Activism & Outcomes: Unnatural Vegan vs. DxE (Direct Action Everywhere)

hi this video is going to talk about an
issue in veganism in the Year 2015 but it's going to talk about it in a way that addresses a broader and more profound problem that's going to be with us forever in political action of any kind young woman who uses the name of Swayze here on YouTube she has a very successful channel called unnatural vegan she's raised the issue in a couple of different videos lately in contrasting herself to other vegan organizations like direct action everywhere People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals she's raised the issue of how do we know the outcomes of political action of political activism even of advertising campaigns and this really is a profound question even if the answer is not that profound the answer is we don't know unless we do outcome evaluation research she's mentioned in passing in a number of different videos she picked I think an intentionally observed example recently when she said in passing look People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals they have chosen to have an advertising campaign that protests against a video game because a video game character where is fur so this is a fictional character wearing fictional fur in a fictional universe is it effective activism is it an effective intervention to try to convince people that this is a bad thing that this is a problem she doesn't say yes or no she just looks into the camera and says you would have to do the research you would have to investigate that and you're damn right that's really the most profound answer you can give if you don't set aside time effort and frankly money to do elchim evaluation research then you don't know and governments don't know either it's very easy for a government a charity and NGO a group of friends involved in political activism to convince themselves that the outcome of their action are identical to their objectives I'll tell you what I mean you have a program let's say it's a charity working together with the government in Cambodia I'm thinking of a real world example that I myself did social science research on they say hey our program exists to help the poor and on some level everyone who signs up to that project is accepting the premise what we're doing is helping the poor with no evidence why because that's what they signed up for that's what it says at the top of the piece of paper this project is to help the poor they print up little ID cards and they all say one way or another they have a logo that we're all here to help the poor right does the project actually help the poor believe me you can have interventions in a third world country that were intended to alleviate poverty that actually make poverty worse that actually result even in the village that you were supposed to help being abandoned the population is reduced to zero because people give up and flee the site because the intervention is going so badly a really simple example you can have a project this was not a project I was involved in but I did read about this you can have a project that tries to dig wells to provide drinking water people if you didn't do it in a scientifically rigorous way you dig wells and you start pumping up water that's poisoned with arsenic what's the real outcome with the result some forms of outcomes you can measure just by interviewing people many interventions are designed to change attitudes I did do research also another example I did research related to HIV and AIDS and some of those interventions you're not directly trying to treat aids cure AIDS help people with AIDS some of the interventions are trying to prevent AIDS by changing the attitudes of certain groups in society if you don't pay someone to go out afterwards and interview those people and say look how things really change what did this project really do for you did it actually make your situation better how did your attitude change sometimes it can be as simple as that as asking people but on the other hand people can be drinking poisoned water water tainted with arsenic and have no idea that's going on a project can be a disaster in a way that requires hard measurement you can have a project that in theory exists to get free medical care to poor people but the process of how that benefit gets to the beneficiary means that bureaucratically maybe it ends up only helping people who are friends of the political party that control the process maybe it doesn't go to the poorest of the poor because the people you're asking to distribute the benefit they themselves don't really know the poorest of the poor their government bureaucrats who sit in an office they have certain family connections and they don't have it in their mandate of their schedule to go out interview identify and help the poorest of the poor so this youtuber swayze has effectively put the challenge to direct action everywhere DXE they like to abbreviate the name but the challenge is your activism really effective what are the outcomes one of the bizarre ironies here is that direct action everywhere was founded on the premise and the promise that what they were going to do would be different from any other vegan charity any other form of environmental activism in being based strictly on the findings of social science research they claimed from day one there their origin story is that their founder and leader Wayne siong rejected earlier methods he used as ineffective baking cookies and handing out free cookies didn't get results so they were now going to form a new organization that was results oriented that was strictly based on this type of social science research talking about it didn't do it what they've ended up doing instead is setting up an organization with a religious belief in one method namely disruption and their idea of disruption includes just showing up in a restaurant and screaming at people the random patrons who happen to be in that restaurant screaming slogans such as it's not meet its violence and everyone involved is willing to believe that the outcomes are the same as their objectives again that's easy to do because that's what you signed up for what's the attitudinal change your supposedly achieving supposedly you're creating an attitude of compassion where there was no compassion before supposedly you're sparking an awareness of and sense of responsibility for the murder of animals on factory farms etc is that actually what you're doing is that the outcome are you interviewing any of the people coming out of that restaurant and say oh so what did you think what both the impacts how did this change the way you view vegans or veganism or animal agriculture meat-eating or anything else the swayze doesn't even have to put together the whole argument here because it is so obvious to everyone that this form of disruptive activism that direct action everywhere believes in so piously and that they write so many stupid essays on the internet defending against the claims of the social sciences I've read those essays it's obvious to everyone that the main outcome of this is antagonism and making vegans look like idiots I do not want this video to degenerate into a series of complaints about everything that's wrong with DXE direct action everywhere I made a separate video about DXE already and it had a lot of very interesting feedback from both current members of the group and former members of the group about everything that's wrong with that organization all right I'm going to digress for half a second one of the really terrible features about it is the sense of denial denial of responsibility for who is in charge and that anyone is in charge the number one excuse got from current DXE members was to claim there is no hierarchy it's a completely horizontal organization we're all equal we're all grassroots nobody's in charge of several people actually said to me DXE is not an organization claiming there was no organization at all on the other hand you look at the articles they've published in response to certain sex scandals they had actually had they had some accusations of sexual harassment sexual assault and sort of thing and that reveals not only is there a strict hierarchy for who's in charge and who's following orders they also have an elaborate bureaucracy for recording complaints but happy well which one is it going to be guys and of course ex-members and more cynical disaffected members they say oh yeah there's a hierarchy there's one guy Wayne's Young and his girlfriend and they are very much the leaders and everyone else is a follower and there is absolutely no equality and there's no grass roots structure this is a top-down hierarchical organization and many people complain to me also for understandable reasons that it is even a cult-like organization but that is kind of another story um one of the ways in which I sympathize with bad activism okay look I got to recapitulate long story short about Swayze's comments on this Shwayze unnatural vegan is right on this issue she's raising an important broad deep question it's hard to answer but it's important again and again to ask this question and to raise the fact that in principle we can know the outcomes of government programs political action activism if we do the research and if we don't do the research are we just choosing to believe our own hype or we just choose to say hey I'm doing this to liberate the animals i'm doing the save animals are you actually saving even one animal what are the statistics one of the infamous example is a pet up people for the ethical treatment of animals what percentage of the pets that they help are really just exterminated a few weeks or a few months after taking on those are questions of measurable outcomes changes in attitude political changes those can also be measured as outcomes currently as Swayze points out direct action everywhere only measure their outcomes in terms of the number of headlines they've gotten in newspapers and on websites for CNN that sort of thing and they don't even go so far as to read those articles and see if the articles are reporting them in a positive or negative fashion and in many cases negative because they're saying hey this bunch of vegans are showed up and screamed at people at a restaurant isn't this kind of ridiculous and there are alternatives out there I mean in terms of questions of method one of the groups that right now is getting a lot of respects I think from from the mainstream media from vegans everyone else Toronto Pig save has really innovated a kind of witness based activism of just showing up and witnessing the reality of the the meat industry seeing the animals being taken to slaughter and so on that's obviously meaningful for the people doing the activism whether or not it has any measurable outcomes for others that's going to be harder to establish are their non vegans are there people in the general public who are impacted by those protests sadly I don't think there are impacts for the animals themselves or for the animal agriculture industry but still there are things to be positively appreciated about that form of activism brings me back to my earlier point that i trailed off from one of the things you have to say in defense of bad activism is that sometimes the beneficiaries are the activists themselves and there's nothing corrupt or evil about that sometimes you set up a project in Cambodia where the real point is not to help the poor you say you're helping the poor but maybe the point is to get volunteers who are wealthy western university students in California and put them on a plane and give them the experience of living in poverty in Cambodia maybe that's the real point of the project now if you're honest with yourself about it that's okay that could be a great project you could be getting kids out of the classroom in California and giving them two months in a village on a mountain where there's no clean drinking water and that's a really meaningful and educational experience and in some sense it changes the world it changes attitudes um but of course if you're claiming that by doing this you're actually transforming the village in Cambodia and you're helping the poor people will go ahead and prove it right with vegan activism are you actually helping animals are you changing the minds of people who are not vegan or are you just providing an experience that's meaningful for the activists themselves so the people who already are vegan for the people who go to the village so to speak in terms of the P thoughts behind the direct action if we're protests that's a lot of what I see I see people who are angry and who want to feel powerful instead of powerless I see people who want to scream in the face of public and difference and another big aspect of direct action everyone their appeal is that they provide community in quotation marks to people who are isolated alone angry crest foam with the world so by going to these events and participating disruption this is part of what some people complain his coat like these vegans get to meet and form bonds with other vegans who themselves are outraged or feel they have to publicly express their outrage and so on so it's hard to make a neutral statement about this what's the point of the project are you trying to just feel better about yourself are you trying to just put together a gang of friends are you trying to change the world are you trying to save animals are you really trying to educate the public as with campaigns to get people to quit smoking cigarettes I think one of the easiest way is to think of vegan political activism is just that we're trying to educate people to quit eating meat and when you put it that way as a process of public education I think it becomes very clear that we're not going to achieve those ends by just screaming at people and restaurants but just carrying out disruption how you can carry it out would be a much longer video but hey thanks to Swayze over at a natural vegan she's made several videos that I personally disagree with on issues I think she's wrong about but on this particular issue i agree with her and I appreciate her for raising it again and again I hope she keeps asking those questions and on a fundamental level I'm a fan of anyone who takes the time to pick up the microphone to raise important political and philosophical questions about veganism or otherwise instead of say putting on a bikini playing beach volleyball and trying to sell diet books for how you too can look right in a bikini not that one is going to replace the other we're not going to replace bikini videos with politics and philosophy videos here people no we're not but we need both all right and in terms of the online presence of veganism I'm delighted to see anyone doing something with more substance than bouncing in bikinis