Marxism within Veganism; Socratic Method is Dead.

one of the issues that comes up again
and again in debates debates pertaining to veganism debates pertaining to politics feminism anything else worth debating really is how precisely we use language the precision with which we use language to a large extent shapes our ability to discuss and dispute concepts in a way that is productive may seem like a needlessly for boosts statement I just made but the problem is when we use words in a way that's indistinct or unclear we don't know what we're talking about we don't know what we don't know what we're winning or what we're losing in a debate in a real sense so just now in the live stream I was commenting about the word exploitation and I have a real problem with the way people use exploitation so even though I have had debates on my channel or discussions about how much I dislike Jeff Nelson and his content and I dislike Nina and Randa and their content I have never accused Jeff Nelson of exploiting his daughters one reason I would not do that is that it's just so vague what do we mean by the concept of exploitation in that context some people have recently been accusing me of exploiting someone else's name but actually I've actually had that recently even on the the videos about Game of Thrones the Song of Ice and Fire oh you're exploiting this other person by criticizing them in your video or something like oh okay what what does exploitation mean if my using the name of another person whom I'm critiquing or disagreeing with if that's exploitation you know we can't even debate it it is simply too unclear so one of the problems I have with what I'd call you know warmed-over Marxists 21st century Marxist Marxist who after the fall after the collapse of the Soviet Union are still repping Marxism is that they tend to lean so heavily on words that nobody can define and the day themselves do not use you know with any precision um quite some time ago I said that I would have a book of you coming up for a book titled animal oppression and human violence by David a nee Bert or need air or nee Bert I he's probably any bear I don't know um look guys that that book review is not gonna be forthcoming yeah I tried to buy the book on paper that didn't work out if I owned the book on paper I would probably force myself to read a larger percentage of it instead I couldn't get it on paper I ended up getting a copy as a PDF or not even whatever in eBook about no electronic copy and I gotta tell you from my perspective this is really pretty terrible the quality of writing and again just this one issue the use of language to me is intolerably bad so I'm gonna read you like I don't know five sentences here and you'll see what I'm talking about so this is a section of his conclusion basically addressed to transcending the capitalist system now already what does the word transcend meet in this context I've had to talk about transcending things and transcendental experiences in the cons in the context of Buddhist philosophy in the context of economics what does transcend really mean why are you using a word that is so vague and misleading as transcend it's probably because you don't want to use words like abolish or even revolution or something which have a much more definite meaning anyway so he's saying in his conclusion here as we have seen dumbest equation so the mess equation is the word he uses instead of domestication to make it clear that he disapproves of the domestication of animals as we've seen domestication fueled the rise of capitalism and many of its most deplorable colonial and imperialist practices have shaped the contemporary world today he says capitalism promotes domestic creation on an enormous level tens of billions of animals are tortured and brutally killed every year to produce growing profits for 21st century elites who hold investments in the corporate equivalents of Genghis Khan these new Khan's are the corporate persons whose ranks include Tyson Foods ConAgra Smithfield pilgrims pride Cargill Perdue farms Maple Leaf Foods United egg producers United poultry growers association etc Center so you know I'm gonna stop there believe it or not there are many many things I dislike about the crypto communist and Marxist approach to politics and life on earth capitalism itself becomes meaningless if it's defined so vaguely right capitalism has to mean something whatever capitalism is it has to be contrasted to feudalism it has to be contrasted to a pre capitalist society and then we can also contrast it to non-capitalist social systems such as communism now all of the claims here even in this very short couple of sentences have just read they're intentionally blurring those lines right what do you think see it's the domestication of animals exploitation domesticate animals was that not a part of communism was that not a feature of communism no actually it was just as bad under communism in some ways even worse under communism exploitation of domestic domesticated animals was that not a feature of feudalism of the you know traditional pre capitalist economy before you have the distinctive elements of cattle no it was a totally integral in electable part of feudalism whether you're talking about Europe or Asia even dime of feudalism in Japan or something exploitation domesticate animals was absolutely integral part and now thirdly if you want to reproach these corporate leaders you know so the the executive director of Tyson Foods or they are in fact not in any way comparable to Genghis Khan and I find this kind of verbiage you know truly idiotic and misleading in a way that's not helpful to anyone um Genghis Khan we have some quotations from Genghis Khan's political philosophy was one of actively pillaging of people we are I remember reading a quote from Genghis Khan that there is nothing more satisfying than to loot a man's valuables and to then make love to his wife Genghis Khan had a very active philosophy of looting and slaving and raping a rape on a scale that's now difficult to fathom and we don't just have literary historical sources describing the kind of mass rape that went on under his regime or his regimes plural we also DNA evidence to prove it he literally changed the face of Asia because he and his army raped such an enormous number of people right now again from a classical Marxist classical communist perspective Genghis Khan is not a capitalist figure he represents what's called primitive accumulation piracy basically you know it's piracy on land right this is raping and looting and pillaging now the executive director of Tyson Foods does none of these things and this is really worth appreciating because it explains why it is that we as a society are exactly so complacent all right so sorry I mean he goes on to say I'll read another senator quote they display a pathological single-minded pursuit of profit that is often more subtle then but certainly as violent destructive and ultimately deadly as the practices of the murderous cons of Eurasia spasso again Genghis Khan is what he's alluding to here genghis khan and his successors know if that were true people would not be complacent if the executive directors of Tyson Foods were enslaving people were murdering people enslaving their children raping their women stealing their valuables people would not be complacent people would be offended in reality these companies provide people with relatively well-paying jobs or anyway the jobs that at least pay minimum wage and health benefits and a comfortable life and that's why their employees make excuses for them um they're a part of our cushy comfortable bourgeois decadent Western capitalist society they're not in any way comparable to Genghis Khan and if you as a vegan which is what this book is right if you're from a vegan perspective want to try to motivate people try to stimulate people galvanize people to be opposed to the corporate interests of Tyson Foods etc etc Cargill etc etc the company's the brother that you cannot possibly do it in this way you do it by claiming that capitalism is just as bad as feudalism and that these corporations are just as bad as a murderous raping enslaving pre-capitalist despotism they're not they're not despotic I'm sorry the American Soybean Association which is in his list the United poultry Growers Association these are not despotisms these are not despotic institutions they're not and the reason why millions of people are happy with them is that they provide a service that people value in a service economy right so now again I've read so much left-wing propaganda my whole life my first major university is political science blah blah blah I'm living in a communist country right now I was looking at a book in Chinese on Marxist philosophy less than an hour ago I'm probably gonna buy a copy of that book so that I can practice the vocabulary used for debating Marxism in Chinese before I lived in Laos Laos is also very much communist country etc etc far left-wing politics and the way that these arguments are framed is something that's overly familiar to me right but mean what is the point and given this is a book by vegan for vegans what is the point of framing this discourse as if our opponents as if the people were criticizing it the people as if the industry we want to transform he is a pathological murderous despotic regime that's which is actually what he's saying right now he goes on I only want to read this okay there are other I'll read another sentence this shows you how it Just's as soon as you've adopted this mentality of trying to dramatize of trying to demonize your opponents trying to dehumanize the people who disagree with you this is this is the direction it takes this is not what I don't want to humanize these people I don't want to demonize them I don't it's counterproductive alright so he goes on to say these and other animals so right perme these and other actors in the animal industrial complex including the World Bank the US Department of Agriculture agricultural departments in major universities the Chicago voted board raid innumerable advertising and marketing firms and related enterprises they exert enormous economic cultural and political influence to promote the consumption of meat dairy eggs and seafood in order to protect the interest of those who profit from it contemporary domination of the world by global capitalist elites is furthered by corporate friendly so-called free trade agreements and the World Trade Organization which has joined the World Bank etc so you can see this cut it's not even conspiracy theory it's just demonizing these people right you know I was talking to a vegan a few months ago her father is a member so she's vegan her father makes his money every day out of this you know animal exploiting industry what have you called the meat packing industry the slaughterhouse industry etc right these are normal human beings I have met and interviewed you know former employees of slaughterhouses and I have at least one video talking about that I remember one video that talks at length about this conversation I had with a guy and very often they're happy very often they think it's a good job working in a slaughterhouse there are other people on YouTube you can see former employees of slaughterhouses who became vegan and now regard what happens so to us it's very traumatic and evil I have again I can remember one video at least I did on that where I have some clips from other people's YouTube pages showing them talking about their experience when they were working in the in the slaughterhouse I understand that from a kind of hackneyed left-wing perspective they think this is useful they think that describing these people as Psychopaths who are carrying out murderous and violent actions in the name of profit this psyche psychopathologies ation of people who happen disagree they think it's useful and it's not what's useful is recognizing their rationality is recognizing their humanity is recognizing these people are not psychopaths they are normal they just happen to disagree with you they just happen to accept a set of cultural values you want to challenge so now let's move this story forward and discuss how we as a movement are gonna get organized to challenge those values saying that capitalism is equivalent to poop primitive accumulation that it's equivalent to piracy that's equivalent to Genghis Khan murdering and enslaving and raping people is useless I know why he's doing it I know the ideological reason he's doing I know the whole hundred and fifty years of this kind of left-wing tradition but it's not useful for communists it's not useful for socialists you know labor organizers and it's definitely not useful for us as a you know as a would-be movement veganism at starting offset so guys this is not a book review I do not know I mean the next couple of months will I have the time to sit back down with this book and devote more attention to it it's it's very hard for me to imagine I'd do so so this is this may be my announcement that I'm not gonna review this but I find it very very difficult to read even one page of this book from my perspective it's extremely poorly written it's extremely insincere and the use it makes of left-wing political concepts is is totally counterproductive from my perspective it's not useful for veganism it's not useful for left-wing politics etc but with all that having been said I found about this book in the first place because of a suggestion from one of my supporters on patreon thank you for that I am interested in any fresh philosophical or political perspective on veganism as a movement and I mean I do feel I mean I do feel like in a sense that that looking at this book has has enriched my engagement with veganism as a movement although for me the enrichment is just another reminder of how hopeless and fucked-up and pathetic the world of formal academia has been for animal rights veganism etc to me this is just another book where I look at it and think wow this is even worse than what we have going on on YouTube and I mean if you think about it it makes sense why YouTube is really a very Socratic medium people come on and make a video and they respond to criticism if this kind of perpetually open-ended dialogue and what I see in this book is just the most ludicrous ego trip on the part of the author he starts the book by wanting to show how the whole tradition of academic sociology is bad and evil and wrong because it treats domestication of animals is a good thing as part of the positive progress of society okay well guess who your audience is it's people like me so I don't know you could cover that in about a paragraph unless you're really interested in seeing this guy kick the can with the you know the godfathers of sociology as an academic discipline which is of no use to anybody and it's interesting to an incredibly small number of people in academia I'm not even a judge that part of the book whether it's good better and different and then you get into this kind of you know fanatical left-wing ideology you it just seems like who could pissing contest who can say the most outrageous thing to demonize people who happened disagree with you so bring that back there one last comment in the last couple days I have had some people you know disagree with me into it which is great you always should I'm totally cool with people criticizing me but what I'm actually sitting you're willing to have a debate with them I think they're so unfamiliar with what I've just been alluding to you know they tell me I'm a sociopath I tell me I'm a psychopath they just scream insults at me and I'm actually sitting here in live shot like okay well let's talk about it what do you what's your actual critique of my video or what you disagree with and they can't do it they can't offer a critique they have no opinion their opinion is just to dehumanize me to Internet hominem way suggest that I'm a sociopath or a psychopath which again is what this guy does David niebuhr he does he's saying that you know whatever the owners of Burger King are psychopaths which I doubt I doubt the owner of McDonald's Wendy's or Tyson Foods as a psychopath I think the reality we need to face up with in vegan face up to and veganism these are normal people they just happen to disagree with us I think you have to on a profound level start from the assumption start on the footing these are normal people who just happen to disagree with me in a matter of opinion and now think through how are we gonna have that that disagreement how are we gonna disagree how uh you know express our contrasting opinions the fact that other vegans so rarely are capable of even disagreeing with me that's already a warning and when I see this kind of holier-than-thou left-wing approach again this is the office of Socratic method this is just getting into assuming your your opponent assuming anyone who would dare to disagree with you as a terrible human being and then let's fill up pages and pages with ranting about what terrible human beings they are and how inconceivable their view of the world is as if our own parents didn't eat meat as if our own grandparents didn't eat meat as if we ourselves in 99% of cases didn't start out our lives eating meat and believing these culture excuses if it's just it's incomprehensible to us that only only a psychopath could disagree with us as vegan this is this is really a pretty dark road to take veganism down and as I was just trying to say in closing this video I think once you get on that road pretty quickly you lose your capacity to recognize the rationality of the people you disagree with and then you lose the capacity to have a productive disagreeing with them hit me up