this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2023
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Anarchism
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Vegans and vegetarians are on average poorer than people who eat meat, so the penthouse thing is mostly fiction.
Also, veganism is defined as not consuming animal products where it's possible and practicable. If it's not practical for someone to not consume animal products, then that's just how it is. A vegan would not argue for one to eliminate animal products to the detriment their own health, well being, or livelihood. Instead, a vegan should only advocate eliminating animal products when you're in a position that it's safe and reasonable to do so.
Vegans are just as much concerned with people who have been forced into shitty living situations by colonizers and multinational corporations as you are. Just because they care about animals, doesn't mean they think animals are more important than people.
First of all, in my long and wide experience, and I was a vegetarian for a while probably longer ago than you have been alive, not vegan, were never poor but "chose" to live a poor lifestyle. It was the lifestyle they were after not the moral/nutritional choice that was part of it. Was my experience biased, I'd let here people think of it and judge for themselves.
Your statements are full of what "x SHOULD do" ... and this stems from a "moral choice" about consumption, robed of all political content, as if a conservative pro-capitalist can do all other things but not use animal products (leather shoes and triple stack hamburgers included). This is problematic alone, politically, to separate this agenda from all else being wrong in the world, society, community (politic-,soci-,economic-, ally). Having said this, about 30-40% of anarchists I know are vegetarian/vegan, but usually quite about it till meal time (like when a grocery was raided to bring food back to an occupied university campus, 30-40% of them went straight to the produce and cereals part of the store, no salamis and ham blocks) ... ... I was told, it is good to keep an eye on them and what they do :) It is the a-political vegan who can be a clerk at a bank authorizing or rejecting student loan applications, unsure of who to vote for all the time, attending church/temple ceremonies, ... but wouldn't dare eat sushi, unless it is sea-weed and organic rice.
For being a critic of veganism as a lifestyle this makes me a "colonizer corporatist"?
Wow, what an "either you are with us or against us" polarization. I thought most of us here were the ones banned or moded in reddit for having a "non main-stream" attitude and being critical of it. Maybe I am wrong, but a colonialist and multinationalist-corporatist ... ?moi? ... most of people around me would crack up to hear such a characterization of me.
There is political content in vegetarianism/veganism that is often overseen by mainstream lifestyler veganists. The fact that it takes 4-8 times more land and soil nutrients to produce x amount of animal proteing and general nutrients than vegetables, THAT is political. Land use in general. Having an industrial monoculture of modified soy to mass produce soy products for NW European and N.Am. vegans, is detrimental to land and peoples' nutrition world wide. You tell this to most vegans and they DON'T care, it is better than eating deer meat caught by sharpened wooden sticks in the hills near you. Your "organic" soy smoothie may still be a GMO industrially produced product, boar's steak is not.
Argentina has gone bankrupt more times than any country in the world, with all the social and economic anxiety this has caused, for being the largest beef monoculture in the world, supplying NW EUrope and N.Am. with beef. Poor people in Argentina can't afford good beef, but their vegetables are pretty expensive because of this land use. Meanwhile kids can be staving in India with cows walking all around them.
The problem with veganism is it is just another -ism, derailed and integrated into the socio-political system as a lifestyle, robbed of political content and sterilized for mass consumption. Highly decorated Marxists teach at the same universities some of the world's most prominent economists and corporate consultants come from. It is amazing what amount of enemies this system can digest and incorporate into its toolset.
I apologize for my wording, the intent of my statement was not to refer to you as a "colonizer corporatist", I was referring to your comment about multinational corporations in bangladesh. I meant to say that many vegans care about situations like that, in the same way that you care about them. Deepest apologies for my poor wording there.
No problem, it seemed kind of odd to be characterizing me this way out of the blue. Here is my elaboration to my position
https://lemmy.ml/comment/3153547
In a world without exploitation and oppression of humans by humans, animals too will be less exploited and abused.