Cube of Truth: Joey Carbstrong is WRONG.
24 July 2018 [link youtube]
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#veganism #vegan #activism
Youtube Automatic Transcription
- yen this is a video about one of the
most popular and I think emblematic forms of vegan activism in the year 2018 and it is again a harsh critique of that method of activism partly in reply to a comment from Chile carb strong that I'm going to read out to you in just a second look guys it's really important to question the real meaning of the symbols we come to rely on in politics symbols due to some extent represent and misrepresent our goals or aspirations are are the meanings we're trying to convey in a political context what does the the silent protester wearing a mask mean to you I think that the idea of a silent vigil is a powerful symbol in Western culture but a silent vigil is a symbol of mourning a silent vigil for example at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier this is a standard expression of mourning a loss of death in our culture and we have a pretty long history of doing silent vigils in vegan activism the so called cube of truth is one recent variation on this however a silent vigil doesn't express a positive aspiration to change the world I think one of the reasons why the reaction to my earlier video criticizing the cube of truth phenomenon one of you is why the reaction was so extreme was that I was challenging the symbolic value of standing silently in a mask people warned to think of this as something heroic something defiant something rebellious and I was leading you to question that maybe instead this is something mindless something conformist something denigrating to the participants and really it is let's talk about the mask itself for a moment let's question the symbolic value of the mask you're wearing do you know what the Guy Fawkes mask represents and what it means it represents terrorism and not just any kind of terrorism Catholic fundamentalist terrorism this alludes to the so called Gunpowder Plot I don't think anyone today regards that as a heroic plot to assassinate the king of England to bring about a coup d'etat to try to replace Protestantism with Catholicism as the ruling state religion of England now Catholic terrorists in that period of time were much more of a real threat than Muslim terrorists Islamic terrorists are a threat to the status quo of England today or any Western European culture there's no real possibility of the government of England being swept aside and replaced with a Muslim fundamentalist government whereas there was a very real threat that continued in England from Guy Fawkes through to the whole period of the English Civil War there was a very real threat of the British government being swept aside the parliamentary tradition and so on and and replaced with a a Catholic monarchy such as most of what much of mainland Europe had at that time was a very real struggle and you know very violent struggle now I know there was a comic book called V for Vendetta many years ago I read that comic book and that comic book was adapted into a movie I'm not going to comment on the movie but I will say that the comic book itself used this symbol in an intelligent way to really question terrorism and terrorism in the context of resisting a fascist regime similar to the Nazi regime of world war ii the comic book is not only about those issues conv was also very interested actually ethnic issues of black versus white not the African American experience specially about African immigrants black people within the United Kingdom there were a number of other themes that the comic book was interested in but the comic book did not present the Guy Fawkes mask as a as a simple heroic symbol I think that's an incredibly stupid misinterpretation of a comic book that also represents its its main character the character wearing the Guy Fawkes masks it very much represents him as insane and of course at the time that comic book came out the resemblance between the Guy Fawkes mask and the the villain the well-known comic book villain he fights against Batman the resemble Street hit and the Joker was intentional making you question right from the beginning is this character the hero or the villain of the story and politically that's a question you're still supposed to be asking at the end of the story in that comic book so yes I'm gonna come out and say straight to your face Chipping garb strong this is stupid the the symbol you're employing is stupid it's bad and it's wrong and it's stupid even on the level of interpreting what is this comic book supposed to be about historically what is the Guy Fawkes mask supposed to be about or what is you know vegan activism supposed to be yes you know I'm gonna say it that lonely do now I'll mention by contrast is a very kind of reasonable and mealy-mouthed critique of this form of activism that was written by Tobias Leonhardt I sent him some messages on Twitter saying hey I just noticed you did a criticism you wrote a critique of the cube of truth here's my YouTube video where I'm much more harshly and directly criticizing and you can kind of see in his reply as he's saying yeah well I relate to what you're saying in that video but he says he was intentionally being a bit more of a of a nice guy about he was being a bit more evasive in his criticism of people don't be a nice guy don't be evasive don't be dishonest what is the point of engaging in political critique of what's going on in the movement if we're gonna lie to ourselves or we're gonna lie to others I used to be a Buddhist I used to be a member of mainstream tera vaada Buddhist religion and I left because I don't want to be a part of a religion that's built on a lie not even seemingly harmless little lies about nirvana and meditation and charity and ecology and feeling good about yourself you know whether it's something within veganism something in western politics I'm gonna tell you the truth in as much as it's known to me and a lot of the time telling the truth comes down to being honest but what we don't know about saying yeah I'm gonna tell you honestly I don't know the answer this question it often comes down to being honest about the questions that we have to ask but sure you know here on YouTube honesty is the only currency that we've got and I am gonna give it to you raw if you haven't looked up the history of the Guy Fawkes masks and the Gunpowder Plot on Wikipedia shame on you for standing in a public square and literally wearing a symbol of Catholic terrorism as your protest statement what kind of ignorant [ __ ] is that I don't even know if these people read the comic book V for Vendetta but it's I mean it doesn't symbolise the comic book it symbolises the Gunpowder Plot the history of Catholic terrorism in Europe but here's the other thing it symbolizes it symbolizes your judgement on yourself as an activist that there is no better change you can make in the world than to stand there silently like a mannequin and end it and it symbolizes a relationship of authority between you and the organizers of this protest that's we're gonna get into this video that's what's really sick is that somebody's in charge somebody's giving orders and you are silently standing there and taking orders and that authoritarian spirit which is very much the opposite of what V for Vendetta was all about this comic book and so on that pervades and I think poisons the whole Anonymous for the voiceless cube of truth project that's weird a question so joy curbstone wrote to me saying quote cubes are held around once a fortnight for four hours fortnight is a fancy word for two weeks by the way so four hours of your time every two weeks and we're now just going to pretend that that's nothing that's ending in silence with a mask following or orders from your overseer from the organizers but that that's nothing I feel like I studied a lot of the philosophy of Aristotle in the last couple of days reading Aristotle I don't think it adds up to four hours maybe about three hours of learning this last couple days if I spent four hours lifting weights of the gym that's a lot of time lifting weights the gym and sometimes that's what it takes um you're kidding yourself there are only so many hours a week that you're awake alert not busy doing dishes not busy with your job you got four hours of mental clarity and you're gonna spend it standing in silence that is a big sacrifice and you have better things to do with your time no matter who you are watching this video you have better ways to advance the vegan movement including even making YouTube videos like this one I mean this may be a really lousy form of activism what I'm doing here writing a children's story book with us from Titan so there are there other examples but sure it's better than standing in silence wearing a mask so I continue it's only four hours so Giuseppe is another 13 days the week to participate in some form of creative advocacy shame on you Joey no he doesn't you know what it's like them a full-time job Julie you know what it's like whoa okay you know what it's like to raise kids I think Joey has a younger sister he's been involved in raising shame you what are you joking you think for hours I think that's that's not a significant sacrifice for hours every two weeks or even four hours a month no it's it's it's significant and that's that's not more question here that the question is could you be spending this time better and you could and you know you could join now I see what you do with your time in an eight this it ain't standing and sounds of the mask on it's not um he continues a vie has reached thousands of non-vegans with a powerful message I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss this moorage well not just dismissing it Joey but tell me selling this excuse you make for cube of truth it's reached thousands of vegans sorry it's reached thousands of people with a powerful message isn't this the same excuse you made for durianrider like just a couple years ago just one year ago maybe up until pretty recently weren't you making this excuse for forms of vegan activism that you now regard as laughable bad and sad and wrong you made this same excuse for durianrider and freely other people make this same excuse for petaa People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals right they reach thousands of non vegans so when does the excuse making stop right and Pettit does reach thousands of people and every writer does reach thousands of people well we're question here is is this good or bad is this better or worse than other things you could do with four hours of your time right that's at some point somewhere the excuse may sink making has to stop and I'm telling you right here right now on this YouTube channel is where the excuse making is gonna stop he says I challenge you to participate in the cube of truth and then do a video reaction afterwards get outraged have some conversations doctorate document your experience get back to us look forward hear me right so we're gonna hear my reply here I did I did volunteer and now in response to this discussion with Joey I've volunteered again and both times I was denied the the right I was denied the possibility of participating in a silent protest because that is how narrow-minded and authoritarian this organization is or I could say in the plural these organizations are I reply hi Joey four hours is indeed a long time to stand someone in a mask and you seem to be ignoring the possibility quite real my own experience that the organizers are basically engaging in power mongering and that the experience is denigrating to the participant who is not a celebrity like yourself I did indeed volunteer to do cube of truth in Victoria British Columbia Canada the city of Victoria you may be unaware of this and the organizers refuse to let me to participate there's a lot of power mongering that goes on in local beacon movements you may be blind to it but if you don't totally conform to some little Hitler in the local movement you're out excluded hated maybe even defame on the Internet and that may be because you don't agree with the local little Hitler on some political issue unrelated to veganism many many vegans have spoken to around the world most recently in France have similar experiences and not only with anonymous or the voiceless anyway your challenge that participating to Cuba is a bit surreal because I ready volunteered for cube and I was not allowed to participate discussed here so I did earlier videos on that two videos I think so there is a lesson to be drawn for my experience with cube and I think it's a lesson for you old man smiley face winky face whatever some kind of emoji alright so I already was excluded from anonymous for the voiceless also known as cube of truth I was kicked out of the Facebook group when I was volunteering to participate in the City of Victoria why did that happen absolutely no good reason they had a post about cube of truth in Thailand this is obviously a very brief summary and I said I just gotten back from Thailand and I said look I think you guys aren't thinking about the real political context in Thailand in Thailand at that time there was no legal right to protest Thailand was at that time a military dictatorship they had no elections that no freedom of speech said I think there's a lot more going on here you guys did think about totally constructive interesting discussion open up and brief comment in a Facebook group banned you're out oh you think for yourself oh you show some signs of independent thought then you can't be a member of anonymous for the voiceless you can't wear the mask and stand there silently like a good little sheep oh and we don't want you we don't want people who ask questions we don't want people use their brains and hey guess what because of this conversation with joette carb strong i took a question to their chapter in vancouver these are two different cities close to each other in canada i asked about volunteering for anonymous for the voiceless cube of truth in the city of vancouver here we go quote and and i put the disclaimer up here this is a question not an answer hi i've recently been discussed in this question with vegan celebrity activist you a carb strong and also semi being introduced aryan author and actress tobias Leonar what is the actual process formal or informal whereby people are included or excluded by AV AV meaning anonymous with a voiceless meaning cube of truth my own opinion slash experience is that people are excluded all the time for reasons that remain unstated for example someone in the group said that you're politically offensive possibly for reasons unrelated veganism for example someone says you voted for Donald Trump and this raises the question of whether or not the outreach includes people who voted for Trump etc on the other hand I've talked to one guy with experience doing cubes who said that he really made an effort to include people as participants who sounded like they were mentally deranged and who compulsively start lecturing about September 11th conspiracy theories ie subjects unrelated to veganism and subjects that make the whole protest seem foolish are crazy however the basic question here is does av have a formal vetting process and if the answer is no are people reflecting on the in a formal vetting process that's ongoing as people are basically excluded all the time for reasons left unstated what was their reply to this message they kicked me out of the Facebook group they prevented me from volunteering for kube of truth okay what does standing silently in a mask symbolize for you maybe it symbolizes the the Christian tradition of a silent vigil the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier so on and so forth in Western Europe maybe for you it symbolizes an act of rebellion and defiance and a vague memory of a comic book and a movie called V for Vendetta maybe maybe I'm challenging you guys here both symbolically and actually what's going on here is top-down hierarchical power mongering it's the creation of little Hitler's it's the creation of unquestioned and unquestioning obedience between the self-appointed leaders of this group and the followers who are who are willing to take that weight who we're willing to stand there and hold that screen and be a be a symbol of you know a relationship of authority that I think should not even exist within the vegan movement this is not this is not a military organization guys and on the other hand this is snuffing out squandering and wasting the real creative potential the real intellectual potential of the people who are holding those signs whether you're an architect or an artist or you know an unemployed janitor you have the mental potential the dueling better with those four hours whether you spend them actively trying to prepare in advance the vegan movement or reading the philosophy of Aristotle or anything else you are making a significant sacrifice and I think you're making a sacrifice in order to be a symbol of something that is fundamentally bad and demented and wrong Joey if you still disagree hit me up [Music] evolution
most popular and I think emblematic forms of vegan activism in the year 2018 and it is again a harsh critique of that method of activism partly in reply to a comment from Chile carb strong that I'm going to read out to you in just a second look guys it's really important to question the real meaning of the symbols we come to rely on in politics symbols due to some extent represent and misrepresent our goals or aspirations are are the meanings we're trying to convey in a political context what does the the silent protester wearing a mask mean to you I think that the idea of a silent vigil is a powerful symbol in Western culture but a silent vigil is a symbol of mourning a silent vigil for example at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier this is a standard expression of mourning a loss of death in our culture and we have a pretty long history of doing silent vigils in vegan activism the so called cube of truth is one recent variation on this however a silent vigil doesn't express a positive aspiration to change the world I think one of the reasons why the reaction to my earlier video criticizing the cube of truth phenomenon one of you is why the reaction was so extreme was that I was challenging the symbolic value of standing silently in a mask people warned to think of this as something heroic something defiant something rebellious and I was leading you to question that maybe instead this is something mindless something conformist something denigrating to the participants and really it is let's talk about the mask itself for a moment let's question the symbolic value of the mask you're wearing do you know what the Guy Fawkes mask represents and what it means it represents terrorism and not just any kind of terrorism Catholic fundamentalist terrorism this alludes to the so called Gunpowder Plot I don't think anyone today regards that as a heroic plot to assassinate the king of England to bring about a coup d'etat to try to replace Protestantism with Catholicism as the ruling state religion of England now Catholic terrorists in that period of time were much more of a real threat than Muslim terrorists Islamic terrorists are a threat to the status quo of England today or any Western European culture there's no real possibility of the government of England being swept aside and replaced with a Muslim fundamentalist government whereas there was a very real threat that continued in England from Guy Fawkes through to the whole period of the English Civil War there was a very real threat of the British government being swept aside the parliamentary tradition and so on and and replaced with a a Catholic monarchy such as most of what much of mainland Europe had at that time was a very real struggle and you know very violent struggle now I know there was a comic book called V for Vendetta many years ago I read that comic book and that comic book was adapted into a movie I'm not going to comment on the movie but I will say that the comic book itself used this symbol in an intelligent way to really question terrorism and terrorism in the context of resisting a fascist regime similar to the Nazi regime of world war ii the comic book is not only about those issues conv was also very interested actually ethnic issues of black versus white not the African American experience specially about African immigrants black people within the United Kingdom there were a number of other themes that the comic book was interested in but the comic book did not present the Guy Fawkes mask as a as a simple heroic symbol I think that's an incredibly stupid misinterpretation of a comic book that also represents its its main character the character wearing the Guy Fawkes masks it very much represents him as insane and of course at the time that comic book came out the resemblance between the Guy Fawkes mask and the the villain the well-known comic book villain he fights against Batman the resemble Street hit and the Joker was intentional making you question right from the beginning is this character the hero or the villain of the story and politically that's a question you're still supposed to be asking at the end of the story in that comic book so yes I'm gonna come out and say straight to your face Chipping garb strong this is stupid the the symbol you're employing is stupid it's bad and it's wrong and it's stupid even on the level of interpreting what is this comic book supposed to be about historically what is the Guy Fawkes mask supposed to be about or what is you know vegan activism supposed to be yes you know I'm gonna say it that lonely do now I'll mention by contrast is a very kind of reasonable and mealy-mouthed critique of this form of activism that was written by Tobias Leonhardt I sent him some messages on Twitter saying hey I just noticed you did a criticism you wrote a critique of the cube of truth here's my YouTube video where I'm much more harshly and directly criticizing and you can kind of see in his reply as he's saying yeah well I relate to what you're saying in that video but he says he was intentionally being a bit more of a of a nice guy about he was being a bit more evasive in his criticism of people don't be a nice guy don't be evasive don't be dishonest what is the point of engaging in political critique of what's going on in the movement if we're gonna lie to ourselves or we're gonna lie to others I used to be a Buddhist I used to be a member of mainstream tera vaada Buddhist religion and I left because I don't want to be a part of a religion that's built on a lie not even seemingly harmless little lies about nirvana and meditation and charity and ecology and feeling good about yourself you know whether it's something within veganism something in western politics I'm gonna tell you the truth in as much as it's known to me and a lot of the time telling the truth comes down to being honest but what we don't know about saying yeah I'm gonna tell you honestly I don't know the answer this question it often comes down to being honest about the questions that we have to ask but sure you know here on YouTube honesty is the only currency that we've got and I am gonna give it to you raw if you haven't looked up the history of the Guy Fawkes masks and the Gunpowder Plot on Wikipedia shame on you for standing in a public square and literally wearing a symbol of Catholic terrorism as your protest statement what kind of ignorant [ __ ] is that I don't even know if these people read the comic book V for Vendetta but it's I mean it doesn't symbolise the comic book it symbolises the Gunpowder Plot the history of Catholic terrorism in Europe but here's the other thing it symbolizes it symbolizes your judgement on yourself as an activist that there is no better change you can make in the world than to stand there silently like a mannequin and end it and it symbolizes a relationship of authority between you and the organizers of this protest that's we're gonna get into this video that's what's really sick is that somebody's in charge somebody's giving orders and you are silently standing there and taking orders and that authoritarian spirit which is very much the opposite of what V for Vendetta was all about this comic book and so on that pervades and I think poisons the whole Anonymous for the voiceless cube of truth project that's weird a question so joy curbstone wrote to me saying quote cubes are held around once a fortnight for four hours fortnight is a fancy word for two weeks by the way so four hours of your time every two weeks and we're now just going to pretend that that's nothing that's ending in silence with a mask following or orders from your overseer from the organizers but that that's nothing I feel like I studied a lot of the philosophy of Aristotle in the last couple of days reading Aristotle I don't think it adds up to four hours maybe about three hours of learning this last couple days if I spent four hours lifting weights of the gym that's a lot of time lifting weights the gym and sometimes that's what it takes um you're kidding yourself there are only so many hours a week that you're awake alert not busy doing dishes not busy with your job you got four hours of mental clarity and you're gonna spend it standing in silence that is a big sacrifice and you have better things to do with your time no matter who you are watching this video you have better ways to advance the vegan movement including even making YouTube videos like this one I mean this may be a really lousy form of activism what I'm doing here writing a children's story book with us from Titan so there are there other examples but sure it's better than standing in silence wearing a mask so I continue it's only four hours so Giuseppe is another 13 days the week to participate in some form of creative advocacy shame on you Joey no he doesn't you know what it's like them a full-time job Julie you know what it's like whoa okay you know what it's like to raise kids I think Joey has a younger sister he's been involved in raising shame you what are you joking you think for hours I think that's that's not a significant sacrifice for hours every two weeks or even four hours a month no it's it's it's significant and that's that's not more question here that the question is could you be spending this time better and you could and you know you could join now I see what you do with your time in an eight this it ain't standing and sounds of the mask on it's not um he continues a vie has reached thousands of non-vegans with a powerful message I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss this moorage well not just dismissing it Joey but tell me selling this excuse you make for cube of truth it's reached thousands of vegans sorry it's reached thousands of people with a powerful message isn't this the same excuse you made for durianrider like just a couple years ago just one year ago maybe up until pretty recently weren't you making this excuse for forms of vegan activism that you now regard as laughable bad and sad and wrong you made this same excuse for durianrider and freely other people make this same excuse for petaa People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals right they reach thousands of non vegans so when does the excuse making stop right and Pettit does reach thousands of people and every writer does reach thousands of people well we're question here is is this good or bad is this better or worse than other things you could do with four hours of your time right that's at some point somewhere the excuse may sink making has to stop and I'm telling you right here right now on this YouTube channel is where the excuse making is gonna stop he says I challenge you to participate in the cube of truth and then do a video reaction afterwards get outraged have some conversations doctorate document your experience get back to us look forward hear me right so we're gonna hear my reply here I did I did volunteer and now in response to this discussion with Joey I've volunteered again and both times I was denied the the right I was denied the possibility of participating in a silent protest because that is how narrow-minded and authoritarian this organization is or I could say in the plural these organizations are I reply hi Joey four hours is indeed a long time to stand someone in a mask and you seem to be ignoring the possibility quite real my own experience that the organizers are basically engaging in power mongering and that the experience is denigrating to the participant who is not a celebrity like yourself I did indeed volunteer to do cube of truth in Victoria British Columbia Canada the city of Victoria you may be unaware of this and the organizers refuse to let me to participate there's a lot of power mongering that goes on in local beacon movements you may be blind to it but if you don't totally conform to some little Hitler in the local movement you're out excluded hated maybe even defame on the Internet and that may be because you don't agree with the local little Hitler on some political issue unrelated to veganism many many vegans have spoken to around the world most recently in France have similar experiences and not only with anonymous or the voiceless anyway your challenge that participating to Cuba is a bit surreal because I ready volunteered for cube and I was not allowed to participate discussed here so I did earlier videos on that two videos I think so there is a lesson to be drawn for my experience with cube and I think it's a lesson for you old man smiley face winky face whatever some kind of emoji alright so I already was excluded from anonymous for the voiceless also known as cube of truth I was kicked out of the Facebook group when I was volunteering to participate in the City of Victoria why did that happen absolutely no good reason they had a post about cube of truth in Thailand this is obviously a very brief summary and I said I just gotten back from Thailand and I said look I think you guys aren't thinking about the real political context in Thailand in Thailand at that time there was no legal right to protest Thailand was at that time a military dictatorship they had no elections that no freedom of speech said I think there's a lot more going on here you guys did think about totally constructive interesting discussion open up and brief comment in a Facebook group banned you're out oh you think for yourself oh you show some signs of independent thought then you can't be a member of anonymous for the voiceless you can't wear the mask and stand there silently like a good little sheep oh and we don't want you we don't want people who ask questions we don't want people use their brains and hey guess what because of this conversation with joette carb strong i took a question to their chapter in vancouver these are two different cities close to each other in canada i asked about volunteering for anonymous for the voiceless cube of truth in the city of vancouver here we go quote and and i put the disclaimer up here this is a question not an answer hi i've recently been discussed in this question with vegan celebrity activist you a carb strong and also semi being introduced aryan author and actress tobias Leonar what is the actual process formal or informal whereby people are included or excluded by AV AV meaning anonymous with a voiceless meaning cube of truth my own opinion slash experience is that people are excluded all the time for reasons that remain unstated for example someone in the group said that you're politically offensive possibly for reasons unrelated veganism for example someone says you voted for Donald Trump and this raises the question of whether or not the outreach includes people who voted for Trump etc on the other hand I've talked to one guy with experience doing cubes who said that he really made an effort to include people as participants who sounded like they were mentally deranged and who compulsively start lecturing about September 11th conspiracy theories ie subjects unrelated to veganism and subjects that make the whole protest seem foolish are crazy however the basic question here is does av have a formal vetting process and if the answer is no are people reflecting on the in a formal vetting process that's ongoing as people are basically excluded all the time for reasons left unstated what was their reply to this message they kicked me out of the Facebook group they prevented me from volunteering for kube of truth okay what does standing silently in a mask symbolize for you maybe it symbolizes the the Christian tradition of a silent vigil the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier so on and so forth in Western Europe maybe for you it symbolizes an act of rebellion and defiance and a vague memory of a comic book and a movie called V for Vendetta maybe maybe I'm challenging you guys here both symbolically and actually what's going on here is top-down hierarchical power mongering it's the creation of little Hitler's it's the creation of unquestioned and unquestioning obedience between the self-appointed leaders of this group and the followers who are who are willing to take that weight who we're willing to stand there and hold that screen and be a be a symbol of you know a relationship of authority that I think should not even exist within the vegan movement this is not this is not a military organization guys and on the other hand this is snuffing out squandering and wasting the real creative potential the real intellectual potential of the people who are holding those signs whether you're an architect or an artist or you know an unemployed janitor you have the mental potential the dueling better with those four hours whether you spend them actively trying to prepare in advance the vegan movement or reading the philosophy of Aristotle or anything else you are making a significant sacrifice and I think you're making a sacrifice in order to be a symbol of something that is fundamentally bad and demented and wrong Joey if you still disagree hit me up [Music] evolution