Against Violence in Political Praxis (The 35 Minute Version!)

yo what up I'm back on my disclaimer
that if I look exhausted it's because I am exhausted I slept from about midnight till 6am last night maybe one I am till 6am and it's about 6 30 am right now hahaha so any of you came from my pretty face I'm even less pretty than usual um I got a message though from Amy on the east coast of Canada that I really feel like I won a record of reaction to just now look so amy is vegan and she's a supporter here on patreon and first and foremost I mean I give her credit she's actually trying to organize vegan action vegan activism in halifax canada and just all ready for that I've got tons of respect for her here in Victoria as you guys know at this moment I'm packing up to move to China I'm not I mean I'm not organizing anything I'm not engaged in activism aside from unless you count me talk to you right now on youtube so first and foremost I respect the hell out of that if you guys hadn't noticed this desk has mysteriously changed color because I've already packed up and thrown away the the wooden desk that was here before so you get a plastic desk for just these last few days that I'm in Canada at all I'm going to read you this email I got from Amy I'm going to read you my reply and I'm going to tell you some related thoughts I mean a lot of this stuff it's painful to me that I have so much to say like some of these things I wish I didn't have what oh this brings up a lot for me all right Amy writes quote I met with a local self-proclaimed vegan activist here in Halifax it was a really weird tea she didn't seem very well informed on many subjects and was a huge proponent of gary yourofsky which turned me off she seemed really upset when I passively explained that I don't support violence in any way she came off as incredibly militant she started going on about how she wanted a war I feel really foolish for having that with her frankly she originally said she wanted to meet with me because she had an interest in working on my workshop so amy has been among she's on YouTube but she's also been planning a workshop of a particular kind you know discussing veganism and discussing how to live how to be vegan on a budget and some other specific issues she said she had a history of public speaking she said she did all kinds of this stuff all the time when we actually sat down to talk all she wanted to do was drill me with questions on how to start a YouTube channel who should watch on youtube and make friends with it's the etc etc I really felt used and well it reminded me of why i dislike activists so much LOL i guess i'm trying to figure out how i can positively influence people I'm not militant I don't support condescending attitudes or violence or any other silly tactic that seems so popular on YouTube maybe this is a really small step but I decided to organize a vegan picnic for the end of the month I thought if people feel a sense of community maybe they'll be more empowered to spread a message to non vegans or maybe it'll simply be a nice picnic do you think doing these things is pointless that was doc Meyers so my reply that I wrote is almost entirely to the very first part of what she's just said because this issue of violence and phony radicalism has been a huge issue in my own life it's something I've dealt with within Canada again and again uh so I said to her first and foremost Amy this obviously echoes various experiences have had in Canada in connection to petty politics of various kinds not just veganism so in response to this issue of meeting someone who poses as militant and who speaks in terms of wanting a war I wrote back saying yeah I've had that experience in various contexts and the people proclaiming World War rarely have anything to offer themselves I remember at Cambridge England attending a meeting of ultra leftists only because it was advertised as a symposium on police brutality something it wasn't at all as it turned out false advertising for what that meeting was the various in 10 DS insisted on speaking strictly in terms of a social war so again that situation we were in a room a lavishly decorated room a room much more beautiful than the room i got married in you know it's kind of gorgeous late medieval sumptuous aristocratic decor that cambridge university has to offer i'm in this elite you can't even call it a bourgeois institution this frankly aristocratic elite institution in england and you have people who are self-defined revolutionary leftist extremists sitting down and talking about you know war and bloody revolution and but just the room the conversation was happening in made the whole exercise seem absurd although the absurdity was certainly not visible to to those people themselves um I remember so continuing just quoting my reply I remember an academic room within University of Toronto were a meeting on electrical power generation no kidding was attended by communists who insisted casually that the problem of electricity generation would be only solved when the streets ran red with blood and the proletarian rose up in class warfare etc so again that was also absurd now University of Toronto is a less impressive campus than Cambridge University in England but the specific room that took place in had beautiful wood paneling was again a somewhat sumptuous or you know beautifully decorated room uh oh the people attending that these were all people from the older generation I was one of the youngest people in the room for that meeting and it was supposed to be a session dealing with you know practical problems of ecology and how electricity organization was was organized in that part of Canada and we go and when the one guy said you know always remember the other people sitting the room were all older there was me and there was there was one guy was with me who were not of this character but one guy said in preface well you know these problems we can talk about them for this meeting but really this is only going to be solved when there's this revolution and you know the ruling class are murdered because that's what class warfare means again see my my essay about that massacre that happened in nineteen twenty class war is not a joke it's talking about people being killed people being massacred and that's what communists have done historically I mean you have to know what those words mean what they mean in theory and what they mean in practice the theory is violent as hell the practice as violent as hell it's no joke and it's anyway and so this one guy this meeting about electricity generation in this academic context and this somewhat luxurious context to be to be blunt um he talked about you know that this problem really was only going to be addressed when this mass murder happened uh-huh and these other you know middle-aged or elderly people sitting around the table all right oh yes mmm right yeah like there was this you know agreement there was this a cent going around the table now as the case of that kind of meeting it was quite some time between when he said that and when I got my chance to speak you know you wait your turn that guy finishes speaking for 20 minutes or something and I put up my hand and and then I spoke you know might have been somebody else spoke before me you speak in you speak in turn but I was the only part III address that directly I had several points to say on electrical generation how that was organized I knew I knew about that stuff at the time I was really involved in interested with ecology so I had some specific points of that but I addressed directly I said excuse me you know who do you think you're speaking to you know in just the assumption this is downtown Toronto the assumption that everyone in that room was not only a socialist of some kind but was a violent anti-establishment communist was sickening to me and again of the same thing at Cambridge England make hemorrhaging and when I was there I had already lived in at least two communist countries you know communist still today people's republic of china people's the democratic republic of laos those are communists till today I have lived in I've been in many more former communist countries like Cambodia Cambodia totally devastated by communism I mean none of these people I mean goddamn you know communists like to use this term paper tigers they're all such paper tigers dude have you ever dealt with real violence I have dealt with real violence month the truth is the main reason why there hasn't been more violence in my life is just the way I look people tend not to bring violence to me because they can tell I'm prepared to deal with it and that's everything from crime to political violence precisely because I'm ready to handle violence people don't try to push me around and that includes even like corrupt police I don't mean police in Canada but like police in Cambodia and Laos people do not try to mess with me because I look poor I look tough and I act in a manner which is just like hey if this is what's on I'm down for that daylight action I'm down for the party man and you know when people have threatened to put me in prison for crimes I didn't commit where you know look I would have feel no guilt we're just to extort me or just a bully me there's been a threat to put me in prison which you don't happen in Laos and what have you I I didn't go to prison Laos I was threatened with being sent to the gulag publish my whole attitude was all right great you put me in prison for five years I'm gonna come out speaking three languages this is gonna be positive experience of my life I'm down for it when people have threatened to rob me or stab me or something my whole attitude is all right I'm more generous with my blood than I am with my money I ain't got no money to lose anyway let's do it homeboy let's let's you know let's see what you got and people have I've had someone pull out a machete on me and try to kill me on the banks of the Mekong River that didn't go so well for him and I ain't got no scars in my body you know I've had people threaten me with violence and I've been around real violence but only to a tiny extent because i'm prepared for it you know and because also just mention i drink no alcohol so like I knew people had guns pulled on them in Cambodia guns pulled out and pointed at them in one case you know gun being fired and so on I don't know anyone who was shot because they'd be dead obviously but you know that never happened to me partly because I was never drunk and I was never going to you know I was never going to nightclubs that kind of thing but like you know I knew a guy smart guy too smart tough guy he and that guy at a background in martial arts and boxing and semi military training not not real military training he he dropped out of the paratrooper corps in in France but I remember that guy he had he had a little kid stick him up with with a submachine gun with it with a portable machine gun machine gun with folding stock and the kid was so was so tiny you know ekta in order to hold this gun at him the kid had to put one foot on a brick and prop the the butt of the gun the kid had to lean against a brick wall you know because the kid couldn't really handle the weight of it so you know violence is real I have I have only had to deal with this much violence in my life because of who I am how I roll what I look like uh you know again I have advantages in this vantage left I'm often surprised that you know people like police and other authority figures treat me with as much respect as they do I've commented in that here in Canada in Southeast Asia I know I look a bit rough but that has made violence less of an issue of my life because like I say I'm down for it whatever you people want to bring at me I'm ready to get brung and so they they don't bring that much but I mean Jesus Christ these these phony extremists and if I've had to deal with it so much even just within Canada I've had to deal with it with vegans within Canada and it totally distorts veganism makes veganism counterproductive and I've had to deal with it in the Green Party I mean people would think I was crazy if you talk about this stuff and people don't know the context a Green Party of Ontario was full of Communists full of violent extremists full of people who want to talk about war and revolution the Green Party of Saskatchewan when i was there and i had to deal with that like face to face i had to deal with that i had to address that and face to face you know when I was in Saskatchewan the green part I got involved with a green party there again and I was very disappointed one of the things one of the influence of Estrella I was trying to make the Green Party really address and be relevant to First Nations politics indigenous peoples well because among other issues obviously they already cared about ecology but when i was in saskatchewan the Green Party had just made the transition there they used to be controlled by communists they were basically founded by disgruntled communists and extreme left-wing people who had all quit from another party or from several other parties to form that local Green Party and so you know this kind of irrelevant radicalism totally counterproductive radicalism that can't can't help you with ecology can't help you with political organization can't help you with any other type of community organizations have been talking about and and it's a way of thinking about social change that because it is rooted in violence and its ultimate ultimate objectives or violence and it's means our balance it never thinks through the type of examples you guys have heard me talk about 10 times on this channel what about cigarette smoking and how cigarette smoking has changed Society what about social organizations like Mothers Against Drunk Driving really effective non-party forms of activism when I was in the Green Party even I was just trying to talk to them about publications but having a magazine that talked about ecology and the science of ecology and you know social change in relation to that you just had a magazine gathering together bits of news that people who donate money to the Green Party would care about and talking about that stuff in an authentic way that would mean so much and it would justify people donating money to you like you know ecology has a scientific aspect as well as an ethical aspect as well as a vegan aspect if you had a magazine addressing those things instead of phony threats of violence and revolution it would make such a positive difference and this is in Canada Jesus correct you know you want to talk about resorting to violence in it you know here in Canada have you been to City Hall no none of these people have been a city old I've never been to Portland they've never tried the legal means of making a difference and when I did that stuff when I was nobody when I was a young kid in University going to City Hall I met and spoke with some of the most powerful people in Canadian politics long term you know I spoke to I interacted with two different guys who later became heads of the NDP of our Democrat Party I guess so i guess one at that time was a former head of the party and the other was a future head of the party these are these are among the most powerful people and that was nobody the among the most powerful people Canadian bugs here in Victoria I had a complaint against my university I went directly to Parliament dealt with my Member of Parliament is presented Parliament nothing's going to come of it but still very gratifying real outcomes compared to this phony ass radicalism and so on I had an image I used to post all the time that related to my experience in Cambodia showing the devastation of revolution in Cambodia with a quote saying you know that there's no room to be a fake dress up revolutionary when there's a real revolution going on but these people who preach violence they both lack a pragmatic connection to meaningful politics and the thoughts about how political change actually happens how to really make political change happen and they also have avoided learning lessons from history have they've avoided reading about actual revolutions what really happens with real class warfare with real violence when it goes on so this remains something glorified and abstract in their minds which is sickening to me something people on the left wing say all the time and I understand I believe me I have studied the Vietnam War especially with reference to Laos Cambodia etc I've studied any more people on the Left talk all the time about learning the lessons of Vietnam yeah well why don't up Jesus Christ there were a lot of lessons to learn from Vietnam there are lessons to learn from the real communist revolutions political revolutions that have happened in Vietnam in Russia in China in Cambodia watch goddamn you want it you want to talk about violent revolution on not even I mean look communism is insane I mean that sincerely please if you if you think I'm exaggerating read that essay I wrote dealing just with one aspect of the Russian Revolution of violent communism in 1920 it's a case study that he tells you what communism is about what class warfare is about what this kind of mass murder looks like in practice there's there are a lot of lessons to learn from that uh but as crazy as communism is one thing you can say in its favor is at least they pretend to represent a large class in society like the Bolsheviks in Russia they didn't even claim to represent the majority but they could say well about twenty-five percent of Russians are members of this industrial poor class that they represents they could they could say they represented twenty-five percent of the population in reality would that 25% even vote for them if they had an election that's another story but you know communists in different countries can claim to represent twenty-five percent or fifty percent of the population they can sometimes the claim to represent the poor now in Canada what percentage the population are really poor right these are the problems you get into but anyway they claim to represent some mass organizations on mass movement vegans can never claim that a meal in 2016 do we represent one percent of the population do we represent two percent of the population why would violence be justified or effective on behalf of that two percent of the population this is mimicking a mentality that is from like the 18th century in Europe not even the 19th century of assuming that political radicalism simply by declaring itself radical represents a huge class of oppressed people and if those oppressed people are just given leadership violent leadership then they will suddenly rise up and vindicate your movement and this is a course a very biased allusion to the experience of the French Revolution experience especially really I don't even II one in French Revolution I mean several French Revolutions none of them being really study your thought about critically you know God yeah look at the French Revolution what was the outcome Napoleon and the Napoleonic Wars Napoleon reestablished slavery you want to talk about learning the lessons from Vietnam you want to talk about learning the lessons of history you want to talk about learning the lessons these revolutions why don't you actually study what happened revolutions the total disaster the loss of life on a scale unbelievable and that the outcome being establishing a dictatorship so horrible you yourself would not want to live through it that was true the French Revolution singular or revolutions plural the revolution in China god damn take a look at what communism actually did in Vietnam once you get past the kind of phony narrative of looking at Vietnam as the the victim of American aggression which of course it is American bombardment is very real but communist dictatorship is very real also mass murder by communist dictatorships Jesus and murder during the revolution itself and what class warfare really means there are a lot of lessons to learn from the Vietnam War or from all these wars or from the stupidity of this pro-war social war attitude so all of this for me pours out in response to this this message from Amy and Amy's attempt to to organize activism in halifax canada but yet look sorry to come back to the ecology and Green Party as an example so I've just said vegans can't can me d represent two percent of the population yes Lee I hope I hope two percent of the population in Canada sympathize with veganism ecology the Green Party you know again is it two percent is it five percent why would violence possibly be justified is just this mentality the idea that there's a huge number of oppressed peasants oppressed factory workers which again is 200 years ago and that if only a group of radicals put together a party put together a vanguard vanguard is the word in communism then those people will rise up and mobilize and response this ideas that absolutely cannot be true the nature of the ideas if you talk about ecology there is just no reason why preaching a transition to electrical cars would result in the poor rising up that way even if the poor oppressed in some countries the poor really are oppressed still today in 2016 in some countries the peasants are oppressed the factory workers are oppressed we can say yes that's the truth however if they're going to rise up maybe they're going to rise up violently to demand more money to demand that an old better health care maybe there's something they're going to rise up for but it's not going to be ecology it's not going to be a vegan diet it's not going to be animal rights you're kidding yourself and you're really making a kind of phony carbon copy of the hype for communist revolutions which today i feel is is fully 200 years at a date maybe you feel it's only 150 years out of date or something you know different people have different historical attitudes but to me this is an echo of [ __ ] made up about the French Revolution and that was applied to you know even situations in Germany and Russia that really had nothing to do with it and that were disasters the Russian Revolution was a disaster the Russian Revolution Lenin his whole significance was that he led a coup d'état and got rid of elected government they had legitimate elections and Lenin ruined them because he wanted to be the leader of a dictatorship instead of allowing a parliament to exist a parliament that elected a left-wing government but not Lenin that elected a variety of socialists and for that communists should feel guilty that they were anti-democratic from day one their goddamn Russian Revolution they glorify so much was not founded on democracy was found on the denial of democracy the quashing of the suppression of the strangling of democracy in a country namely Russia that struggled so much to try to have elections in a legitimate democracy to replace the Czar the rule of a king basically the rule of a terrible dictatorship and Lenin poisoned that it's it's one of history's great tragedies and communists still today are defined as the people who are willing to tell lies about that and glorify that history for their own their own cynical ends and yes it's a problem I mean it seems unbelievable in 2016 but I mean when I was there so I was in Cambridge a couple years ago but this is all 21st century it seems absurd but yes ecology and Toronto the Green Party in Saskatchewan and meeting with a queda MX in anthropology at Cambridge University England in those places communism is still a real force even though it's such a discredited ideology even though like CNN news does not take communism seriously and these people believe insane conspiracy theories about Vladimir Putin and Russia even though there's nothing left wing above flattener putin russia I mean the far left as a factor within veganism is terrifying to me for all these reasons and more that I about lined okay returning to my letter here my reply to Amy I say yeah I've dealt with pro violence vegans here in Victoria as I've whined about on my youtube channel so i have already complained about that and say and i think those people now hate and fear me as my youtube channel has had more impact than anything they ever did with their activism and yes i realize how tiny my youtube channel is but it is still bigger than their horse [ __ ] than their projects here in Victoria so again I don't really know that those people haven't taken the time to tell me to my face how much they hate me but I've I've kind of seen it so the pro violence people really dislike me because I do not play along with this fantasy with this this game so in response to a me saying that she feels foolish we're having met with this person forever met with this pro violence person I then say in reply to that one of the lessons concerned here relates to having a party Constitution or an equivalent document that defines your organization or charity being anti violence or anti revolution may seem like an absurd point even bother making in such a document but it is crucial it's crucial even for the Green Party and it's crucial for the Liberal Party what have you so I'm not gonna talk with the too much right now but that's really part of classical political science I didn't learn in the classroom I had to learn on my own but you know like in Canada we have a mainstream party called the Liberal Party and their constitution is very vague and very general but it's still important so it sets down things like the the party's commitment to never supporting homophobia that's outside of balance they will not support homophobia especially gay rights now that may seem like today it's like well that seems like a joke why why bother having that as a defining aspect Constitution no it's not a joke those are exactly the principles that become important so when the Liberal Party organizes a plenum a party conference or something to discuss policy plans the future there will be Christian groups you know that have money and organization and come to that plenum and they want to present their case for something that is homophobic even if it's politely homophobic is that that's what they sincerely believe in maybe they're Catholic or whatever they're against gay rights in some sense and the party can say what they don't they don't have to have the debate that you know if that's your position then you have to quit the party because the Constitution the definition of this party is only for people who agree to this principle about homophobia so it's not a joke it shapes the whole party discourse even though it's at that incredibly broad and vague level so when you have an organization whether it's a charity and NGO foundation vegan thing even though it may sound like a joke to say look we do not support revolution we've got support and armed uprising against the government that may sound like a joke but the point is that whenever you have a plenum whenever you have a session or something or we don't support violence of different kinds violence like Gary Yourofsky you could erase things then the point is you don't even have that debate then when you have a conference or plenum you get to avoid that if people show up in the preaching they say look maybe you didn't read the party charter or the party constitution or the the organization's definition no no none of that's acceptable discourse here if that's what you support you've got to start a different foundation because this party of this foundation that's in our Constitution that we don't do that so in terms of setting the ground rules uh you know it definitely in Canada I mean it might be different you know I have some viewers who are in Muslim countries and very different political context but the party constitutions charters they are largely negative in their statements they state what you will not do what you will not discuss and many people who don't have a background in political science they don't realize how important that is like they read this to give it to the Liberal Party it doesn't define liberalism it doesn't tell you positively what liberalism should be or what the message of liberalism for society in the future is or a vision of a liberal utopia none of that's there it doesn't tell you in a positive way what's good about liberalism not at all but it tells you negatively all the things the Liberal Party will exclude and then those are the debates you don't have so again the reality was for the Green Party in Saskatchewan when I was there the majority of their members had just quit and acquit angrily because the Communists had lost power within that party so you know they just had reasonable people the people in charge were just kind of normal people it's not like they hated communism there were just normal Canadians who were not extremists who were not communists they were they were left of center but they were kind of normal people to go to this party and then they were dealing with intense hatred from the the former communists who founded that party used to be the majority of the of the active members so I got to witness that that was a bit surreal um Lou uh anyway so Amy then says she is not militant and I just said look honestly there is a very limited viable role for militancy within veganism in Canada in 2016 people want to talk talk tough and get on an ego trip and to be honest I can understand that to some extent i can understand why people want to feel tough and want to talk to everyone opposed in this way pardon me but thinking in terms of outcomes effective activism etc etc you know what what role for militancy is there you can even refer to my video on conspiracy as a concept many of these people you better off trying to form a conspiracy akin to a corporate Lobby rather than preaching violent revolution uh alright guys that is what it is let's let's end this video there I've talked to you guys from about 6 30am till after 7am your canada as mentioned this is what I look like when I'm completely exhausted no makeup no intro no voucher a real talk these are the issues I've dealt with my whole life I wish it was a joke I wish I could say that these types of extreme politics were not an issue in in Canada you know God you know you'd think I think of the streets run red with blood in Canada but they are and violence and non-violence in theory and in practice remain profoundly important fundamental issues for vegans to be able to get to grips with and again why is that it's not just because violence is a means to an end but violence sheeps the end sheeps the objective so profoundly of what you're trying to do that it pollutes or it distorts all of the stages leading up to that so the Green Party are using the same example when I was there they were not even thinking about having a magazine that talked about science so you know like science news new scientific stuff in relation to ecology even though it's so obvious like if you're doing fundraising you want people to donate money to you because you're an ecological movement the type of people who donate money they will really value a magazine that comes at every three months telling you about recent events you know within Canada but recent scientific discoveries recent research related to ecology related to pollution in some river or that's what those people want to read about but that was a shockingly new idea the shockingly original idea to people inside the Green Party when I presented to them not because they're stupid some of them are stupid but they do not think in those terms at all because the paradigm of violent revolution the paradigm that outcome thinking in those terms means they're not thinking about the really constructive methods of how to build a constituency of how to build an effective moon and when I first started talking about cigarette smoking and government attempts to discourage nicotine and social activist movements in relation to nicotine and alcohol mothers mothers against drunk driving cigarette smoking when I started talking about that on YouTube many vegans written to me and said well that's a shockingly original idea they never thought of those comparisons why again not because they're stupid although stupidity is real many of the people involved are stupid they had never thought of those things because the paradigm of violence this objective these methods so distort the discourse so direct your attention away from really salient considerations of effective activism of how do we organize a movement what are our methods what are our means what are outcomes so again ecology pure and simple and veganism I mean God communism has been one of the most influential ideologies in history of the world it's a huge problem in terms of how it distorts the way vegans think about changing the world it's an even bigger problem if you were involved in labor activism like you know labor unions trying to help workers rights or raise wages or what have you so there are many deep unexamined assumptions about how we pursue social change that comes out of the last 200 years of experience with communism and radicalism and I can't say it's irrelevant to all circumstances in the world in 2016 you know there are extreme circumstances there's Somalia there's you know Saudi Arabia there are all kinds of really extreme political circumstances around the world where maybe we'd be having a totally different conversation but yeah in these white Western decadence Democratic context it is shameful for me to me it is shameful to me that vegans want to be phony dressup revolutionaries and I say shame on you you guys have already seen my videos shame on gary yourofsky for taking a platform he had to advocate positive social change and polluting it with a pro violence message what up