Boxing Match with Jason Pizzino: Vegan Politics, Leadership & Living for the Cause.

a lot of you guys will know another
youtuber named Jason fazzino uh Jason I know each other and some of his videos respond to content for my channel and some of my videos respond to his content is a really interesting contrast between the two of us in many different ways politically it otherwise we're approximately the same age we're not that far off an age me and Pacino and by the way he's the only youtuber i'm scheduled to have a boxing match with so i know i know he looks impressive in those photos of him with his shirt off I know you're thinking I can't possibly win this boxing match but first and foremost let's be clear a charity boxing match is not about winning and it's about veganism it's about raising money or where and spoke people having fun so I don't care if i lose we have a boxing match totally totally if I was assuming when we first pose I completely assumed that I was going to lose but later I found out how much he bench presses and the fender his total body weight you know what I stand a chance you know me and uh me and Jason it's it's it's a more of a fair fight than you might think what I lack in in bulk I might make up for in height reach and total body weight and he does not benchpress all that much Jason so I don't know we'll see but you know my priority in life as I've said you guys many times I've already life is not working out six hours a day I'm learning Chinese and I've got a new job lined up I got a lot of things going on that are more prepared either getting in shape to to get never hang with Jason but anyway the contrast between us you know is instructive in many ways one of the issue so I'm you're going to respond to at least two issues that Jason is kind of brought up in his videos mean you could see this publicly and you know where he cares about the stuff privately there's this is kind of very subtle sotto voce anarchist streak in the background of Jason's videos the whole time which is enter I think it's because most of his videos just feature him jumping into a pool and swimming just be harmful if occasion etc etc so I mean one of the issues I think is interesting is the question of whether or not leadership is significant at all politically in vegan is in the 21st century or for any social movement of this kind now you know this is interesting because the analysis of this issue in social sciences tends to extremes with an anthropology there are many many people who glorify so-called assefa Leslie der ship movements that apparently or actually have no leader this is partly a varicose background partly out of there are many many communists than within anthropologists discipline and the reality is that a cephalus leadership you know movements that seemingly have no one leader no no one figurehead no chief or what have you they're much more common in modern life than we'd like to admit they are but they're also much less important than some of these kind of academic disciplines make them out to be we used to have in Toronto every year a Caribbean festival caribbean cultural festival Caribbean music festival Caribbean costumes it was called caribana and you know this is a huge festival thousands of thousands of people were involved because you know there were just the number of dancers and singers and musicians and you know they had food to they would have said of Jamaican food and then their behavior the cultures would compete with each other for who had the best food you at the boats best music and dancing so you know a huge number of people were involved but if you would ask someone who is the leader of this event which is probably bigger than any vegan event in the world maybe I'm wrong but I mean it's a big big event that happen every year I don't think anyone could have named one person I don't think anyone could have named a you know a group of five people or what have you this is effectively a cephalus leadership and point out to you by contrast whether you're talking about the military organized crime in the vast majority of you know organizations the question of who made this decision is life and death serious you know it's you know with your organized crime or within the military very often the only question people have before they obey an order is who did this order come from who made this decision they don't want to know why they made the decision that I'm one of the factors were who made the decision oh that's too easy or okay and then it gets carried out so the significance of the person who made the decision can be completely decisive organized crime the military of CIA or what have you very often that's the only thing you can know because all the other factors are in effect top secret they're not they can't be shared but then the opposite extreme you can have large scale social and political events where nobody knows who organized nobody cares and the reason why this example sticks out of my mind and again in some ways it's it there may be more successful than any vegan moving in the world at this point you know um one year the event just didn't happen it was one year where you know because it would happen at the same time every year on the same calendar same schedule and there were so many Americans attending the event sorry Casey oh no I'm talking about an event that happened in Canada but there were so many Americans that had booked hotel rooms that the hotels were getting last-minute cancellations people found out they'd already planned to come and visit Toronto during this event of course these are mostly caribbean's living in the United States we're coming to this event and so then the media started to ask questions so what why why was it cancelled this year what why didn't happen and only then do you find out okay who's actually in charge who leads so when it falls apart you're right that's that's when you start to get questions of leadership when there's a crisis oh now now we need to know who's a leader so this question to gets asked I've many many videos talking about a vegan political movement called direct action everywhere DXE on this channel if you just search for the three letters DX e in the video history of the channel you get the whole list of my critiques of DX e DX e one of the things that makes them dangerous from my perspective let's let's put a book on the shot there one of those that make them dangerous from my perspective is that they pretend to be a leaderless a cephalus decentralized movement but they're not in reality there is hierarchical as any political movement can get there is one man and his girlfriend who are absolutely the leaders of that movement and they have a bank account and when you make donations to that movement it goes into that banging or they make decisions and other people are the consequences of those decisions and when something goes wrong when they have a scandal then those decisions get handed up in a completely centralized hierarchical fashion so if you ask me in this sort of anarchist vein how important is the question of an assess movement a leaderless movement or how important is leadership as opposed to having a more leaderless format you know the reality is both can work again if you just look at something like a festival where nobody knows who's in charge and in some case nobody even questions it people just apply they sign up you know musicians and dancers and crooks it can be thousands of people and nobody knows who's in charge and nobody cares right that really is in the modern world as close as you get to a genuinely decentralize the cephalus movement and it's based on something anarchists care a lot about it's based on goodwill it's based on the fact that people go into it with you know faith they go into a faith that for what among other things this is harmless the nobody's going to get hurt that there are no consequences they really need to worry about who is accountable for right now of course I think if there was a disaster if people if for example the or the event was so badly organized that people got killed you know then suddenly you'll be okay who's in charge where's the hierarchy now we look for accountability and we may create accountability out of what had been formally ana cephalus leaderless amorphous a sort of movement but i think it is tremendously dangerous and counterproductive to pretend that you do not have leadership when you do so in the case of direct action everywhere people pretend that Wayne's Young is not the dictator that they pretend it's decentralized that it's horizontal is the term they've completely resolved there's no vertical element that there's no chain of command no book come on if wayne song publishes an opinion piece on his blog or on the DXE website do you really think that as the same importance as me or anyone else or some junior member or publishing of you know what sir correct just have a comment coming here that is on it is dishonest it's dishonest and it can have damaging consequences and it's a problem in terms of accountability and responsibility and the problem is when you don't admit you're in charge then you also don't admit when you're wrong and you don't change in response to criticism that points out exactly how you were wrong and how the leadership s change and also um you can never replace the head of a movement when they don't admit they're the head I am just using head is general term because I know if you say President or whatever you know we can use it whatever term you want now I'll just mention really quickly so you guys know I used to work in the publishing industry non-fiction publishing books etc there was a famous left-wing book publisher that was actually based mostly in Africa so they got a lot of left-wing guys out of Africa you know a lot of them understandably you know hate France or hate England a lot of anti-colonial anti-western sentiment and they published a bunch of groovy books of course some other a lot of their books were garbage but they were also kind of famous for finding these voices of dissent you know sometimes from Africa or sometimes from America but whatever and uh you know they had these kind of pretensions to having equality amongst all their members but the reality was there was one guy who was you know who had devoted his life to this printing press to this this book publisher so he'd spent many many years and of course earned this much money you know if you're gonna publish those kinds of books you know you're not in it for the money and the very first time they had an election to to choose who was going to be their leader his employees fired him in effect they kicked him out and he he accepted it and he went on and he founded a difference but you know political a printing press and I think it under his new publishing venture I think he didn't have those democratic and egalitarian pretensions but the point is as soon as you admit somebody's in charge then you can hold them accountable you can question their leadership you can say who made this decision how can we change this policy and ultimately you could change them so let's say let's give a hypothetical example that's not too hypothetical here let's say that me and mod vegan start of political foundation that we do the paper we register it and when we found it let's say me and mod vegan are the only members I think in Canada we I should have a minimum you have to have five people at the start but okay me and mod vegan are the dictators of this organization and when we found it that's how it is and you say hey we started this vegan foundation and here are principles here's our constitution is what we're doing and where the dictators because we're the only members yeah and no a few other people whatever ten people sign up or something so if you admit that someone's in charge and if you have principles down so can they resign can they be replaced can you have new elections and what qualifies people you guys made another spoken you guys know I'm an atheist you know I'm a former scholar of Buddhism so I've also been involved with religious and secularists and atheists movements movement is such a vague word but I remember we had a really hilarious controversy like that ah in one of Canada's you know aunty real pro atheist pro secularist political movements where all those questions came home you know can they really change the leader and when there's money involved right because all these things people donate money so someone's donate a lot of money do you really have the nerve to vote against them and put someone else in charge who didn't donate that money when someone's devoted years their lives to the cause can you really change your leadership because there's a cost and you're alienating your donors you maybe bankrupting yourself to get rid of that guy but on the other hand if you don't get rid of them are you saying that the leadership of your organization is something that can be bought and sold right very very hard questions I mean the reason one of the reasons I talk about this is most people don't know how this works for a small-scale organization you may be only know how it works for organizations that are so huge that they make it on to the nightly news and we just had I mean if you're Canadian you may have heard about this we just had the most hilarious controversy within the Green Party of Canada they have their own semi democratic processes and the Green Party of Canada is just torn itself apart over Israel of all things as if the Green Party of Canada could possibly have any influence over you know Israeli politics so it's counterproductive in many different ways uh but one you know the party is now internally divided Green Party can is tearing itself apart over Israel's foreign policy over their war with basically you know all of their many of their neighboring states let's not say all Israel Israel some very solid peace treaties with many favorites if you look into it you might be surprised how funny allies is real has in that region but anyway the ongoing israel-palestine conflict and it's you know it's linked to the ongoing conflict in Syria etc sir so you know you have the Green Party of Canada collapsing internally disintegrating making enemies out of their allies over an issue that they can't possibly influence can't possibly influence positively and at rock bottom the question is do we really care about democracy or not that's what animates the whole thing right uh okay so this is my first issue this this issue will be decided in a boxing match between myself and Jason Posey no in Thailand coming all these issues are too nuanced to be to be decided by vitac Singh boxing match you know one of the other issues that in its linked here because it's linked to this issue of leadership versus subtle anarchist sentiments in in Jason's approach to life Jason really got inspired by one of the videos i made ask him about the question of you know do you die for the cause so in that video i was responding to jason's ex-girlfriend hey Nia and I was raising the point that hania said she was thing about quitting YouTube because put her life in danger now I feel open a whole tangent here there's a guy with a channel called don't interrupt daddy and he recently lost his job because of YouTube you know I might as well just include that here i can i can put a link to his his video on this below but obviously the name of this channel is a joke don't interrupt daddy somebody made repeated phone calls to his boss his employer alleging that this vegan on youtube was dealing drugs the employer didn't take it so seriously but in terms of the protocol at whatever his place employment was they did ask him to take a drug test in response to these allegations and he passed the drug that he doesn't use drugs many people would not I mean many people might be casually using marijuana or something but this guy's apparently entirely clean so we did pass the drug test but eventually his employer did fire him because of these harassing phone calls these allegations that came in uh it's very sad from it's a short-term challenging and what have you some there are risks and I myself I am as you know i'm currently in court in Thailand because of the rest and because the negative consequence for my life of having people really defaming me on the net D faming me and threatening me with violence on the internet and now sadly my main reason for starting that court case was to challenge us all that do better was to challenge the vegan demi-monde to to move beyond you know the violence and defamation and instead what I've seen I mean in the same way that several hundred people simply imitated the worst aspects of during writers act trying to get bits and pieces of the same kind of fame during read her gotten several hundred people made channels imitating Jerry minor in the same way now many many people are imitating vegan cheetah are imitating the drama mill and are imitating a genre that's based on slander and defamation slander has become a sport so exactly what I was hoping I could minimize or discourage has been at least in the short term encouraged to keep people are trying to get that same degree of Fame or that same I don't know shred of money money micro fame whatever going to take off the jacket alone yeah it's a good comment from soy there soy says from us from a star into a constellation that's the truth we've seen this metastasize a word you rarely hear spoken metastasize from a star into a constellation alright so one of the things Jason got inspired by was my questioning are you down to die for the cause because in that earlier video I said in response to Pena yeah you know what if my life's on the line that's not going to stop me it doesn't disturb me the thought that doing what I'm doing right now on YouTube could lead to my death that advocating veganism is worth it for me you know I am down to die for the cause I don't flinch you that at all and I'll say about myself in terms of the type of character I am what's much scarier to me is the idea that I would live a meaningless life right risking death to lead a meaningful life to me that's nothing new it ain't nothing new it's never been for any cause and what are we comparing veganism to you want to compare veganism to the struggle for independence in the history of any country you know come on what are you going to compare it to the struggle for black civil rights which people very frequently I think it's a really bad comparison I think it's very misleading comparison people will people risk their lives for that any any struggle come on this trouble to legalize marijuana people that put in jail for that crap you know sorry for me that's compared to these other things just a bit of a joke but fine fine you know I realized they're people who feel passionately but you criminalizing marijuana well they were down to go to jail for that they were down and die for the cause so you know people risk their lives even for that to have a political cause I mean we live in a world where almost every cause that takes itself seriously has people who are down to die for it to me it's not even a question I mean what the [ __ ] you doing on YouTube talking about veganism if you're not down dive the guy you know I mean every sorry so to me that that that social is we're low but what's so interesting about veganism is that you know the question isn't are you down to die for the cause the question is are you willing to live for the cause and how do we live for the cause and I know it may seem like I'm addressing three completely unrelated issues in these videos but to me they're crucially related because in movements that have one charismatic leader everyone knows what it means to live for the cause you can look at these totally cult-like political leaders somebody like Joseph Stalin and then for stalinists you could say what does it mean to live for communism it means they do whatever the leader asks it means they're devoted personally to that leader to his vision his decisions no matter how bizarre and explicable no matter how destructive you know then no matter how many millions people might get killed etc etc their commitment to the cause to live for the cause is tied very clearly to one person's leadership all right when you take that away when we're talking about a cause that is not defined by anyone's leadership right things get much more interesting what does it mean to live for veganism as a cause and in the last two years I've seen that shaken up in such a dynamic way because there were so many people who believed who believed wholeheartedly that what it meant to live for veganism was to go to the gym every day and ride your bicycle 100 kilometers to be lean and beautiful to present an image of perfect health at all times and for that lifestyle for your beauty and your body to convince others inspire others to adopt the lifestyle and in the last two years I have seen that conception of what it means to live for veganism completely fall apart um and veganism I mean it's such a contrast to a utopian movement even like communism but many many movements want a utopia that can never really exist in this world sorry camera just wanted to focus it so I put my hand out there with veganism it's funny because everything we want to attain is not utopian it is attainable it's completely attainable except for human nature right everyone on earth could stop wearing leather shoes tomorrow it's so easy except they're human beings they don't care except for indifference except for greed except for avarice their lives would not be made any more difficult whatsoever I mean some people now you know you buy shoes on the internet all you need to do is move the mouse over and click on that true instead of that one and when you wear them there's no difference you know there's no disadvantage the other day I walked down to the train station here and the train station here in conveying has an enormous number of small restaurants clustered around it and every single one is selling chopped up pieces of animals it's not exist so hundreds of small restaurants Sun shutters there's no vegan option anywhere around there I wasn't hungry it wasn't a problem for me i was just looking out of interest and you know you have to visualize in this one small space there are the disembodied you know chopped up pieces of thousands of animals and somewhere right now there are exactly that and there are thousands of animals waiting to replace them because tomorrow all those little pieces of dead animals will be replaced with thousands of new dead animals every day and you know so somewhere there's this huge area of grassland and what have you that he says and it's it's attainable I mean you know the idea that I would go to that train station and not see a single piece of beef and pork everyone could be getting on the train with a boxed lunch this basically it's there so you can buy food before you get on the train everyone could be eating tofu or what have you I mean it's not utopian it doesn't require leadership it doesn't require any grandiose vision it doesn't even require the kind of social sacrifice involved with the Industrial Revolution you know of all the revolutions of all the uses of the word revolution the industrial revolutions in some ways the most instructive my society was completely transformed by the Industrial Revolution some societies still are being transferred by terrible cost you know it turned the sky black it made stars disappear I mean the air unbreathable of me the water impossible to drink it you know polluted the landscape it transformed the world it crippled men in factories in terrible factory conditions it resulted in so many children being born with birth defects you know the dust revolution whether you're looking the history of England or frankly the history of China the impacts of it are so terrible and to make in the vegan revolution if you want to call it that to revolutionize societies with vegan insist on any of those costs is of those tropics it doesn't even change me or your experience of the shoes you wear isn't any different doesn't impact the new with so you know it's tantalizing and it's tortuous to live with that possibility and then you ask yourself you know what does it mean in that context of lacking leadership of lacking a coherent movement of lacking anything for us to believe in a participate in to support you know I already know the petition I can sign I may be real with you I there's no idea I can't join pediped isn't really vegan there's nothing for me to join there's nothing remember I want to start my own foundation there's nobody for me to obey or adhere to we had a question a few minutes ago but do I you know is there anyone I idolized or look up to know every book I read by a respected academic on vegan or a respected so-called political leader or philosopher about veganism I have nothing but contempt for feel like all these people are morons I'm sorry that's the truth you guys have heard me say it you know I still got love for them in some place love them or more on to other hearts in the right place every every time you guys have seen my recent book reviews and what have you so for me that question of what does it mean for to die for the cause to be willing to die for the cause that's really kind of a dead end but the question of what does it mean to live for the cause in this context of lacking leadership like a movement election Russian I think that's tremendously meaningful and I think it's something all of us are struggling to come up with new answers to especially in the wreckage of so many of our past ideals having already disintegrated imploded having already been proven to be counterproductive failures