DEGENERATE SPECTATOR: Mocking compassion is the real problem, veganism isn’t
Katie Glass’s Spectator magazine article doesn’t offer a reasoned argument against veganism. Instead, it paints vegans as irritating, controlling, and morally aggravating. Instead of engaging with the reasons behind veganism, it mocks the people who live it. To paint them as joyless extremists, 'tofu-munchers,' or self-important lifestyle influencers. To dismiss compassion as trendiness, and conviction as attention-seeking. Veganism doesn’t deserve to be mocked , it deserves to be understood. Not because vegans are perfect, but because the animals we fight for have no voice, and someone has to speak. If that makes some people uncomfortable, so be it.
ALEX GAUTHIER: The Spectator published a piece by Katie Glass ridiculing Billie Eilish’s decision to make her O2 Arena concerts fully plant-based. Fans were reportedly unhappy with the vegan food on offer, and this was used as a springboard for a long, sneering takedown of vegans — who were called sanctimonious, extreme, socially toxic, and, naturally, annoying.
It’s not the first time veganism has been dragged like this in the media. And sadly, it won’t be the last. The piece in the Spectator wasn’t really about food. It wasn’t about nutrition, the ethics of animal agriculture, or even concert catering. It was about identity — about mocking the people who have made a choice that unsettles the status quo.
But instead of simply reacting with anger, I want to ask a more generous question: why would a journalist like Katie Glass — intelligent, articulate, clearly capable of empathy — write something like this?
This kind of writing reveals something deeper about our cultural discomfort with what veganism represents. It isn’t just a diet. It’s a refusal. It says: “I won’t participate in the unnecessary suffering of animals if I don’t have to.” That might sound simple, even gentle. But in a society built on the normalisation of animal use — in our food, our fashion, our entertainment — that refusal is radical and it is also confronting.
When someone chooses not to eat meat, they don’t just change what’s on their plate — they quietly invite others to question what’s on theirs. And for some, that feels like judgment, like moral pressure or like guilt.
So instead of engaging with the reasons behind veganism — animal cruelty, climate breakdown, health, justice — it becomes easier to mock the people who live it. To paint them as joyless extremists, “tofu-munchers,” or self-important lifestyle influencers. To dismiss compassion as trendiness, and conviction as attention-seeking.
This is exactly what Katie’s piece did — not by offering substantive critique, but through sarcasm and cultural shorthand designed to trigger eye-rolls rather than thought…
Katie Glass’s piece doesn’t offer a reasoned argument against veganism. It doesn’t address the realities of modern animal agriculture, or the massive environmental cost of meat production, or even the well-established health potential of a balanced plant-based diet. Instead, it paints vegans as irritating, controlling, and — most tellingly — morally aggravating.
And maybe that’s the point. Not that vegans are wrong — but that we’re annoying because we won’t let everyone else forget what they’re complicit in. Yes Katie, you are complicit and yes you have a problem… I don’t believe that deep down she truly thinks people trying to reduce animal suffering deserve ridicule.
I think she, like many, has absorbed a cultural allergy to moral urgency — a weariness with being told to “do better,” even when better is clearly needed. It’s easier, and sometimes more profitable, to make jokes than to confront cruelty. Especially when that cruelty is tied to something as intimate and habitual as food…
Katie, if you ever read this: I don’t think you’re cruel ( I think you actually love your dog) But I do think you’ve aimed your sharpness at the wrong target. Veganism doesn’t deserve to be mocked — it deserves to be understood. Not because vegans are perfect, but because the animals we fight for have no voice, and someone has to speak.
If that makes some people uncomfortable, so be it. But maybe discomfort isn’t the enemy. Maybe it’s the beginning of something honest. SOURCE…
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