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Vegan Influencers Keep Comparing Meat-Eating to the Holocaust and Slavery
- Thread starter WrenchNinja
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Please don't pay any attention to this dickhead. He is a con artist who raises money for the "animals" but goes on expensive luxury trips with the money.
He doesn't represent the Vegan community. Fuck him.
Most of us (at least the Vegans I know) couldn't give two shits about what you eat. We just don't want to eat it. Yeah it'd be nice if more people ate less meat but it a long road and the majority of people aren't going to change overnight. So shoving shit down their throat won't help.
He doesn't represent the Vegan community. Fuck him.
Most of us (at least the Vegans I know) couldn't give two shits about what you eat. We just don't want to eat it. Yeah it'd be nice if more people ate less meat but it a long road and the majority of people aren't going to change overnight. So shoving shit down their throat won't help.
User Banned (3 months): bigoted and inflammatory comparisons
This can be at once both true and and sad for exposing a glitch in human empathy.
While the holocaust comment is pretty distasteful, the slavery comment is actually pretty accurate. In fact, this line of reasoning has been pointed out in multiple highly regarded publications, including the book Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. I think the argument holds a lot of weight. For people who immediately scoff at the idea, I highly suggest taking a step back and fully reviewing what we're doing to animals in the modern age. Pens that are so small a sow cannot turn, forced into pregnancy as fast as possible, weened babies off so young to cause distress, forcing animals to spend their entire existence laying in their own excrement, and the list goes on and on. It didn't used to be this way. We've taken billions of sentient animals and forced them into such horrible life that it will bring the average person to tears when they see it.
I suppose both issues deal with the question at which one point one should grant something moral consideration, but there are some substantial differences. For one, you're not weighing a potential (currently non-sentient) life vs. the bodily autonomy of a woman but the life of a sentient living being vs. your craving for meat which is entirely optional.
As a vegetarian I completely agree with you.
The only vegetarians/vegans that shove their dietary choice in your face are the attention grabbing idiots. The self righteous (usually bigots) that are overwhelmingly active on social media and desire the feedback loop and the negative attention they gain also.
It's beyond annoying to see. My choice in diet is mine, for whatever personal reasons I have. I wont persecute my friends and I don't expect them to persecute me because I like green leafy things and tofu.
I used to be one of those asshole, pretentious vegans. I totally get how this type of rhetoric unnecessarily inflames people, especially in how it marginalizes history. And there are a lot of opportunists and grifters making lots of money on the moral crusade.
That said, right now I'm 100% a vegetarian and mostly vegan again with my current diet in large part because I still do think it's unfair to blindly support industries that are unnecessarily cruel to incredibly intelligent animals, particularly pigs.
I'm well past my activism days where I look down on anyone who still eats meat. But this is the kind of shit that I can't move past, personally:
I will never get past the nipple bacon. I just can't stomach the thought of meat now. This is what comes to mind every single fucking time...bacon directly connected to a nipple. It's so fucking gross and nasty and really highlights the fact that I'm eating FLESH. I'm eating a literal DEAD CARCASS of something. Just can't do it anymore.
That said, right now I'm 100% a vegetarian and mostly vegan again with my current diet in large part because I still do think it's unfair to blindly support industries that are unnecessarily cruel to incredibly intelligent animals, particularly pigs.
I'm well past my activism days where I look down on anyone who still eats meat. But this is the kind of shit that I can't move past, personally:
I will never get past the nipple bacon. I just can't stomach the thought of meat now. This is what comes to mind every single fucking time...bacon directly connected to a nipple. It's so fucking gross and nasty and really highlights the fact that I'm eating FLESH. I'm eating a literal DEAD CARCASS of something. Just can't do it anymore.
Maybe, but I'd argue it's not because he drew an analogy with human slavery and he is pointing to that suffering as a basis of comparison for the suffering of animals while actively ignoring the current human suffering/slavery his phone ownership allows. The entire crux of his post is predicated on moral superiority. Personally, I don't subscribe to the blanket use of whataboutism, especially when the issue is directly germane to what is being discussed. I think it's perfectly acceptable to point out his indifference to human suffering and clearly in this thread I'm not alone.
But hey, even if it is a whataboutism, he's still a fucking hypocrite who used a terrible, offensive analogy and subsequently marginalized two very serious issues.
So I'll take the logical mulligan because he's still a fucking shit.
You think almost all vegans who are vocal about it are morons?
I've cut my meat consumption because vegans shared information on social media about a lot of stuff, from the treatment of animals in certain places, to the effects of the meat industry on climate change.
Many are attention grabbing assholes, yeah, but you're making big generalizations here, don't you think?
Not just that, the argument goes both ways then. I hope they don't use any products that were made using uyghur slave labor in China.
This is not new. Ethical vegans have made this comparison for decades. I mean The Smiths did a song "Meat is Murder" in the 1980s.
Those of us who are ethical vegans but don't yell at others tend not to express these kinds of viewpoints, but industrial-scale factory farming is desensitized mass murder. While I would not make that comparison directly, the factory slaughterhouses and "farms" practice a huge scale, efficient kind of mass killing and misery that genocidal dictatorships would be envious of.
Those of us who are ethical vegans but don't yell at others tend not to express these kinds of viewpoints, but industrial-scale factory farming is desensitized mass murder. While I would not make that comparison directly, the factory slaughterhouses and "farms" practice a huge scale, efficient kind of mass killing and misery that genocidal dictatorships would be envious of.
No they don't, pro life is about taking choice away from women.
These things are not comparable
I'm not sure how the modern vegetarian/vegan movement will be able to move past PETA's legacy in the public image. They've so thoroughly poisoned the well, both in terms of the American public's perception of veganism and in inspiring the next generation of asshole activists like this guy.
These people are idiots.
I do think there will be a moral generational reckoning when it comes to meat eating and farming. Children are going to grow up without so many animals because of the damage we have done to our planet. I think one day generations will look back at this age and think of us as monsters for our inhumane treatment of these animals and the unfathomable scale and magnitude of death we caused.
I do think we don't truly give these animals enough credit for their intelligence, awareness and emotional capacity because if we did it would be a lot harder to look at them as food.
All of that being said comparing it to the holocaust is fucking moronic at best
I do think there will be a moral generational reckoning when it comes to meat eating and farming. Children are going to grow up without so many animals because of the damage we have done to our planet. I think one day generations will look back at this age and think of us as monsters for our inhumane treatment of these animals and the unfathomable scale and magnitude of death we caused.
I do think we don't truly give these animals enough credit for their intelligence, awareness and emotional capacity because if we did it would be a lot harder to look at them as food.
All of that being said comparing it to the holocaust is fucking moronic at best
I hate shock tactics like this... At the very least, and way more attainable, is switching to cruelty-free (grass-fed) products or just cutting back as much as you can (it's honestly not that hard either). There is a lot to be said about the awfulness about meat industries, but this is a layered issue that'll involve a lot of factors to solve; not just influencers shouting at people.
Militant anything is the worse, to compare it to the greatest tragedies of human history, I think you have to be a bit nutty.
The vegan influencer sphere has been fucking wild for years now.
I remember first getting sucked into it with the Jezebel article surrounding a vegan woman who eats 50+ bananas a day being a cyberbully and just feeling utterly lost:
https://jezebel.com/help-me-understand-this-bullying-controversy-ripping-th-1774787368
Extremely Online Vegans are a wild bunch!
I remember first getting sucked into it with the Jezebel article surrounding a vegan woman who eats 50+ bananas a day being a cyberbully and just feeling utterly lost:
https://jezebel.com/help-me-understand-this-bullying-controversy-ripping-th-1774787368
Extremely Online Vegans are a wild bunch!
Veganism will always be more moral than eating meat. And I have no arguments to why I shouldn't be vegan, at all.
It's just my priviledged ass who hasn't been able to go full vegan. That being said, assholes like this does nothing but hurt the veganism movment.
It's just my priviledged ass who hasn't been able to go full vegan. That being said, assholes like this does nothing but hurt the veganism movment.
As a vegetarian Jew, I can tell you that there have been these people for a long ass time and they are very annoying.
If PETA or vegans or vegetarians in general had any sense and genuinely wanted to effectively proselytize rather than fucking virtue signal, they'd stick 100% to the meat industry as a climate change issue narrative.
If PETA or vegans or vegetarians in general had any sense and genuinely wanted to effectively proselytize rather than fucking virtue signal, they'd stick 100% to the meat industry as a climate change issue narrative.
No, I don't think most vegans and vegetarians who are vocal about their dietary choices are morons. I've been vocal about it, here and elsewhere, and if someone presses me for why I decided to be a vegetarian I have no shame in telling the choice to eat meat in a developed country is, by and large, precisely that; a choice. It is a luxury no longer necessary for health and survival, a luxury that is directly tied to (by virtue of choice) immense suffering and pain inflicted upon animals on an industrial scale. Behavioural science has long since clarified that farmed animals absolutely do feel fear and pain and frequently to great extent during their final moments during industrial scale farming, and by virtue of choosing to eat industrialised meat produce you are consciously contributing to this process. There is no escaping the rational and it's why I made choices of my own (hypocritically mind you, as I continue to eat dairy despite many of its own issues). Nevertheless, I don't need meat to live and be healthy and happy, and thus I choose not to contribute to another animal's suffering and death unless absolutely necessary. I've had this argument here a couple of times.
I was being mostly hyperbolic and facetious in my extremes, and I'm sorry if it came off as too blunt. My primary frustration is from successful influencer-types who, from my experience, are often vastly out of touch with the world and especially how to communicate their ethical choices and reasoning, opting for guilt and hysteria and weak comparisons to guilt an audience into lifestyle choices. They often have a weirdly fragmented understanding of their own nutrition, and especially when using guilt have an ignorance towards the inherent relationship between capitalist industrialised meat farming, availability of alternative produce, affordability for lower poverty classes. Especially on a global scale where the luxury of vegetarian/vegan diets is simply not realistic, due to time, resources, and economy.
But yeah, sorry if I was an ass about it. I implore vegans and vegetarians to share their ethics and choices and open up difficult discussions. It's the influencer-types I have grievances with, in addition to the overwhelming misinformation and nastiness from some people within these communities. One of my closest friends has been vegan for two decades and had to leave a bunch of vegan Facebook groups due to the bizarre influx of alternate therapy crystal healing idiots hijacking conversations and turning basic recipes for vegan biscuits into their own soapboxes.
#notallvegans
I'm just gonna post that from now on. Some of these comments with the broad brush opinions hit me the wrong way.
I'm just gonna post that from now on. Some of these comments with the broad brush opinions hit me the wrong way.
I don't take any sort of pride in being a meat eater. so much of the behind the scenes aspect of it is super fucked up.
but the methods these people use will only get people to ignore (or demean) their causes completely.
but the methods these people use will only get people to ignore (or demean) their causes completely.
This is the dissonance that I'm not a fan of. Moral panic when monkeys are tortured in Indonesia, whales are slaughtered in Japan, or dogs are cooked alive in China....but silence for the millions of pigs that are tortured and slaughtered inhumanely right in the USA every year and sold in the supermarket like nothing is wrong. Even though pigs are smarter than dogs and many people have them as pets.
You can't arbitrarily declare one animal "food" and another animal "man's best friend." That's just being hypocritical. Either society works towards bolstering animal rights, or they collectively don't give a shit. You can't have it both ways.
Does that make it THE HOLOCAUST and LITERAL SLAVERY? That's where PETA damages legitimate logical inconsistencies in modern-day society with extreme hyperbole.
I do implore people in general to at least reduce their meat intake. And society seems to be trending in that direction. Nearly 1/4 people in the USA have cut back on eating meat, with women twice as likely as men.
Fuck these people? I understand your disagreement with it, but the comparison to the Holocaust didn't originate with food influencers, but instead with prominent Jewish animal rights activists, some who survived the Holocaust. Have all the disdain you want for online pseudo-celebrities but the actual position is a pretty nuanced one that people should seriously engage with instead of outright dismissing it as Holocaust denial or antisemitism.
Pretty funny that everybody thinks vegetarians and vegans need to be some paragon of social activism strategy and communication. Some people are so latched onto the tone of the arguments that they are too stubborn to critically review the substance. There is substance here. There are facts, much like there are in issues like climate change, feminism, etc. Concentrate on the facts, the data, and the ethical standpoint you feel is right.
This sort of reminds me when Anita Sarkeesian was really getting full attention on Feminist Frequency. So many people were fixated on her tone and some were saying "I hate how snarky she sounds". Honestly? Who gives a flying fuck about the tone. It's ok to be upset about some of these issues. Do you think Greta Thunberg is polite and nice all the time? No. She's fucking pissed, as she should be. They are injustices right on the face of it. If you're too busy to be distracted by how the facts are packaged and think you need to have some kind of silver bullet deprogramming session, you're deliberately focusing too much on the "strategy" and less on the content.
This sort of reminds me when Anita Sarkeesian was really getting full attention on Feminist Frequency. So many people were fixated on her tone and some were saying "I hate how snarky she sounds". Honestly? Who gives a flying fuck about the tone. It's ok to be upset about some of these issues. Do you think Greta Thunberg is polite and nice all the time? No. She's fucking pissed, as she should be. They are injustices right on the face of it. If you're too busy to be distracted by how the facts are packaged and think you need to have some kind of silver bullet deprogramming session, you're deliberately focusing too much on the "strategy" and less on the content.
I never claimed it was Holocaust Denial or anti-Semitism. I said such analogs are especially shitty in an era when those things are on the rise.
And I don't care who originated that analogy, it's shit. So is the slavery analogy.
There are much better ways to get your point across.
You can always cherrypick bad insta posts to make a movement look bad. 🤷‍♂️ Dropping hardly controversial takes like "Please don't kill animals needlessly" won't exactly get you an article on Vice or a thread on Era, will it? Inflammatory takes are inherently more interesting.
From a PR POV I think spreading documentaries like Dominion is the most effective way to "convert" people if that's what one wants to do. Dunking on people with facts and logic (defending veganism is among the easiest debates to be had on the internet. Left and right communities argue against it with the same exact arguments which was a little eye-opening to me actually) is probably a double-edged sword, inflammatory comparisons are probably just repulsive. Show people what they are actually paying for. There's little as horrific as finding out how the sausage is made.
This is the dissonance that I'm not a fan of. Moral panic when monkeys are tortured in Indonesia, whales are slaughtered in Japan, or dogs are cooked alive in China....but silence for the millions of pigs that are tortured and slaughtered inhumanely right in the USA every year and sold in the supermarket like nothing is wrong. Even though pigs are smarter than dogs and many people have them as pets.
You can't arbitrarily declare one animal "food" and another animal "man's best friend." That's just being hypocritical. Either society works towards animal rights, or they collectively don't give a shit. You can't have it both ways.
Does that make it THE HOLOCAUST and LITERAL SLAVERY? That's where PETA damages legitimate logical inconsistencies in modern-day society with extreme hyperbole.
I do implore people in general to at least reduce their meat intake. And society seems to be trending in that direction. Nearly 1/4 in the USA have cut back on eating meat, with women twice as likely as men.
Sure, on the other hand, trying to improve the the world and treatment of one animal group is a step. Living in a capitalist society means constantly compromising. Just because someone didn't do ALL the right things, doesn't mean they don't care. No one person can lift up and live with ZERO conflicts of interest or even have all the right information to make these decisions. Applaud the attempt and encourage more, don't mock people for not running a marathon the first time they try to exercise.
I can fully acknowledge the validity of veganism without being okay with this type of messaging.
And to be clear, I am not okay with this type of messaging.
If chickens and cows want me to stop eating them, they need to be more cute like dogs. Or dogs should be more delicious if they want me to eat them.
This is the dissonance that I'm not a fan of. Moral panic when monkeys are tortured in Indonesia, whales are slaughtered in Japan, or dogs are cooked alive in China....but silence for the millions of pigs that are tortured and slaughtered inhumanely right in the USA every year and sold in the supermarket like nothing is wrong. Even though pigs are smarter than dogs and many people have them as pets.
You can't arbitrarily declare one animal "food" and another animal "man's best friend." That's just being hypocritical. Either society works towards animal rights, or they collectively don't give a shit. You can't have it both ways.
Does that make it THE HOLOCAUST and LITERAL SLAVERY? That's where PETA damages legitimate logical inconsistencies in modern-day society with extreme hyperbole.
I do implore people in general to at least reduce their meat intake. And society seems to be trending in that direction. Nearly 1/4 people in the USA have cut back on eating meat, with women twice as likely as men.
Pigs are raised as food with replenishable and controlled numbers. Whales are not, and almost went extinct due to Japanese whaling.
I'm not saying eating pigs doesn't do other harm, but comparing eating pigs to slaughtering whales is clear dissonance
That's why I said successful influencer types, not general social media posting. Inflammatory takes are inherently more interesting and garner a lot more attention, and are often precisely faulted in dialogue, poor at conversion, and misrepresentative of a community because of this. It's like sensationalist news headlines. Grabs the audience, but often full of useless, misinformed shit that doesn't benefit anybody.
But yes, I agree. Proper documentaries that open up dialogues and present information clearly and concisely, and intellectually engage people in the context and consequences of industrialised farming, a person's options and role they play within that, and what kind of support exists if they would like to try alternatives, is far more effective. There's a lot of other factors that need to be considered too, again like the relationship between classism and produce affordability/accessibility, that play a major role in the seemingly unstoppable steam train that is factory farming, but it does begin with a conversation and having a solid platform of facts and dialogue is a good start.
They are idiots.
If they want to be reductive they can drill down on every consumer good they use in their life and how someone or something is exploited to create that consumer good., even their beloved veggies. They can eat dirt and drink water and see how far they get.
Been a veg since 1991.
If they want to be reductive they can drill down on every consumer good they use in their life and how someone or something is exploited to create that consumer good., even their beloved veggies. They can eat dirt and drink water and see how far they get.
Been a veg since 1991.
I still eat meat occasionally (although I ensure it's from good sources) but I do believe in 100 or 200 years most humans will see it, and particularly mega farms and their absolutely monstrous treatment of animals, as a super fucked up thing like we do see slavery, colonization or war now (and many still have to catch up on those).
We literally give these animals so little space that they can't move, they step over each other covered in feces, we push food down their throats, make holes in their stomachs to push more food, steal their babies as they are born, destroy their bodies in life to make them grow faster, they get so sick we can only keep them alive with so many hormones that we are growing immune to our own medicine... When global warming forces us to use lab-grown meat for a few generations, those who didn't grow up used to this won't look fond of it.
We literally give these animals so little space that they can't move, they step over each other covered in feces, we push food down their throats, make holes in their stomachs to push more food, steal their babies as they are born, destroy their bodies in life to make them grow faster, they get so sick we can only keep them alive with so many hormones that we are growing immune to our own medicine... When global warming forces us to use lab-grown meat for a few generations, those who didn't grow up used to this won't look fond of it.
Holocaust survivors have made the same comparisons as well.
They are not comparable on an ideological basis, clearly the nazis committed their genocide for other reasons then the continued exploitation (and killing) of animals by animal agriculture.
The comparison can be made in the execution of these two. Especially with regard to factory farming, watch Dominion for instance.
Personally I blame the way animals are exploited more on capitalism (meat demand v.s. amount of grazing land & cost effectiveness).
And Governments know that this is happening and make sure that trying to expose it is illegal.
At the same time we are fighting climate change which in large part is related to animal agriculture.
These things also come at a human cost.
We don't eat dogs because dogs are carnivores and you can get parasites and other issues from eating carnivores.
Otherwise we would eat the hell out of them.
It's not the degree of suffering that matters, it's the dissonance between the two reactions that's so jarring. MORAL PANIC vs. silence. If you care about the welfare of one intelligent animal group (like dogs), that courtesy should logically extend to other intelligent animal groups as well (like pigs). Don't just limit your compassion to what's convenient in Western society.
Exactly. We can't change the world, but we can make simple decisions that make big impacts in an aggregate. Deciding not to eat pork, or eating pork a lot less frequently, when multiplied over millions of people will drive pork producers out of business. And the suffering the pigs face will lessen. It doesn't take anything radical to make incremental positive changes in society.
Or, you know, reminding people that eating large quantities of meat is a relatively recent phenomenon, and most Europeans and Americans up til the 20th century subsided mostly on grains, vegetables, fruits, etc. with meat being a special occasion sort of thing.
I am not vegan or vegetarian but I can't help but notice that society goes out of its way to point out examples of "militant vegans" or whatever. Obviously this guy in the OP is fuckhead, but why do we care about him at all? He doesn't speak for anyone other than himself and maybe some other insane weirdos.
I think we love to find examples of militant vegans because their craziness makes us feel better about the fact that we eat a lot of meat despite knowing what it does to the planet as well as the animals. And I say this as someone who very much enjoys meat.
I think we love to find examples of militant vegans because their craziness makes us feel better about the fact that we eat a lot of meat despite knowing what it does to the planet as well as the animals. And I say this as someone who very much enjoys meat.
The tiny sliver of people who would compare meat-eating to the holocaust or slavery is in no way representative of veganism as a whole, and I hope everyone that is rightfully raging about it in this thread recognizes that. Because veganism is the future (I say this as a meat-eater with a vegan partner); factory farming is killing this planet and there is something metaphysically horrible about the vampiric relationship we (humans) have with sentient life on this planet. Please don't buy into the premise that all vegans are naive or selfish or evil or whatever.
I did not bring up degree of suffering
Once again, the "dissonance" here is likening consumption of a domesticated animal whose numbers have been properly managed for centuries, to slaughter of an animal that we have proven unable to properly replenish for centuries when we thin its numbers. The two couldn't be more different.
Slaughtering whales leads to the end of all whales. Consuming domesticated pigs, cows, sheep, ironically makes these species more prolific.
I did not comment on dogs.
I am specifically pointing out that comparing eating pigs to slaughtering whales is not helping your cause
I am not limiting my compassion to what's convenient to Western society.
I am delegating my compassion to those species that need it most, species that are endanger of becoming extinct (whales)
This is not "dissonance"
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