Permanently Deleted
We get those assholes here on hexbear too. The carnist brainworms run deep.
I've always found it more chill to be vegan here (hexbear) than other places I've been on the Internet
And that's after our own vegan struggle session!
No ethical consumption under capitalism (this means it's totally neutral and leftist to hire a prostitute)
I sort of unironically believe the opposite of this (responsibility is fake, everyone is stupider than they think and smarter than others think) but if you mean they use it as a reason to excuse systemic horrors, I can see that as an issue
I think it’s the particular strain of Marxist humanism that places higher value on the human experience than on animal experience as a moral axiom.
I don’t think it’s anti-veganism itself.
Their position would be, to explain it please don’t interpret this as an endorsement, that veganism as practiced in the west is largely a middle class phenomenon that largely became relatively widespread during a time of high standards of living and widespread access to food options that weren’t as easily available in earlier decades and centuries and are not necessarily available in other countries or cultures.
I don’t ascribe this to you and I am very aware that many vegans are not wealthy or middle class so I’m not describing you or your experience but it’s nonetheless true that the phenomenon of modern western veganism is mostly a recent phenomenon. Now sure there are plenty of principled vegans in the west going back decades, centuries, and even millenia but in the past access to food was difficult and so eating meat an animal products or using animal labor for farming was an important source of calories.
From a Marxist humanist perspective, there is an objection to the strongly-vegan principle that animal experience is of equal value to the human experience. Marxist humanism usually prioritizes the human experience as the most important axiomatically (or if not axiomatically then based on some Peter Singer type argument based on the capacity to experience suffering which becomes much more tangled which is why it’s usually treated as an axiom) and so when a strongly-vegan person objects to the use of animal products or labor as a source of calories, this offends the Marxist humanist since the Marxist humanist would consider this a bourgeois indulgence in moralism since the people need to eat.
Now to be clear I don’t entirely agree with the above since I think it’s a bit dismissive of why people in the west are vegan. I think it’s unfair to dismiss it as a bourgeois phenomenon but it’s nonetheless true that the capacity to be vegan depends on a certain level of material wealth and access to calories, access to modern farm equipment, etc.
So I sit a bit in the middle. I think the dismissal of modern western veganism as purely middle class is not correct but I agree with the Marxist humanists that we can’t moralize about subsistence or poor farmers using animal labor since I agree with the Marxist humanists that human experience takes priority (maybe you and I disagree on that and that’s ok.)
Lemmygrad are strongly third-worldists and to criticize them I think this biases them to dismissing modern western veganism as a western middle class, somewhat bourgeois, phenomenon which I think is overly dismissive and unfair. But I join them insofar as it’s clear to see the contemporary relatively widespread phenomenon of western veganism only really started in the context of a high level of material wealth and that’s why it’s unfair to moralize about poor or subsistence farmers with less material wealth and more precarious access to calories using animal products and labor.
And for the record of course many subsistence farmers are in fact eating mostly vegetarian anyway because meat is expensive, and indeed eating the large volume of meat we consume in the west is itself a product of our material wealth. We didn’t eat nearly as much meat even 50 years ago so eating lots of meat is itself clearly a bourgeois phenomenon. Likewise the idea that eating more meat in China is a sign of material progress I think is misguided of the third-worldists since actually that’s just not sustainable and not necessary for human survival. So I am in the middle between you and them.
I’m also not dismissing the fact that in India for example there is a very long history of veganism and vegetarianism, and I’m also not dismissing the fact there are important examples of western vegans going back centuries, but specifically pointing to the contemporary relatively widespread practice of veganism in the west.
I hope this essay makes sense. I don’t mean to attack you or them. I also don’t want to say that “you’re wrong” because I can also see the important difference in moral axioms regarding the relative value of human vs animal suffering, so the argument really comes down to that moral axiom but it becomes colored by the history of veganism in the west and the importance of animal labor and food products to subsistence or poor farmers, and is again colored by the rising living standards in China and greater demand for meat consumption there which is not driven by subsistence.
I feel that, as I've said before, much of Lemmygrad's problems stem from getting too many people from Reddit, particularly from MoreTankieChapo or whatever it was called (I forgot the name), and I myself didn't help in this regard much (though I never promoted the place back at MoreTankieChapo; however, I did cross-post over 120 times the website, like, at least twice on separate occasions and did other things like that multiple times).
But that's just me. I don't want to start another row like I did before as I tend to offend people on this topic. My apologies.
I honestly think the same is true of Hexbear. The only reason Hexbear is really capable of achieving something close to left unity is because the majority of people on it are Marxist-Leninists who got kicked from Reddit, and the majority of people who’re an anarchist or anything just stuck to actual Reddit. As an ML I can’t really complain but I can’t help but feel that the situation is going to either end up just shutting out everyone who isn’t an ML or exploding into a Hexbear civil war.
There needs to be some sort of attempt at making an actual consistent middle ground, I get why that isn’t a thing yet (it takes a lot of work) but I don’t think things will end well without
I’ve seen a lot of people try to claim that there is no such middle ground, but I disagree, because I think we like to tell ourselves things are opposites or are inherently incompatible when any such incompatibility was just made up in the first place. I also don’t think a single pamphlet made by Stalin is enough to dismiss the entire idea by itself.
Oh I absolutely agree, it’s definitely the best space for actually good anarchists on the entire internet right now, it could just be even better
They then treat any kind of vegan argument as pure moralism unless it appeals to their utilitarian sense of human superiority. One of them accused me of literally being a fucking Nazi because I pointed out that the same argument used to justify human “superiority” is the same that Nazis use about white people.
I do not agree with your characterization of the interaction in question.
They said:
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You responded:
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And they responded:
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Are they calling you a Nazi here?
They then treat any kind of vegan argument as pure moralism unless it appeals to their utilitarian sense of human superiority. One of them accused me of literally being a fucking Nazi because I pointed out that the same argument used to justify human “superiority” is the same that Nazis use about white people.
The thread in question is about a moralistic argument for veganism. No one is arguing against veganism. The person you were replying to even listed arguments for veganism they do find compelling. An archived version of the thread in question, sans removed comments:
https://archive.ph/UnQVr
I really DO NOT want to start a shitfest here between anyone on LemmyGrad and Hexbear. Please don’t take this anywhere else and just keep any complaints to this thread. If you’re an omni/carnist that stumbled across this post, read the sidebar before responding.
By posting this in a publicly visible place, you are. I am not responding as a "carnist apologist". I'm responding to push back against your assertion that you are being treated hostilely and disrespectfully.
As someone who made this account on LemmyGrad before Hexbear even federated, this is honestly extremely annoying and I don’t know how this level of disrespect for veganism grew to such a degree
If you think the interactions you are having break Lemmygrad's rule for respectful interaction, you should report them.
