Earlier today a vegan made a post with a white supremacist dog whistle by satirizing a person who's people "have been eating dog for thousands of years". Another Indigenous person and I did our best to call out the white supremacist nature of the discussion, so the poster later edited the title to specifically reference European people, which may have been well intentioned but only served to gaslight us by making it look like we were over-reacting and looking to be offended.
I came here for the leftism, and stayed for the Trans Rights. I'm a 2-spirit, native leftist. I have myriad reasons why I may or may not choose or even have the choice of veganism and any moralizing or condescension that comes from white vegans is an extension of over 500 years of an imposition of an alien value system which is profoundly disconnected from this land and the plants and animals which are our blood relations.
Yeah that whole dog-meat thing was inadvertently validating some really racist shit too. Like I get it that it's a contradiction - for a lot of the world, but it's also not a contradiction for a lot of other people, who constantly get shit on by white people because they, or just their parents or grandparents, ate the meat of the types of animals they didn't happen to fetishize and form cultural bonds with. "What kind of barbarian would eat a dog??" is not a good leftist through-line.
I'll also say that just because some white peoples' cultural connection to meat goes as far as like, butterball turkey breast slices, doesn't mean that vegans should assume all white people have a shallow relationship to animal products.
Like, since they don't have to worry about their culture getting wiped the rest of the way out, I'm not nearly as concerned about their relationship to meat... but THEY fucking are. I wouldn't be so hurt by a lack of meat but seriously, a lot of people would rather get beaten and pissed on, than have you take their meat away. And I'm not talking about the over-intensity of white peoples' resistance to being told little things, like wearing a mask for instance. No, I mean in their hearts, the idea of mandatory veganism is worse than getting their faces pissed on. For a lot of people this too-rich diet is like the last vestige of wholesome happiness in their lives, and veganism is some omega-Bloomberg shit. "Remember- no meat, and NO SODA!"
And it's not just the food itself, it's one of the only things tying them back to anything communal or wholesome. Maybe it's fucking crazy but it's absolutely true. And in areas with hunting cultures, yeah there's mayo-brained consumerist shit sometimes but for a lot of people, they have an actual cultural practice going back, and in many cases it's the glue holding family clans together. I think it's probably right to be a vegan, but tying aggressive mandatory veganism to leftism is some bad shit. I'm not being hyperbolic when I say it's worse than tying economic equality to getting your face pissed on.
Also, so I don't do the same thing I'm criticizing - I'm talking about non-consensual face pissing. You do you.
I have seen enough of white people shaming us for what we eat, and even what most do not. Ask a white person about dog eating, most will be racist to Chinese.
Me buying my weekly pound of plastic wrapped chicken, beef and pork, the production of which is the largest chunk of my carbon footprint, slaughters several animals, exploits foreign labor, produces toxic waste which ruins native land, and spreads zoonotic diseases: "lol white vegans are so preachy"
Me making a strawman argument: "Me buying my weekly pound of plastic wrapped chicken, beef and pork, the production of which is the largest chunk of my carbon footprint, slaughters several animals, exploits foreign labor, produces toxic waste which ruins native land, and spreads zoonotic diseases: “lol white vegans are so preachy”"
So...if a non-western vegan told you not to eat meat you'd take it seriously?
oh is that something vegans are doing? Demanding to colonize people to stop them eating meat? 63 upbears
“I think there is a connection between … the way we treat animals and the way we treat people who are at the bottom of the hierarchy.”
"Sentient beings … endure pain and torture as they are transformed into food for profit, food that generates disease in humans whose poverty compels them to rely on McDonald’s and KFC for nourishment."
"The fact that we can sit down and eat a piece of chicken without thinking about the horrendous conditions under which chickens are industrially bred is a sign of the dangers of capitalism, how capitalism has colonized our minds."
Notoriously privileged and counter-revolutionary preacher of Veganism; Angela Davis.
How it went:
How it's going:
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/jul/13/angela-davis-vote-joe-biden-candidate-who-can-be-m/
i don't understand why class reductionism gets upvoted when it's used to attack vegans.
Because veganism is "white and western" and therefore bad according to site orthodoxy. Unless it's from an article that quotes a Chinese CEO who wants to turn vegan meat replacements into a luxury commodity, then it's "based".
Are animals going to be full.members of society after the revolution? I mean, I think there are pretty good reasons that the answer to this should be yes, but this is solely because we should be respectful to animals.
Calling it class reductionism to not prioritize the choice of veganism, however good it may be, is not exactly respectful of the other intersections that people are born with, like gender identity, race, etc etc.
Don’t work too hard to fix the flaws in a system that needs to be removed entirely.
i don't know how else to take this besides a class reduction. they're even ignoring the fact that humanitarians is listed there right next to animal advocates, and then uses the quote to say we should just ignore their concerns.
basically just a total garbage take that is only upvoted because everyone is having a circle jerk hating on vegans right now.
No, it's because these movements, as they are often implemented to deflate the revolutionary potential by being about a lot of talk and not actually providing the ability to change the conditions that caused the issues in the first place. Of course addressing these issues is good, of course veganism is good, of course helping those in need is good - but when it's done with the intent of derailing the ability to effect real change, that is, when it is used instead of further work, or to put blame on the working class, or when it's not utilized to organize and criticize the bourgeoisie, then it is counter-revolutionary.
Example :Charity is counter revolutionary because when it is used by the bourgeoisie to direct a pittance to the poorest in need, it mollifies many otherwise who would take to the streets to demand change. Charity is used as propaganda to mask class antagonism, while simultaneously supporting the status quo.
This is a fundamental part of liberalism, is lip service to important causes, without providing a pathway to real change.
I don't see this as class reductionism.
Similarly, attacking your comrades for their personal choices does not provide a pathway to greater change. Yes, veganism is cause worth fighting for, yes animal rights are important. This is something that should be used to motivate the left, not attack and create schisms.
when it is used instead of further work, or to put blame on the working class, or when it’s not utilized to organize and criticize the bourgeoisie, then it is counter-revolutionary.
the top of the thread just says "fuck changing anything in favor of being less cruel to animals, we have more important shit to take care of." while trying to use the fucking communist manifesto to justify it. if that's not creating a fucking schism and demotivating leftist vegans i don't know what is. if he'd said about humanitarian efforts his comment would be removed for being 'stupidpol garbage' as well it should.
I don't think this is the right approach to take towards past communists. Their words are not gospel fron which we must derive our morals. On the contrary, we should look for areas to improve. We should make Marx look like a fascist.
However, some vegans are going out of their way to degrade comrades and label them as non-leftists. This is a form of sectarianism and needs to be combatted.
This seems like a poor argument to me along the same lines of the "how can we deal with social issues when there are starving people!!'. Attention and focus can be brought on different subjects at once.
Like is veganism as important as climate change? No of course not, climate change is already/is going to kill off most animals just like it's gonna kill humans. But that doesn't mean that people aren't allowed to focus on some of the smaller issues while we address the big ones too
You have to also be bourgeoise for any of these things to apply. It's describing the owner of a vegan restaurant not a vegan proletariat. Nice try.
No, it's describing the focus on capitalists focusing on moralistic arguments and introducing solutions to derail and take the wind out of revolutionary solutions. It's about talk and not real action.
Chiding people for being vegan is not making progress towards a society wide solution. If it did, all of the protestors outside of the meat packing plants in my town would have had them shut down decades ago.
It's the same with XR, with PETA, with Occupy wallstreet. These are movements that shame the user, the consumer, and the worker, without possessing any plan for follow through for making real solutions or effecting change, it's just blame and spectacle.
Veganism has a very true moral argument, but this shouldn't be blaming people for eating meat or calling them non -leftists, it should be working together to effect this change from a position of power.
more pressing concerns, like the lack of human rights in the US and elsewhere, is kinda privileged
"It's privileged to care about subhuman lives" this website is dumb af lmao
Don’t work too hard to fix the flaws in a system that needs to be removed entirely.
Dengists: "actually no workers ever skin racoon dogs alive because that's not efficient profitable enterprise praxis"
“It’s privileged to care about subhuman lives” this website is dumb af lmao
Being vegan is fine; morally correct, even. Spending your time advocating for animals when that time could be devoted to better things is bad. Yes, humans are more important than any other animal. That should not be a hot take.
You can care about more than one thing. I think killing animals is bad, so I stopped eating them. I think that poverty is immoral so I spend my time working at a food bank and organizing to end capitalism.
You say these problems shouldn't be fought under capitalism until it's overthrown, but do you think communism or socialism should be vegan?
Yes, being vegan is the morally correct and more sustainable option. I don't think anyone could argue otherwise in good faith. I just don't think putting a ton of time into it is good when there are numerous ways to help your fellow humans with your time.
organisers of charity
All charity is bad and people who do it are evil. You heard it here first folks.
Am I still allowed to be upset that my tax dollars are used to fund the torture and slaughter of animals on an industrial scale?
Edit: Or the well-documented prevalence of PTSD among slaughterhouse employees? Even if we decide we don't give a shit about animals, I kind of get the impression that concern for the wellbeing of workers was meant to be core to the concerns of communism.
Yes, and you should be. Destroying life to satisfy the market is not the same as taking life to nourish and sustain other life. There is no connection, there is no respect. The mentality behind those slaughterhouses is one that views the rest of the world like it is behind some imaginary glass pane. Life (in the grand sense of the word) is something we are all immersed in, it is not a thing you can opt into or opt out of. If anything, the PTSD suffered by those slaughterhouse workers is a kind of proof that it is emotionally and spiritually harmful to engage in that behavior.
Fair enough. It is admittedly strange to me to see this talk of vegan colonizers. It seems to me that the white western societies that tend to do the colonizing are very much anti-vegan, given the massive scale of animal ag industries in most western countries, along with the aggressive police response to animal rights activists and anti-vegan signaling common in popular media.
Oh absolutely, the discourse around veganism is a goddamned minefield. I spent a number of years writing off veganism (despite a bunch of parallels where we could agree on things) because the common discourse was poisoned through that anti-vegan sentiment you're talking about.
I'm not into veganism, I don't care for the vegan posting. But I don't get this post. Almost every single culture on the planet has a long storied history/tradition of eating meat. It's one of many reasons why militant vegans are nearly universally reviled. IDK why vegans would be more supportive of Indigenous meat eating than of anyone else's meat eating.
Oh man. I have been gone from this site for a while, and I return to this kind of bullshit drama. I'm starting to remember why I left. No, being indigenous does not absolve you of moral culpability for your actions. If eating meat is wrong, it is wrong regardless of your culture. If eating meat is wrong because it is an enormous resource drain, then it does not stop being a resource drain because you're not white. If eating meat is wrong because animals are sentient creatures who feel pain and deserve compassion, this does not stop because the person doing it grew up in a culture where that is normalised. While vegan rhetoric may be problematic, and evoke racist imagery concerning chinese people in a discussion about dog meat, the idea that it is racist and shuts you out of the discussion when I say "Eating meat is murder" is quite frankly nonsense.
I hear ya comrade. Living where I'm at, I'm able to have a more intimate understanding of the life of the native tribes, and on a more minor note the lives of settlers that try to live in respect to nature like the native tribes, and how vital and spiritual hunting and fishing is to them.
I can understand and support the cause of anti-capitalist vegans in their fight against the horrors of industrial agriculture, yet can not help but speak up to tell them to pump the breaks a bit when the argument swerves from anti-capitalist systemic critique to neoliberal woke virtue signaling assaults of individuals or groups of peoples for how they live.
As I've said in another post, probably the original one the OP is talking about, I called this whole argument of vegans scolding people for eating meat an absolute shitlib argument on the level of "stop using plastic straws to save the environment, sweaty!"
And it flatly fucking pisses me off. It reeks of liberalism thats completely separated from the concrete people of this concrete world with concrete issues to adress and conjures up a fantasy where the ephemeral people of the world whom live on a perfect world only need to be simply told to eat their beans and greens to bring harmony to all under the heavens.
Want a taste of what life's like for the northern natives? Watch this
Kinda ironic how I look at your username and my first thought is "flesh".
:france-cool:
Bruh, I'm Mongolian, my entire culture is based on herding sheet and cattle. Our entire diet consists of meat, milk, cheese and the few wheat we can trade with the southerners. If we were to eat exclusively agricultural products then my culture will quite literally be annihiliated, but since according to these libs eating mutton is just as cruel as a viking blood eagles I guess that's good.
There's a reason I said "white vegans" in my post. I have been vegan when circumstances have permitted.
The post does explicitly say White Vegans, and generalizations are necessary because culture is a generalization. It's the overlap in identities, beliefs, and lifestyles of large numbers of unique individuals and therefore inherently nebulous.
I really think you're trying to hard here. You're trying to find loopholes, not grasp the central tenants.
Different people have different morals, standards, traditions, and lifestyles. These are often alien to us, and we need to be careful not to be exclusionary. That means recognising and accepting differences of opinion. Don't try to make your personal soft spot the criteria for who's a leftist.
The title is not the post. You need to comprehend the title, the body, the argument, and the motivation behind the post, not the semantics of the tagline.
I use Us and We to mean leftists. That paragraph is not specific to veganism or indigenous issues. It's a real problem with the culture of the site.
Most veganism is coming from the experiences of those living in a modern, industrial society, completely removed from where food comes from. It comes from people trying to close that distance and being shocked by what they find. And it is awful. The way we treat livestock needs to change, and that's something I think everyone here agrees on, vegan or not.
But there's another side to things. Humans are animals. We are naturally part of an ecosystem, fulfill our needs by taking fron that ecosystem, and we change that ecosystem to suit out needs. In this context, humans hunting and eating meat is no different than a wolf or bear doing so.
I'm a vegetarian. In my life, I don't think eating meat can be justified. However, not everyone has my life. I can't expect other people to come to the same conclusions I do when their relationship to food and to the natural world are completely alien to me.
Somewhere between those two points, early human ancestors and industrialised farming and slaughter, I think there's a line to be drawn where our relationship to other animals becomes unnatural, exploitative, and downright evil. I don't know where it is. Is the invention of horticulture when we lost the right to kill? The industrial revolution? Was domestication a mistake? Can we include animals in our economy at all? Should we separate ourselves from nature entirely? What's exploitation and what's symbiosis? Does the act of pondering these questions leave us with obligations other animal species lack?
It's hard to answer these questions even for yourself, but then trying to impose your answers onto others becomes problematic because you came up with your answers in a completely different context.
Why must it be true for all? If it exclude his culture that is enough. A counterexample do not disprove it.
The bottom line is still caring more about human comfort than animal lives. If a (hypothetical) Indigenous group has a culture that holds mass human sacrifice then should that just be accepted?
Nah I’d rather talk about my specific experiences in regards to my race than be some anonymous shadow figure. It’s a huge part of who I am, how I interact with the world, how I believe in leftism. Not like someone can identify every gypsy in the world out there to find which one I am.
edit: also mostly just asked cause if a nonRoma tried to tell me to not ‘generalize for all Roma’ or something i’d surely be upset. saying such a thing can be taken in kind of a shitty way if youre not of the same ethnicity/culture.
Don’t worry I learned my lesson the other week and will never talk about my family crest on social media.
So where do you draw the line? Because there are quite a few morals, standards, traditions and lifestyles that opposing is inherent to leftism, we exclude capitalists, slaveowners, racists, homophobes, transphobes etc. what is the difference other than that you personally see it as a lesser issue and then why do you see it as lesser? Is it because you don't see animal life as life maybe?
The difference is animals are not part of the leftist movement (save for a handful of based riot dogs). If you're homophobic, racist, transphobic, etc. inviting you into the leftist movement weakens it by excluding others. Someone who eats burgers isn't excluding anyone from the leftist movement and therefore not an impediment to Leftism.
many of us have to understand that people can have a very strong cultural connection to food and that many also have a different or better relationship with their food and how or where it comes from.
it’s exhausting to see
:Care-Comrade:
I would be happy to no longer consume non-hunted meats once the occupiers in my country are gone and the total environmental devastation to the hunting grounds are repaired and reversed.
The amount of damage done in the last 150 years alone is enough to unironically turn someone into a posadist.
:posadist-nuke: :pog-dolphin:
I saw your two comments arguing with the poste,pr, and holy shit - the instant you called them out on racism they doubled down lmao
doubled down
More like quadrupled down, there were like 5+ different edits
they acted as if putting an asterisk with "european" at the end of their sentence would suddenly erase all the dogwhistles
God damn, looks like they followed you here. Sorry comrade
Yeah the comments are terrible holy shit. Everyone trying to impose their value system on indigenous people, it's bad
after being specifically called out for trying to impose those values. good job everyone, and thanks mods for all your hard work at making sure anglo vegans get their soapbox to shout from
Between the horrible, F tier, reactionary anti vegan arguments, and then vegans refusing to take any criticism from indigenous people the site is really showing its entire ass on this.
I won't exclude omnis; we all want to overthrow capitalism, and we can't agree on everything
but well-being for all means animals too; killing and exploiting animal comrades is wrong for anyone and everyone. if your conditions mean you'll actually die without some animal product, that's pretty different. but yeah eventually veganism should be integrated into leftism, it's just amending who the subjects of exploitation are
I disagree with veganism being mandatory of a leftist vision. I'm not going to discuss meat consumption right now. I agree veganism is good in the current conditions that most of us live in, but I disagree with thei idealization of veganism outside the capitalist system.
Most visions of socialism in the modern era include a symbiotic relationship to the natural world, and that doesn't need to stop with animals.
Having a pet and maintaining humane living conditions for them isn't exploitation. At most, they may provide emotional labour, but they're generally quite eager and happy with their compensation.
Now say that pet is a female chicken. It lays eggs. Do I have to leave those to rot? Throw them away? Can we not have sheep? Can we not shear their wool? What about goats and their milk?
These are all byproducts or surplusses of natural processes. If we live together in a commune with these animals, is utilising that surplus immoral?
Our biological processes are designed to work together to maintain an ecosystem. We may have dramatically reshaped that ecosystem, but when we remove the system that's actively pushing us to destroy it, we can rekindle that connection to other lifeforms.
utilizing that surplus is immoral because there's basically never a way to do it harmlessly
-here's some of the cruelty involved in wool (CW animal abuse): https://youtu.be/dUnTyjBuxkk
-taking in rescue pets is a good thing, but producing pets through dog farms results in a lot of animals getting culled
-both goat dairy and cow dairy require animals to be constantly impregnated (r*ped) so they can produce milk, and calves are separated from their mothers which is horrifying
-even if you just mean backyard eggs, female chickens were bred to lay many times more than they would naturally, and as a result suffer from calcium deficiencies, which result in lots of broken bones
even under socialism, we would continue to selectively breed animals in ways harmful to their health, and there would always be an incentive to treat them only well enough to get a product out of them. we have to remove the idea of getting labor/products out animals, because if we allow that, it means many people will take in animals just for those products. it's basically incentivizing mistreatment
The same occurs with our reliance on the labour of other people. The answer is to remove the commodification, not the relationship with animals or workers.
I'm not watching any videos posted by vegans. Y'all have been terrible with content warnings so I don't trust any links. You can give haircuts humanely.
Animals have sex too. If you have a male and female together, you'll get a baby. It's only with truly monsterous levels of selective breeding that we've created a few breeds that need insemination. Removing calfs is optional. All animals produce a surplus. We've spent centuries finding ways to increase that surplus.
We have guided chicken evolution into a new niche of a symbiotic relationship with farmers, providing eggs in exchange for food, safety, comfort, and medical care. All species have weaknesses, but a major concern of chicken farmers is providing extra calcium.
Arguing about specific conditions that can be changed doesn't advance your position when we're discussing a post-capitalist world where we can change those conditions.
I mean veganism is about trying to eliminate the exploitation and suffering of animals for human gain so if you're able to devise some system that has no exploitation of suffering that still lets you consume animal products then crack on but why bother coming up with some post-capitalist hypothetical system when we already have the means to eliminate animal suffering and exploitation by just not using animal products.
We've had sustainable, ethical relationships with wild and domesticated animals since before we were human. While those relationships no longer predominate, they still exist.
We do not have the means to eliminate animal cruelty through individual action. Boycotts don't work. That's why we've always imposed the requirement for change on political institutions and systems of production. Our consumption patters are based on innumerable factors and you can not fix any problem by focusing on one, single factor to force people into changing their consumption.
I thought we were talking about a post capitalist world and a vision of socialism not on boycotts and how to reach this post capitalist world. I probably made my point badly but what I'm trying to say is if you're envisaging a socialist world with ethical relationships with animals, why would you envision one where you have to come up with a way to consume animal products ethically when you can just envision a world where you don't use animal products at all.
