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Veganism is Leftism
(lemmy.dbzer0.com)
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this post was submitted on 06 May 2026
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I'm not the OP, but it's not irrelevant.
I'd agree that it would be irrelevant in your example here because you mentioned militarism and the war in Iran, which means it would be obvious bullshittery to interpret "people should avoid joining the military" as "people should never join any military". But if you had said "people should never join any military", then perhaps a few follow-up questions might not go amiss, because that's quite a contentious statement.
In this case, it's not unfair to infer a blanket statement of all animal exploitation is bad. In which case, what about the Inuits? If it applies to the them, then you would presumably suggest that they should abandon their traditional (and provably sustainable) lifestyle and integrate into mainstream Canadian/Russian/etc. society. In which case; congratulations! You're (arguably) doing a colonialism! If it doesn't apply to them, then you're conceding that animal exploitation isn't always wrong, which means when it is or isn't is now up for debate.
I'm not interested in these extremely niche cases like tribes or deserted islands or dumpster diving. Something like 99% of the choices of 99% of people reading this are going to be what you buy at the grocery or order off a menu. Those are the cases that are actually relevant to our lives, in existing reality.
What you're trying to do is bring up this extremely niche case in an effort to discredit the people advocating the idea in order to dismiss the idea, which is textbook ad hominem and bad faith. Even if there are some colonialist vegans, that does not discredit veganism any more that a trans person doing a bad thing would discredit trans rights.
It's literally just a trick, and you spell out the trick rather plainly. You want me to concede that "not all animal exploitation is bad" so that you can make a rule from the exception an take that extremely rare case that's completely unrelated to your own situation, and use it to justify your position and behavior.
But in fact, I don't have to give you either concession. I simply recurse myself from the question, because I have no authority to weigh in on their affairs, as I have no experience with them. "No investigation, no right to speak." To say that animal exploitation is moral in that situation would mean that, if a member of such a tribe believed in veganism and advocated for the tribe to change their ways, I would have to tell them they're wrong and that the tribe should continue their old ways, which in my view, is just as colonialist. That's for them to work out.
Should I ever become shipwrecked or survive an airplane crash in their lands, then I'll have a reason to ponder the ethics of that particular situation. Until then, it's naval-gazing at best and a bad faith distraction/attempt at ad hominem at worst.
I am not trying to trick you, or trap you, or discredit you (or indeed all vegans or anyone else). I am not here to argue on behalf of veganism or against, and I thought my language in my comment was sufficiently diplomatic to convey that I am not trying to attack you, so let me be clear about what I understand and why I ask the question I ask. Please understand that I am not trying to be condescending.
Firstly, I consider that Grainne's post contains an implicit moral stance along the lines of "one has to be a vegan to be a leftist". I don't know for sure that that is they meant to convey, and I apologise to Grainne if that is a misrepresentation.
Secondly, I understand, based on what you have written, that that would be a statement you would broadly agree with. Again, I apologise if I have misunderstood you. But I will proceed on that basis and you are free to correct me, or not, if indeed you care at all.
Now, I would ask if we could clarify that statement? It is one thing, for example, to propose that animal suffering is bad (I think most would agree) and that veganism is "a", or "the", most practical of reducing it. In that case you would be well within your rights to disregard hypothetical questions about Inuit people, because at that point we are having a discussion about practicalities. It is another thing, though, to put forward the proposition that "one has a moral duty to be vegan". Now we would be having a discussion about moral philosophy, and I would like to know how you arrived at your conclusion before I decide whether or not to take it under advisement.
At this point, if you, personally, would not care to be having a discussion about moral philosophy, feel free to skip to the end.
So why do I think it is fair to ask about the Inuit? Well, because "either animal exploitation is always wrong, or there are circumstances in which it is not wrong" is not a trap that I am trying to set. It is a logical truth, and I am interested to know what circumstances you think it would not be wrong, if there are any. For my part, I believe that I should reduce animal suffering, but I believe lots of other things. I believe we should strive to live sustainably, and I believe it is wrong for me to impose my beliefs on others without a good reason. I would certainly feel very iffy telling the Inuit, who have proved that they can live sustainably for thousands of years, that they should change their ways. But if I conclude that I shouldn't judge the Inuit for that, then that raises the further question; how far does that go? If I have no right to judge the Inuit, do I have a right to judge a fell farmer in the lake district? I have no idea whether or not it is true since it isn't my field, but I could certainly see that there is perhaps an argument to be made that it might be more ecologically friendly to make clothes from local wool than it would be to ship in vegetable cashmere from overseas. Would it be wrong, in that case, to farm sheep for wool?
Or let's take the opposite approach and say, hypothetically, that everyone, including the Inuit, should be persuaded to be vegan. How far does that go, exactly? I have seen vegans liken animal farming to slavery and genocide, and I certainly can't say that they're wrong to do so, but it raises the question; how far should we be willing to go? We've fought wars to stop slavery. We've fought wars to stop genocide. If I genuinely believed that slaughtering animals was akin to genocide, should I be willing to kill people working in an abattoir? If I wasn't would that make me a moral coward?
These are questions that I ask myself, and I don't have the answers to them. You are under no obligation to answer any of them for me. The reason I wrote this wall of text is essentially because I simply wish that you had interpreted my comment more charitably than you did, and I want to persuade you that these kinds of questions do not necessarily come from a place of bad faith.
FWIW, I am not vegan, but I'd like to be - or something close to it - eventually. I struggle with disordered eating, so it's hard, though.
I apologize for being harsh and accusatory, you do seem to be looking at things in good faith.
When it comes to moral rules, I'm less concerned with universal rules that apply to all theoretical cases without exception and more concerned with establishing good guidelines. Generally, it's always possible to find some edge case or hypothetical where a rule may be questionable. In those cases, you just have to use your best judgement. But it's useful to use your judgement to establish general rules that apply to most cases, because realistically you're not going to reexamine everything each time you go to the grocery store.
thevegansociety.com defines veganism as:
"As far as possible and practical" should clear up certain things, like the idea of starting wars to liberate animals. Killing farmers is not a particularly effective way of advancing the cause of veganism, extreme ethical positions aside, it discredits the movement, and it tends to impair one's ability to advocate for change. Likewise, I'm not going to go visit an Inuit tribe and try to convince them to go vegan when there are people who are physically and culturally closer to me who are causing more harm.
There is a pretty wide gulf between a thing being morally wrong and a thing being a capital offense. I can't speak for others, but generally if I draw comparisons to slavery or genocide, it's not attempting to draw a moral equivalence, but rather trying to show a logical inconsistency in someone's argument. Some arguments against veganism, if followed to their logical conclusion, could be used to justify things like slavery just as easily, but that's not the same as saying the two are equally bad.
Applying absolutism to any moral principle tends to produce unreasonable and impractical conclusions. As they say, only a sith deals in absolutes.
Hi! I've not much to add other than I appreciate your reply!
Lets move back to the original post. It sais that you are not a leftist if you eat meat. By this definition, we exclude indigenous peoples into the conversation. We shame them for following their culture. Thats not a hypothetical.
Blanket statements should be opposed if they are wrong, even if they are in the spirit of good.
We should not let exclusionary rhetorics be the grounds of our dragments, because we create unnecessary friction. Because with friction, we stop the waves. We need rhetorics that gives us support from the 99% while still keeping the transformative spirit.
When we realize that a dragment is exclusionary, we should go back to the drawing board and understand how our dragment can transform into something more inclusive. Understanding the essence of the dragment with an emphasis on inclusiveness, impact and spreadability.
That's not what it says. Go back and look: it says "leftism leaving people's bodies as soon as you ask them about animal liberation".
This does not mean you can't be leftist and eat meat. It merely observes that, often enough to be memeable, self-identified leftists pull out all the dogshit centrist/right wing arguments they would otherwise not just oppose but recognize as dogshit.
You can see this in this thread; the majority of replies are "lgb without the t" tier arguments about the left going too far, about that level of moral purity simply not being feasible, about it not being politically expedient, threatening to join the right if that's the way it is, judging a political position by its weirdest supporters, conjuring up the most niche edge cases as if those invalidate the structural change being proposed, and yes, railing against straw man versions of what they are seeing.
Sadly, you do not make the cut here.
Maybe you can process the fact you've been attacking a straw man and re-examine whether you still feel like OP threatens cultural erasure?
Also, unrelated,
It's interesting. The statement discredits itself, and yet you made it in earnest. How?
I'll admit that I committed a strawman in the last comment. I'll take the L on that one.
But I do not agree that this entire thread is based on a strawman, because my original question was in response to seeing OP taking a purist stance other places. We can see that OP answered this question with a purist take.
From what I can see, OP refused to answer the question because it's a hardly relevant edge case. Could you link the comments where OP took the purist stance your original comment is a response to, and where OP responded in a purist way?
Though to answer the question you pose for myself, I would say it's up to Inuit to find a way to evolve their culture to become vegan while preserving the things they care about that don't involve brutalizing animals. Cultures evolve all the time; the horse wasn't native to the Americas but was happily adopted by nations across the North American and Argentinian steppe. This isn't loss, it's improvement. You aren't entitled to hurt others just because it's traditional to do so.
And if some people refuse to let their culture evolve, and in some distant future activists have nothing better to do, and the ecosystem is at least as balanced if the animals aren't killed^1^, and all less violent ways to apply pressure have been exhausted, then at some point it would be right for people to defend animals from hunters with deadly force, whether those hunters are Inuit or anything else. What those hunters want to do other die trying to kill others is up to them.
Consider how rhinos are currently being protected with deadly force from poachers. There are lots of traditional cultures that want to hunt and kill rhinos for their bodies, but local governments have decided that the continued existence of rhinos as a species is more important than those rituals and the lives of those who want to enable those rituals.
Do you think the people that are willing to kill traditional hunters to protect those rhinos are wrong?
Though sad as it is, Inuit likely won't have a choice. The ecosystem that relies on seasonal ice coverage and the necessity of cold adaptation is being undone. Climate change will drive most species Inuit traditionally hunt to extinction, or at the very least drive them north much further than the places Inuit have traditionally lived and reduce their populations below the point people (or other predators) can sustainably hunt them. Inuit culture will have to evolve or die without any person getting between them and animals they might hunt. So why not evolve into veganism while they're at it?
^1^: I personally don't see a moral difference between predators of different species hunting animals to kill them and eat their flesh. Deer likely don't care whether they are killed by buckshot, spear, or a wolf's bite. For thousands of years Inuit were part of a balanced ecosystem as an apex predator, competing with polar bears, orcas, and birds of prey, and they were no worse than them. But in an ideal world, there world be no predators and no overpopulation of the animals they prey on.
One day, when this is the most pressing issue, and we know there is a predator species that can't be kept alive with a vegan diet and whose ecosystem can be balanced without them, I would be okay with letting that species go extinct rather than let prey animals suffer and die to feed them. Hopefully we can find better options, though.
Without climate change, it would be quite possible that Inuit hunters turning vegan would destabilize the ecosystem by creating a surplus of herbivores that cause a collapse of populations lower down the food chain, or that it would end up with just as many animal deaths as other predators fill the ecological niche and there is just as much suffering. But now, polar bears are at risk of extinction in the wild, and the ecosystem is getting unbalanced in ways Inuit tradition never had to encounter.
I thought I had answered you earlier, but seems like my answer was unposted. Anyways here is the link to OP's answer.
https://lemmy.ml/post/46931241/25560113
By the way, looking over the post with new eyes I realize that I overlooked the title of the post "Veganism is leftism". Feel like it is worth pointing out given that it changes the context of the image text. At the very least this insinuates
Or maybe you disagree with this. If so, then I guess I'll leave it at that.