Vegan Outreach: Talking to Communists on Sidewalks.

hey guys what is up coming to you
patreon exclusive in September of 2018 I'm gonna share this with the general public about one year later but if you're watching this a year later or 10 years later I just note this anecdote is in some ways uniquely September of 2018 its contacts way back in September of 2018 which is right now if you're supporting the channel from $1 a month on patreon and thank you ah we participated in street outreach public education sidewalk activism in Vancouver British Columbia Canada and the first person who walked up to me and talked to me at this event was in fact a communist or possibly an anti-capitalist anarchist or a narco communist something of that kind so this video is primarily going to be relating that anecdote this conversation had to you with a few more reflections on this particular style of vegan outreach or activism so for myself overall this was a positive experience this is a very small group that organized the event it's ultimately one man's out in a one man's organization as so often the case with vegan activism and it does not directly reflect the methods used by cube of truth or the Earthlings experience the founder and coordinator and organizers of this group he was a former employee of Mercy for Animals and he'd seen what the other groups were doing in terms of street activism and outreach and in some ways his method is a bit of a creative response to the advantages and disadvantages of other methods so just as I suggested on this channel some time ago instead of having people standing silently wearing masks and holding up video monitors he simply bought a metal rack the video monitors are mounted on and the video monitors he purchased to display the slaughterhouse foot they are commercial-grade there they're the type of monitor used for public advertising not for you know using your computer at home to do word processing so they are much brighter and the image carries further down the sidewalk whereas you know if you're holding a laptop computer that's a type of display monitor or screen that's the type of screen really designed for people to sit up close to it so there are some some strategic differences here already and the other big one in terms of the psychology and attitude that the participants there's nobody having I think the denigrating experience of standing in silence with the mask on now different people do tell me different things about that experience of having the mask on and the main thing I'm excited with this video is that different people have different perspectives on the experience of doing the face to face conversation and outreach that this this type of activism entails that's very different for different psychological types of people it probably also is different based on your physical appearance sad but true in this world I'll come back to that a little bit later but you know I've had some people tell me that they really do appreciate and enjoy the experience of standing in silence with a mask on and seeing the look in other people's eyes seeing the reaction you know silently when they come over and look at the monitor I can understand that but I do sometimes have people telling me yes they really do experience this as a somewhat oppressive and hierarchical experience where some people at this event are being assigned to stand with a mask on and some are not that they can't stand the process of you know after two hours of standing in silence they got to move around or do something or go to the bathroom or that it drives them crazy that they really feel awful about it and that there are little power struggles for who gets the talk and it was to stand there in silence who's in charge who's gonna be a silent peon and who's gonna be the star of the show kind of thing that that that that kind of is going on so I mean some people enjoy standing in silence I have been told indirectly that some people prefer standing in silence because they're basically shy and inarticulate people and they feel they can't involve themselves in the other the other parts of the process and interestingly sometimes it is one in the same person who's telling me both sometimes one of the same person tells me that they do appreciate some kind of positive element of standing there and silent silent protest but at the same time they also appreciate the critique I offered and they really agree with that and they feel that yes there are there are negative aspects to it and just following up on that one step further I think got an email back from a guy in Japan who's again modifying this Earthlings experience cube of truth method of outreach and activism and the first modification they made for Japanese pardon me for a Japanese audience was getting rid of the masks so this is only I've said again and again and again how do you think this mask is perceived in different cultures how would it be perceived in Africa how would it be perceived in Japan or Thailand or China and how is even perceived in the United States of America versus England vs. Australia if we really think about it even if we're just doing a market research level analysis not a political or philosophical level of analysis there's a lot wrong with this particular mask and in some context is a question of should you be wearing a mask at all but anyway the guy this guy wrote back to me from Japan and he said look you know they did it on an experimental basis they tried using the the Guy Fawkes masks they tried using different masks and they said look here in Japan the response to the masks is really negative it's really distracting it trivializes the demonstration that people seeing it don't take it seriously because wearing the mask he talked about how the reaction was negative so they've really made the decision to do this kind of protest or outreach barefaced to just an effort their face exposed and they immediately saw much more positive engagement so interesting word on that from Japan so the particular group we participated with in Vancouver there are no masks and there's nobody standing in a silent vigil they have an advertising style big video display and simply as a volunteer you stand there to talk to anyone who's willing or interested to talk to you after they see the gruesome spectacle that's playing constantly on the screen of slaughterhouse footage and there's a little bit of text on screen not too much there are some simple things sit on screen indicating that you know this suffering can be abolished just by switching to a healthier vegan diet there are a few written prompts on screen and you don't get sound you don't get the sound of the the pigs screaming or you know pigs cows whatever's on screen which is again an interesting choice a lot of the negative reaction to slaughter has footage that I've seen has been because people really feel the sound is disturbing them and that's very understandable especially in confined spaces like a subway or a train station where people have to be there people have to be there with the kids to have the sound of the screaming the animals on the other hand I think some protesters would say that's exactly what they want so this particular setup they were playing music just anodyne meaning music that's not related to the the video in any way and but otherwise the video was silent so the very first person to come up and and speak to me and you know she wasn't particular interest to me she just stepped forward and kind of spoke to everyone it was close to her and I I took up the conversation cuz I was I was standing close to her um again I would say she was either a communist or maybe an anarchic communist or some kind of anti anti-capitalist person this becomes obvious from the very first thing she said as you'll see as I tell the rest this anecdote um but it was also striking to me that she was actually wearing the outfit that today identifies you as being a part of the quote-unquote black bloc of protesters so that's a style of dress that's been around since the 1990s but it used to be that people would just dress up that way when they were going to a protest dressed up as a member of the Black Bloc that was that was associated in the past especially with anarchists but all kinds of people dressed that way today and you know I don't think anyone thought of that as a style of clothing you'd wear 24/7 but obviously now for some people it is unless unless she was coming over targets coincidentally maybe she just came from some other or political protest if so she didn't mention it so she was wearing an old black hoodie all-black outfit exactly the the style of clothing that that's associated with that political leaning these days and she looked at the screen you know briefly but no no four four two minutes or something and then she said very sincerely and very directly she said that she thought the real problem with what was on screen didn't have anything to do with animal rights or veganism she thought that the problem was capitalism because all of this only happened because it was being done for a profit from her perspective in a capitalist system so as it happened I was standing quite close to her so I got to be the person who reacted to her first and the first thing I said to her which I really did try to say in a very affable and disarming way I didn't say it in an authoritative way or confrontational way I said um I've lived in communist countries and this really surprised her it just did and you know she was just kind of a little bit boggle that said what and I said to I've lived in in two different communist countries I said you know in in communist countries the animals die just the same way the process of where meat comes from the process of making beef pork chicken milk the animals die just the same way and she actually respond to that her words were a little bit garbled I did understand her meaning but she didn't she she fumbled a few words she said in a kind of hasty way that oh well that was just a problem with current actually existing communist systems but not somehow under real communism and again trying to be affable and not confrontational and she did actually respond positively I mean she was being very sincere and she didn't get defensive so I think I succeeded in being being affable saying this I said no in Russia in 1920 the animals were being killed the same way in China in 1960 the animals were being killed the same way under every communist system this isn't just something as she was suggesting with recent corruption income his countries or capitalist influence in communist countries in every stage of history and the next thing I said was she was she was a little bit stunned there was a moment of silence after I said that so I then offered further this goes back more than 2,000 years this goes back more than 10,000 years this isn't a problem with capitalism this isn't just a problem with industrialization or industrialized Society so you know this this is a story of of centuries and millennia for all this time you know this is where your food has come from the animals have been dying the same way now I was really expecting her at this point to have a defensive reaction or a dismissive reaction because I could tell from her very first statement where she was blaming capitalism that you know this is a real personal conviction of hers that she's someone who's an anti-capitalist or pro-communist of some kind and you know she really wants to believe that her political ideology would solve this problem or at least that the political ideology she hates that the economic system capitalism if were abolished this would also abolish this problem but what she said next surprised me because she said to me quite sincerely and sounding a bit bewildered so what's the alternative that you know how do we solve the problem and I said to her you know the very first a factor that was veganism said I've been eating a vegan diet for years now I could have said all of us have because we had a group of people there who were all vegans were all there but I just hope for myself so now it's sort possible and her next question after that also indicated that she really was sincere she wasn't just interested in defending communist or anti capitalist ideology she asked and I I do sympathise as a sincere question she said where do you get your protein how do you get enough protein yes sincere enough and I gave her a reasonably informative answer with that I said well there are plenty of you know natural sources like soy beans black beans kidney beans any kind of bean is rich in protein but I said if you're too busy to eat uh you know to prepare a meal with whole beans in it you know there are lots of ways you can cheat I said you can buy protein bars you probably see them at all the grocery stores and what-have-you you can buy you know the Clif Bar that's a vegan brand that has protein and a bunch of other vitamins in it I say you can you can cheat you know if you're busy and you don't have time to really cook properly as a vegan you can buy protein powder you can buy protein supplements this is if you're worried about protein you know there are ways to cheat and there are also ways to get enough protein having whatever you want to call it a healthy Whole Foods diet you know or what have you and I just mentioned she um she did not look healthy I would say she was at least thirty pounds overweight but maybe even she had about fifty pounds to lose she was she was significantly overweight and young I mean she wasn't an older person being overweight that way so she might also have on some level been been interested in in improving her health well that's not overtly you know what we talked about so you know only a few more words were exchanged after that you know communism has been one of the most popular and the most influential ideologies in the history of the world so you know it is surprising for many of us you know you feel that this has been discredited that it's killed millions of people how is it possible in 2018 that you meet communists as I do I mean I've known huge numbers of Communists my whole life especially within academia especially in context where left-wing extremism is really kind of celebrated and and protected from outside scrutiny um you you certainly have to be open to the possibility when talking to communists that they're not interested in cynically making excuses for their ideology that they're not trying to use their ideology as an excuse for their bad behavior I've definitely seen that with communists in the past where they say they believe in liberating the workers and therefore they don't care about liberating the cows or the chickens of the pigs that they're they don't care about ecology or other things that they just have this Marxist analysis of class struggle and that's the political struggle they're committed to and that only you know you have to remain open to the possibility that the people you're talking to are sincere and well-intentioned even if they have signed up for a political ideology as odious as communism and it's hard it's not easy I've literally broken down weeping reading detailed accounts of communist atrocities and those atrocities are not as well-known as the Nazi atrocities you know when you say the word Nazi immediately what comes to mind our concentration camps and gas chambers and eugenics so on and so forth when you say the word communist very very few people have done the reading have done the kind of research to know the type of mass murder that ideology really entails or even to know how ugly the reality is lurking behind euphemisms like class war that you know yeah class war really does mean you know students murdering their own teachers it really does mean people going house-to-house and you know slaughtering their fellow man for being bourgeois and the definition of who is who isn't bourgeois is always dangerously vague and susceptible to interpretation and so on and so forth not even to get into masturbation ethnocide genocide and simple looting that's they came up as part and parcel of the history of communism yeah I've said many many times in this channel I did not want to be part of the Buddhist religion anymore in the past when I left Buddhism because I didn't want to be part of a religion that's built on a lie and I can still say today my engagement with veganism ecology and other forms of politics in this same way is always about keeping it real keeping it real with myself and others it's not always gonna turn out well it may sometimes be emotionally damaging for both parties when you really keep it honest but yeah I'm not living a lie one way or another neither in in terms of you know the account of my own political commitments nor terms of the way in which I a challenge others