Vegans "vs." the Far Left: Intersectionalism.

implicitly and what you're saying is
this some things are your responsibility whether you want them to be or not and some things are only a responsibility if you choose to take them on as your responsibility you know food and water and air there are some things we've got to say this is your responsibility and you know if not you then who not everyone's gonna take responsible you've gotta go and ask people will you will you take responsibility for the consequences of you know what's on your fork what's on your knife what's on your plate every day the animal suffering ecology health everything else sure and that's why I preach man I don't I don't preach for everyone to go do humanitarian work in in Lausanne if I don't I think very few people should do that there are some special people for whom that might be a good path in life but yeah veganism is for everybody - Yin hey guys I did an interview with a vegan activist podcaster and organizer for cube of truth anonymous the voiceless just last week and he asked me at one point in the conversation what do I have to say about the simmering conflict between vegan activists and intersectional activists intersectional ism so in just a minute you're going to hear my direct earnest answer that question but here's the thing I like to make videos so they won't just be meaningful the day they get uploaded to YouTube but so they'll be meaningful if people come back and watch them five years from now if I come back and watch them five years from now etc etc and I feel I have to say a little bit about the context this video is being made in in the year 2018 and the context is this really a lot of hatred directed towards vegans from the far left wing from socialists leftists crypto communists and including most of the people who use the concept of intersectional ISM positively now we have to digress on the point people who defend the idea of intersectional ism especially within academia will often try to describe it as a value neutral analytical toolkit as an approach to research as an approach to the academic discussion of politics that could be used by anybody with any political bias anyone who's interested in issues of overlapping oppressions intersecting compressions riddle me this when was the last time you saw an intersectional isten alysus of how oppressive communism was to the citizens of Russia after the year 1917 when was less time you saw an intersectional analysis of the overlapping oppressions of what it was like to be alive in China during the life and dictatorship of communist leader Mao Zedong yes in theory the intersection list approach to politics could be used by a moderate person a centrist person or even a conservative person even a right-wing person to look at different types of historical and political situations um but it is absolutely absurd to suggest in the year 2018 that this is a value neutral tool used for research in academia that doesn't bring with it a very definite political agenda and maybe that's to be regretted and maybe five years from now that'll change I doubt it but it's possible now in terms of the hostility that vegan activist and anyone he talks positively about veganism faces from the far left this has been the subject itself of real formal academic research the one author I know who published on it was dr. will Kim Lucca this is Kim lequel Kim Lucca is spelled with a k and a y and you can guess the rest dr. bull Kamaka um he basically tried to write the history of why animal rights and left-wing politics have always mutually rejected each other even though people who are in the center or conservatives or the right people outside tend to assume that animal rights is a left-wing thing and it's not now again historically you have to understand like from my own mother for her generation my mother having been a university radical in 1968 so I should have done the quotation marks for radical I was a little bit too slow there and getting the quote the airport's up be a university radical in 68 for her the core of left-wing identity had to do with things like labor unions had to do with the concept of the general strike had to do with the idea of the working class rising up and imposing working-class values as opposed to bourgeois values and as opposed to aristocratic values right now what is working-class values really mean that's another question but it's very obvious that from a left-wing perspective they are stabbing at the at the heart of veganism when they claim that veganism is elitist that veganism is linked to white privilege that veganism is part of these nebulous intersecting oppressions and that's what we deal with every day as vegans and that's what I dealt with literally today so again whether or not you deal with this on a daily basis has to do with how many left-wing people you talk to I was walking down the street I had literally just been eating kale and I had kale in my teeth and I was wearing a vegan t-shirt so I'm about as stereotypical vegan as you can possibly get and this young woman buttonholes me to have a conversation with me and she starts off by saying you have something green in your teeth great great way to pick up a dude ladies great way to start a conversation and I said oh yeah that's that's probably kale I just ate some kale and if it was and we start chatting the main reason I was talking to her was that I'm still learning Chinese and I'm always really looking for people to be language partners touch my nose Jenny's but as soon as this conversation gets rolling what she lays on me is oh yeah yeah veganism she just been discussing veganism in her political science and Gender Studies classes she's a major in politics and Gender Studies up University of Victoria and she lays on me these these exact oceans you know veganism is somehow about white people oppressing non-white people veganism is elitist etc etc this is this intersectional as condemnation of veganism and you know I don't really think any of the finer points of intersessional ISM as theory are to blame there I think what's really lacking is basically generosity of spirit it's basically four people on the left wing to say oh that's interesting what can I learn from that what can I learn from your experience and look guys we just happen to be criticizing the left wing here but believe me I can criticize the right wing and conservatives far more harshly than this but you know I really find that when I talk to left-wing people I especially here mean english-speaking left-wing people England Canada Australia um if I tell them something like oh yeah yeah you know I've just been doing humanitarian work in Cambodia and Laos I've just come back I've never once had a left wing person capable of just saying oh that's interesting or oh wow great or even asking in an open-ended way like oh so do you think that was effective but do you think it went well do you think you really had outcomes that mattered or did you feel it was a waste of time like do you feel there were real impacts it was a lack of impacts I am the most skeptical and open-minded person on that I'm really willing to discuss that with people I don't go around preaching that like the particular humanitarian projects I was involved with had a great positive impact on the world on the contrary I'm really skeptical and I really like to say well I was part of a project that was trying to help starving people by giving them food and by improving their methods of agriculture but actually you know we could have been doing more harm than good and here's why I'm completely willing to have that conversation I don't expect other people to cheerlead for me and I don't present like propaganda about the particular political causes and questions I've been involved with my own life that includes veganism if this is your first time coming to the channel welcome but I do not do propaganda or cheerleading for veganism I ask I ask tough questions um but yeah at bottom I I don't actually think in this sense that intersectional ism is the problem I think the problem is a fundamentally defensive attitude on the part of many left wingers not all a sense of who do you think you are don't you know who I think I am where they cannot be satisfied if you tell them about any moral claim or any ethical cause that matters to you like if I personally care about em and involve with the Kree in the Egyptians politics First Nations language extinction politics of Education and poverty of indigenous peoples of Canada when I tell them that and they can't just be happy for me or even have a skeptical attitude like okay so here's someone with a different background and different set of interests what can I learn from that whether it's that or Cambodia or veganism would they respond to veganism just as a threat like oh so you have a way to make the world a better place and it has nothing to do with me and my issues and like the philosophy of Emma Goldman or whatever it is they're they're heavily committed to it has nothing to do with ideological commitments I've already made therefore I I'm gonna do what I have to do to undermine and discredit you and and your worldview but I wanted to add this this is my last note and we go straight to me giving the direct answer in this interview about this topic you know a couple videos ago I was addressing the issue of reduce at Arianism and I said to you guys honestly and bluntly reduce at Arianism is a threat it's a threat to the vegan movement it's a threat to vegan philosophy it's a threat and here's why because it's an income look we can't make common cause with a genuinely incompatible cause and they're really incompatible I would not say the same about intersectional I really wouldn't there's no reason fundamentally why veganism should be incompatible with you know people who are basically concerned about the way in which racism and sexism and other forms of hierarchy and oppression can overlap intersect there's there's no need for those to be incompatible or in conflict with another however at the time that I'm making this video in 2018 for totally extrinsic reasons the reality is they are in conflict one at one another and just today walking down the street this young woman starts talking to me and the minute I mention oh yeah like I'm a vegan activist I'm involved in vegan politics the first thing she wants to tell me is how her gender studies professor and other left-wing university professors are telling her how veganism is a really terrible thing and it's somehow about like sophisticated wealthy people in the cities opressing poor tribal peoples living on small tropical islands or groups like the Inuit who survive by fishing allegedly if you've ever actually met and talked to any what people very few of them are living a traditional livelihood anymore story for another video but where there's this framework presented to them in the university classroom on a basis of air SATs far-left crypto communist politics to some extent bundled up with intersectional jargon and that they're approaching veganism with a kind of phony skepticism and a deep-seated sense of resentment hostility and defensiveness that then we as vegans have to deal with every day adventists yen right no so I look I just made a video about this yesterday so it's something I've been thinking about recently but it's nothing comes up again and again and you know the one word I use most of all I tell you what this is tragic this is part of the tragedy of life you know not just in 2018 it always was always has been always we'll be when I was doing humanitarian work and politics in Laos and Cambodia you know I'm ethnically Jewish people would want to have conversation with me about politics in Israel and I'd say to them I don't do Israel Palestine I don't do Syria like I don't that's not my field of expertise that's not when I'm out here or like right now doing humanitarian work in Laos and this takes everything of God like you know just saying like if you want to know about Lotion politics you can't even spell the name of the politician at first you know kit zoom boom even right uh-huh right and when was that you know whatever experience living italic there really is like a barrier there you know of course linguistically and in terms of historical and political oh she was like look this what I'm doing but but make even the further point that even within veganism in terms of that this tragedy of specialization if you really care about dolphins in the Mekong River or if you really care about orangutans in Indonesia or if you really care about deer or bears in Canada I mean groundhogs in Canada any species like this in Canada once you've fastened onto that once you've made that the locus of your activism your advocacy your research your thoughts your emotions your tying your money quite possibly that is gonna take everything you've got to give and you know now you're the guy of course here in Victoria the most common example is Wales there are people who start becoming whale advocates or dolphin advocates and then that's it you know everything they've got to give in life and even veganism becomes less important or disappears you know into the background even if they got into it because they were they were vegan first so yeah I think that is really um you know part of the fundamental tragedy of being human and you know you find ways to talk about it where it's clear like okay like Here I am in Laos and Cambodia and I'm not gonna tell you I don't care about what's happening in Syria or Israel or Palestine I'm gonna tell you that's not my responsibility like right now I'm literally part of this humanitarian project here in Laos and this is what you know my thought and time and energy goes to and that's that's a choice you can make and then the other side of it that I've talked about you know on YouTube is how heartbreaking that is when the project ends when I left Laos so I was doing humanitarian work in Laos in the most obvious kind of humanitarian project so the really brief but the project included handing sacks of rice to starving people so that's like the simplest Kyle Kate you're starving we're gonna give you food it's the simplest guy that's not all they did they did other things too but it's the simplest kind of humanitarian intervention and I was kicked out of the country with death threats from a government official government official freaked out and said she was gonna have me killed she went all this detail my parents would never find my body be buried in the jungle and all this stuff it was quite a quite a desert yeah so I left that country with nothing but my backpack and my bicycle and it's like wow so I've put no I had no money I mean I was broke but I've put years of my life into learning the language learning the politics learning the history but also learning practical things like how the government works now the humanity how the humanitarian sector works so I can get out there and make this positive difference in the world and now all of that's over all of that for nothing so again we already talked this way at the beginning this interview I put in all this time and effort and a little bit of money it's not that much money into learning Korean a Jib way and trying to make it pause the difference that way and then when that ended it was like wow you know all the silver so that's that's the flipside of that tragedy you can specialize and you know life you know circumstances beyond your control I'm tempted to use words like fate or destiny but I'm not I don't believe in fate or destiny punch you circumstances beyond your control can separate you forever from being able to make the positive difference that you were training yourself to make that you were studying to make the Cure that you were learning to make and of course that could happen with something like dolphins also you know can you put all this energy into doing dolphin activism and then whatever you have to move to Detroit and there are no dolphins in Detroit you have to move somewhere for whatever reason you're really cut off from that yeah so when you're talking about making a real difference on specific issues whether it's within veganism or where it's outside of veganism that is the fundamental tragedy and now implicitly in what I've said I don't think I have to say it implicitly is that I'm in effect I'm anti intersectional list because I think people and intersectional ISM part of the problem is wanting to believe that you can do everything and I'm saying no no no let's really let's really deal with the tragedy that you can't and even according in all these things your own ignorance is infinite there are people you know and they mean well who make political statements about Cambodia and Myanmar and Laos and they think they're let's say they're the the stereotypical intersectional list left-wing intersectional list in theory someone could be a right-wing intersectional still never heard of that but you know in theory it could be you know they really think they're doing the right thing but it's like you haven't read one book about the history of this country and you know you should probably read about three before you have this kind of conclusion or make this kind of extreme political statement even though that political statement may be motivated by compassion you know what I mean and we just went through this with with palm oil at length people want to take a position on palm oil and it's like I'm saying but you know I've been to a palm oil farm you don't like if you know if you really thought this through you try to get some Socratic dialogue going but yeah it's it's really easy it's easy to multiply your own ignorance by multiplying your ideological commitments to mature sectionalism and I'd rather deal with really earnestly our own finitude where it's like look just this question starving people in Laos that's gonna take everything I've got and you know agriculture and rubber plantations and you know they're all these related issues understanding what's going on in the economy and farming and the education sector why people are starving and how do they get their children to school when you live in a town that's not connected anywhere by roads and the illiteracy and minority languages all these things were interconnected I poured everything I could into that and I developed expertise and once I'm back in Canada I have no more career path I can't get a PhD I can't do anything with that knowledge and hey here's the final tragedy and I see statements made by the Government of Canada and by the Senate of Canada and the people involved within the government they don't know what I know than over my background and by the way you can get that level really quickly God met people with the whale issue whether it's whales or wild goats or wolves if you do that with animal advocacy very quickly within a couple of years you'll know more than the people in government about about whales or but that specific whale population and what the ecological problems are so you know you develop that expertise then within a couple of years of commitment to an issue yeah that's not unique to my circumstance there you go man that's as heartfelt as it gets right right right no look it's look I think I mean I just want to say this explicitly implicitly and what you're saying is this some things are your responsibility whether you want them to be or not and some things are only a responsibility if you choose to take them on as your responsibility I was not born with any responsibility to the people of Laos or Cambodia I chose that but if you eat three times a day maybe you eat four times a day once a day but you eat watch this video eats it is surreal to claim you have no responsibility for the food that goes in your body and that's why veganism is so Universal sobering flipside I did advocacy on pollution water pollution in Toronto and you think wow everyone's gonna care about this issue because they all drink the water nope you'd be amazed at how easy it is for human beings to just just shirk their responsibilities to just not care even when I could show them at that time I don't know if this has changed or I could show them a map and say this is where the sewage goes out into Lake Ontario and this is the pipe where your where your drinking water comes from and they're they're right next to each other you know and you might think wow people are gonna get interested in getting so you know I mean that that is that is the gap but no I mean I absolutely you know food and water and air there are some things we got to say this is your responsibility and it you know if not you then who not everyone's gonna take sponsor but you've got ask people will you will you take responsibility for the consequences of you know what's on your fork what's on your knife what's on your plate every day the animal suffering ecology health everything else sure and that's why I preach man I don't I don't preach for everyone to go do humanitarian work in in Lausanne if I don't I think very few people should do that there are some special people for whom that might be a good path in life but yeah veganism is for everybody sure a bonus Yin