Measuring "Effective Activism"? (Brainstorming for a Better Vegan Movement)
23 January 2017 [link youtube]
An edited excerpt from a longer podcast (1hr 40min long) get it from Patreon now:
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Youtube Automatic Transcription
i minus y n so there are two big issues
here though I'm just saying it less I don't forget the big one you've raised here is what is effective activism and what are we doing with this concept in 2017 na na nu en some types of content are better consumed as a video and some are better consumed as a podcast this conversation and recorded you're about to hear a 20 minute excerpt from it is fully one hour and 40 minutes long brainstorming with the future of veganism how we can take the human resources we've got here on YouTube and all the other resources we can muster and really start organizing something positive for the future there's that catchphrase to save the planet how would any of us be living our lives what would any of us be doing at a time if we really were sincerely motivated to save the planet and we weren't just thinking about our next 5,000 views on YouTube so these are the questions that in frame the conversation and you're both here selection of what we get into in this conversation the guy I'm talking to I think he's one of the few people who could claim that he is living his life as if he's trying to save the planet Stephen fight I miss Frances name Stephen fate but that's me his preferred pronunciation is Stephen psyche what's more important in this life fight or fate but look steven is lawyer in Washington DC primarily involved in ecology environmentalism etc and you know like many of us I mean that may already sound like a wonderful position to be in as a vegan but like many of us in his spare time he comes on YouTube and listens to content from people like myself because in the real world he knows amazingly few vegans he's also looking around for the people he can cooperate with and collaborate with to really make something positive happen in the future for veganism for the environment for the animals all those things so if you are willing to donate one dollar per month to support the creation of content like this on patreon hit the link below this channel and you can download the full conversation an hour and 40 minutes long and then here it on your mp3 player while you're doing the dishes while you're on the stairmaster while you're shoveling the snow oh whatever it is you do know i mean that that brings us something that I've been thinking about quite a bit especially in the context of your critiques of direct action everywhere yeah which is I think one of the profound challenges for all sorts of vegan activism not also a start that's not sure for the sort of baseline activism of producing vegans out of non vegans obviously there are you know other things that are that are quite measurable but a lot of the kind of core baseline activism is really hard to measure in terms of effectiveness and and I know these days affected activism is like the new hot saying and all anyone talks about and early in some circles maybe maybe the weird corners of the internet that I spend my time on but I think that we as a population of vegans have to really reckon with this question of what it means to have a lot of our activism be not just not just we aren't measuring it but in a lot of ways you don't have good ways of measuring it or maybe the ways to measure it will be really expensive and also just this fact that I think and I could be wrong I don't know how people for the ethical treatment of animals organizes itself internally but I have to imagine that a lot of their logic is we need small victories that are consistent that we can tell our supporters because it's not easy to say I can tell you're from Washington I can stop you for watching Claudia but just just this idea that that as if you're right you're raising money to say we're going to try to convince people to go vegan and then a year later you have to show people what you did I mean you can talk about like what you're doing in the streets and there are all these huge ad buys and cities all over the world for these go vegan billboard Yochai think are awesome but I just think solution I'm just creating a problem well you hit the nail on the head there with the example you've given us so there are two big issues here though I'm just saying that less I don't forget the big one you've raised here is what is effective activism and what are we doing with this concept in 2017 but the example you're raising of what pedda does people for Ethical Treatment animals what they really do is in old-fashioned political parlance ambulance-chasing you're exactly right they're always scoring these little victories and sometimes their connection to the victory is really nebulous you know what like what exactly did you do like they showed up and took credit for it in the in the press so give you an example here because I've just been through their annual report so pedda donated 66 state-of-the-art surgical simulators to replace the deadly use of thousands of dogs pigs and other animals in surgical training programs in nine countries Bolivia Iran Mexico and others so this is the kind of thing they're doing you know obviously I mean it's so they they donated i'm guessing 66 fancy computers you can do a cost estimate on that I know what that is but it's exactly it's this ambulance-chasing it's saying hey we're we're doing these little these little projects all the time they had a they so they had this kind of in terms of pure ambulance-chasing the United States Coast Guard was using animals in cruel and deadly exercises and pettah released video footage of these cruel tease and wrote a bunch of letters to the press and caused the fuss and caused the scandal and they claimed credit for changing the US Coast Guard's policies now how much did pettah actually do it is pedda actually responsible for the film I doubt it but I don't know the story but there are these little everyday little victories and this is how they you know earn the you know the loyalty of their donors and I'm not even going to hate on it those as we said you know they're constantly pilloried for this they have the posters with you know sexy women whatever percentage of their you know advertising revenue comes from that I don't know but a lot of people in veganism are using scantily clad women to promote themselves promote their YouTube channel it would have you pet aren't doing what's doing it but there's certainly a variety of exactly that type of old-fashioned politicking of you know you found out the Coast Guard is doing something bad chase it down get in the local newspaper make noise and then when they when they buckle claim the victory we did it it's because of us just because we wrote the letter to the newspaper or whatever and you know I don't even know if they they put some on an airplane who actually showed up to do anything and that's their annual report as a whole list it's just an endless list unorganized list of those types of little angel and chasing activities and you know I have some respect for that some on the other hand you have to live it eleven million dollar budget to print a magazine I've never seen that magazine on the store shelves I've never seen it in airport I've never seen in the coffee shop so a lot of magazines do not have an 11 million dollar budget you know a sinking budget a budget that on to earn back 11 million dollars in charity per year and yet I managed to see them quite a bit more successful to protect us magazine that may indeed contain those types of news stories so yeah it's a bizarre juxtaposition to be sure um okay what is effective activism I've got to say I'm really quite depressed by that I do think that France Ionian is in his newest book manages to kick the ball a little bit further down the field and it has been because I've seen the concept of effective activist and really become a religious concept where people just evoke the name of effective activism to mean whatever it is we already believe in any way I don't see any sincere openness to questioning effective activism and when you talk about measuring effective activism I mentioned this briefly less time starting to mount vegans like well look when i was doing this stuff in cambodia and laos we were actually measuring the impact of programs there's a protocol called 3ie impact evaluation and protocol is an international standard used in charity work humanitarian development I eat intervention what have you and were you actually are looking at okay we spent ten million dollars trying to prevent the spread of AIDS how effective was it and that is that's real work and that's research that is a real budget and so on and now look and so most of that stuff and the difference is that there are actual interventions the actual impact I think like most of the stuff we're talking about veganism I think everyone involved in this sort of pseudo religious discourse they already know there is no no impact there's no impact to measure so maybe that's why it's so insincere the question of what is you know what is effective advocacy or what is effective activism they just say so like like a really simple one in Cambodia you did an education program to try to teach gay men Oh games and you did a baseline survey before the intervention for how often gay men use condoms and a bunch of other questions and then you did the intervention and then you a follow-up survey maybe two years later and you find out how the behaviour of gay men and Cambodia have changed I asked that's er that's real impact research you know I'm saying and write correctly nation oh yeah that's I used to earn my living that way that's correct yeah I political science yes I was paid and incredibly low salary to do research but the crux the thing is you have an intervention there that actually does have an evac or could have an impact or should you know like educating gay men about condoms as an impact I don't know of anyone in veganism is doing anything they believe in having those impacts to even that modest extent that you know taking someone aside and telling them hey look this is a condom you know and this could be a life-or-death decision for you oh yeah I put the ball in your court i don't know what's after that you know no I mean I think it's just I think I think there's also there's a lot of different pessimistic ways I can go but I just I guess I'm going to maybe rattle off a couple of loosely connected thoughts I think we see the growth of youtubers they're vegan youtubers and receive the growth in like vegan food products and and there's so much of this optimism I mean plant-based news class just kids like vegan 2016 video and he was like you know we're winning and everything and um I think I listened to when I first discovered what was a vegan revolution I listen to like two of his podcast and in one of them he happened to say like oh yeah i really think that like vegans are going to be the majority in the UK in like five or six years at this point I think I I think i was walking alone listening to headphones and audibly laughed out loud but but just just 11 on point of information for all of this winning that we're doing in 2016 in the United States the United States consumed more meat than it has any year since 2006 so all those graphs about how meat consumption is declining is that about meat prices in a global recession or is that about all of our amazing vegan activist I think probably the former yeah obviously from our perspective veganism is not a fad is something important there's a deep intellectual backing behind it but at least in the United States and and to a degree in other countries at least in Argentina when I was there there is a sense in which egan ism is is writing a cultural ways and where there's sort of a social signaling that restaurants want to make it very clear that even if you're not vegan don't worry we have vegan options and like worship and we're cool and there is a sense there or there is a sense in which veganism is a fad for a large chunk of the relevant discussion and like all fad it will fade and we'll get to the new place where now the thing that restaurants want you to know is that the animals that they're killing and serving you we're like quote unquote treated humanely and like no no we don't have vegan options because don't worry because all our cows were super happy when we murder them um like it yeah so that is why I'm I'm just broadly pessimistic so I'm I'm probably the one per you know I just have this video up now saying why I am NOT left-wing I'm one of the only people who's comfortable with discussing the issue of elitism within veganism or the the interaction between veganism and elitism and you know I'll give you one one example of good news that I actually could not believe when it was told to me like you know people say that I don't believe it in a casual way I mean I actually SAT there thinking is this a lie is the person telling me this insane and all the friend of mine someone I've known for ages who is a philosophy major in Europe and it goes to a lot of philosophy conferences so academic conferences for people who generally have PhDs and philosophy or that kind of thing um she said that in the Netherlands now in the Netherlands veganism is so common in that elite social class that on the forms you fill out when attending a philosophy conference in Netherlands it says dietary restrictions other than vegan they no longer have a check mark for vegan because such a large percentage the people showing up we're vegan and the conference is going to be vegan anyway so you show me that that the forms now they don't have a check mark for vegan because this is this is among people who are you know specialized some of them will be undergraduates some of them will be graduates but these are people who are me he majors at whatever level dietary preferences other than vegan there's no box for vegan and I SAT there and I like I know where I've known her for years she's not insane but like I was actually wondering like has she gone insane like this can't be true I can't believe this I was you know I calm down but that's so hard for me to believe now you know for me I think that this is not contradict and either points you made vegans are an incredibly small minority of the population there at self-selecting minority and I think they are going to reflect certain elite Tennessee's you know a lot of people on the Left want to pretend that the vegans represent the the poor and downtrodden of the world that they're the workers of the world rising up to take over ownership of the factories and some kind of Martius fantasy I i do not see it that way uh you know within India vegetarianism is elitist you know it always has been for at least three thousand years possibly five thousand years and the idea of becoming vegetarian as you move up in the social hierarchy in India moving up was very hard to do you know that that's reflected in society there are obviously the sense in which the California the ruling class of California the leisure to class of California people who own a yoga mat and have the time and leisure to go to the gym and do yoga people who are of a certain level of affluence they definitely are associate with veganism and that can be a powerful thing in a positive way and of course it can be a powerful thing with a certain kind of stigma attached to it in a negative way so look I bring this back to close to the example you mentioned close as this video of the year in 2016 close and I talked a little bit we're not super close friends I just mention we're in touch you know a close wanted my reaction to that video he said look you know could you watch the video and some worse think about it so I did watch the whole thing which otherwise I wouldn't have to be honest with you and you know there's a moment in that video from a protest in London that just happened where they had two thousand people at this protest apparently I was from memory but I think it was a 2000 people protest on it was a pro llegan you know protest and they have these very dramatic speeches these people sitting there and screaming about how they're going to change the world or some [ __ ] and now next year next year they could have 20,000 people instead of two thousand people or them and you know I said to close in my email said to me this is not a victory 2,000 people who show up in a park and then go home afterwards is not a victory what I am interested instead and you you come from a political background in Washington you'll really does melee I want to know how many of those two thousand people have each other's phone numbers now how many of them will still know each other one year from now in the United States I read a hard political science report on the success of the so-called Tea Party movement which really was a plurality of small movements but the long story short about this is hard physical science research was the mainstream press thinks the Tea Party is a joke it's not a joke and they looked at over time how many of the Tea Party groups were still having monthly meetings monthly town hall meetings at those monthly meetings what percentage of the people knew on a first-name basis or had a phone number for or an email for other people in the group all the kind of classical old-school measures of social capital they were actually meeting Ashley cooperating and those were town hall meetings that had homework incredibly rare in any kind of sincere you know where they would meet and they would say okay before the next meeting we need everyone to read this legislation or you know some technical document you know related to local city hall or the local state legislature we need everyone to read it before you come back so before you can attend the next meeting whether it's two weeks later a month later you know you can photocopy it but here are the documents you need to read and the people would actually do it and come back so the point was yes the tea party may not have maintained headline status in the newspapers why would they they actually did form classical real units of cohesive social organization and they were effective in lobbying their local governments for a list of social change than 1 i'm looking at this protest in london maybe I'm a cynic I don't think anyone there was making those those connections I don't think I don't think I did the basis for a movement to do anything I I don't think i'm looking at a movement at all and you know i i'd be delighted if i'm wrong yeah i mean that that also i don't know if this is the be perception that you've gotten but something that occurred to me recently again this is going back to the site that i guess is being spearheaded I cheetah about like whether we should have hard thresholds about like what veganism is and isn't and you know I guess dredging up the Franchione e-type debate is I get the sense that at least on YouTube there's a real feeling that like veganism started basically when like freely started her YouTube channel or even though that was like proto veganism and that veganism has really only been around like 2012 or 2013 and it's remarkable to me how there is no collective sense of any kind of intellectual or even even just a factual history yeah a group of people that identifies beings and have been doing this for not not a very long time but you know many decades yes like and there's no interest in what was happening for the ages i I don't know of any movement that um that has that kind of not not a disdain which is a complete indifference to its history and I mean you look at became not super well versed but familiar with the one of the debates between I guess was Booker T Washington and web2 boys in the United States in the early 20th century and in the civil rights movement I don't know if those debates have a ton of applicability to civil rights roles today but I do know that like when thinking about civil rights you would want to learn and read about that right and and it just it's remarkable to me how a historical there's so many and maybe there's a YouTube thing maybe there's a young people think maybe it's just that we don't him yeah I'll all be all the devil's advocate on that one because I've been I've been going through the more academic literature lately as you know some of the stuff have put up as book reviews and in some cases I've actually made videos that our patreon exclusive apologizing that I'm not going to do the book of you because the book is so stupid or so crazy like a lot a lot of the academic discourse is garbage but you know one of the reasons why people forget is sometimes they want to forget and you know no it says no surprise there but you know I tried to kind of lead my my youtube channel in having a set of real reflections on how much veganism has changed just since the year 2001 when the big knowing is the big you know the real debates were under the heading of a narco primitivism and you know just a few people were interested in talking about it with me but most people feel very alienated and very unfamiliar and afraid but there were a couple of people who said yeah I remember that stuff they can remember the SHAC seven the stop Huntington animal cruelty group and the debates at that time but like just the difference between 2001 vs 2016 one that of course it's annales 2017 letter saying we use a round number here at the times this is 15 years looking back in history and in many ways it's not recognizable as the same movement which i think is a legitimate point like what was going on in 2001 from the perspective of 2016 is not the same movement and we just did this debate will night in debate we did this discussion between myself and my vegan and we're looking at peter singer who's still alive i believe i'm going to you dead yet and peter singers version of veganism is no longer recognizable as veganism I don't know if you want to call that 20 years I don't know we're 30 years or 10 even know I don't want to put a date on Peters fingers veganism but if some of some of his some of these publications are for more than 30 years ago but I don't know to put a single year on on one that was current so actually you know in many many ways i think it is true that you know definitely the spirit of the moment more than anybody else is defined by Gary frenzy ohne I say that even though I'm a critic of his I do think that the the kind of default idea of what veganism is now is basically the abolitionist idea was that Edmund said I have open right here Gary Fran Sione's youtube channel and i'm looking at 300 views 153 views 168 views the Fran Sione's message can be summarized in just a few sentences and we've all heard it before and nobody wants here in anymore you know I think veganism is moving on but those those kinds of simple fundamental assumptions of what veganism is I'm devil's advocate on this one I think that the collective amnesia the lack of interest in even the recent past of this movement reflects the fact that we can't we can't even recognize those precipice precedents as being part of the same moment I bunderson
here though I'm just saying it less I don't forget the big one you've raised here is what is effective activism and what are we doing with this concept in 2017 na na nu en some types of content are better consumed as a video and some are better consumed as a podcast this conversation and recorded you're about to hear a 20 minute excerpt from it is fully one hour and 40 minutes long brainstorming with the future of veganism how we can take the human resources we've got here on YouTube and all the other resources we can muster and really start organizing something positive for the future there's that catchphrase to save the planet how would any of us be living our lives what would any of us be doing at a time if we really were sincerely motivated to save the planet and we weren't just thinking about our next 5,000 views on YouTube so these are the questions that in frame the conversation and you're both here selection of what we get into in this conversation the guy I'm talking to I think he's one of the few people who could claim that he is living his life as if he's trying to save the planet Stephen fight I miss Frances name Stephen fate but that's me his preferred pronunciation is Stephen psyche what's more important in this life fight or fate but look steven is lawyer in Washington DC primarily involved in ecology environmentalism etc and you know like many of us I mean that may already sound like a wonderful position to be in as a vegan but like many of us in his spare time he comes on YouTube and listens to content from people like myself because in the real world he knows amazingly few vegans he's also looking around for the people he can cooperate with and collaborate with to really make something positive happen in the future for veganism for the environment for the animals all those things so if you are willing to donate one dollar per month to support the creation of content like this on patreon hit the link below this channel and you can download the full conversation an hour and 40 minutes long and then here it on your mp3 player while you're doing the dishes while you're on the stairmaster while you're shoveling the snow oh whatever it is you do know i mean that that brings us something that I've been thinking about quite a bit especially in the context of your critiques of direct action everywhere yeah which is I think one of the profound challenges for all sorts of vegan activism not also a start that's not sure for the sort of baseline activism of producing vegans out of non vegans obviously there are you know other things that are that are quite measurable but a lot of the kind of core baseline activism is really hard to measure in terms of effectiveness and and I know these days affected activism is like the new hot saying and all anyone talks about and early in some circles maybe maybe the weird corners of the internet that I spend my time on but I think that we as a population of vegans have to really reckon with this question of what it means to have a lot of our activism be not just not just we aren't measuring it but in a lot of ways you don't have good ways of measuring it or maybe the ways to measure it will be really expensive and also just this fact that I think and I could be wrong I don't know how people for the ethical treatment of animals organizes itself internally but I have to imagine that a lot of their logic is we need small victories that are consistent that we can tell our supporters because it's not easy to say I can tell you're from Washington I can stop you for watching Claudia but just just this idea that that as if you're right you're raising money to say we're going to try to convince people to go vegan and then a year later you have to show people what you did I mean you can talk about like what you're doing in the streets and there are all these huge ad buys and cities all over the world for these go vegan billboard Yochai think are awesome but I just think solution I'm just creating a problem well you hit the nail on the head there with the example you've given us so there are two big issues here though I'm just saying that less I don't forget the big one you've raised here is what is effective activism and what are we doing with this concept in 2017 but the example you're raising of what pedda does people for Ethical Treatment animals what they really do is in old-fashioned political parlance ambulance-chasing you're exactly right they're always scoring these little victories and sometimes their connection to the victory is really nebulous you know what like what exactly did you do like they showed up and took credit for it in the in the press so give you an example here because I've just been through their annual report so pedda donated 66 state-of-the-art surgical simulators to replace the deadly use of thousands of dogs pigs and other animals in surgical training programs in nine countries Bolivia Iran Mexico and others so this is the kind of thing they're doing you know obviously I mean it's so they they donated i'm guessing 66 fancy computers you can do a cost estimate on that I know what that is but it's exactly it's this ambulance-chasing it's saying hey we're we're doing these little these little projects all the time they had a they so they had this kind of in terms of pure ambulance-chasing the United States Coast Guard was using animals in cruel and deadly exercises and pettah released video footage of these cruel tease and wrote a bunch of letters to the press and caused the fuss and caused the scandal and they claimed credit for changing the US Coast Guard's policies now how much did pettah actually do it is pedda actually responsible for the film I doubt it but I don't know the story but there are these little everyday little victories and this is how they you know earn the you know the loyalty of their donors and I'm not even going to hate on it those as we said you know they're constantly pilloried for this they have the posters with you know sexy women whatever percentage of their you know advertising revenue comes from that I don't know but a lot of people in veganism are using scantily clad women to promote themselves promote their YouTube channel it would have you pet aren't doing what's doing it but there's certainly a variety of exactly that type of old-fashioned politicking of you know you found out the Coast Guard is doing something bad chase it down get in the local newspaper make noise and then when they when they buckle claim the victory we did it it's because of us just because we wrote the letter to the newspaper or whatever and you know I don't even know if they they put some on an airplane who actually showed up to do anything and that's their annual report as a whole list it's just an endless list unorganized list of those types of little angel and chasing activities and you know I have some respect for that some on the other hand you have to live it eleven million dollar budget to print a magazine I've never seen that magazine on the store shelves I've never seen it in airport I've never seen in the coffee shop so a lot of magazines do not have an 11 million dollar budget you know a sinking budget a budget that on to earn back 11 million dollars in charity per year and yet I managed to see them quite a bit more successful to protect us magazine that may indeed contain those types of news stories so yeah it's a bizarre juxtaposition to be sure um okay what is effective activism I've got to say I'm really quite depressed by that I do think that France Ionian is in his newest book manages to kick the ball a little bit further down the field and it has been because I've seen the concept of effective activist and really become a religious concept where people just evoke the name of effective activism to mean whatever it is we already believe in any way I don't see any sincere openness to questioning effective activism and when you talk about measuring effective activism I mentioned this briefly less time starting to mount vegans like well look when i was doing this stuff in cambodia and laos we were actually measuring the impact of programs there's a protocol called 3ie impact evaluation and protocol is an international standard used in charity work humanitarian development I eat intervention what have you and were you actually are looking at okay we spent ten million dollars trying to prevent the spread of AIDS how effective was it and that is that's real work and that's research that is a real budget and so on and now look and so most of that stuff and the difference is that there are actual interventions the actual impact I think like most of the stuff we're talking about veganism I think everyone involved in this sort of pseudo religious discourse they already know there is no no impact there's no impact to measure so maybe that's why it's so insincere the question of what is you know what is effective advocacy or what is effective activism they just say so like like a really simple one in Cambodia you did an education program to try to teach gay men Oh games and you did a baseline survey before the intervention for how often gay men use condoms and a bunch of other questions and then you did the intervention and then you a follow-up survey maybe two years later and you find out how the behaviour of gay men and Cambodia have changed I asked that's er that's real impact research you know I'm saying and write correctly nation oh yeah that's I used to earn my living that way that's correct yeah I political science yes I was paid and incredibly low salary to do research but the crux the thing is you have an intervention there that actually does have an evac or could have an impact or should you know like educating gay men about condoms as an impact I don't know of anyone in veganism is doing anything they believe in having those impacts to even that modest extent that you know taking someone aside and telling them hey look this is a condom you know and this could be a life-or-death decision for you oh yeah I put the ball in your court i don't know what's after that you know no I mean I think it's just I think I think there's also there's a lot of different pessimistic ways I can go but I just I guess I'm going to maybe rattle off a couple of loosely connected thoughts I think we see the growth of youtubers they're vegan youtubers and receive the growth in like vegan food products and and there's so much of this optimism I mean plant-based news class just kids like vegan 2016 video and he was like you know we're winning and everything and um I think I listened to when I first discovered what was a vegan revolution I listen to like two of his podcast and in one of them he happened to say like oh yeah i really think that like vegans are going to be the majority in the UK in like five or six years at this point I think I I think i was walking alone listening to headphones and audibly laughed out loud but but just just 11 on point of information for all of this winning that we're doing in 2016 in the United States the United States consumed more meat than it has any year since 2006 so all those graphs about how meat consumption is declining is that about meat prices in a global recession or is that about all of our amazing vegan activist I think probably the former yeah obviously from our perspective veganism is not a fad is something important there's a deep intellectual backing behind it but at least in the United States and and to a degree in other countries at least in Argentina when I was there there is a sense in which egan ism is is writing a cultural ways and where there's sort of a social signaling that restaurants want to make it very clear that even if you're not vegan don't worry we have vegan options and like worship and we're cool and there is a sense there or there is a sense in which veganism is a fad for a large chunk of the relevant discussion and like all fad it will fade and we'll get to the new place where now the thing that restaurants want you to know is that the animals that they're killing and serving you we're like quote unquote treated humanely and like no no we don't have vegan options because don't worry because all our cows were super happy when we murder them um like it yeah so that is why I'm I'm just broadly pessimistic so I'm I'm probably the one per you know I just have this video up now saying why I am NOT left-wing I'm one of the only people who's comfortable with discussing the issue of elitism within veganism or the the interaction between veganism and elitism and you know I'll give you one one example of good news that I actually could not believe when it was told to me like you know people say that I don't believe it in a casual way I mean I actually SAT there thinking is this a lie is the person telling me this insane and all the friend of mine someone I've known for ages who is a philosophy major in Europe and it goes to a lot of philosophy conferences so academic conferences for people who generally have PhDs and philosophy or that kind of thing um she said that in the Netherlands now in the Netherlands veganism is so common in that elite social class that on the forms you fill out when attending a philosophy conference in Netherlands it says dietary restrictions other than vegan they no longer have a check mark for vegan because such a large percentage the people showing up we're vegan and the conference is going to be vegan anyway so you show me that that the forms now they don't have a check mark for vegan because this is this is among people who are you know specialized some of them will be undergraduates some of them will be graduates but these are people who are me he majors at whatever level dietary preferences other than vegan there's no box for vegan and I SAT there and I like I know where I've known her for years she's not insane but like I was actually wondering like has she gone insane like this can't be true I can't believe this I was you know I calm down but that's so hard for me to believe now you know for me I think that this is not contradict and either points you made vegans are an incredibly small minority of the population there at self-selecting minority and I think they are going to reflect certain elite Tennessee's you know a lot of people on the Left want to pretend that the vegans represent the the poor and downtrodden of the world that they're the workers of the world rising up to take over ownership of the factories and some kind of Martius fantasy I i do not see it that way uh you know within India vegetarianism is elitist you know it always has been for at least three thousand years possibly five thousand years and the idea of becoming vegetarian as you move up in the social hierarchy in India moving up was very hard to do you know that that's reflected in society there are obviously the sense in which the California the ruling class of California the leisure to class of California people who own a yoga mat and have the time and leisure to go to the gym and do yoga people who are of a certain level of affluence they definitely are associate with veganism and that can be a powerful thing in a positive way and of course it can be a powerful thing with a certain kind of stigma attached to it in a negative way so look I bring this back to close to the example you mentioned close as this video of the year in 2016 close and I talked a little bit we're not super close friends I just mention we're in touch you know a close wanted my reaction to that video he said look you know could you watch the video and some worse think about it so I did watch the whole thing which otherwise I wouldn't have to be honest with you and you know there's a moment in that video from a protest in London that just happened where they had two thousand people at this protest apparently I was from memory but I think it was a 2000 people protest on it was a pro llegan you know protest and they have these very dramatic speeches these people sitting there and screaming about how they're going to change the world or some [ __ ] and now next year next year they could have 20,000 people instead of two thousand people or them and you know I said to close in my email said to me this is not a victory 2,000 people who show up in a park and then go home afterwards is not a victory what I am interested instead and you you come from a political background in Washington you'll really does melee I want to know how many of those two thousand people have each other's phone numbers now how many of them will still know each other one year from now in the United States I read a hard political science report on the success of the so-called Tea Party movement which really was a plurality of small movements but the long story short about this is hard physical science research was the mainstream press thinks the Tea Party is a joke it's not a joke and they looked at over time how many of the Tea Party groups were still having monthly meetings monthly town hall meetings at those monthly meetings what percentage of the people knew on a first-name basis or had a phone number for or an email for other people in the group all the kind of classical old-school measures of social capital they were actually meeting Ashley cooperating and those were town hall meetings that had homework incredibly rare in any kind of sincere you know where they would meet and they would say okay before the next meeting we need everyone to read this legislation or you know some technical document you know related to local city hall or the local state legislature we need everyone to read it before you come back so before you can attend the next meeting whether it's two weeks later a month later you know you can photocopy it but here are the documents you need to read and the people would actually do it and come back so the point was yes the tea party may not have maintained headline status in the newspapers why would they they actually did form classical real units of cohesive social organization and they were effective in lobbying their local governments for a list of social change than 1 i'm looking at this protest in london maybe I'm a cynic I don't think anyone there was making those those connections I don't think I don't think I did the basis for a movement to do anything I I don't think i'm looking at a movement at all and you know i i'd be delighted if i'm wrong yeah i mean that that also i don't know if this is the be perception that you've gotten but something that occurred to me recently again this is going back to the site that i guess is being spearheaded I cheetah about like whether we should have hard thresholds about like what veganism is and isn't and you know I guess dredging up the Franchione e-type debate is I get the sense that at least on YouTube there's a real feeling that like veganism started basically when like freely started her YouTube channel or even though that was like proto veganism and that veganism has really only been around like 2012 or 2013 and it's remarkable to me how there is no collective sense of any kind of intellectual or even even just a factual history yeah a group of people that identifies beings and have been doing this for not not a very long time but you know many decades yes like and there's no interest in what was happening for the ages i I don't know of any movement that um that has that kind of not not a disdain which is a complete indifference to its history and I mean you look at became not super well versed but familiar with the one of the debates between I guess was Booker T Washington and web2 boys in the United States in the early 20th century and in the civil rights movement I don't know if those debates have a ton of applicability to civil rights roles today but I do know that like when thinking about civil rights you would want to learn and read about that right and and it just it's remarkable to me how a historical there's so many and maybe there's a YouTube thing maybe there's a young people think maybe it's just that we don't him yeah I'll all be all the devil's advocate on that one because I've been I've been going through the more academic literature lately as you know some of the stuff have put up as book reviews and in some cases I've actually made videos that our patreon exclusive apologizing that I'm not going to do the book of you because the book is so stupid or so crazy like a lot a lot of the academic discourse is garbage but you know one of the reasons why people forget is sometimes they want to forget and you know no it says no surprise there but you know I tried to kind of lead my my youtube channel in having a set of real reflections on how much veganism has changed just since the year 2001 when the big knowing is the big you know the real debates were under the heading of a narco primitivism and you know just a few people were interested in talking about it with me but most people feel very alienated and very unfamiliar and afraid but there were a couple of people who said yeah I remember that stuff they can remember the SHAC seven the stop Huntington animal cruelty group and the debates at that time but like just the difference between 2001 vs 2016 one that of course it's annales 2017 letter saying we use a round number here at the times this is 15 years looking back in history and in many ways it's not recognizable as the same movement which i think is a legitimate point like what was going on in 2001 from the perspective of 2016 is not the same movement and we just did this debate will night in debate we did this discussion between myself and my vegan and we're looking at peter singer who's still alive i believe i'm going to you dead yet and peter singers version of veganism is no longer recognizable as veganism I don't know if you want to call that 20 years I don't know we're 30 years or 10 even know I don't want to put a date on Peters fingers veganism but if some of some of his some of these publications are for more than 30 years ago but I don't know to put a single year on on one that was current so actually you know in many many ways i think it is true that you know definitely the spirit of the moment more than anybody else is defined by Gary frenzy ohne I say that even though I'm a critic of his I do think that the the kind of default idea of what veganism is now is basically the abolitionist idea was that Edmund said I have open right here Gary Fran Sione's youtube channel and i'm looking at 300 views 153 views 168 views the Fran Sione's message can be summarized in just a few sentences and we've all heard it before and nobody wants here in anymore you know I think veganism is moving on but those those kinds of simple fundamental assumptions of what veganism is I'm devil's advocate on this one I think that the collective amnesia the lack of interest in even the recent past of this movement reflects the fact that we can't we can't even recognize those precipice precedents as being part of the same moment I bunderson