Against Violence: Against Gary Yourofsky. (vegan / vegans / veganism)

I've met vegans face-to-face who
glamorized the idea of people being put in prison who think there's something heroic or wonderful about vegans going to prison for this type of of violent activism if vegans are known primarily for standing up in a restaurant and screaming hysterically at strangers and breaking down weeping and screaming it's not food it's violence yes that discredits veganism guess what violence much more profoundly discredits veganism a discredit Gary Yourofsky as an individual it discredits any organization he's a member of any organization he's a leader of it discredits veganism as an ideal and that's a damn shame I vanished in don't ask me to have empathy for victimizers my heart hurts enough for the victims I'm not gonna weep over a victimizer being tortured me to scrub I'm not gonna weep or victimized you being tortured you killed yo what's up I am vegan and I am anti violence and that may not sound like a controversial pairing you but in fact many of the most prominent leaders of the in public opinion political leaders for veganism are pro violence one of them is a guy named Gary Yourofsky who is quite a famous name in 2016 and he's made himself famous or infamous by making bold pronouncements in favor of violence there are certain groups of individuals who will not listen to reason and for that you need violence very few people have respond to this critically and I think this is because on the one hand nobody takes what he has to say seriously and on the other hand vegans seem to be preoccupied with photographing themselves eating bowls of oatmeal going on vacation riding a bicycle up a hill promoting weight loss diet lifestyle certain kind of glamorous self-indulgence joy to the EULA and very few people are sincerely questioning political philosophy and very few people are on a quest that involves political action so let's break it down I love a laugh but I don't agree with them in being nonviolent um the most interesting thing that you're offski has to say is actually when he contrasts himself to the Animal Liberation Front the a LF there are at least twenty videos on this channel that mention my own anti violence position and the fact that I am completely against this movement becoming violent promoting violence or societal violence I've reflect on that from different angles in different videos but it has come up at least 20 times so let's examine yobs ki is saying the al f does not go far enough that they are not violent enough for his tastes whereas someone like Steve best endorses and only endorses the type of violence at the al F promotes what does that mean the al F basically promotes breaking and entering and they claim that breaking and entering is violence against property and property only and that it is not violence against people and that therefore it's morally permissible this is amazingly shizune whether or not you are familiar with the world of criminal activity or the world of political activity and of course there often is overlap between the two I recently heard a very long interview with a guy who was a bank robber but who was also involved with the Black Panthers so he was partly motivated by political factors and he reflected one of the reasons he became a bank robber when he became a career criminal robbing banks was because he felt that robbing banks was more ethical that it was more moral that it was a crime against the state or a crime against property and not a crime against human being if you think there's a completely nonviolent way to rob a bank you're crazy you go into a bank you don't know who's gonna get hurt you don't know who's gonna get killed alright the same is true with breaking and entering and I mean there are so many mainstream movies addressing the set of culture mainstream TV shows yes people may decide they are just gonna break it enter whether it's into a laboratory or into a fur farm or into a I don't know a slaughterhouse yes it's breaking the law breaking the law is a significant choice I'll say more about that in a minute it does discredit you as a political movement it does put your members in prison I don't know any political movement that thinks that having people sitting in jail is a great way to bring about social change that's stupid I don't think anyone should be preaching here on YouTube that anyone should undertake a form of activism that's gonna put them in jail no matter how ineffective you may be now with your freedom believe me you're going to be a much less effective agent for social change when you're sitting in a cage doing a sentence for breaking and entering or for some other criminal activity it's ridiculous but above and beyond that as soon as you're into breaking and entering you think nobody gets hurt you think and on the other hand whenever people get killed in Breaking and Entering you think the thieves planned for that no you can't predict what's gonna happen you send people over a fence you send people through a window to break into property there might be someone inside that property who pulls a gun on you now what are you gonna do there might be inside that property you pulls a baseball bat on you now what are you gonna do okay people get hurt including your people it's gonna be in the very near future that somebody bust into a slaughterhouse or a vivisection lab with guns and they tell the slaughterhouse workers you take those knives off those pigs threats right now I'm gonna shoot you people like Gary Yourofsky are kidding themselves people like Steve vest are kidding themselves anyone who supports the AL f and preaches the hypocritical doctrine that you can commit crimes against property without crimes against people I don't know maybe you never watched a bank heist movie [ __ ] I asked you to stop killing it well the second thing is look as soon as you cross this line into a legal activity of violence of any kind but really illegal activity of any kind then you get violence within your unit okay you can read the history of the IRA the IRA this is the Irish Republican Army Irish independence movement whatever you want to say they felt violence is justified guess what the IRA spent a lot of time killing their own people killing their fellow members the IRA and again if you just watch crime movies you can see how that happens they're worried about snitches than the organization as soon as you've got criminal active as soon as you've got the possibility that somebody goes to jail something odd happens someone disappears for two weeks or someone gets arrested for a random reason and now people are looking around and wondering if somebody snitched sometimes nobody snitched sometimes there were no snitches sometimes there were no betrayals than the unit but nevertheless now you're starting to get violence within your political movement because they're terrified of being betrayed from within now you wouldn't be terrified if what you were doing was really legal and aboveboard right when you have a conflict within a group that's doing a hundred percent legal activity that's paying their taxes that's you know registered and using real democratic methods of dissent then if one of your members decides to switch teams on you if they say forget it you know I think you guys are incompetent I'm gonna quit and I'm gonna join a different ecological movement or something like that then nobody's looking to stab each other in the back it's not that real because nobody's afraid that they're gonna go to prison because that person is gonna rat them out all right that's still a problem that's a huge problem even if what you're doing is just so cold crimes against property if it's just breaking and entering if it's just sabotage all right that escalates the level of violence within your political movement if you study the political history anywhere in the world I I really have not studied Ireland my interests have been in the history of Asia primarily also the history of Europe in the West whatever but I mean you know um there was a famous case of a double agent who was codenamed steak knife within the IRA and he killed and murdered people on both sides and the IRA completely trusted him because he engaged in torture and murder on behalf of the IRA and in reality he was a snitch he was a double agent working for the British government and he was getting people from the IRA side killed and murdered and he was sharing information with the British government etc let's put it this way the vegans who are pro violence look at someone like me who is anti violence and they think I'm naive they think I'm jejune okay I look at you I look at you Gary Yourofsky I look at you guys who are pro violence I think you guys are naive I think you're zoom I'm not gonna weep over they demise being tortured and killed screw I think you don't know what kind of hell it is for people to be inside a political organization like the IRA afraid they're gonna get killed afraid their wife and kids are going to get killed sometimes over a rumor that started that could finger them for being a snitch or a turncoat or for any other crazy hysterical reason okay history of communist movements is like that to an extreme where communists spent more time killing other communists than they did killing their enemies all right and veganism we do have some susceptibility to tend towards those extremes because we're already a movement that's interested in ideological purity that's interested in you know purging its ranks of people who somehow step off the dotted line that defines you know adherence to the movement so yeah it's scary there are problems and introducing overt use of violence into veganism is only gonna make it worse even if you have this ridiculous excuse of talking about violence against property as opposed to violence against people it don't work and look there are some cute zpool vegans here on YouTube I'm not going to name you there are some cute cpu vegans here on YouTube who front on the AL f who say they're Pro violence against property you say they're Pro violence in general and I don't think they've thought this stuff through I don't think they've studied any of the chapters of history and they don't know the series of steps that do lead to murder pure and simple where the defenders you might want to call it violence but hey you're bringing it on yourself Gary Yourofsky coming back to his own argument again are the rest of this I don't think is that interesting I don't think it's even worth refuting so much of what he has to say is just ridiculous and the majority of vegans I feel confident will basically scoff at it and regard this guy as a lunatic nevertheless um it falls on to my shoulders to critique this one of your röszke Yurovsky z' phrases is that he says people who will not listen to reason must be treated with violence that they should be made of to feel fear that they should made afraid because they will not listen to reason what does that really mean it means that people who don't agree with you should be threatened or forced or killed that's really what he's endorsing there are certain groups of individuals who will not listen to reason and for that you need violence because what he means by not listen to reason is anyone who disagrees with him all right now your oski describes himself as an anti-fascist but I've got to tell you that is the core of fascism that is the core of totalitarianism as soon as you have a political ideology that says anyone who disagrees with us will get killed anyone who get disagrees with us will get forced to comply that is totalitarianism in principle okay so your offski describes himself as an anti-nazi in fact he has taken the crucial step to making himself equivalent to the Nazis in the most important way and look I I actually have a tremendously tolerant attitude towards people who won't listen to reason and that's why I keep using the example on this YouTube channel of the public quest to eliminate cigarette smoking okay people who smoke tobacco won't listen to reason I've got compassion for them I don't want to threaten them I don't want to kill them I don't want the government to use violence I don't even want people to smoke cigarettes to be put in prison I don't really think it'll be effective but I mean it's a question so it's a known fact any rational person can look at the facts and say hey we should all quit smoking nobody should smoke tobacco nobody should smoke cigars cigars are celebrated as a sign of wealth and an indulgence okay that's not rational now what are we gonna do as a society to achieve that okay and in the case of tobacco the majority of people recognize that it's bad the majority of people recognize that we should phase it out right and that's not remotely the case with veganism in meat weren't a tiny minority of people recognize that this is bad and should be phased out but still with tobacco even when the majority of people realize that there's a really difficult to negotiate democratic process step by step and phase by phase of making that cultural transition I don't believe violence is gonna help and there were people whose parents have died due to lung cancer or whatever their husband or wife died you know longer if there were people who are deeply aggrieved by the harm that tobacco was done in society and if you ask them do they want to get on this kind of violent train that Gary Yourofsky is is endorsing if they want to use violence to bring about that social change I think the vast majority of them would say no and you know the other tragedy is the vast majority of smokers today even if they continue smoking recognize that smoking is a bad thing they may want to stop or even if they don't really want to stop they recognize this is something bad but they accept that they're doing it even though it's bad and it's wrong we are a long long way from achieving that level of social consciousness in relation to meat milk and eggs um III doubt that even ten people sorry I doubt that even ten percent of people today accept that basic premise of veganism and can look at meat and dairy as something we're transitioning away from so we've got our work cut out for us even to reach that level through public education activism or what have you but my point here is even when it's 50 percent or even when it's 90 percent of people recognize that meat and dairy etc is bad I still do not endorse resorting to violence and the comparison to cigarettes really has some depth and meaning here what percentage of people think that heroin is bad the vast majority the vast majority of heroin addicts or X heroin addicts think that everyone is bad but it's still really debatable what is the role for violence in trying to eliminate the use of heroin in our society and the answer most people come to there's a broad spectrum of opinion there are people who are experts on this who devote their lives to studying what is effective government policy on heroin but the answer that most people come to is as little as possible even if it is ultimately necessary for the police to get out their guns and arrest someone who is buying and selling heroin what we want to see is the minimum amount of violence definitely not the maximum amount of violence and definitely not the kind of holding people at gunpoint that your offski is endorsing here spare me the [ __ ] adages about violence beginning violent and doesn't always be good violence in most cases it actually ends violence he makes these comparisons to World War two and the Nazis that are of course Oshin inappropriate among other things it is somewhat bizarre that he seems to pretend that World War two present prevented the Holocaust it didn't the Holocaust happened world war two among other things is a total failure of violence in that it didn't prevent the Holocaust the right people got killed the Nazis he tries to make a general argument for violence as preventing violence rather than violence causing more violence by vaguely gesturing towards the Nazis this video is going to be way too long if I get into all the ways this is historically inaccurate and describing world war ii but among the fundamental paradoxes in looking at the history of world war ii is the fact that the Western Allies were aware that the Soviet Union especially under Joseph Stalin under the leadership of Stalin had engaged in massacres on an unbelievable scale they'd done that before World War two that it adjourn world war two that did after World War two although Hitler killed communists Stalin in his purges murdered far more communists that Hitler did Stalin did engage in anti-semitic purges he killed huge numbers of Jews and at the time of his death he the plans were in place there was actually going to be another Holocaust he was going to carry out anti-semitic parties on an enormous scale in the Soviet Union now he did flip-flop on that many people just basically say Stalin was insane whether or not he was insane he tended towards different contradictory extremes than his time and power he had periods where he was Pro Jew as she had periods where he was anti Jewish and a lot of people died all right so to say as as Gary Yourofsky says that American policy in World War two or British policy in World War two did not result in more massacres is is totally false one of the tragedies of World War two regarded as a whole is precisely that you know the Western powers were very reluctant to back up Stalin to expand Stalin sphere of power his control over more territory over more countries or to make his rule more permanent and that is exactly what World War Two did World War two made a hero and an ally out of Stalin it expanded he gained more power in Eastern Europe even gained more power in Asia more power more territory more millions of people suffering under his horrible dictatorial government and the reason why there was a period of history called the phony war that happened and the reason why there was a period when Hitler and Stalin were allies they the Ribbentrop Molotov pact the period when Hitler and Stalin were on the same side in World War two that everyone wants to forget about ultimately is because the Western power saw themselves in a situation where they would prefer to see Hitler and Stalin destroy each other then they would intervene in a way that was going to result in more massacres in more mass murder under Soviet Communism so yes world war ii you know ultimately eventually hitler got defeated is this a positive example of humanitarian intervention no not at all because that intervention among other things totally failed to prevent the Holocaust the Holocaust actually happened and this whole [ __ ] about violence begetting violence okay when the Allied forces won in the Nazi Germany and murdered Nazis to save Jews and kind of curious what was the violence that happened after that now if you want to look in history of world war two interestingly for an example of something that resembles justice there's very little justice in world war two it's a tragic tale from start to end I think instead of looking at it as endorsing you know bombing or you know murder with guns or something I think one of the lessons you could learn from World War two was looking at the importance of trials of trying to give people a fair trial of and you know I think there's an argument that there should have been more trials but taking people who were Nazi leaders and actually bringing them to a court of law and putting them on trial I think that is one positive aspect of World War two and there were many Nazi leaders who did not go on trial and that is a scandal for the history of the world Gary Yourofsky is not endorsing trials he is not saying people have committed crimes against animals you go to court and get a fair trial that might be a reasonable conclusion to draw from world war ii is hey you know what people who do terrible immoral things should should have a fair trial and then should face punishment some going to prison time that would be a wonderful lesson to draw from world war World War two instead Gary Yourofsky is endorsing the violence he's talking about people at random breaking into buildings and holding people at gunpoint it's gonna be in the very near future that somebody bust into a slaughterhouse or vivisection lab with guns well that's part of what created the Nazi system in the first place I can't get into it here but if you actually look at I mean there are descriptions from Arthur Koestler about a period of history in the early days before the the Germans before the Nazis took over power in Germany where you know there was this long period when the Nazis were really like a bunch of street thugs and they would get in a car and go to a go to a coffee shop or communists would hang out and they'd do a drive-by shooting shooting up the coffee shop and then the Communists would get in a car and they would go and try to get into a fight street fight with you know knives or guns with the Nazis down at one of the Nazi bars and you know the Nazis did have a long period where they really were disorganized street thugs in this way this was part of their rise to power and you know I mean part of the tragedy and looking at that history is that violence doesn't prevent violence there was a cycle there was an upward cycle of more and more violence starting from this low level of you know as they say basically street thugs and there was indeed a criminal element built into the Nazi movement from early on for that reason because those are the people they organized that was the type of activity they have and that defines the type of movement you have politically the type of people who participated and so on you don't oppose violence you just oppose who I proposed to be violent for again we can kill her behalf of blacks and came on behalf of Jews and came on behalf of children but nobody wants to kill on behalf of chickens and cows and pigs again I think those animals disagree vehemently and so do I seek it on behalf of chickens and cows and pigs again I think those animals disagree vehemently and so do I your offski I think uses a lot of phony realism in declaring things like that's not how the world works okay well let me ask you this in terms of how the real world works do you think after making these statements do you think Gary Yourofsky could get himself elected as mayor anywhere anywhere in the United States or anywhere in the world who would look at these features he makes and thinks this is a rational good person who can take on the responsibilities of government who can take on the responsibility of making decisions about the sidewalks and pollution and ecology let alone the morality of animal exploitation the human diet no he has discredited himself in a profound way he's discredited himself even among the tiny minority of people who are already vegan but worse he has discredited himself among the public at large all right he's someone who could not be trusted to be in any position of authority he's someone who would be laughed at if he ran for mayor and that matters okay being a part I mean look a lot of people on the internet do not want to distinguish between positive attention and negative attention god this could be split off me to a separate video I have people attacking this channel and when I talk to them about it they seem to have just no awareness of the difference between drawing attention to their Channel that's negative and drawing attention to the channel that's positive you know having an opinion is one thing having an opinion that people pay attention to because they respect your opinion they respect you is something completely different having the most outrageous opinion possible may bring attention to you but it's not positive attention I've met vegans face-to-face who glamorize the idea of people being put in prison who think there's something heroic or wonderful about vegans going to prison for this type of violent activism I remember I started giving an example in a conversation of a guy who spent years in speaking to another vegan here face to face and I was giving it I was giving this as an example because I was trying to say what I've already said now in this video don't put yourself in a cage don't put yourself in prison if you think what are the different modes of effective activism I can tell you one thing sitting in a jail cell is not effective activism and what this vegan said back to me because he is pro violence he said back to me but you're still talking about it you know he said this glowing he was proud so yeah but you know that guy went to prison but you're still talking about it as if this is Fame this is attention yes its attention but it's not positive attention I'm talking about it but I'm talking about it with you right now because I'm telling you not to repeat this mistake I'm telling you not to put yourself in a cage not to discredit yourself as an intellectual not to discredit yourself as a political movement through violence and I mean on this channel we've talked a lot about how just some of those silly forms of street protest discredit veganism because they do if vegans are known primarily for standing up in a restaurant and screaming hysterically at strangers and breaking down weeping and screaming it's not food it's violence yes that discredits veganism guess what violence much more profoundly discredits veganism it discredit Gary Yourofsky as an individual it discredits any organization he's a member of any organization he's a leader of it discredits veganism as an ideal and that's a damn shame