people see someone who disagrees on a fairly complex issue and jump immediately to the worst fucking mindset possible in the person they’re debating with.

veganism is one of the various positions in which you will rarely see unity in any given left group that doesn’t organize around it. so literally the only way to address it is for both sides of the issue to decide either their comrades are still their comrades despite a differing position on it, or that the differences are irreconcilable in which case the other side needs to be fought at the expense of the community itself.

Yeah this sort of thing is really scary, and I know I've done it already myself a bit which I regret like implying they would throw slurs at me if I partaked in things like fishing/hunting that my grandpa and his community took part in, I realize that was unfair and rude of me to just assume. I still think it has a veneer of racism behind that but I was probably too hostile and assumptive about the level. At the end of the day, arguments around all these topics have been in leftist discourse since practically forever. And I'll also admit, I've probably upvoted a few rude comments in my haste that I shouldn't, which doesn't help cause it shows "support" for them that I shouldn't have done.

And besides, there have been vegan communists, they have been omni communists, there was probably a lot of communist thinkers who couldn't make up their mind too all throughout history. Accusations thrown around like "Vegans are actually neoliberals!" or "You can't be leftist without veganism" are just silly because of that. It's so unnecessarily aggressive.

Also uh, this is a problem throughout the whole internet but minorities can disagree with each other is a thing too. I posted before about how I don't want to talk over my indigenous comrades, but we do need to keep in mind that the term is broad and can refer to a lot of different cultures with different histories behind them. One culture might have a lot of emphasis on hunting and still actively teach their kids how to, while another might have veered away from that in the past few generations. One holocaust survivor might think eating animals is a fair comparison, while other survivors might find it disrespectful of the pain and suffering they went through. Someone who's ancestors were slaves might think that the comparison to slavery as unfair and rude, while another person with slave ancestors think it's an apt comparision. People can disagree about these things even in historically oppressed communities. But I do think, the only people who should really be speaking up about that are the ones who go through it. A holocaust survivor can call something similar to the holocaust, but you, someone born 50 years after, shouldn't be. You can point to the person who did say it, but that's really it. It's not your job to latch onto one oppressed person's words and use them to shove your own non experienced thoughts into a conversation.