Vegans: proto-activism for a proto-political movement.

hey guys I don't have a lot to say in
this video and it's now going to go on for 45 minutes right I get positive feedback from people on patreon people have decided to pay one dollar a month to support what I'm doing you're on YouTube support my long term aspirations to be involved in politics of veganism ecology animal rights etc the long term aspirations that you've probably heard me express again and again from many different angles on this YouTube channel already there's not much I can do to express my thanks to the people who you know get their credit card out of their wallet and decide to pay me that one dollar aside from wanting to do here in this video which is to read out and reply to a couple of those those messages in some ways what I'm saying this video is really anticipated by the long long conversation i had with american unicorn so that's an hour and forty minute podcast that's already up that's been up for about a week now and in it american unicorn she just had decided to delete her youtube channel i talked her through some things you need to be prepared for uh here in the digital demon vegan demi-monde um i was giving her some encouragement and advice but a pointed out to her that you know some of the shallow and stupid and hateful comments you get may come every five minutes and some of the people who really appreciate what you do in a deep way they may write to you once a year or less offer the rights once a year so these these letters are actually good examples of that before i read out and say just a few words are apply to these these two letters I'll just say I think this isn't news but you know it's with no false humility that what I what I do here on on YouTube is described as not being activism this is not activism or it's not activism yet I think you can describe what i'm doing here as proto activism as setting a foundation for setting a basis for later political activism and it's really a beautiful thing that we're able to have these debates these reflections these conversations before any of us are committed financially politically or otherwise to a movement now I mean the bad news is that there is no movement currently movement doesn't exist it's a proto movement this is proto activism for a proto movement some of us are more optimistic than others about what we can do as vegans in the future but you know having studied political science it's it's a beautiful thing it's really a wonderful luxury that we're able to debate these things and discuss them in depth and at length really before any form of activism has begun by contrast I'll just sail choose one example in many many examples from history but you know in one of my former areas of studies Southeast Asia Cambodia Laos Thailand etc there were all of these political movements and often they had political publications before the internet they had magazines they had journals that you know on paper publications there were political movements that were loosely defined as anti-war and they were often were coalition's of people that came together with a sense of urgency in crisis people figured out oh my god the United States is dropping so many bombs on Laos what's really going on with this war really all about and for example they never really discussed what does anti-war mean does anti-war mean that you support peace at any cost does anti-war mean that you care more about peace than you care about human rights or democracy does anti-war mean that you would support a tater ship a communist dictatorship or a military dictatorship before a right-wing dictatorship does it mean you would support a dictatorship as long as that dictatorship can deliver peace there are really really hard questions and it's very easy now to look back on those conflicts and you know and you know being an anti-war magazine at that time or an anti-war journal or anti-war political movement are you willing or unwilling to publish you know basically what's Pro communist propaganda or anti-american propaganda because at that time there was a lot of very serious propaganda and misinformation that might be politically convenient for you as a magazine but be politically convenient for you to you know you're it's what your readers want to hear it supports your anti-war cause or movement but is it true is it legitimate can it be verified can you even know whether or not it's true and to what extent are you willing to you know comma terror terrible questions involving terrible ethical compromises and you know there's a lot of this lot of really terrible scholarship at that time too there's a lot of really misguided activism and what have you for people whose hearts were in the right place but very often they never had those those conversations those debates maybe they did within their own marriage you know I think husbands and wives were torn apart by that by the Vietnam War it's a great example that many many other you know momentous political questions history were like that on the level of your own family and friends I think people might have set that as well wait a minute what does it really mean to be anti-war what is it we're pro or we pro-democracy or what um way the fact that you're critical of the work the feather your concern about the war effort you know and those were exactly the words that got used you know you'd have the the bulletin of Concerned Asian Studies you'd have critical Asian Studies you'd have these code words in the titles of the publications and you know hinting at the fact that these were these were linked to anti-war political movements but what does it mean to be concerned about the Vietnam War what does it mean to be critical of u.s. foreign policy obviously those things don't unite people you know there's going to be a great variety of dissident opinions anyway we're at that stage now with veganism where I say this is sort of proto activism this is a you know a prelude to real political engagement political activism but it's a beautiful thing that people are really able to ask these deeper questions and debate them at length you know the people are not blindly getting committed to ideologically defined movements and of course you know the exceptions roles uh the exception to that rule the people who are getting blindly committed or exactly the groups that I think I have been criticizing on this channel I think that in many ways guy like Gary Franchione a or a movement like direct action everywhere I think they really represent the old fashioned style politicking and what we're able to do now here on YouTube is really it's really new fashioned and as with the fundraiser I did before anyone who disagrees with me on these these fundamental issues they're welcome to disagree but the point is different people different different factions are going to take the movement in different directions and we're going to make different foundations and that too could be a beautiful thing the world is definitely big enough for all of us I can imagine a group of vegans being completely devoted just to ocean issues you know just to fishing at ocean pollution I can imagine another group being totally devoted just to river issues and you can there will be political differences between those groups even if they're defined geographically or echo logically or what have you you know they're there are so many categories obviously there could be a group just devoted to zoos just devoted to circuses just devoted to high density agriculture feed Lots so many issues and ultimately you know this is the tragedy of think think global act local tragedy is that that legally almost all of us are tied to one place that we have to pursue these global issues in a local scale we have to deal with City Hall the local provincial government into the local state the local governor ultimately we have to cooperate people with people who who legally are in the same jurisdiction of ourselves and and people who are participating in the same parliamentary system the same the same government wherever in the world you may be living anyway guy named Tom writes in to me tom says hey man what's up I'm not sure what my true intention of writing to you is but we'll see what this goes I've been supporting you on patreon and I've been a fan for around three months now it struck me as bizarre that you have had such an influence in my opinion yet I have never reached out to you nor to those in your patreon page so again this is what i mentioned that interview with with American unicorn people can have meaningful things to say to you people who you're positive supporters but they have real jobs real lives and they have no particular reason to bother you by sending you you know a message every five minutes or what have you the way maybe someone who hates you does they're not going to badger you they're not going to waste your time so after after several months this guy takes time to write into me no thanks Tom a continue reading I've been a vegetarian for over four years now and I've transitioned to a vegan diet over the last 10 months I actually became aware of vegan YouTube by consuming an hour's worth of what I eat in a day videos every day as someone who enjoys cooking I must admit they really helped me and I learned a lot but there's only so much avocado and quinoa person can watch until you have seen it all after a few months I began jumping through the scenes I began jumping through the scenes them talking so he's talked about skipping head in the in the videos as I gain nothing from it I've heard it all before and became tired me watching these videos isn't doing anything productive then I found your videos your video on community was really what I needed it's the only video regarding veganism that gave me any passion god I hate that word I know why it says that by way he says he hates the word passion but am I thank you i can take a compliment obviously i'm glad to hear that that video in particular as the one spoke to you apart from when i first began reading up on the subject i really enjoyed your content on pets as it had been something i've been debating for a while but mainly regarding the aspect of pets eating meat he grew up with pet cats though i had no one to discuss this with isolation is something you've spoken about in your videos i dropped some of my vegetarian friends due to their involvement with drugs and their inability to be productive in any sense I just pause something you know the drug epidemic from my generation drug use I can't say it influences all of us but I think it's been a huge part of so many people's lives everybody knows somebody whose life has been ruined or severely impacted by drug use and that kind of decision we make who you're going to spend time with drugs and alcohol or so often an aspect of it in modern Western culture so for me also although as I've said a million cocaine is vegan these are these are issues outside of veganism but obviously they overlap with and intersect with veganism and they're they're really the decisions then they can be a decisive importance if you're putting together a crew of people to actually go to City Hall to actually get organized and to do anything related to veganism ecology and animal rights who is and who isn't a drug user maybe the you know decisive issue um this is freed me to a large extent who st. cutting off these old friends as freedom to understand and I have a strong group of politically minded friends but I'm finding more and more how isolating my diet lifestyle and philosophy makes me my studies are an engineering an area obsessed with efficiency and building better tomorrow but nevertheless veganism is a rare thing I've been stuck in an echo chamber for several years with engineers and scientists believing they're brighter than humanity students however most of the people my sector lack any political discourse conversations aren't practical many speak about our problems being solved through technology and is common to hear well we'll have nuclear fusion soon so there's no point in building wind farms or we'll all just be given pills in the future so i can keep eating meat right now because in the future it'll be fine he then admits okay these examples have been edited to sound even more stupid than they really are but that's honestly how I hear it sometimes from from its colleagues many people in this sector would rather have fun and entertaining conversations about fifty years into our future rather than the next year in the years following change doesn't happen as the result of Technology political decisions give technology its application so I just pause I mean I think as we as we all mature me grow older I mean it's with no pride that I say that political science and politics is so important in life in a sense it's a luxury it's a wonderful thing if you live in a place in the world where you don't have to constantly worry about politics where politics isn't you know um constantly interfering with and superseding your other concerns and interests in life but I think part of you know maturity in almost every field unless you work in a field that doesn't involve other human beings in almost every field as we mature we start to realize that politics is alloyed with mixed up with is inextricable part of just so much of human aspiration and endeavor whether it's in the arts or in the sciences or what have you but obviously the the process of realizing that and what the implications are if your personal life is very different from person the next but yeah real social change he is saying doesn't just happen as the result of technology because political decisions supersede that political decisions give technology its direction its focus its application as he says I continue this letter from from Tom do have the name right yeah just using first names here Tom I come from Wales studied in England and currently live in a small town in hessen Germany working for an engineering firm this isn't cool Berlin its worst vine and potatoes thank God for potatoes it says Birmingham England while not the most glorious of cities was a student city where my veganism wasn't anything shocking the move to Germany has proved to be difficult I write as I have admired your ability to remain vegan in some of the more difficult areas and has certainly given me the strength to not let this struggle get me down it's possible to feel isolated even when surrounded by friends and I worry that my sector and current living arrangements are clashing with my police don't get me wrong though I absolutely love my work and living in this country is hugely benefited my language skills thank you for making veganism political for me I have always been very interested in European politics and I have really enjoyed what you had to say from your background in political science a term that many in my sector would regard as an oxymoron thank you for opening my eyes to areas such as Laos Cambodia and Thailand in the past that would have never been interested in the people in system surrounding this these countries and I may have been so eurocentric as to believe that I could only gain something cultural by visiting within your although Europe and somewhere that will always have my heart he says keep your videos and podcasts coming man keep keepin it real kid me up tom so thank thanks very much tom I don't have a lot to say here I mean this video is mostly just made in appreciation for my supporters how do hospitals operate the answer is in part scientific but it is really in large part political yes obviously science is inextricably intertwined with every aspect of what happens in hospital good bad and indifferent but the organization of the hospital what the hospital does how it works who is and who isn't a doctor there who's in charge who gives orders and who follows orders who gets to be a patient there and who doesn't how they pay who's excluded news included so many of the crucial questions of the hospital including just how its organized how effective there was how effective the hospital is how effectively it's using the resources it's given its budget its millions of dollars so many of those questions are political that even though it may be invisible to us at first especially if you come out of a pure scientific background or a pure medical science background as we mature we have to learn to look at the world and see the politics that's bound up in everything 2cd inextricable in electable sense in which you know these institutions are political and in which the changes we can make to them especially in the short term next 10 years next 30 years those changes are really political in nature I don't say that with any pride in the discipline of political science academically political sciences is largely a disaster especially in Canada I could do a whole separate video on how pathetic political sciences in Canada it really is worse than it is in the United States really is and I'm sure it's very different for example in Germany I'm be interesting to talk to someone there and contrast my analysis of what happens again devise Germany so you know these things it's definitely very different in France I looked into that seals PO in France whole different story but in case it's not out of any pry in the academic discipline I have no pride what's served in that academic discipline but it's out of this deep awareness I have that when we look at the world around us we look at these institutions the questions of organizations the questions of potential change those are really political questions even though the science may cite Sciences are involved in every stage of it also just one more example how does a nature reserve operate a nature reserve a national park forest conservation area whatever term you want to use the answer the really meaningful important answer is really political yes there's science involved there's science involved in counting the numbers of animals and figuring out which animals are endangered and keeping track of how many wolves there are and how many deer but the fundamental question for example of whether the budget for it whether or not it exists how the lines are drawn on the map and then what is the purpose of this institution does a national park exist in order to sell as many tickets as possible to a ski lodge or does it really exist to benefit endangered species habitat conservation or other other goals may exist for public education reasons also do you take kids from the inner city and take them out to the countryside and show them what a bear looks like in the wild or a moose or anything else there may be all sorts of reasons social reasons as well as scientific reasons as well as you know animal rights type reason for why that institution exists but you know the difference is we deal with are not really so much in science they're in political science and that may be tragic maybe there will be a better place of those questions we're not political but but they are okay next letter i'm going to read is from Mali Thank You Molly thank you for joining my patreon thank you for paying the one dollar a month hello I Somali rights it is my pleasure to finally reach out to you I've been a subscriber YouTube channel for over a year now and I've been meaning to message you at some point so again just like I said in that interview hour and forty minute interview with American corn a lot of the people who appreciate your work most they don't pester you every day or even every month they write to after more that a year which is great thanks running in Mali and I think you'll soon hear she has a pretty busy life she's doing a lot of meaningful things to their life she has a lot of meaningful aspirations he has a lot of better things to be doing than that then writing into me I come to you now seeking advice and discussion because I already know so much about you I will include a bit of background information about myself i'm a 21 year old public health undergrad student in Florida so university degree is in public health so coincidentally that's quite like the example i just used of a hospital being really an intensely political institution and organization and questions possible form really being more political than scientific or political scientific um I became vegan two years ago when I learned about the daily atrocities committed against animals and decided I could no longer take part in it I changed my diet overnight and spent the rest of that week ridding my house of all products of cruelty I could find after watching just one of your videos on vegan philosophy I felt I had finally understood who I am I can take a compliment Thank You Molly but um that is quite a compliment she says after watching just one of my videos on vegan philosophy she felt she finally understood who she well thank you I do not make my videos for a huge audience it's wonderful now that so many of my videos reach about two thousand viewers but it's the depth of what's being shared here that I think is really important sometimes I put up videos that are just for fun that are just silly you guys know that but obviously this is the stuff that's going to matter five years from now five years from now is not that far in the future yes really but five years from now Molly will be 26 not 21 I don't even want to think about how old I'm gonna be but um I'm really not worried about this week's controversy I'm worried about building that future for myself for her for all of us and yes ultimately for the animals for ecology for the planet but we got to start with getting five people or 50 people organized who can really make a difference in this world most of my life she says most of my life I considered myself a nice person who just had a more humanitarian heart than most others I met but I have been slowly casting off the nice girl facade I was operating under I am bitter I am impatient I want change it's the realest thing in the world I mean look it's it's good that you know that at age 21 it's good that you're aware of that and you know you may go through a period of time when you're a bit out of control on that I don't know you may have a completely under control but the fact that you you know it and you can write those words at age 21 I think means that you know as soon maybe by age 23 you may really have be a hundred percent you know you may have perfected that that really difficult art of being passionate highly motivated and you know ambitious that's what you're talking about you've got to take that bitterness that impatience that desire for change and harness it or harness is not a very vegan or do you know shape it into a kind of a kind of ambition that's productive in your own life and that you know hopefully makes you more friends than it makes you enemies in terms of how you how you share that passion with your fellow man but nobody's perfect and you don't need to be perfect and you don't need to live a lie and you don't need to live under a facade you know you don't you don't need to pretend to be a nice girl and you know niceness is suitable for some things and not others it's all comes down to this brings me to why contacted you izel I will be completing my undergraduate degree this coming spring I'm looking forward to the future I do not desire to become another cog in the corporate machine I want to bring about real change legislation against animal cruelty is the most impactful solution comma correct so this video is not going to be a long discussion I mean I think she's hoping to start a long session ii which is great and I've talked with this stuff legislation against animal cruelty may really not be the best goal for you to be pursuing short-term or long-term this stuff I mean guys like okay I'm not going to quote authors there's no point that was going to quote some some figures from history political science their questions of you know legislating against the majority matters of principle come first when we're in face-to-face conversation with their fellow human being but mad as the principal come last when you're talking about legislation we're not going to have a despised minority of less than one percent of the population voiced a resolution that for example makes all factory farming illegal in a democracy at a time when the vast majority of people support factory farming now I don't even have a statistic for that they're currently there are no poles on how popular unpopular you know factory farming is and as I mentioned recently in the video that was talking about the how weak the comparison to slavery is before you even got to the civil war in the United States the debates around slavery had totally dominated you know US Congress us summit for such a long time is a major you know defining issue that have reorganized politics the United States and veganism isn't most people are not even aware of it and I'm certain the vast majority of the population if you ask them but factory farming would kind of reluctantly look at you and say what what are you talking about and would simply report that they don't care that was again that was not the case at all with slavery before the Civil War was in the cases every after the Civil War even even less so everyone was mobilized everyone had an opinion everyone regarded it as as tremendously important so you know legislation against animal cruelty short term well you know sure if you can do it if it's something that that motivates people to some extent in politics you know the process is the product i was talking to another vegan has a youtube channel about lobbying and i was really saying to her look the strength of lobbying is that you can deliver something meaningful to your donors right away the process is the product so if me and this other youtuber if we go to city hall or provincial parliament in canada some local level of government we prepare a little speed deposition that's presented the government and we film that and we put it on YouTube then we get to turn to our donors and say look these are your donations at work here's what we did with the money you know we put together this information we went to government we lobbied government and if absolutely nothing else comes out of it if everybody in the provincial Parliament sits there and says i don't care i just want to eat bacon sandwiches for lunch if that's the attitude of people in government still the process is the product and for your social movement for your foundation for your donors ultimately there is something meaningful you're doing so I'm really stating this as a sort of concession however at this stage in 2016 I think the most fundamental struggle is exactly what I talk about my video on community that's already been mentioned before it's a struggle to go from being an invisible minority to being a visible minority from being a despised minority to a highly vocal highly respected minority and as I've said so many times I think the really positive example in Canada for my generation is the gay rights movement is that gays went from invisible to visible from despised to respected really that's not understanding it oh they went from being despised to being respected and then ultimately the end of that process they did have legislation that gave them rights they didn't have before that legislated new civil rights really that you know but that was the end of the process it really was I was the final step and that was at a stage when you know the opposition to those those legal reforms had really become dug into a very narrow defensive religious posture where they had less and less of a constituency behind them and someone we're for something so specifically saying legislation against animal cruelty it's a very very distant goal now what about legislation against polluting rivers see that's a wedge two different which people who eat meat if you frame in that way so look you eat meat so you support factory farming but factory farming can change I'm a vegan I don't support factory farming but here's one of the problems with factory farming is that they are polluting the rivers so I want this legislation that protects your drinking water that holds this industry to a higher standard this is what I could go on all day I gave the example ages go of even the the standards for the trucks that leave the factory farms you can pick you can pick things that are so my mute they're meaningless but obviously river pollution is not meaningless so choosing the type of legislation and then how you can build a constituency how you can build the core of the movement being devoted vegans but choosing a topic where the door is going to be open at Parliament the doors can be opened with the public with the press because you haven't chosen something as narrow as animal cruelty love as a whole the whole of factory farming would end if animal cruelty is really illegal then overnight what factory farming has to cease to exist so you know if we're looking at this step-by-step those issues for example water quality that maybe I don't know where she let out Florida somewhere in florida it may be that you've got to pick a very different you know very different legal issue at least to begin with but as they say to some extent the process is the products there is actually some value in presenting to Parliament or to a local city hall there there is actually a point for you and for your movement for followers just in making the presentation just in doing the lobbying itself even if you and you know but on the other hand in terms of building that visible community there's also a point in opening restaurants night clubs having dance parties whatever I mean oh there are all these things that again they may seem trivial in isolation but for gay rights they really built communities wheel communities and for veganism also now we have to be building real communities why did why doesn't San Francisco have a vegan district why doesn't London England have a vegan district should you know many of the great cities in the world now and in the future need to have a vegan neighborhood the same way they have a gay district at the same way they may have a Chinatown of Chinese dis director or what have you and again the the most fundamental message that delivers is we're here we're not going to disappear we're a part of this society and that long-term slow undertow of the moral demands were making the ecological concerns were presenting that's given a body that's given substance that's something that gradually and inevitably the whole world will have to take seriously no matter how inconvenient it is no matter how unwanted a challenge it is to their traditions to their daily dietary habits to their religious beliefs because well it's easy to forget veganism it's a challenge to every Thanksgiving dinner it's a challenge to all of the Abrahamic religions Judaism Christianity and Islam all of them are built on old ultimately tradition that began with animal sacrifice and with meat-eating being a major which relies part of that tradition so you got to choose you got to choose your shoes carefully obviously for example i do not think a strong issue to choose is you know the criticism of halal meat which in some place i'm told in australia some of the ecological shows that when they made that the wedge issue was that the standards for making halal meat or kosher meat are worse than the standards for the kind of meat from my perspective water pollution instead much more dynamic the first step to choose and we are talking about a first step for someone who doesn't already have a foundation or a movement that were part out anyway so i continue Molly's emailed to me Molly says I'm considering going to law school but only to become an animal rights defense lawyer however I would prefer any other route besides surrendering another three to four years for intensive study and countless hours working just to pay it off law is not an interest to me as far as academic studies goes but I feel a calling to make huge changes with the animals so pause I'll continue a second a lot of people in Canada wanted to go into human rights law for this reason and the fundamental advice you have to give those people is no there's no such thing as a human rights lawyer you first have to just become a lawyer then you have to become a respected lawyer and then you become a respected human rights lawyer you may be underestimated just how many years of sacrifice this path involves in terms of working in areas of law that don't interest you in any way and what kind of work is involved in the long slow path of just earning a living as a lawyer let alone being you know respected that that process what basement you already told me I think you're already aware this is not the path for you but being known as a good lawyer being known as a or even a great lawyer having that great reputation having that foundation and then slowly building up because I take it you're not born a multi-millionaire building up the capacity to have your own law firm and then to have that law firm have reputation for ecology animal rights etc it's a long so difficult path but look if you go back I have one video a couple hours long talking to a lawyer who's involved with ecology specifically in Washington DC there are some people who manage to do it there's some people who manage to do meaningful work that way and if you can get in touch with any of those people including Stephen fate himself they may give you a much more positive view of that field they may say to you know you can get meaningful work and here's how to do it and it's not as bad in this bleak as what this political science guy makes it out to be but obviously becoming a lawyer somebody had to consider for myself it's several very different junctures in my life I'd say it is still not completely impossible probability is approaching zero that I would ever become a lawyer though Molly's letter continues I guess what I'm asking of you assuming you have knowledge of American law is to help me find another avenue to impact the current laws without suffering through law school well we may continue this discussion for years life is long um on youtube or by email or what have you I'm skipping over a few paragraphs are in the letter Molly continues I want to see real change in my lifetime I want to see the fart the factory farming industry collapsed in the next few decades we only have so much time it's real I've only paused and said but you know you know this about yourself you know that this is your your ambition and you know how you feel about it you know at age 21 you've got a lot of the pieces of the puzzle it's true there are a lot more pieces to put together but it's very positive basically that you've reached this level of self-awareness I open this video with a comparison to the anti-war movement opposition the Vietnam War United States oh I'm going to close with with the same comparison the reality is the anti-war movement was a failure and it was a failure in many different ways both short-term and long-term and I really sincerely believe that this failure began with crucially a failure to define what anti war itself meant in the context of a political emergency in the context of so much emotion in the context of feeling a sense of shock and horror when you're looking at photographs of dead bodies you know and you're being told this is being done by your army by your taxpayers dollars etc etc it's very easy to overlook those fundamental philosophical and political problems it's very easy to just say well we're the good people because we're anti-war and whoever disagrees with us is bad because they're pro-war and to run roughshod over all those those questions now of course it was a failure just in the sense that it it totally failed to end the Vietnam War the actual reasons for why that war ended when it did had everything to do with a man named Nixon and another man named Mao Zedong and China and a unique political arrangement so called strategic triangle in Cold War politics the vietnam war ended when it did for reasons that had absolutely nothing to do with protests in the streets had nothing to do with letter-writing campaigns or any other form of political activism within the United States that may be sad that may be a bitter pill to swallow that may contradict a sort of fabled narrative we have that glorifies street protests in our culture was the truth it was a failure in the short term but it was even more of a failure in the long term because that deeper question of what does it mean to be anti-war what does it mean to be pro peace in the context of the politics at that time or in the context of our politics today do you support peace that he cost peace at what cost etc well as soon as the vietnam war was over there was officially and ostensibly over you know the government of Vietnam was a human rights disaster and it still ends it still is a source of shame and consternation it's not quite as infamous as North Korea but still people who felt they were protesting on the side of peace and human rights and maybe even democracy soon found that they were making excuses for yet another communist dictatorship and that in fact some of the people on the pro-war side who had issued really grave warnings about who the Communist side were what they would do and how they would repeat many of the same things that the Soviet Union had done in the history of communism many of the same problems would happen again a lot of those people were proven correct they proved to be right chicken is a very difficult pill to swallow it's in history most of the time there are no good guys but um you know definitely people who put decades of their lives in that movement were then left feeling that after all the bad guys had one you know had they done the right thing look at the real outcomes as terrible and brutal as the US intervention in Vietnam was the US withdrawal which again was part of a collaboration with communists it was part of a strategic partnership between the United States and Communist China this raised even more difficult questions and those difficult questions of course for the very small number of people who really paid attention to really cared those questions had to be asked again and again because in some places the Vietnam War never ended most obviously Cambodia the war just kept going on and on as part of that strategic partnership between the US and China and that is truly a story for another day I think a lot of people before they started watching videos on my channel felt completely confident that they knew what veganism mint and plenty of people felt offended and felt angry at me that I was questioning the meaning of veganism it was raising really difficult questions whether about vivisection scientific research pet ownership insects about killing mosquitoes about the fact that raising crops such as wheat and fruit all of our vegan foods that those also kill insects the morality of killing insects I think they felt genuinely hurt and offended and shocked that I was asking questions that ultimately point to the heart of of this movement and its pretensions and its ethical aspirations and really asked again and again what is veganism what should veganism be what do we want veganism to be what is the future veganism going to be and that simultaneously just as absurd as asking what does it mean to be anti-war and yet it's also just as meaningful it's just as crucial it's just as integral to our success both short-term and long-term probably the easiest way short term to organize a vegan political movement is like the anti-war movement is to just have a negative definition there were quite a few movements that have come and gone some of the most extreme movements were just anti-vivisection and everyone involved felt that they understood what being anti-vivisection meant it's very simple it's simpler than then being vegan or being pro ecology or pro environment and those movements tended to fall apart whether they had success or failure or a mixture of both success and failure what happens to the anti-war movement once the war you're protesting against is really over for me even though now and veganism were so far away from having any meaningful victory you can gain I I'm still haunted by that question so again I can point to an example you've heard me indicate many times Mothers Against Drunk Driving I think they did win many of their victories they became this very powerful unfortunate but they didn't disappear Mothers Against Drunk Driving is still going every day to primary schools and high schools and is educating children and teenagers about drunk driving their mission never ended their politia their their political mandate never ended even after they scored quite a few victories they didn't fall apart and I think that reflects that they have a core membership they have a group of people supporting them who really understand that mandate who really understand the costs involved and who really built a political foundation long term it's one of the greatest success stories within Western democracy of a civil society organization and you know in they've changed the world in a way that's meaningful to them that's the challenge we're all looking at both in terms of the process and the product we want to pursue this change that's meaningful to us but it does start with and again we have this luxury it's a beautiful thing we're in this wonderful position before we even started it does start with these questions of really what is the meaning of veganism and the reality is in 2016 two different people will have two very different answers to that question and ten different people may have 10 different answers to that question and I'm trying to find the people whether there's five people or 50 people who have come to the same conclusions that I've come to and have a high level of confidence reliability competence to high level of intellectual self-discipline high level of rigor and who are willing in the next 10 years next 20 years next 30 years to fight through democratic means through public forums through public education through real political activist who are willing to fight to make that change and the beautiful thing is if you disagree with me if your vision of veganism and your vision of the future is different from mine great you start your own YouTube channel you start your own foundation and you know maybe there can be real mutual respect maybe there can be real mutual admiration between us despite those fundamental differences because in even if it's in very different ways we will both be working to make the world a better place