Full disclosure: I don’t have the time or patience to watch a thirty minute video, and perhaps the OOP discusses this point somewhere in the video. I don’t know.
But I believe vegan activism doesn’t require anti-capitalist activism. Or even opposition to capitalism in general.
I agree that capitalism is inherently anti-vegan. The logic of capitalism sees both animal bodies and human bodies as objects to be owned and used for their masters’ profit.
I think it’s more ideologically consistent for vegan activists to also oppose capitalist systems as a whole.
But vegan activism doesn’t require ideological consistency. We’re not trying to change the entire world economic system. We don’t need to change the entire world economic system. If abolitionists could oppose slavery without opposing capitalism - and win - vegans can oppose the slavery of animals without opposing capitalism. Vegans can win victories and have protections for animals written into law without opposing capitalism. We can and we have.
And if you can be a vegan activist and still be a capitalist, you can certainly just be an ordinary vegan and still be a capitalist.
Frankly, absolute ideological consistency is for heroes in an Ayn Rand novel. Vegans can work with with anybody who puts the animals first. And anybody who puts the animals first can be a vegan.
The video is worth a watch. It actually doesn’t argue that all vegans must be anti-capitalist.
Instead it’s a take-down of a video of a popular vegan influencer arguing you can’t be both vegan and anti-capitalist.
Insightful and well said. I appreciated the analogy with abolitionism. Just wanted to say thanks - this is the kind of Lemmy content I love to see :)
Want to sabotage a protest? Encourage advocacy for increasingly tangential issues. Focus splits, folks start disagreeing on new issues, folks start disagreeing on how issues get prioritized, everything falls apart.
Sadly, this doesn’t even require a malicious actor encouraging it. Well-meaning folks see a potentially sympathetic audience for their pet issue and boom.
I’ll happily debate political beliefs, but not here. In vegan communities, I’m here for the animals and welcome anyone here with similar motivations. Fragmenting the community by requiring increasingly narrow adherence to beliefs X, Y, and Z is not helpful.
What is the source of your quote? I can think of quite a few places where I’d want to share it 😆
Just copy/pasting something I wrote in another thread as it applies just as much here. https://lemmy.ca/comment/4835622
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