VEGAN RADICALISM: Vegans are the dissenters in society’s war on animals; that’s why we need them.
Veganism matters, not only because of its economic divestment from animal exploitation. Going vegan builds political energy and connections with other humans invested in animal liberation and with the animals that vegans recognize as sentient and social creatures. It builds glimpses of a desired future in the present. Most importantly, after centuries of humans’ intense exploitation of animals, it acknowledges that in today’s world, animals are not simply mistreated beings. Rather, that society itself is organized around slaughtering, torturing, and dominating animals, as a class, on a massive scale.
JISHNU GUHA-MAJUMDAR: Despite decades of advocacy, vegans and veganism remain deeply unpopular, even detested. Many influential animal activists are now debating a question that would have once seemed absurd: Is it worth the movement’s precious time and resources to keep advocating for meatless diets, an apparently lost cause?
Although people define veganism in different ways, it fundamentally entails avoiding all animal products to the greatest extent possible, including meat, dairy, and eggs, but also non-dietary products like wool and leather. Whereas the more commonly practiced vegetarianism only rejects meat consumption, the vegan movement generally rejects the property status of animals and aims to fully divest from animal cruelty and exploitation.
Vegans are often considered too extreme, especially in a meat-obsessed country like the US — a perception that persists despite the growing popularity of vegan products. The famed late chef Anthony Bourdain once compared vegans to Hezbollah, declaring them “the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit.” His aversion seems representative of the public’s feelings. One 2015 study found that, in the United States, negative attitudes toward vegans rivaled those toward atheists.
These social headwinds are making veganism unpopular even among influential voices in the animal movement. Matt Ball, who co-founded the advocacy group Vegan Outreach in the 1990s but has since changed his tune on the strategic necessity of promoting animal-free diets, has argued that the “‘vegan’ brand is damaged beyond repair”…
Some aspects of this weariness resonate with large swathes of people who advocate for animal rights or are sympathetic to their plight: the warning against dogmatism and a call for nuance, a healthy skepticism toward individualism and consumerism, and the sense that something is better than nothing, even if that something is less radical than we’d like. Indeed, on its own, even the strictest veganism can feel like a minuscule choice against the onslaught of the factory farming death machine, which tortures and kills more than 10 billion land animals annually in the US alone. Why spend so much energy convincing people to undertake such a massive life change if it seems akin to using a bucket to bail water out of a sinking cruise liner?
While I sympathize with these sentiments, I worry that they miss the promise and radical force of veganism: It can be an act of solidarity with nonhuman animals. Veganism takes the recognition that animals are sentient beings with lives of their own and infuses it into one’s body and everyday practice. In a world that relies on extracting the literal lifeblood of nonhuman animals, that depends on externalizing the costs of “progress” onto them and distributing the benefits to privileged humans, veganism refuses to pass the buck. It is a way of “saying” to nonhumans, non-verbally and without the promise that the message will be received: The world has turned against you, depends on your flesh and bone. But we will not. We refuse.
This exhortation has profound implications for the animal movement’s future direction. Animal advocates have often been mired in debate over which tactics are the best use of our time, and which ones meaningfully help animals instead of creating a “humanewashing” smokescreen. Promoting veganism need not be the movement’s only or primary strategy, but it should remain its heartbeat. After all, if we’re not committed to fighting for a world free from animal exploitation, then what exactly is the movement fighting for? Veganism as solidarity provides a core commitment and standard that can help set movement priorities…
Still, one might argue, it makes little sense to invest scarce resources on promoting veganism without evidence of a clear and measurable impact. This objection makes a lot of sense if we understand veganism as primarily a consequentialist, consumer-oriented approach, of “voting with your dollar.”
But reframing veganism as solidarity encourages advocates to think beyond quantifiable market consequences (though these effects are still relevant). Put differently, veganism matters not only because of its economic divestment from animal exploitation, but also because of its less quantifiable political effects. Going vegan builds political energy and connections with other humans invested in animal liberation and with the animals that vegans recognize as sentient and social creatures. It builds glimpses of a desired future in the present.
Perhaps most importantly, solidaristic veganism acknowledges that in today’s world, after centuries of humans’ intense exploitation of animals, it’s nearly impossible to have an ethical relationship with animals without addressing the most direct ways that most people benefit from the destruction of animal life. Animals are not simply mistreated beings. Rather, society is organized around slaughtering, torturing, and dominating animals, as a class, on a massive scale…
Veganism has broader, political implications beyond individual behavior change. But the way that it shapes the lives of individuals who become vegan can be extremely powerful, too. Political veganism can better attune advocates as they persuade individuals of the practice’s virtues.
Political scientists have observed that political protests change the character of those who protest, even if the protest doesn’t achieve its stated policy goal. If, for example, you attend a protest against a new oil pipeline, what was once an abstract issue on a computer screen becomes alive to you. You learn that you are not alone, and you might find sustenance in community with others who care about climate politics as well.
Veganism as solidarity can have a similar effect. Abstaining from animal products in a world that disavows animal suffering prevents the vegan from forgetting the character of this world; it puts them into constant confrontation with it every time they go to the grocery store, buy clothes, and commune with others. To rework Upton Sinclair’s famous line, it is hard to get a person to think clearly about animals when their everyday life depends on animal slaughter, degradation, and exploitation. SOURCE…
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