Vegan "activism": Gandhi & DxE (Direct Action Everywhere)

every time I think to myself you know
what for a little while I'm not going to make videos about veganism I'm going to talk about some other issues there are really issues that that come to the fore that I feel compelled I ought to talk about especially given who my audience is I've already made several different videos talking about direct action everywhere uh I'm going to provide a link below this video to those earlier discussions some of them are fairly lengthy and in depth and give a more systematic overview of who they are how they were founded what their principles or core concerns are this video instead is going to deal with one specific issue depart from a specific philosophical and practical question why is it the direct action everywhere thinks that making a display of weakness is strength to be slightly snippy about it um why do they think that breaking down in tears in a shopping mall or in a restaurant that ranting uncontrollably showing that you're overwhelmed that you're weak why do they think that's going to bring about social change now I'm not saying this in a mean-spirited way but DXE has contrived this as a political method of what they call disruption it's very different if you're talking about like here on YouTube I see completely sincere or videos of people sitting down talking about their feelings talking about how they're overwhelmed with their relationship with their boyfriend or their boss or their problems if I'm completely fine with that and I love you know as I say most of that is completely sincere it's not contrived and it's not being presented as a political methodology to change the world you know if I come on this channel and talk to you about my divorce it's not in any way comparable to what direct action everywhere is doing even if I break down crying on camera I don't think that's happened on this channel I don't think I've wept on camera for you but he said I'm not opposed to that I'm not opposed to the open display of emotion what's strange to me many aspects of this exchange to me direct action everywhere make these over-the-top claims about saving the world and about having a methodology that is based on the study of social science research and learning the lessons of political history and they then vaguely allude to Gandhi in India the abolition of slavery in the United States the loot anti-vietnam war protest they'll kind of allude to a bunch of things really quickly with very shallow gloss they like to mention the Arab Spring I don't know if that's gone at a style yet take a look at the Arab Spring man it's been a disaster a humanitarian nightmare resulting in Civil War and what have you I don't know if they're still showing the Arab Spring as a as a successful example of social change they want to imitate any way I roll my eyes at that a great deal and I wonder if they've read anything about any examples but anyway they throw these out really quickly and then they show you their methodology and the hat videos in the internet were they display exactly their ideal of how a how a disruption is supposed to go there's a sort of glaring absence of logical lines connecting any of these points of reference you're left to connect the dots like oh yeah Gandhi therefore breaking down weeping in a restaurant is a great idea as a great method of social change oh yeah yeah the abolition of slavery and the Arab Spring therefore showing up in a restaurant ranting uncontrollably holding up a sign Breaking out we've been showing people how emotionally pfizer that's going to be researched it well pardon me but at what stage did the United States abolitionist movement use these methods at what stage did Gandhi Gandhi wrote it enormous length about his method of pursuing an achieving social change at what stage did he endorse this method or anything like it the answer is never and this I mean this troubles me on many different levels if you watch this channel regular you know I've researched the history of Asia from many different angles I would have liked to have been a specialist in just one country or just want to reach it in Asia but I haven't had that luxury so I have actually studied the political history of India also to some extent right now I'm doing Japan and the past have also worked on Cambodia in many other places for a relatively fun and indeed shocking article there's there's a famous famous article that was published in commentary magazine a commentary magazine is a magazine I only know about because of Woody Allen Woody Allen used to make jokes about it used to it he used to you know kind of insult this magazine as somewhat pretentious um source information but if you google it you'll get it really quickly because this is still a famous article it's titled the Gandhi nobody knows so if you just do a Google for commentary magazine Gandhi expose you'll get you'll get this article right away that article will contain many facts about Mohandas Gandhi that will probably shocked you even if you're cynical about politics it'll reveal to you the extent to which what people tend to say about Gandhi and I came to a left-wing people people who are peace activists all kinds of people The Legend of Gandhi is is remarkably different from the historical reality of Gandhi but you know for me that article even though it reveals many scandals and shocking things it doesn't i think deal with the the core issue here which is that you know Gandhi's political praxis which I see cynically referred to by people at direct action everywhere it's actually set out in a multi-volume work called non-violence in peace and war and if you compare the first volume to the second volume there's a tremendous change because Gandhi himself actually lost faith in his own political methodology his ideas changed between the first volume in the second volume now I read that many many years ago the core idea that Gandhi advanced and that people in India really got sincerely excited about the time was that his method of non-violence was a method of warfare it was war but then once you were in the position of superior power you would hold back from actually slaughtering your enemies from actually engaging in violence so it's not at all what people imagine it to be now that method you can say it's a good method of a bad method for India at that time but it was a method devised for situation where Gandhi felt confident that the vast majority of people in the population of India were opposed to the British Empire so they were an absolute majority they were from his perspective they were ninety percent of the population or ninety-eight percent of the population whether or not that's true i mean you know maybe they were only eighty-five percent I don't know you can look into exactly what percentage population were really supporting independence the british empire but don't list it was a huge majority of muslims of hindus of all kinds of people in india at that time so he felt in that circumstance they were in the position to demand change to organize and amass themselves and the depressed for change like an army imitating military methods which a lot of people in india the time were very positive about it was a very pro war feeling in the air in india because the way india experience world war one was completely different from the way you're up did for one thing course none of the battlefields weren't india but the Indian perspective on war at that time was not what you might expect and Gandhi himself you know was very pro war as a younger man when Gandhi was living in South Africa he was actively trying to join the british army to fight for the british empire not against it very interesting psychologically and politically look at all this stuff is from memory and none of this is scripted him i'm sorry the these people at DXE who want to be your great intellectual leaders there they're painfully ignorant of exactly the stuff they choose to speechify about this isn't my chosen area of expertise or interest but i'm better informed than wayne see on guys I'm sorry he's writing all of these subjects is but now at best amazingly bad author but anyway he's got fans it's cool I shall I don't like Kanye West either but millions of people like Kanye West so whatever it is what it is um sorry so I was soggy mcgann DS overall approach to non-violence in peace and war this type of methodology even looking over all the bizarre contradictions then it even looking even in choosing to ignore Gandhi's own loss of faith in the method because Gandhi in volume 2 of that work is already saying that he was wrong and he regrets endorsing this method because in his words he thought India was taking the road of the non-violence of the strong but in fact they were trapped on the road of the non-violence of the week in discussing this he attacks exactly the type of methods that direct action ever uses Gandhi explains that he's completely opposed to putting yourself in the position of a beggar of asking for social change from someone more powerful than yourself that his model of non-violence was only of putting yourself position of the stronger of having the ability to threaten violence and then holding then holding back from actually doing it so look to give DXE some credit and to shift to another but reasonably profound aspect of this puzzle direct action everywhere are also into challenging the normalcy of meat-eating that was something I was thinking about just today again so this method if that's your point if you want to scream and weep in public and show extreme emotional reactions because you're outraged that meat eating is normal and given all the intellectual pretensions of DXE their claims to using social science research learning for lessons of history cetera what is the basis for thinking that this type of so-called interruption in people's normal lives will actually challenge the social normalcy of meat-eating leather-wearing etc it's very clear to me that the effect of having someone display extreme emotionless way like Priya herself like the founders themselves going into a restaurant the screaming incoherently weeping holding up a sign etc it does not challenge the normalcy of mediating it reaffirms the normalcy of meat-eating and shows us vegans to be abnormal to be crazy most people will see that and think oh these people are psychologically abnormal these people have some kind of emotional or psychological problem that makes them react this way to something that everyone else regards as normal and acceptable and they may not be wrong we have to face up to this also guys I mean god I remember that video with a bite size vegan weeping about the death of her dog and having an emotional breakdown it's real but I mean I've talked to the vegans about it's like at what point in this movement can we look at the relationship vegans have with their household pets and say hey this is kind of messed up like psychologically like in terms of vegan philosophy of practice like this is not really something we should be celebrating like dogs evolved in the wilds they didn't evolve to be a decoration for your carpet like you know our standard of what is normal in human animal relationships has to based on wild animals not on domesticated animals that you know even if it's a rescue dog even if whatever the excuse ER history is like these emotional relationships this is not the core of veganism as a movement and doesn't even fit into the social model veganism very well sorry one controversy leads to another here so yeah the people who regard vegans as crazy or as having an abnormal emotional attachment animals they're not a hundred percent wrong as some of us fall into that category some vegans are crazy cat ladies and crazy guy you know bless their hearts in the right place I'm not here to hate on you guys but yeah the appearance that people are crazy this way uh but if we're supposedly learning from history is this how cigarettes went from being normal to abnormal if your point is to challenge the normalcy of meat-eating there was a time not too long ago when people smoke cigarettes in the church in the hospital in the military they used to smoke cigarettes sitting around the boardroom table looking at maps all those places are non-smoking now it used to be normal for pregnant mothers to be smoking cigarettes during the alkaline everything else these things were challenged how and why science is a portent part of its social stigma is a part of it public education part of it you can draw up a whole diagram but yeah there's been a dramatic change I would say there's also been a dramatic change in attitudes towards alcohol consumption and I think that that change is still ongoing I think we're going to continue to change your attitudes but there's almost no place in any of those examples whether it's India gaining its independence the abolition of slavery changing attitudes towards alcohol and cigarettes there is almost no place in this for these overwrought emotional breakdowns which are the core methodology that direct action everywhere supports promotes and defines their movement by so to me this is an open contradiction and I'll just to get one more caveat it's true like with cigarette smoking it's possible that there was a documentary film that interviewed someone who is dying of lung cancer it's possible that there's some role for this type of emotional gnashing of teeth emotional outpouring it's true I'm not going to say there's zero role for that in India's revolt against the British Empire there's some role for tear-jerking accounts of people whose husbands and sons have been killed by the bayonets of racial sure there's some role for salacious emotional anecdotes some but if DXE has these claims to learning from the lessons of history at social science research how is it possible they've taken in this constellation of stars all these unrelated points with no dog to line connecting them and the only lesson they've taken from it and the methodology they've pulled out of it is walk into a restaurant break down weeping etc it's pathetic and it has that worst possible combination of being pathetic embarrassing discrediting the movement making us all look crazy not getting results and the same time being tremendously self-important intellectually pretentious and asking for your donations now hey man there are two aspects to this you know you can curse the darkness or you know you can try to light up a candle ultimately you know I'm saying this stuff both DXE because I wanted to better than them myself and I want to see other vegans get organized do something better do something real