Veganism is NOT an excuse: Gary Yourofsky & the question of pluralism.

this is what I think should happen the
rapist even somebody who raised a woman in a fur coat if that ever happens I think that his penis and his ball should be seared off with a cuticle remover slowly then I think two skewers should be shoved into their eye sockets yo what up hopefully this video isn't too lightweight for you guys I've made a lot of really heavy content on YouTube lately and some people love it some people hate it what could I tell you this video is really responding to two different strands of thought on the one hand a recurring theme especially in the conversations I have with other vegans face to face is of offering a sort of broad and general excuse that well whatever problems may exist in vegan political discourse the fundamental value we can return to is that we need diversity we need all kinds of different people promoting all kinds of different messages all roads lead to Rome and it's all positive in as much as it promotes the vegan message now all right really honestly a heart of hearts is this anything more than a way of ending an awkward conversation on my channel I have encouraged people to go to school stay in school get an education lead a meaningful life get a meaningful job etc can you really say that this message is equally as valid as other vegans encouraging people to just drop out of school immediately to just live on permanent vacation to just promote a career on YouTube to travel wander around Thailand aimlessly etc now it's no joke I've mentioned specific examples on my channel I have also received email from people and I've seen a few a few videos on YouTube but I've received email people I'm not going to name obviously talking about their own experience that they had a period of their lives either in university or while they were still in high school when they were really seduced by this when they really felt that they should drop out of school or they actually did drop out of school because of the guidance being given to them by leaders in the YouTube community now my advice may not be great my people apathy but it's not the same it's not equivalent and if we're being honest with ourselves we can't just say in an offhand way well all roads lead to Rome as long as people are promoting veganism it doesn't matter whether their advices to drop out of school and be a bum or their advices to stay in school get an education now as most you know watch my channel among the most prominent people who went back to school because of my influence was this guy the vegan cheetah so he's an ex-convict he's got a lot of problems in his life he's been trying to improve his life and turned around and he really thanked me profusely and directly some videos I made before I'd ever talk to him some videos I made really directly inspired him to turn his life around and go back to college and he's getting some kind of college degree related to journalism and digital media now and he's taking on a whole different view of his future and his career and before that he was directly under the influence of people like durianrider and freely in imagining himself being a rebel being anti establishment and in just pursuing a life as a social media personality now I can't claim I've sold any of the eyes problems I can't even say my advice was that great but my point is the notion of this kind of equivalence falls apart I'm not going to repeat here that the different warnings I gave a bad nutritional advice obviously we can't pretend that all nutritional advice is equally valid we can't pretend that all promises of you know beauty & health promises that you'll cure incurable diseases are not equivalent to real science based medical approaches to veganism that's another asymmetry but first and foremost from my perspective when you have a situation like Gary Yourofsky sitting down and freaking out on camera sitting down and incoherently saying that people should be stabbed murdered raped you know these kind of violent in name breakdowns Gary Yourofsky who is not a teenager who is a grown man uh I don't see how anyone can look at that and honestly say well all roads lead to Rome well as long as it's promoting V it's okay and it's all equally valid revolutionaries throughout history we're all crazy crazy enough to fight the system to stand up in a court of law and not apologize for breaking the law to go up against cops judges politicians society in general and if you want to say that well you still support violence I've never denied that I support violence it's going to be in the very near future that somebody bust into a slaughterhouse or vivisection lab with guns and they tell the slaughterhouse workers you take those knives off those pigs threats right now I'm going to shoot you there's no way that a pro violence message can really be equal to an anti-violence message there's no way that a democratic participatory approach to veganism can be equivalent to a violent and fascistic approach to veganism and I don't use the word fascist lightly some of you already know this about me I'm one of the only vegan channels to directly address the problem of neo-nazis within veganism nobody else wanted to do it now some of my critics who kind of fault me for very minor things who people who have their own YouTube channels one of things i can say back with them is yeah look I may be a terrible human being but at least I was bold enough to really take on and address the problem of neo-nazis and since I made that video I know of at least two more channels people who were vegan who became either neo-nazis or crypto Nazis you know uh you know not quite as clearly committed to like Adolf Hitler but still way out on that end of the political spectrum and involved in anti-semitism and racism what have you so that's going on there is no way we could say oh well you know all roads lead to Rome as long as they're promoting veganism it's all equally valid no obviously there are hard limits obviously we have a real problem that I feel a guy like Gary Yourofsky brings into sharp focus with you know the lunatic fringe of veganism being the most visible aspect of veganism being in some ways the most influential aspect of veganism and we're in danger of that being the definitive image of veganism is certainly in Israel a Gary Yourofsky being the guy who got on television his particular form of insanity probably has defined how millions of people think about veganism for better and for worse and you know of course you can point to some elements of his influence that are positive but yes I am really sincerely concerned about the negative aspects and I'm even more concerned about it because just like with the the issue of the actual Nazis and veganism nobody's talking about it then people are making these excuses and carrying on now so I said way back at the beginning of what five minutes ago there's sort of two questions I want to roll into one video here the other is something that came up very briefly in my um my conversation with zaria you may have noticed that conversations area I paused and reflected I said look you know I can remember the first vegans I saw on YouTube and that did in some sense shape what I saw as normal or as positive or beneficial discourse in this game we play backtracks light layer look why do I mention this now why do I include it with this question of look all all roads lead to Rome as opposed to being really honest and reflecting on the hard limits to what is and isn't positive or acceptable within veganism as a social movement to some extent whenever you're criticizing something else as unacceptable or abnormal you have some implicit notion of what normalcy is and you know I'm not such a snob I do think and I've said this in recent videos I said this in conversation with vegan cheetah you know I do think there's a role for just vacation videos I do think there's a role for weight loss and lifestyle and the stuff unfortunately currently it's suffocating the life out of veganism there are problems of disgust in the length this channel I don't need to repeat them but I think there's a role for comedy silliness and for all kinds of diversity within what vegans have on YouTube however as I've already been saying there are hard limits there is nothing comedic about Gary Yourofsky sitting down on a mainstream news channel and ranting about killing people and stabbing them in the eyes and these you know dark violent fantasies he has this is not comedy it's not satire it's not a positive part of veganism and there has been a code of silence I think the vast majority of you guys who are watching this you who have your own YouTube channels now you you ask yourself you look in the mirror why you never addressed it I think it's because in the one hand people felt a debt of gratitude towards Gary Yourofsky that they felt they could not criticize him because of the positive contributions made and on the other hand people are just in the reckless pursuit of Fame and they would much rather try to to you know attach themselves to Gary Yourofsky star to try to ride his wave of popularity to try to make money basically or raised our profile rather than really being honest or rather than really dealing with the negative implications this has okay so in this context you know for me it's worth reflecting on what I think is normal given you know even in that discussion with zaria we were talking about I don't really regard the beauty centered form of veganism as normal now on the one hand that reflects my own experiences back around the year 2000 s that's now 16 years ago when veganism just was not about diet and weight loss beauty and sorry people didn't even say vegan back then people said vegetarian and animal-rights or you know animal rights and ecology you know different terms use the word vegan was not that popular yet and I think I think most the people weren't one thing either but they were somewhere on the on the vegetarian spectrum and say back then I refuse to buy leather back then and so on i mean it's just it just a different different era and I've already made videos talking about that um but look I said to zaria the first youtubers I saw they were not is ending themselves as objects to seduce you they weren't they weren't the beauty was just not the focus of the message it wasn't important and you know of course beauty's in the eye of the beholder and so on but one of the people who shaped my expectation the very first person I saw talking with Venus on YouTube was Shelley one two three i will put a link below I think she's been forgotten now it's more than five years ago and I'm not saying her videos are brilliant I'm not saying they influenced me they didn't know they had no real impact on me but that was the first time when I sort of had I saw the reality of veganism being you know packaged and presented and argued on behalf of on YouTube where YouTube was the public forum for the presentation these ideas but I say that that gave me a sense of normalcy compared to which people like freely never were normal you know um so for me that's worth reflecting on and the other channel I want to I want to link to here is a young woman named Claire but if you you know cut a cow's throat or if you take a cow's baby away from her so you can steal her milk they do feel pain they are cendien so we can make such a big difference with our choices the choices that we make every day we can help to make this world more nonviolent more love it we can help to erase discrimination and exploitation so you can do that why don't you want to why don't you want to make the world a better place so she's now 20 years old but she's been on YouTube for several years and I remember secret videos several years ago when she was probably 17 so at age 17 she was putting up rational rigorously argued statements on behalf of veganism and she was uploading them both in English and in Chinese now if you're really honest with yourself if you take the time to click through the link and take a look at Claire's videos I'm not saying they're all genius and not saying they're all brilliant but honestly this woman at 17 was a better advocate for veganism than Gary Yourofsky ever has be so the point is if we can't be perfect vegans if we can't be perfectly nonviolent all the time we can still get really close we can still be ninety-five percent on my little ninety-nine percent online why are you going to say that we can't be a hundred percent so I'm just going to be zero percent it doesn't mix in and trying to be nonviolent really trying really going vegan really trying to do the best you can makes such a big difference nature is my lecture but is that a good thing do you want to say nature is violent and just live violently everywhere no that's not good we have a choice to live non-violently and we should make that choice we should try and live as non-violently as possible but if you have in your mind an excuse for gary Yourofsky that oh he's a young guy you know he just he has mood swings you know we should just overlook this or forgive this no Gary Yourofsky is conduct in having these kinds of hysterical violent breakdowns in news interviews and just on his own youtube channel where he can edit it you know she doesn't even have to release it nobody's forcing him and in the interviews he's given to bite size vegan that type of behavior it compares badly to any mainstream politician whether it's a local mayor or someone like Jeb Bush we all think Jeb Bush is an idiot well if Jeb Bush is an idiot compare Gary yahtzee them how much stupider how much less disciplined is Gary Yourofsky because uh it's very difficult to think of a mainstream politician of these breakdowns but really sincerely this young woman Claire to take a look at her content she was doing better at age 17 then Gary Yourofsky was as a grown man so again for me there are lessons there about what's normal not what's optimal not what's excellent day but just you know it is possible for people to address these issues engage with them in a sincere meaningful way without resorting to you know making a product out of their own sexuality and without resorting to these kind of extreme violent tactics or what have you there's just nothing inevitable about that but the last thing I got to say here is the same as the first thing to make progress even just as isolated individuals you know forget the movement to make progress just as a bunch of people who are sitting alone in front of the internet with a camera with a blog with whatever you've got making any progress on this issue actually does start with admitting to ourselves no it's not okay it's not the case that all roads lead to Rome it's not the case that all messages in support of veganism are equally valid and should be equally embraced just because this for veganism the same way that we need to have a refined critical awareness that we apply to health information scientific claims etc we need to apply to political claims and yeah it reflects very badly on veganism the paucity have any kind of sincere critique in response to the neo-nazis in response to Gary Yourofsky in response to any of the other outlandish examples that really matter that reflects very badly on the state of veganism today when you look at the incredibly caddy shrewish counterproductive self-hating infighting that goes on over matters that are completely trivial