Organizing Dissent: Digital Veganism vs. Real Life Vegans
08 April 2016 [link youtube]
"In a sentence, the problem with digital veganism in this respect, the problem with the internet view of the world is that people come to regard weakness as strength: people think that defining yourself more narrowly (and in connection to one of these political causes) makes veganism stronger, and it doesn't, it makes it weaker."
Youtube Automatic Transcription
in a sentence the problem with digital
veganism in this respect the problem with the internet view of the world is that people come to regard weakness as strengths people think that defining yourself more narrowly and in connection to one of these political causes makes veganism stronger and it doesn't it makes it weaker in technology people talk about the difference between the early adopters of a technology and the mass-market who happens to be the type of person to try something out when it's new and unreliable and expensive as opposed to the potential for something to reach millions of people the colorful cast of characters of eccentrics who quit their jobs and drop out of university to start a YouTube channel to show off you know them riding a bicycle wearing a bikini they are early adopters and the question is where you live who is the mass-market YouTube does not show me the grandmother's who are sitting at home who would write a check and donate to support the Green Party or who would donate to support a vegan party a vegan cause of some kind if you had an organization doing advocacy for any particular issue under the heading of vegan of who are those people and how do you reach out to them those grandmothers writing the checks and that will be different it's different in Spain it's different in Germany it's different from one city to another in Canada it's different in Montreal from from Vancouver who are those people and how do you reach them I can tell you one thing for goddamn sure you are gonna alienate those people you are not gonna reach those people you are not gonna earn their trust or support by identifying yourself with Marxism libertarianism intersectional feminism or any other radical political ideology that only provides vegans with the ego-trip of being rebellious of being revolutionary of being anti-establishment evolution ah buh move yen hey guys making my usual cavi here if I look exhausted that's because I am exhausted I'm recording this at about what I am I'm having one of these nights which is kind of wonderful and terrible at the same time because I don't have a regular job I have to wake up four in the morning if I decide I'm gonna do 200 push-ups before I go to sleep I can stay up as late as I need to to get those tuner push-ups done if I decide I'm gonna get a certain amount of reading done before I go to sleep I can stay up and get that reading done so this is a luxury actually very few of us have in life and I have very few luxuries in my life but right now this is one of them so there's a gap between digital veganism veganism is represented here on the internet by people like myself and including myself in the reality of who normal vegans are or average vegans are and this matters because the potential for vegans to make a difference in the world in terms of getting organized socially or otherwise is gonna rely on those normal vegans or average vegans wherever you happen to live they're not gonna be the same kind of people in Spain as they would be in Germany or not the same in California as they are in Canada and knowing and getting to grips with who becomes vegan even in your particular City that's gonna be a necessary first step to figuring out what's possible even at the level of organizing a tiny you know local charity I mean if if the vegans in your city all really care about saving the whales even though you personally you may not think veganism is all that linked to you know preserving whale habitat or wild whale populations I think that is the kind of thing you got to work with where you got to recognize okay look unlike the people on the Internet this is the reality of who vegans are where I'm at this is what I can work with this is who I can work with and then go from there um the type of pragmatic down-to-earth attitude I've just described is very much the opposite of what is currently ruling the internet I can remember vegan gains openly saying vegan gains the name of YouTube personality openly saying that if you're vegan and you're not an athlete you're not a bodybuilder you're not lean and beautiful then you should not let anyone know in public that you're vegan and his thinking there was that vegans should keep up this illusion that veganism is a panacea for obesity that it's an easy solution for being overweight that if you're vegan you're automatically going to be beautiful and vibrant and athletic now vegan gains he's a guy who's been to many bodybuilding conferences I don't know if he's ever gone to an animal-rights conference or any kind of political event like that for a quick contrast I got some email from a guy who is a tall thin guy living in Europe he's vegan and he goes to vegan events of many different kinds in person not not just on the internet and he told me in responding to various themes raised in my videos he said to me look he happens to be the type of tall thin guy who really prefers overweight women to be blunt he prefers fat women that's his preference and he says there is no problem finding vegan women who are seriously overweight and all of these events he goes to in contrast to what's presented on the Internet the reality is fat vegans are really common as a very interesting perspective of course it's coming from somebody who's happy about it mmm you know but his point is this illusion that you know vegans are by default or disproportionally very lean or very athletic or something it doesn't square with reality on the ground now that's a very simple example because it's physical you can get into a lot of other more difficult examples I've repeatedly called attention to the problem that look don't get into the assumption that all vegans are left-wing if you believe veganism is for everyone then you have to believe it's also for at least conservatives moderates liberals what-have-you and a lot of what I see going on in the internet is instead vegans trying to attach veganism to an even smaller even more radical or failed ideology give you I don't know two examples of what I mean here I have spoken directly with a guest three different vegans who were really interested in attaching veganism to intersectionality as people say which is really a shorthand for intersectional feminism now in all three cases people is talking to you I said well you know um intersectional feminism is a really small movement it this is not a criticism of the substance or content which is another question but you have to appreciate we talk about intersectional feminism you're talking about something that almost exclusively exists inside universities for people who have a career in the academic study of feminism academic study of women's issues in history so if you compare intersectional ism to Marxism Marxism is something that that the vast majority people regard now as as a failure as a joke as you know just a chapter of the world's history that's over and as a political movement that has no future as a political movement that has no significant following well in relative scale Marxism is enormous compared to intersectional feminism depending on where you live in the world if you live somewhere like Greece today Marxism may be very vibrant and powerful locally where you live you might be able to make an argument that veganism can grow and be more influential by infiltrating your local Marxist party of trying to get the Marxist party to formally recognize veganism as a goal or as an aspect of its platform now where I live in Canada that would be a joke I mean you know Marxism here is very marginal and of course it's scorned because it is strongly associated with a history of mass murder the connection between Marxism and you know violent communist regimes is very meaningful and important and it shouldn't be denied or overlooked however I mean I raised the the example of Marxism just as a contrast why would you as a vegan think that the way to make this tiny and powerless movement more powerful more influential is to attach it to an even tinier even more powerless even less respected movement such as intersectional feminism again I don't say that out of any hatred for the particular example I am raising this under this rubric because I think this is the type of misperception or misconception that comes out of vegans living so much on the internet a large percentage of vegans only have vegan friends via the internet they don't know other vegans face-to-face in real life and I can sympathize and you know basically the situation I've been in most of the time I've been vegan I'm you know whatever whoever my girlfriend is at the time um what would be vegan also and then outside of that you know do you know any vegans face to face in the city happen to be living in it stuff so you know for me to most most of you know my sense of what normal vegans are is like is also warped I often say to people look I don't know what normal vegans are like I know what vegans on YouTube are like I know what vegan that I know the tiny minority of vegans who you know have the self-confidence to get on camera or to write a blog or the right articles I know what those people are like and of course there's a distortion and that distortion is partly Geographic because I'm looking at kind of the boldest and the bravest of people from England California India Hong Kong it doesn't represent the potential for political action in my city partly just because it's cosmopolitan and partly because these are mostly not people who have a job not people who have kids or a normal life these are often people who are trying to earn an income from their internet presence you know already I've also outlined the many ways in which my channel is different from that norm and obviously look I mean I'm not hating on it I'm not saying vegan YouTube shouldn't exist I am a fan I'm a fan I mean these people all know me and you know the people I'm a fan of your channel you know I'm a fan cuz I've told you et cetera I I send I don't just get fan mail I send people fan mail I'm happy that there are people spreading this message on YouTube however all sorts of distortions arise because of this sort of unexamined gap between digital veganism and real world veganism and the latter may be really hard to look into now again I'm not raising this concern because I'm afraid Outsiders will look at vegans the internet and think vegans are dumb I'm not raising it because I'm afraid that people like vegan gains people on YouTube with extreme opinions make veganism look bad that's not my concern at all I'm concerned about you guys my viewers and the people right into me who are trying to organize veganism into something politically not knowing where to stop not knowing where to start we'll worry about where to stop later am i right um and being really misled this way now another example I get a lot of reactions from a guy called Ron Paul girls who is both my number one fan and my number one critic and instead of intersectional ism or Marxism he's wanting veganism to be attached to libertarianism specifically he has his own eccentric view of ecological libertarianism which is interesting to talk about in some ways because I think one of the clearest weaknesses of libertarianism is exactly its relationship to ecology the vast majority of libertarians like anarcho-capitalists will just say well if it's your private property you can do whatever you want with it well if you buy a piece of land and cut down all the trees this is a problem you know they're just obvious issues of regulations and government paternalism government oversight and an intervention they come up under the heading of ecology and they come up for vegans too anyway that's his approach that's interesting if you're just talking about you know people on the Internet and the distorted view of the world you get through the internet you might think this sounds like a viable approach or what have you it's not and it's not for the same reasons that I've been talking about just now we come from a culture anyone who speaks English anyone in the modern Western world we come from a culture and an era that reviews that pardon me that a culture in an era that treats rebelliousness as a positive trait in and of itself and people slip into the assumption very easily that veganism is a revolutionary movement simply because it's a challenge to one aspect of the establishment well veganism isn't and you make veganism weaker by attaching it to any kind of rebellious or revolutionary cause for the same reasons look a campaign to and cigarette smoking is not inherently rebellious or revolutionary a campaign to save the whales or any other pragmatic you know habitat related wilderness related single issue like that it doesn't get stronger by so seeing itself with radical politics or rebellious revolutionary politics if you you know whatever let's see the example if there's there are seven dolphins left and a certain stretch of the river you're trying to preserve that habitat save this endangered species no other example monkeys are left but a very small patch of habitat last few families at the given species of monkey etc the last thing you're gonna want to do is let's say you organize your five friends who care about this specific issue the last thing you're going to want to do is to hit your cart to some obscure radical philosophy whether it's Marxism or intersectional feminism or libertarianism this is not pragmatic if you have five people together and you're trying to change the local bylaws about cigarette smoking where you live you're trying to get an anti-smoking campaign running which in some parts of Europe is still a really necessary jail but depending where you live that may all be in the past tense but there's some places where that's still a big a big struggle to reduce the use of of tobacco however many people you have involved at the beginning five people ten people whatever you say okay we're gonna form this anti-smoking committee this ending smoking campaign the worst thing you could do is say we're only going to let people join who are intersectional feminists or we're only going to let people join who are libertarians or we're only going to participate with and we're gonna try to infiltrate the local libertarian party this is taking an incredibly small and weak political movement and making it even smaller and weaker so in a sentence the problem with digital veganism in this respect the problem with the internet view of the world is that people come to regard weakness as strengths people think that defining yourself more narrowly and in connection to one of these political causes makes veganism stronger and it doesn't it makes it weaker now why is that this is part of the world of likes and thumbs up and all kinds of things I mean yes if you have an obscure blog and instead of just being vegan you identify with any one of these tiny political parties or movements your blog may now get more attention more comments more fan mail more thumbs up more viewers on YouTube or have you on that scale this kind of factionalism is rewarded you can get a niche market a niche viewership that grows very easily and probably someone like there's a channel called a privileged vegan she identified with I don't know some of the most far-out she took on a certain ideological pose that got her a lot of attention from non vegans and I think she found that very rewarding you know whatever I'm happy for her good for her I certainly have some criticism over on this channel but you know whatever for an individual person who has that experience of okay look this ideology took my channel from obscurity to a certain level of attention globally let's say again let's say it's Marxism any of these people or anarchism I mean anarchism still you know I actually I don't see many vegan channels that are sincerely interested in anarchism what I tend to see are vegans who flirt with the faded memory of the role in urk ISM and the a LF had twenty years ago in animal rights and then I think they seem to lose interest maybe because the reality of what the al F is like today or the reality of of anarchism in in ecology and veganism a I don't know but for right now that seems to be out of flat out of fashion at a style but obviously it's easy to imagine that could come back into style and so again whatever your blog your YouTube channel if you identified with anarchism or Marxism that could easily bring you more you know another ten thousand viewers internationally but it is alienating you from exactly the people who could actually support your movement organization in your city or your town now to actually accomplish something worthwhile now we again what whatever you think of as the example of local activity and organization I've had many examples on this channel this guy in London violent vegan he's trying to organize a vegan hot dog shop a hot dog stand is a form of outreach and of course it's hard to find people to work with anyway so just say not not all political organization and activism is about a street protest so in technology people talk about the difference between the early adopters of a technology and the mass market who happens to be the type of person to try something out when it's new and I'm reliable and expensive as opposed to the potential for something to reach millions of people veganism this is one of the problems you know people like me are in a sense early adopters the colorful cast of characters of eccentrics who quit their jobs and drop out of university to start a YouTube channel to show off you know them riding a bicycle and wearing a bikini they are early adopters and the question is where you live who is the mass-market this is point one point two so one of the criticisms are received some people think I'm praising the Green Party Party of Canada and on the contrary I have said nothing but kind of scorn and derision above the Green Party of Canada incredible low opinion with me Party Canada I think it's garbage but I raised it as an example to show the level of organization that vegans have not yet even achieved and I've raised this example in contrast and saying like well if you really think there's hope for the future through this or that vegan organization let's compare how far it's come to the Green Party not an uncritical fan of the Green Party on the card to have said repeatedly the Green Party of Canada one of the things I despise about it is they actively support the milk and dairy industry where they want the government to give more money to support the milk and dairy in it they want more subsidies and you know this stupid nationalistic rhetoric of the government has to protect the Canadian dairy industry against the American dairy industry as if somehow milk made in America is more evil than milk made in Canada it's idiotic and it's an excuse for you know graft of the worst kind and nobody in the Green Party is interested in the question of you know the actual suffering of the cows or any of the ethical and ecological realities so anyway I just say anyone who thinks I'm a fan of the Green Party you're missing the point of why I have mentioned it in in previous videos nevertheless the Green Party for this video once again is significant there's the contrast between early adopters and the mainstream market mainstream audience there's a contrast between the political splinter groups the radicals the internet and the political mainstream wherever you live it's going to be very different city to city but the reality of an organization of the Green Party is that it's based on another type of public another type of constituency when I was involved in Green Party Ken and many many years ago the reality was the party only existed because of a small number of retired people who donated let's say $100 a month you know it's not even stereotypical to say they're retired um these were elderly people who you know got involved with ecology in the 1960s and 1970s and who were convinced that the Green Party had some legitimacy in Canada and who reached into their pension and donated $100 a month a very small number of those people were providing the the financial lifeline on which the Green Party existed they were desperately needed that was the core constituency and now the Green Party Canada as I've mentioned it's kind of a failure in many ways they were also spoiled by this because those donors that particular political constituency they didn't expect anything in return if you gave them a leaflet once a year in the mail they'd be happy and they go okay well hey I gave them a hundred bucks and now I've got this worthless leaflet this little you know a few baited pieces of paper updating me on what the Green Party has done during the last 12 months and in reality that party would have done nothing or almost nothing they had a meeting you know hum I remember talking to the man who was the leader of the Green Party the federal Green Party at that time again this is years and years ago and he was talking about getting you know a Green Party youth organization and he was hopeless this guy I mean I might as well have been talking to a brick wall he was an idiot for saying to him look you know young people have other things to do what you're talking about what he was imagining it's gonna take up a lot of their time and money and what are you offering in return what's rewarding about this or what's gratifying about this so like you don't even have a magazine for them to contribute to or something you know if somebody publishes an article in magazine and their name is on it and they're maybe their photo is on it even if there's no money back for something like the Green Party for an ecologic organization that can be really rewarding I don't know if your magazine is good enough maybe the person listed on their CV I mean there are things any political organization can do that rewards participation and at that time the Green Party was doing none of them I said you're imagining you know the youth as if they're gonna line up to give you their their time and their money when you're offering absolutely nothing in return um uh III was having that conversation I'm in a genuinely helpful tone of voice unlike its what a voice I just used now but it was completely useless that guy that guy was hopeless um so look this is the final gap I want to talk about here is the gap between digital vegans and the people who are their potential patrons politically speaking in any given city wherever it is in the world YouTube does not show me those people YouTube does not show me the grandmothers who are sitting at home who would write a check and donate to support the Green Party or who would donate to support a vegan party a vegan cause of some kind if you had an organization doing advocacy for any particular issue under the heading of veganism again whether it's save the whales or save the river or setting up a hotdog stand who are those people and how do you reach out to them those grandmothers writing the checks and that'll be different it's different in Spain it's different in Germany it's different from one city to another in Canada it's different in Montreal from from Vancouver who are those people and how do you reach them I can tell you one thing for goddamn sure you are gonna alienate those people you are not gonna reach those people you are not gonna earn their trust or support by identifying yourself with Marxism libertarianism intersectional feminism or any other radical political ideology that only provides vegans with the ego-trip of being rebellious of being revolutionary of being anti-establishment it's the ego trip that you know putting on a black mask and calling yourself an anarchist well what the really changes when you take off the mask and look in the mirror at the end of the day you're the same person and you've now destroyed your credibility with the only constituency who could actually care about you and sympathize with what you're trying to accomplish in the long term so this is part of the blinding phenomenon of taking a political movement on the Internet in the past there were other problems when political movements relied heavily on magazines only a certain type of person would be getting articles into the magazine it would normally just be people who lived in New York or just two people who lived in Toronto you know in the centers who were involved with you know political publications and you wouldn't hear anything from maybe the majority of people who lived in more more remote areas what not only remote smaller cities suburbs what-have-you there have always been distorting biases of this kind in political organization you know the dissidents who were criticizing communism in Moscow in the 1980s they were almost all moneyed intellectuals in Moscow and you weren't hearing from you know the peasants of the surrounding area because those are the people who had access to publications have you so these are fundamental patterns and political science but the internet blinds us as never before as to who our audience is and what our potential is to make a positive difference by getting organized
veganism in this respect the problem with the internet view of the world is that people come to regard weakness as strengths people think that defining yourself more narrowly and in connection to one of these political causes makes veganism stronger and it doesn't it makes it weaker in technology people talk about the difference between the early adopters of a technology and the mass-market who happens to be the type of person to try something out when it's new and unreliable and expensive as opposed to the potential for something to reach millions of people the colorful cast of characters of eccentrics who quit their jobs and drop out of university to start a YouTube channel to show off you know them riding a bicycle wearing a bikini they are early adopters and the question is where you live who is the mass-market YouTube does not show me the grandmother's who are sitting at home who would write a check and donate to support the Green Party or who would donate to support a vegan party a vegan cause of some kind if you had an organization doing advocacy for any particular issue under the heading of vegan of who are those people and how do you reach out to them those grandmothers writing the checks and that will be different it's different in Spain it's different in Germany it's different from one city to another in Canada it's different in Montreal from from Vancouver who are those people and how do you reach them I can tell you one thing for goddamn sure you are gonna alienate those people you are not gonna reach those people you are not gonna earn their trust or support by identifying yourself with Marxism libertarianism intersectional feminism or any other radical political ideology that only provides vegans with the ego-trip of being rebellious of being revolutionary of being anti-establishment evolution ah buh move yen hey guys making my usual cavi here if I look exhausted that's because I am exhausted I'm recording this at about what I am I'm having one of these nights which is kind of wonderful and terrible at the same time because I don't have a regular job I have to wake up four in the morning if I decide I'm gonna do 200 push-ups before I go to sleep I can stay up as late as I need to to get those tuner push-ups done if I decide I'm gonna get a certain amount of reading done before I go to sleep I can stay up and get that reading done so this is a luxury actually very few of us have in life and I have very few luxuries in my life but right now this is one of them so there's a gap between digital veganism veganism is represented here on the internet by people like myself and including myself in the reality of who normal vegans are or average vegans are and this matters because the potential for vegans to make a difference in the world in terms of getting organized socially or otherwise is gonna rely on those normal vegans or average vegans wherever you happen to live they're not gonna be the same kind of people in Spain as they would be in Germany or not the same in California as they are in Canada and knowing and getting to grips with who becomes vegan even in your particular City that's gonna be a necessary first step to figuring out what's possible even at the level of organizing a tiny you know local charity I mean if if the vegans in your city all really care about saving the whales even though you personally you may not think veganism is all that linked to you know preserving whale habitat or wild whale populations I think that is the kind of thing you got to work with where you got to recognize okay look unlike the people on the Internet this is the reality of who vegans are where I'm at this is what I can work with this is who I can work with and then go from there um the type of pragmatic down-to-earth attitude I've just described is very much the opposite of what is currently ruling the internet I can remember vegan gains openly saying vegan gains the name of YouTube personality openly saying that if you're vegan and you're not an athlete you're not a bodybuilder you're not lean and beautiful then you should not let anyone know in public that you're vegan and his thinking there was that vegans should keep up this illusion that veganism is a panacea for obesity that it's an easy solution for being overweight that if you're vegan you're automatically going to be beautiful and vibrant and athletic now vegan gains he's a guy who's been to many bodybuilding conferences I don't know if he's ever gone to an animal-rights conference or any kind of political event like that for a quick contrast I got some email from a guy who is a tall thin guy living in Europe he's vegan and he goes to vegan events of many different kinds in person not not just on the internet and he told me in responding to various themes raised in my videos he said to me look he happens to be the type of tall thin guy who really prefers overweight women to be blunt he prefers fat women that's his preference and he says there is no problem finding vegan women who are seriously overweight and all of these events he goes to in contrast to what's presented on the Internet the reality is fat vegans are really common as a very interesting perspective of course it's coming from somebody who's happy about it mmm you know but his point is this illusion that you know vegans are by default or disproportionally very lean or very athletic or something it doesn't square with reality on the ground now that's a very simple example because it's physical you can get into a lot of other more difficult examples I've repeatedly called attention to the problem that look don't get into the assumption that all vegans are left-wing if you believe veganism is for everyone then you have to believe it's also for at least conservatives moderates liberals what-have-you and a lot of what I see going on in the internet is instead vegans trying to attach veganism to an even smaller even more radical or failed ideology give you I don't know two examples of what I mean here I have spoken directly with a guest three different vegans who were really interested in attaching veganism to intersectionality as people say which is really a shorthand for intersectional feminism now in all three cases people is talking to you I said well you know um intersectional feminism is a really small movement it this is not a criticism of the substance or content which is another question but you have to appreciate we talk about intersectional feminism you're talking about something that almost exclusively exists inside universities for people who have a career in the academic study of feminism academic study of women's issues in history so if you compare intersectional ism to Marxism Marxism is something that that the vast majority people regard now as as a failure as a joke as you know just a chapter of the world's history that's over and as a political movement that has no future as a political movement that has no significant following well in relative scale Marxism is enormous compared to intersectional feminism depending on where you live in the world if you live somewhere like Greece today Marxism may be very vibrant and powerful locally where you live you might be able to make an argument that veganism can grow and be more influential by infiltrating your local Marxist party of trying to get the Marxist party to formally recognize veganism as a goal or as an aspect of its platform now where I live in Canada that would be a joke I mean you know Marxism here is very marginal and of course it's scorned because it is strongly associated with a history of mass murder the connection between Marxism and you know violent communist regimes is very meaningful and important and it shouldn't be denied or overlooked however I mean I raised the the example of Marxism just as a contrast why would you as a vegan think that the way to make this tiny and powerless movement more powerful more influential is to attach it to an even tinier even more powerless even less respected movement such as intersectional feminism again I don't say that out of any hatred for the particular example I am raising this under this rubric because I think this is the type of misperception or misconception that comes out of vegans living so much on the internet a large percentage of vegans only have vegan friends via the internet they don't know other vegans face-to-face in real life and I can sympathize and you know basically the situation I've been in most of the time I've been vegan I'm you know whatever whoever my girlfriend is at the time um what would be vegan also and then outside of that you know do you know any vegans face to face in the city happen to be living in it stuff so you know for me to most most of you know my sense of what normal vegans are is like is also warped I often say to people look I don't know what normal vegans are like I know what vegans on YouTube are like I know what vegan that I know the tiny minority of vegans who you know have the self-confidence to get on camera or to write a blog or the right articles I know what those people are like and of course there's a distortion and that distortion is partly Geographic because I'm looking at kind of the boldest and the bravest of people from England California India Hong Kong it doesn't represent the potential for political action in my city partly just because it's cosmopolitan and partly because these are mostly not people who have a job not people who have kids or a normal life these are often people who are trying to earn an income from their internet presence you know already I've also outlined the many ways in which my channel is different from that norm and obviously look I mean I'm not hating on it I'm not saying vegan YouTube shouldn't exist I am a fan I'm a fan I mean these people all know me and you know the people I'm a fan of your channel you know I'm a fan cuz I've told you et cetera I I send I don't just get fan mail I send people fan mail I'm happy that there are people spreading this message on YouTube however all sorts of distortions arise because of this sort of unexamined gap between digital veganism and real world veganism and the latter may be really hard to look into now again I'm not raising this concern because I'm afraid Outsiders will look at vegans the internet and think vegans are dumb I'm not raising it because I'm afraid that people like vegan gains people on YouTube with extreme opinions make veganism look bad that's not my concern at all I'm concerned about you guys my viewers and the people right into me who are trying to organize veganism into something politically not knowing where to stop not knowing where to start we'll worry about where to stop later am i right um and being really misled this way now another example I get a lot of reactions from a guy called Ron Paul girls who is both my number one fan and my number one critic and instead of intersectional ism or Marxism he's wanting veganism to be attached to libertarianism specifically he has his own eccentric view of ecological libertarianism which is interesting to talk about in some ways because I think one of the clearest weaknesses of libertarianism is exactly its relationship to ecology the vast majority of libertarians like anarcho-capitalists will just say well if it's your private property you can do whatever you want with it well if you buy a piece of land and cut down all the trees this is a problem you know they're just obvious issues of regulations and government paternalism government oversight and an intervention they come up under the heading of ecology and they come up for vegans too anyway that's his approach that's interesting if you're just talking about you know people on the Internet and the distorted view of the world you get through the internet you might think this sounds like a viable approach or what have you it's not and it's not for the same reasons that I've been talking about just now we come from a culture anyone who speaks English anyone in the modern Western world we come from a culture and an era that reviews that pardon me that a culture in an era that treats rebelliousness as a positive trait in and of itself and people slip into the assumption very easily that veganism is a revolutionary movement simply because it's a challenge to one aspect of the establishment well veganism isn't and you make veganism weaker by attaching it to any kind of rebellious or revolutionary cause for the same reasons look a campaign to and cigarette smoking is not inherently rebellious or revolutionary a campaign to save the whales or any other pragmatic you know habitat related wilderness related single issue like that it doesn't get stronger by so seeing itself with radical politics or rebellious revolutionary politics if you you know whatever let's see the example if there's there are seven dolphins left and a certain stretch of the river you're trying to preserve that habitat save this endangered species no other example monkeys are left but a very small patch of habitat last few families at the given species of monkey etc the last thing you're gonna want to do is let's say you organize your five friends who care about this specific issue the last thing you're going to want to do is to hit your cart to some obscure radical philosophy whether it's Marxism or intersectional feminism or libertarianism this is not pragmatic if you have five people together and you're trying to change the local bylaws about cigarette smoking where you live you're trying to get an anti-smoking campaign running which in some parts of Europe is still a really necessary jail but depending where you live that may all be in the past tense but there's some places where that's still a big a big struggle to reduce the use of of tobacco however many people you have involved at the beginning five people ten people whatever you say okay we're gonna form this anti-smoking committee this ending smoking campaign the worst thing you could do is say we're only going to let people join who are intersectional feminists or we're only going to let people join who are libertarians or we're only going to participate with and we're gonna try to infiltrate the local libertarian party this is taking an incredibly small and weak political movement and making it even smaller and weaker so in a sentence the problem with digital veganism in this respect the problem with the internet view of the world is that people come to regard weakness as strengths people think that defining yourself more narrowly and in connection to one of these political causes makes veganism stronger and it doesn't it makes it weaker now why is that this is part of the world of likes and thumbs up and all kinds of things I mean yes if you have an obscure blog and instead of just being vegan you identify with any one of these tiny political parties or movements your blog may now get more attention more comments more fan mail more thumbs up more viewers on YouTube or have you on that scale this kind of factionalism is rewarded you can get a niche market a niche viewership that grows very easily and probably someone like there's a channel called a privileged vegan she identified with I don't know some of the most far-out she took on a certain ideological pose that got her a lot of attention from non vegans and I think she found that very rewarding you know whatever I'm happy for her good for her I certainly have some criticism over on this channel but you know whatever for an individual person who has that experience of okay look this ideology took my channel from obscurity to a certain level of attention globally let's say again let's say it's Marxism any of these people or anarchism I mean anarchism still you know I actually I don't see many vegan channels that are sincerely interested in anarchism what I tend to see are vegans who flirt with the faded memory of the role in urk ISM and the a LF had twenty years ago in animal rights and then I think they seem to lose interest maybe because the reality of what the al F is like today or the reality of of anarchism in in ecology and veganism a I don't know but for right now that seems to be out of flat out of fashion at a style but obviously it's easy to imagine that could come back into style and so again whatever your blog your YouTube channel if you identified with anarchism or Marxism that could easily bring you more you know another ten thousand viewers internationally but it is alienating you from exactly the people who could actually support your movement organization in your city or your town now to actually accomplish something worthwhile now we again what whatever you think of as the example of local activity and organization I've had many examples on this channel this guy in London violent vegan he's trying to organize a vegan hot dog shop a hot dog stand is a form of outreach and of course it's hard to find people to work with anyway so just say not not all political organization and activism is about a street protest so in technology people talk about the difference between the early adopters of a technology and the mass market who happens to be the type of person to try something out when it's new and I'm reliable and expensive as opposed to the potential for something to reach millions of people veganism this is one of the problems you know people like me are in a sense early adopters the colorful cast of characters of eccentrics who quit their jobs and drop out of university to start a YouTube channel to show off you know them riding a bicycle and wearing a bikini they are early adopters and the question is where you live who is the mass-market this is point one point two so one of the criticisms are received some people think I'm praising the Green Party Party of Canada and on the contrary I have said nothing but kind of scorn and derision above the Green Party of Canada incredible low opinion with me Party Canada I think it's garbage but I raised it as an example to show the level of organization that vegans have not yet even achieved and I've raised this example in contrast and saying like well if you really think there's hope for the future through this or that vegan organization let's compare how far it's come to the Green Party not an uncritical fan of the Green Party on the card to have said repeatedly the Green Party of Canada one of the things I despise about it is they actively support the milk and dairy industry where they want the government to give more money to support the milk and dairy in it they want more subsidies and you know this stupid nationalistic rhetoric of the government has to protect the Canadian dairy industry against the American dairy industry as if somehow milk made in America is more evil than milk made in Canada it's idiotic and it's an excuse for you know graft of the worst kind and nobody in the Green Party is interested in the question of you know the actual suffering of the cows or any of the ethical and ecological realities so anyway I just say anyone who thinks I'm a fan of the Green Party you're missing the point of why I have mentioned it in in previous videos nevertheless the Green Party for this video once again is significant there's the contrast between early adopters and the mainstream market mainstream audience there's a contrast between the political splinter groups the radicals the internet and the political mainstream wherever you live it's going to be very different city to city but the reality of an organization of the Green Party is that it's based on another type of public another type of constituency when I was involved in Green Party Ken and many many years ago the reality was the party only existed because of a small number of retired people who donated let's say $100 a month you know it's not even stereotypical to say they're retired um these were elderly people who you know got involved with ecology in the 1960s and 1970s and who were convinced that the Green Party had some legitimacy in Canada and who reached into their pension and donated $100 a month a very small number of those people were providing the the financial lifeline on which the Green Party existed they were desperately needed that was the core constituency and now the Green Party Canada as I've mentioned it's kind of a failure in many ways they were also spoiled by this because those donors that particular political constituency they didn't expect anything in return if you gave them a leaflet once a year in the mail they'd be happy and they go okay well hey I gave them a hundred bucks and now I've got this worthless leaflet this little you know a few baited pieces of paper updating me on what the Green Party has done during the last 12 months and in reality that party would have done nothing or almost nothing they had a meeting you know hum I remember talking to the man who was the leader of the Green Party the federal Green Party at that time again this is years and years ago and he was talking about getting you know a Green Party youth organization and he was hopeless this guy I mean I might as well have been talking to a brick wall he was an idiot for saying to him look you know young people have other things to do what you're talking about what he was imagining it's gonna take up a lot of their time and money and what are you offering in return what's rewarding about this or what's gratifying about this so like you don't even have a magazine for them to contribute to or something you know if somebody publishes an article in magazine and their name is on it and they're maybe their photo is on it even if there's no money back for something like the Green Party for an ecologic organization that can be really rewarding I don't know if your magazine is good enough maybe the person listed on their CV I mean there are things any political organization can do that rewards participation and at that time the Green Party was doing none of them I said you're imagining you know the youth as if they're gonna line up to give you their their time and their money when you're offering absolutely nothing in return um uh III was having that conversation I'm in a genuinely helpful tone of voice unlike its what a voice I just used now but it was completely useless that guy that guy was hopeless um so look this is the final gap I want to talk about here is the gap between digital vegans and the people who are their potential patrons politically speaking in any given city wherever it is in the world YouTube does not show me those people YouTube does not show me the grandmothers who are sitting at home who would write a check and donate to support the Green Party or who would donate to support a vegan party a vegan cause of some kind if you had an organization doing advocacy for any particular issue under the heading of veganism again whether it's save the whales or save the river or setting up a hotdog stand who are those people and how do you reach out to them those grandmothers writing the checks and that'll be different it's different in Spain it's different in Germany it's different from one city to another in Canada it's different in Montreal from from Vancouver who are those people and how do you reach them I can tell you one thing for goddamn sure you are gonna alienate those people you are not gonna reach those people you are not gonna earn their trust or support by identifying yourself with Marxism libertarianism intersectional feminism or any other radical political ideology that only provides vegans with the ego-trip of being rebellious of being revolutionary of being anti-establishment it's the ego trip that you know putting on a black mask and calling yourself an anarchist well what the really changes when you take off the mask and look in the mirror at the end of the day you're the same person and you've now destroyed your credibility with the only constituency who could actually care about you and sympathize with what you're trying to accomplish in the long term so this is part of the blinding phenomenon of taking a political movement on the Internet in the past there were other problems when political movements relied heavily on magazines only a certain type of person would be getting articles into the magazine it would normally just be people who lived in New York or just two people who lived in Toronto you know in the centers who were involved with you know political publications and you wouldn't hear anything from maybe the majority of people who lived in more more remote areas what not only remote smaller cities suburbs what-have-you there have always been distorting biases of this kind in political organization you know the dissidents who were criticizing communism in Moscow in the 1980s they were almost all moneyed intellectuals in Moscow and you weren't hearing from you know the peasants of the surrounding area because those are the people who had access to publications have you so these are fundamental patterns and political science but the internet blinds us as never before as to who our audience is and what our potential is to make a positive difference by getting organized