Vegan Abolitionism vs. Plain Old "Ethical Veganism": What's the Deal?

hey guys I set myself the challenge of
trying to make a video that would explain why I object to vegan abolitionism in a way that would be approachable and easy to understand for vegans who had never seen my channel before who had never seen any of my prior videos talking about this topic and closely related topics but I will say as a preface to this discussion that this is something of a dress before it's something that's been an important part of my life for years and if you've been seriously engaged in vegan politics philosophy and political philosophy in the last 10 years you've probably watching sort of the rise and fall of abolitionism as a paradigm within the movement I think there's no doubt that in the last decade abolitionism has been the most influential idea certainly within American english-speaking veganism I can't say I mean obviously Japan Germany there are other cultures that have very different notions and the American origins of evolutionism are obvious to me all the time I'm Canadian but obviously it's easy for me to understand English in American accent the concept of abolitionism itself seems to appeal to a notion of the abolition of slavery in American history as taught in American primary schools it's a way of looking at history that definitely has heroes and villains angels and demons and invites us to imagine that we as vegan activists can play a role in the next chapter of the world's history that is tantamount to that is comparable to the role of abolitionists who fought against slavery in America's history and there's a rarely emphasis put on the Civil War it's rarely phrased in terms of inviting us to fight in a civil war that's going to kill enormous numbers of people so it's a somewhat selective rereading of that history but nevertheless the point your distance starting is the American origins in the American format so to speak of evolutionism is obvious even in the name I'd also say that part of the appeal of abolitionism just comes to the name itself so that name is is really loaded with emotional significance for Americans it's tied to their history and ultimately I think vegans who you know they wanted something catchy and something that I don't know immediately suck summons up images not only of radicalism but of epoch-making world-changing radicalism in a way that a tag like ethical vegan doesn't ethical vegan could be associated with a retreat with withdrawing from society with living like a Buddhist monk separating yourself from society you could be an ethical vegan and live in a cave but an abolitionist vegan already the word summons up this issue of trying to transform the society or live in especially the transformation the United States just as the abolition of slavery did again don't mention the Civil War I part of the reason why that transformation was so dramatic was precisely the Civil War um no abolitionism it did also especially to mention just two varieties because today there are different leaders in the abolitionist vegan movement or movements plural and they do debate with one another that you disagree with one another vociferously but for example Gary francais on a is one famous leader in that and ween see on the founder of direct action everywhere is another they have taken that concept in different directions and as mentioned they they engage in I guess you could say healthy intellectual debates now there's an old idiom in English of a dancing bear not a very vegan image when a bear gets on stage and dances you're not asking the audience whether or not the bear is dancing well the audience is expected to applaud because the bear is dancing at all we have to be honest the caliber of intellectual debate within veganism is so low that as with the dancing bear I'm not going to sit here and tell you that the quality of the debate surrounding abolitionism is poor the fact that there is an intellectual debate at all the fact that there are multiple philosophies debating the future of you know veganism as a political movement like the dancing bear we applaud just because there is any such performance at all and I mean that believe it or not as a sincere compliment away even though I disagree a great deal with people like Gary Francie own and whence young even though in many ways their work seems to me astoundingly stupid to be blunt I can realize sorry I can i Iike it's completely obvious to me that these are people who have good intentions and they're piously in their own way trying to save the planet no more no less alright with all that haven't been said what is the philosophical problem at the root of the abolitionist approach philosophically and I'm emphasizing we're philosophically because when we're talking about philosophy we're not talking about methods of effective activism so the way that direct action everywhere organizes a public protest that's a question of effective activism I already have many videos address to that philosophically I think the error they're engaged in is refusing to admit of a difference between prescriptive ethics and descriptive ethics so they are refusing to admit of a difference between statements about what you ought to do in analytical statements about trying to understand what the situation really is analytical statements involve Shades of Grey they involve statements about what's comparatively better and comparatively worse sometimes truly hypothetical sometimes actual sometimes dealing with historical examples so for example we could have a conference where we compare North Korea to Iraq let's say that conference let's say we had a bunch of historians academics political scientists different political figures come to a conference back in the year 2000 talking about the dictatorship in Iraq at that time and the dictatorship in North Korea the abolitionist vegan position would be outraged by this of course this is a comparison and say how dare you draw up an analysis where you talk about which is better and worse how dare you deal with these shades of grey these complex contradictions you only can respond to this by taking an abolitionist position of saying no all dictatorship has to end now let's say at this conference not only do they compare North Korea and Iraq but they talk about the whole range of possible interventions they talk about ways to meliorate he rights conditions right and now as we know in the years after 2000 there have been unending wars in Iraq and you know one of the reasons why in political science we talk about halfway measures is precisely to avoid war it's very easy to come to conclusion as George W Bush did that the way to abolish a dictatorship is to drop bombs on it and if you're over the age of 20 you probably now have some memory of how that's gone in the last ten plus years well we're way past ten years on that now aren't we anyway so again the abolitionist position is refusing to admit not only the shades of grey analytically but that in terms of prescriptive ethics we get into statements about what you should do that again are morally loaded and complex yes it's very easy for me to say everyone should stop eating meat it's very easy for me to say that Iraq should cease to be a dictatorship or should become a democracy it's easy for me to say that about North Korea also but to wade into the complex analytical and prescriptive details of what we can actually do brings us into murky shades of gray and that's what we do in politics since we don't political science from the outfit of the Omega from page one to page to the last page of the book folks um that's rupa Philip philosophy is something separate from political science but philosophically we can't disable ourselves we can't present or prevent ourselves from being able to deal with all those rich shades of grey so in terms of illustrating this because I'm talking with a principle thing but now I'm going to get into the particular just enough so you can understand my point if you want to help a particular population of dolphins this is my favorite example I have used it before the abolitionists would actually object to this because you're breaking a number of their sacred rules a number of their pious precepts how can you help just dolphins that speciesism you're supposed to treat dolphins as equal to mosquitoes you're supposed to eat dolphins as equal to cows and foxes and everything else they object to any single issue cause so if I set up a charity as a vegan and I say yeah you know what I care about cows I care about pigs but I especially care about this particular population of dolphins in this particular River in South East Asia we have dolphins that live in rivers I know the more famous dolphins live in the ocean there are also river dolphins um I want to prevent this population dolphins are going stings I want to deal with this issue this matters to me yes it's a single issue cause no it's not going to abolish the meat and dairy industry no it's not going to convince the world to give up wearing leather and to instead where synthetic fabrics or what have you it's not going to rest any of those issues but I care about these dolphins now and if somebody doesn't do something now or in the next ten years they're going to go extinct now of course it could be dolphins it could be monkeys you can pick any example but the reality of activism in the real world does involve those kinds of compromises it does involve rolling up your sleeves and engaging in some single issue causes and otherwise the consequence reps with terrible so if these concepts they're employing whether it's the anti species this notion which is useful within some limits so you know I do think it's useful you guys have probably seen the t-shirts that say why do you love one and kill the other and it compares a dog to a pig completely agree i think that dogs dogs and pigs and wolves and lions it is very useful philosophically to be able to point out to people the difference is we create between them ethically are counterproductive fine however if you're in the abolitionist paradigm the next step is for you to claim that we cannot engage in any single issue activity then it means we can't help lions and we can't help dolphins and we can't help dogs either right so this is a moral position that has gone past the point of diminishing returns and it's become observed in counterproductive now again why is that I think the fundamental philosophical error is failing to deal with the nature of prescriptive ethics statements about what you should do as opposed to descriptive and analytical ethics this video is now 11 minutes long um I just point out I have only talked about this fundamental philosophical issue there's then a kind of magical bridge from how you get from this concept of the abolitionist refusal to engage in single issue causes the notion that we should only focus on in the industry how do you cross the bridge from that to the specific model of activism that direct action everywhere involves it in gauges in that involves some some ridiculous forms of protests such as running into the running from the crowd of a baseball stadium onto the field I can give you a clip of them doing exactly that their method of disruption of jumping over the barrier and trying to interrupt Bernie Sanders when he's speaking there is no logical dotted line that connects their philosophy to their pragmatic ideas about effective activism now admittedly that's a separate critique a separate set of questions that you could have a totally different philosophy and still believe in those methods and there already have been videos on this channel debating that abolitionism I really do think most of its public profile comes from the name itself and comes the fact that so many vegans feel lonely and powerless and they want an ideology that makes them feel like they're part of a massive movement that's challenging society fundamentally in the same way that the abolition of slavery did but you know it might be more humble and effective if we coin some totally new term like disassembled ism I checked google no other political ideology has used that disassembled ism and we admit it you know what even though we care about circuses even though we care about zoos even though we care about the use of animals in vivisection and cancer research we have to recognize the overweening importance of disassembling the meat and milk and leather industry that currently stands at the core of our society at the core of our economy the core of our culture in some ways and that it's an enormous task in the next hundred years it's a task of such the tragic enormity that even if we focus all of our efforts on it I don't know how much we could accomplish the next 50 years say right and that many of these other issues although I do think they're worth debating do you think they're worth understanding i think it's worth and i have several hours discussing just zoos on this channel to have a great video with jay costly on that and so on someone who used to be at an employee ensues and he knows behind the scenes that work I do think those ethical issues are interesting and illuminating and there are philosophical significance but pragmatically and politically if we started from acknowledging just one goal of that kind if we were looking at actually abolishing industrialized meat production in the next hundred years at the same time we would recognize you know what dealing with hunters is not a priority dealing with seal hunters in the Arctic Circle of canada is not important doesn't mean it's right doesn't mean I'm a species essed it doesn't mean I love cows and hate seals doesn't mean any of those things but it means ok with all due humility we have to set these sort of priorities and I think that more humble and pragmatic approach whether or not it has a fancy term like disassembled ISM attached to it that's the approach that lets you recognize if I want to save these dolphins in this river here's what I have to do and it may involve all kinds of moral compromises it may involve cooperating with fishermen it may involve cooperating with hunters it may involve cooperating with all kinds of non vegans but who agree with you who are united with you who stand together with you and support you on that one issue of helping those dolphins