Campus Radicalism is Rubbish, Innit? (Vegan / Vegans / Veganism)
05 December 2016 [link youtube]
Youtube Automatic Transcription
so I have a message from a patreon
supporter who I'm just gonna call Nick and this is about something many of us know firsthand suddenly that's maybe in the background of all our discussions about effective activism lifestyle activism mmm vegan politics which is just the awareness that in real life face to face most vegan activism sucks it's crappy it's exhausting it's not rewarding feels bad if the people involved has very few positive outcomes and you know this is also part of the origin story for DXE so DXE is a vegan animal rights group DXE is their way of abbreviating direct action everywhere I have many videos on this channel criticizing but one of the aspects of their their act their routine that I have sympathized with that have commented on sympathetically was just that they really decided to found a new group with a new approach to protesting and activism because they were already frustrated with wasting their time and energy using other approaches now the new approach they adopted I think is terrible I think it's a disaster I think it's all bad and they're still wasting their time doing things like going to baseball games and running onto the field trying to hold a poster that says go vegan like you know interrupting the baseball game if you know anything about American baseball that means that the security runs out and pounces on you so you're on the baseball pitch for a few seconds and the crowd there's no idea why you're interrupting the game and they think you're just another crazy fan or idiot who's interrupting the baseball game because that does happen often enough people for different reasons some people run naked under the baseball pit just for stupid reasons people run onto the baseball pitch and security pounces on them it's like a normal thing at sports games so direct action everywhere their response to what was wrong with the old style of activism was to invent a new style of activism that's even worse so it's pathetic but I can sympathize and their founder and boss he pretends he's not the boss but he is Wayne's Young who is very much the dictator for life of the DXE group Wayne's she hung he likes to mention in his lectures on this on why DXE was created he likes to mention that for many years he would bake cookies and give out cookies on University campus with a message about veganism animal rights vegan cookies we presume so he gave out hundreds of cookies and hundreds of Flyers of the cookies and this wasn't the fact that it was waste this time so I understand I understand but what you're gonna do with that impulse is another question so I've got a message here from Nick and you're gonna see some of you are gonna hear this and you're gonna be really like yeah yeah yeah you're gonna know exactly what's being talked about here it's gonna be overly familiar to you and some of you have never tried this kind of stuff before so give me listen to it going didn't didn't realize didn't realize that was the way the cookie crumbled with these situations so Nick writes to me by the way Nick if you want me to promote your channel or use your full name if you want me in future to promote your website tell me but I treat people as anonymous in case they want to remain anonymous in these videos so I'm just calling you Nick and he hasn't he hasn't mentioned having a website or anything Nick writes I just wanted to update you on what happened this semester since the last time we talked I had my first encounter of just how apathetic people are above veganism I printed out and cut up over 200 flyers mostly using scissors a bad and painful move for the cowspiracy showing and discussion that was on campus so the point is he was making fliers to promote they decided to show a a vegan film documentary called cowspiracy I handed them out to all my closest friends to everyone in all my classes to people outside the campus walking to the residential side of campus etcetera etc okay the next part of the sense is a little bit peculiar he says some professors and not one person showed up from this effort so I assume his point is a couple of people a couple of professors showed up but not a single normal person showed up as a result of this this effort to promote the event the only people who came were people who got extra credit from one vegan professor and another professor who I don't know much about so two professor participated plus a few students who were more or less forced to go by their professors abso out of the 200 flyers the success rate was 0% people didn't come to learn they didn't come to be exposed to new ideas they just came for points ie for for bonus marks in their class I'm sure my inexperience is showing pretty obviously in this email that I was expecting at least two or three people to be interested enough to learn about something never heard of the forum after all I remember the thought in my own head when I clicked on the video that turned me vegan a video that would challenge my ideas and not just assuming the person on YouTube was some crazy person but that I would hear them out on why I should stop eating meat pretty ironic I know right apparently that line of thinking is more rare than I thought so next semester I need a new approach I was thinking about going personally to different environmental clubs on campus and handing out flyers there instead connecting more with people who are tangentially related to veganism whether they know it or not basically what I'm asking is do you know of any effective ways to advertise an informational event for veganism that happens on campus every semester just one last note the food company that services the college has asked our group to advertise for meatless Mondays and get more people to send their info into the heartless corporation that makes money out of selling food on campus in this case it's Chartwells horrible in my experience a terrible company needless to say the meatless Monday's meals they have been serving are loaded with cheese and butter but if we get support for it and show Chartwells the students I should care that might change that it would give us a voice but we have been greeted with more apathy we assigned everyone in the group to contact environmental clubs and ask them to show a video explaining meatless Mondays and explaining the impact it could have on campus health not a single group got back to any of us the only response I got was from one of my friends complaining to me that we posted on her club's Facebook page without asking on a club open oh and that was for a club that was open to all students next semester I plan to get permission to at different club meetings personally together support for the campaign but none of my disheartened Club members seem to want to do the same is there something I could do that I'm not solo effort against from experience do you even think the talking at Club meetings is effective as this semester ends I won't have to eat seven PB&J sandwiches a week with warm rice and cold salad bar beans every other meal so that's a plus so we may be able to do something positive next semester so he's alluding to here it's not the most clearly written email the actual food eats on campus is garbage his situation to be able to feed himself is pretty awful his situation in terms of being able to motivate or participate with other students is pretty helpful you know it's it's depressing it's bleak and it seems like a waste everyone's time and everybody else the group except for him wants to give up right I can relate and this is also why I mean I've had many many videos talking about the impulse towards violence and radicalism and extremism within veganism you know this is one of the things that drives people towards extremism is the feeling that being moderate being reasonable doesn't get results people feel emotionally drained because this is something so meaningful to them it's something so important to them and they feel like they're screaming in the face of a crowd of people that's completely indifferent right so maybe they get interested in something that will get a reaction out of the crowd whether that's moral or immoral right they get interested in some kind of protest or you know a lot of campuses have animal rights activists who try to break into the labs try to damage property or get into more and more extreme forms of activism to try to get the response they want from an indifferent public look I mean I actually don't wanna answer this question it is video it's gonna be a one-hour discussion some other video and I feel have made many videos in the past if you just search for the words effective activism on this channel you're gonna find many many many reflections from me on what is a active activism what does it mean and what can it be in your life but I mean I could do a specific video talking about what's what's possible and what's impossible and on a campus I do think that part of what you're struggling with here what's the name of using Nick right okay part of what you're struggling with your Nick I really think is a sort of unexamined inheritance from left-wing politics the assumption that something like you know this is understandable the assumption that the mode of protest and the mode of radicalizing people is like the way people used to rile up public opinion on the oppression of african-americans in the 1960s okay the oppression of African Americans the unequal status the poor living conditions of the poor economic conditions of African Americans 1960s was something that was obvious to everybody it was on the TV news every night it was something people were physically uncomfortable with every day it was telling people were talking about on the street and being confronted with on the street in many forms and seeing every day it was something that everyone on or off university campus had to have an opinion about so the reality of giving out pamphlets or having events or protests in that unique set of historical circumstances is totally different from the situation for veganism today and again I normally use it as a positive comparison but you have to think so my point is here without examining it without being aware of it I think that many vegans are assuming that they are in the same position as radicals you know roasting up is roasting the right that your radicals harnessing an already present you know social discontent like that the people are ready to rise up that people are curious that people are concerned that people are engaged the people are angry that people are unsettled and all you have to do is hand out flyers to get people come to an event and in the 1960s that was definitely true with the status of African Americans and my pointer it's not just African Americans who responded that millions of white people were really concerned and didn't know what to do wanted to hear a voice of reason and wanted to attend events and rallies and debates and get involved because it was such an obvious social problem they couldn't be ignored right now my point is here it's not that vegans are consciously and intentionally imitating that culture of descent or that culture of protest or that that pattern of political activism I think in a totally unexpected part of that cultural legacy will have the same kind of results will have the same kind of public interest and it won't so normally I make a positive comparison between veganism and the struggle to deal with drunk driving or the struggle to deal with cigarette smoking right like Mothers Against Drunk Driving but it's also a negative comparison a sense because again if if you're not comparing the situation of veganism to radical left-wing politics or you know black liberation politics black civil rights politics in the 1960s you have to realize Mothers Against Drunk Driving a group tried to deal with a problem like drunk driving or cigarette smoking they were never in the situation of just walking around a university campus and handing out flyers and having thousands of people ready to rise up it was never that kind of issue it was never gonna harness that kind of discontent right it's not I mean know again people to some extent they may care emotionally about drunk driving even if you say yeah you know what my cousin was killed in a drunk driving accident people may care emotionally but cigarettes won't they say yeah you know my grandfather died of lung cancer because of cigarette smoke it's there but still it doesn't mean that you can walk around a university campus and just tap into seething discontent and that really is the illusion that the left-wing banks on so heavily because the whole tradition of communism and socialism is based on the illusion that the workers the masses are seething with discontent at all times that all you have to do is go and ask anyone who has a factory job and they're all on the edge of rising up in a revolution to tear down the government now nothing could be further from the truth this is an illusion primarily based on fiction about what happened in Paris in 1871 in the days of the Paris you know like this is a very specific kind of historical fraud both looking backward in history the way communists misrepresent the past history of Europe and looking forward in history you know about how this supposedly is a pattern that's gonna repeat itself even though we're lying about what happened the last time and the time before that you know what happened in you know various failed revolutions and I'm sorry I think I just gave the I may have just given you the wrong day for the the Paris Commune sorry um I'm thinking of 1789 is that is the French Revolution and then what am I thinking of Paris Commune is 1871 right let's use Google let's see if I've got those date right 1871 in Paris Commune am I wrong back me up here Google I think that's right 1789 and 1871 oh but I'm in China so Google is blocked authenticity your people yeah okay so I'm right so my memory is not failing me okay great so yes I could do a much longer video I've done many videos in the past that were defective actors might approach these things but insurance oh you think about it I do think you you you need to start with a totally different paradigm of appreciating the position you're in that you're not harnessing some seething discontent it's not the case that there's a revolutionary fervor or even the kind of discomfort that exists or that existed in the 1960s with the you know unequal status of black people you're in a situation of contentment so again that left-wing paradise is about the left-wing paradigm is about harnessing discontent and they had this illusion that there already is this revolutionary discontent boiling up everywhere especially among the working class or among African Americans and all you have to do is harness it or direct it or tap into it okay the situation for vegans is that we are living in a society that is contented we're instead addressing ourselves to contentment complete contentment people are not even dissatisfied to the same extent that they're dissatisfied with drunk driving as a social problem or cigarettes causing cancer is a social problem people are happy eating meat people are happy eating cheese the whole [ __ ] civilization could not be more contented with its cheap readily available and relatively safe access to meat products meat and dairy products remember a hundred years ago meat and dairy products carried disease and infection at a much higher rate thanks to you know modern hygiene and modern you know refrigeration technology these foods have become more and more readily available more easily for people to consume etcetera etcetera so you are addressing your protest you're not harnessing discontentment you're addressing a contented and indifferent audience and I think what you're trying to do is create discontentment out of contentment and in a very fundamental way that is the wrong approach and that is always going to be rewarded with the kind of frustration that you're facing here so my heart goes out to you I do sympathise and I do sympathise the people who've gotten pissed off with how ineffective these methods are and who have like Wayne see on like the rarity I should never have tried to seek out a new method of activism but it's a great shame I think that so far they have all been seeking out the wrong methods and in many cases they've traded in a bad method for one that is even worse
supporter who I'm just gonna call Nick and this is about something many of us know firsthand suddenly that's maybe in the background of all our discussions about effective activism lifestyle activism mmm vegan politics which is just the awareness that in real life face to face most vegan activism sucks it's crappy it's exhausting it's not rewarding feels bad if the people involved has very few positive outcomes and you know this is also part of the origin story for DXE so DXE is a vegan animal rights group DXE is their way of abbreviating direct action everywhere I have many videos on this channel criticizing but one of the aspects of their their act their routine that I have sympathized with that have commented on sympathetically was just that they really decided to found a new group with a new approach to protesting and activism because they were already frustrated with wasting their time and energy using other approaches now the new approach they adopted I think is terrible I think it's a disaster I think it's all bad and they're still wasting their time doing things like going to baseball games and running onto the field trying to hold a poster that says go vegan like you know interrupting the baseball game if you know anything about American baseball that means that the security runs out and pounces on you so you're on the baseball pitch for a few seconds and the crowd there's no idea why you're interrupting the game and they think you're just another crazy fan or idiot who's interrupting the baseball game because that does happen often enough people for different reasons some people run naked under the baseball pit just for stupid reasons people run onto the baseball pitch and security pounces on them it's like a normal thing at sports games so direct action everywhere their response to what was wrong with the old style of activism was to invent a new style of activism that's even worse so it's pathetic but I can sympathize and their founder and boss he pretends he's not the boss but he is Wayne's Young who is very much the dictator for life of the DXE group Wayne's she hung he likes to mention in his lectures on this on why DXE was created he likes to mention that for many years he would bake cookies and give out cookies on University campus with a message about veganism animal rights vegan cookies we presume so he gave out hundreds of cookies and hundreds of Flyers of the cookies and this wasn't the fact that it was waste this time so I understand I understand but what you're gonna do with that impulse is another question so I've got a message here from Nick and you're gonna see some of you are gonna hear this and you're gonna be really like yeah yeah yeah you're gonna know exactly what's being talked about here it's gonna be overly familiar to you and some of you have never tried this kind of stuff before so give me listen to it going didn't didn't realize didn't realize that was the way the cookie crumbled with these situations so Nick writes to me by the way Nick if you want me to promote your channel or use your full name if you want me in future to promote your website tell me but I treat people as anonymous in case they want to remain anonymous in these videos so I'm just calling you Nick and he hasn't he hasn't mentioned having a website or anything Nick writes I just wanted to update you on what happened this semester since the last time we talked I had my first encounter of just how apathetic people are above veganism I printed out and cut up over 200 flyers mostly using scissors a bad and painful move for the cowspiracy showing and discussion that was on campus so the point is he was making fliers to promote they decided to show a a vegan film documentary called cowspiracy I handed them out to all my closest friends to everyone in all my classes to people outside the campus walking to the residential side of campus etcetera etc okay the next part of the sense is a little bit peculiar he says some professors and not one person showed up from this effort so I assume his point is a couple of people a couple of professors showed up but not a single normal person showed up as a result of this this effort to promote the event the only people who came were people who got extra credit from one vegan professor and another professor who I don't know much about so two professor participated plus a few students who were more or less forced to go by their professors abso out of the 200 flyers the success rate was 0% people didn't come to learn they didn't come to be exposed to new ideas they just came for points ie for for bonus marks in their class I'm sure my inexperience is showing pretty obviously in this email that I was expecting at least two or three people to be interested enough to learn about something never heard of the forum after all I remember the thought in my own head when I clicked on the video that turned me vegan a video that would challenge my ideas and not just assuming the person on YouTube was some crazy person but that I would hear them out on why I should stop eating meat pretty ironic I know right apparently that line of thinking is more rare than I thought so next semester I need a new approach I was thinking about going personally to different environmental clubs on campus and handing out flyers there instead connecting more with people who are tangentially related to veganism whether they know it or not basically what I'm asking is do you know of any effective ways to advertise an informational event for veganism that happens on campus every semester just one last note the food company that services the college has asked our group to advertise for meatless Mondays and get more people to send their info into the heartless corporation that makes money out of selling food on campus in this case it's Chartwells horrible in my experience a terrible company needless to say the meatless Monday's meals they have been serving are loaded with cheese and butter but if we get support for it and show Chartwells the students I should care that might change that it would give us a voice but we have been greeted with more apathy we assigned everyone in the group to contact environmental clubs and ask them to show a video explaining meatless Mondays and explaining the impact it could have on campus health not a single group got back to any of us the only response I got was from one of my friends complaining to me that we posted on her club's Facebook page without asking on a club open oh and that was for a club that was open to all students next semester I plan to get permission to at different club meetings personally together support for the campaign but none of my disheartened Club members seem to want to do the same is there something I could do that I'm not solo effort against from experience do you even think the talking at Club meetings is effective as this semester ends I won't have to eat seven PB&J sandwiches a week with warm rice and cold salad bar beans every other meal so that's a plus so we may be able to do something positive next semester so he's alluding to here it's not the most clearly written email the actual food eats on campus is garbage his situation to be able to feed himself is pretty awful his situation in terms of being able to motivate or participate with other students is pretty helpful you know it's it's depressing it's bleak and it seems like a waste everyone's time and everybody else the group except for him wants to give up right I can relate and this is also why I mean I've had many many videos talking about the impulse towards violence and radicalism and extremism within veganism you know this is one of the things that drives people towards extremism is the feeling that being moderate being reasonable doesn't get results people feel emotionally drained because this is something so meaningful to them it's something so important to them and they feel like they're screaming in the face of a crowd of people that's completely indifferent right so maybe they get interested in something that will get a reaction out of the crowd whether that's moral or immoral right they get interested in some kind of protest or you know a lot of campuses have animal rights activists who try to break into the labs try to damage property or get into more and more extreme forms of activism to try to get the response they want from an indifferent public look I mean I actually don't wanna answer this question it is video it's gonna be a one-hour discussion some other video and I feel have made many videos in the past if you just search for the words effective activism on this channel you're gonna find many many many reflections from me on what is a active activism what does it mean and what can it be in your life but I mean I could do a specific video talking about what's what's possible and what's impossible and on a campus I do think that part of what you're struggling with here what's the name of using Nick right okay part of what you're struggling with your Nick I really think is a sort of unexamined inheritance from left-wing politics the assumption that something like you know this is understandable the assumption that the mode of protest and the mode of radicalizing people is like the way people used to rile up public opinion on the oppression of african-americans in the 1960s okay the oppression of African Americans the unequal status the poor living conditions of the poor economic conditions of African Americans 1960s was something that was obvious to everybody it was on the TV news every night it was something people were physically uncomfortable with every day it was telling people were talking about on the street and being confronted with on the street in many forms and seeing every day it was something that everyone on or off university campus had to have an opinion about so the reality of giving out pamphlets or having events or protests in that unique set of historical circumstances is totally different from the situation for veganism today and again I normally use it as a positive comparison but you have to think so my point is here without examining it without being aware of it I think that many vegans are assuming that they are in the same position as radicals you know roasting up is roasting the right that your radicals harnessing an already present you know social discontent like that the people are ready to rise up that people are curious that people are concerned that people are engaged the people are angry that people are unsettled and all you have to do is hand out flyers to get people come to an event and in the 1960s that was definitely true with the status of African Americans and my pointer it's not just African Americans who responded that millions of white people were really concerned and didn't know what to do wanted to hear a voice of reason and wanted to attend events and rallies and debates and get involved because it was such an obvious social problem they couldn't be ignored right now my point is here it's not that vegans are consciously and intentionally imitating that culture of descent or that culture of protest or that that pattern of political activism I think in a totally unexpected part of that cultural legacy will have the same kind of results will have the same kind of public interest and it won't so normally I make a positive comparison between veganism and the struggle to deal with drunk driving or the struggle to deal with cigarette smoking right like Mothers Against Drunk Driving but it's also a negative comparison a sense because again if if you're not comparing the situation of veganism to radical left-wing politics or you know black liberation politics black civil rights politics in the 1960s you have to realize Mothers Against Drunk Driving a group tried to deal with a problem like drunk driving or cigarette smoking they were never in the situation of just walking around a university campus and handing out flyers and having thousands of people ready to rise up it was never that kind of issue it was never gonna harness that kind of discontent right it's not I mean know again people to some extent they may care emotionally about drunk driving even if you say yeah you know what my cousin was killed in a drunk driving accident people may care emotionally but cigarettes won't they say yeah you know my grandfather died of lung cancer because of cigarette smoke it's there but still it doesn't mean that you can walk around a university campus and just tap into seething discontent and that really is the illusion that the left-wing banks on so heavily because the whole tradition of communism and socialism is based on the illusion that the workers the masses are seething with discontent at all times that all you have to do is go and ask anyone who has a factory job and they're all on the edge of rising up in a revolution to tear down the government now nothing could be further from the truth this is an illusion primarily based on fiction about what happened in Paris in 1871 in the days of the Paris you know like this is a very specific kind of historical fraud both looking backward in history the way communists misrepresent the past history of Europe and looking forward in history you know about how this supposedly is a pattern that's gonna repeat itself even though we're lying about what happened the last time and the time before that you know what happened in you know various failed revolutions and I'm sorry I think I just gave the I may have just given you the wrong day for the the Paris Commune sorry um I'm thinking of 1789 is that is the French Revolution and then what am I thinking of Paris Commune is 1871 right let's use Google let's see if I've got those date right 1871 in Paris Commune am I wrong back me up here Google I think that's right 1789 and 1871 oh but I'm in China so Google is blocked authenticity your people yeah okay so I'm right so my memory is not failing me okay great so yes I could do a much longer video I've done many videos in the past that were defective actors might approach these things but insurance oh you think about it I do think you you you need to start with a totally different paradigm of appreciating the position you're in that you're not harnessing some seething discontent it's not the case that there's a revolutionary fervor or even the kind of discomfort that exists or that existed in the 1960s with the you know unequal status of black people you're in a situation of contentment so again that left-wing paradise is about the left-wing paradigm is about harnessing discontent and they had this illusion that there already is this revolutionary discontent boiling up everywhere especially among the working class or among African Americans and all you have to do is harness it or direct it or tap into it okay the situation for vegans is that we are living in a society that is contented we're instead addressing ourselves to contentment complete contentment people are not even dissatisfied to the same extent that they're dissatisfied with drunk driving as a social problem or cigarettes causing cancer is a social problem people are happy eating meat people are happy eating cheese the whole [ __ ] civilization could not be more contented with its cheap readily available and relatively safe access to meat products meat and dairy products remember a hundred years ago meat and dairy products carried disease and infection at a much higher rate thanks to you know modern hygiene and modern you know refrigeration technology these foods have become more and more readily available more easily for people to consume etcetera etcetera so you are addressing your protest you're not harnessing discontentment you're addressing a contented and indifferent audience and I think what you're trying to do is create discontentment out of contentment and in a very fundamental way that is the wrong approach and that is always going to be rewarded with the kind of frustration that you're facing here so my heart goes out to you I do sympathise and I do sympathise the people who've gotten pissed off with how ineffective these methods are and who have like Wayne see on like the rarity I should never have tried to seek out a new method of activism but it's a great shame I think that so far they have all been seeking out the wrong methods and in many cases they've traded in a bad method for one that is even worse