolution!".
In the same manner, I am really not fond of Christianity. Will I bash and attack Christians on here? No. I'll gladly talk about something I'm writing, or mention that it's good that proselytization of the young is put down like in China but I wont attack anyone specifically. If you want to make a community here that talks about the ills of animal exploitation, new recipes, theory-crafting, etc that is great and should be encouraged.
So I wrote a thing and then realized after you had already mentioned religion also in your example (oops, reading comprehension fail lol). I will post what I was going to say anyway, but it may come across a bit of a repeat of what you have already said.
This is what I wrote:
Yeah, I would say it's similar to what gets called "militant atheism" in this way. It's one thing to be against exploitative, abusive, or controlling religious practices (especially cult-leaning stuff). It's another thing to hate religion unquestioningly and in the process, be hating colonized peoples who just happen to also be religious while fighting for liberation. In a similar sense, it's one thing to encourage someone who can realistically eat vegan to eat vegan. It's another thing to throw everyone under the bus, including colonized peoples who hunt in ways that respect animals and do it to survive, and have a very different view and practice of eating meat than the factory farming capitalistic mode of consumption. When we try to universalize these things too flippantly, we more often end up on the side of imperialism, even if unintentionally. The imperialized, colonized peoples of the world may not have the "liberal individualism" "choices" that we have to "choose to be vegan" in the first place. Some of them are outright struggling to eat, period. So yeah, things need to be understood in the proper context.