English translation of the text that was sent to us. Original czech version can be found here.
For a long time now I am pissed at what veganism has become.
I am sure I‘m not the only one.
I am not even glad that I have to spend my time writing a text that would make sense.
An article that would be understood.
But it is much easier since I will not make anything up. I wil not calculate and strategize my writing so that fiction and my interest would become a longed-for reality.
Moreover, all of those sneaky vegans are so much better at it. Those who transformed mere more ethical diet into a completely dysfunctional subculture.
We should finally realize that people who live in glass houses should not throw stones. And thus strenghten the Animal and Earth liberation movement. I would be very glad if my reflection would lead to others reflecting their behavior. But ideally, just think the whole text through, for a day or two. Read it once, twice, thrice and then come to your own conclusion.
Truth hurts, goes the famous saying. But only truth can move us forward, or in this case – only truth can return us to the good idea. Not lies, calculating, so-called vegan bubble and vegan bussiness.
I do not aim to unleash hatred or quarrel. The main reason I am writing this is my faith in the existence of at least few people who are sliding on the wave of the vegan lie right now – that if I am a vegan I am helping animals and it is more than enough.
Only if they realized what a huge fiction that is they could start helping where it is really needed.
To tangibly influence lives of at least some animals (including human animals as well where possible!).
And to help the nature, the Earth.
I am writing „at least some“ deliberately because in the misery Animals and Earth are right now, together with the decay of the movement for their liberation, I have no intention at all of talking about a total liberation and to waste my time with that. Simplified, it is the aim of all of us who hate all exploitation and destruction, together with human wickedness and greed. But first of all let‘s talk about liberation of individuals. Because right now our „total liberation“ is just a fiction.
We are not the first generation that constantly thinks about this and debates it. Surprisingly, for some of us. Unfortunately we are basicaly still at the beginning. Or rather, at the same spot. But we also know what works and what had worked and we have to keep that on and keep on growing. As Camille Marino says: „When the movement was militant, these psychopaths were royally scared. Some quit and looked for different lines of work, while others were deterred from entering abusive vocations. That’s the way it should be!“
Everywhere around me I hear talks about total liberation of animals. About connecting the minorities that need to go into the streets together and fight for their rights. But I do not hear how to force them to do it. I hear only visions that are fundamentally true and offer the only way to that total liberation.
But I do not hear how to carry that out.
The reality is somewhere else and that is what we should be concerned about. Philosophy is a nice thing, we are pursuing it for a long time now and it is justified. And it also has a positive effect for the movement. But still, it is only nice talks if we are not capable of turning it into reality.
And as we all know, animals do not hear our speeches.
That‘s our world.
Not theirs.
We didn‘t even manage to liberate ourselves and suddenly we want to totally liberate everyone else. Total animal liberation would certainly require our total participation. Again, I have no idea how to do that if the vast majority of movement members has enough on their own plates. Work, bureaucracy, survival… Again and again we have to defend ourselves against nasty fascists. There are still countries that suffer under the dictate. Slave work… And we already speak of total animal liberation?
I guess it‘s no good to set goals that are not even on the daily agenda and we should start doing what we can and what works. (And I definitely do not mean welfare. Nor agreements with political power about what we can or cannot do. We are not going to ask if we can do good!)
Every rescued animal and every saved acre of forest is a victory!
Every burned slaughterhouse and every destroyed hunting tower is a victory!
What is that total animal liberation anyway?
If it is a way of saying that not one nonhuman animal will be ever again harmed by human existence then we should probably add that total animal liberation is not possible without total human extinction.
Apparently we are very good at simplifying probably the most difficult issue on this planet, ie the effect of humans on the planet and other animals.
We are not so good at working for the animals really hard though.
At becoming a real trouble for the system that is absolutely dependent on all-exploitation.
At tightening our belts.
At risking our comfort, freedom, money, mind and life for the good of others.
However, without all that we will not even get the partial animal liberation. We need to be whole for that, not just our thoughts and our greasy mouths.
No idea. Maybe we should clear out one of the most logical situation. When do we work well for animals?
When the system, goverment and public leave us be and we are no bother for them?
When politicians allow us to ban something at the expense of few individuals because it fits them to sell out for better media coverage? Just to close our mouths for few years again?
Or is it when we are so efficient that those who benefit from the animal exploitation, be it their profit, comfort or greedy lifestyle, consider us bothersome and they have to eliminate us immediately?
I guess each of us knows the answer.
More about this tactic that deforms each and every effort for animal liberation and discredits the movement that is really fighting for the essence of this issue again from Camille Marino: „The mainstream Animal Liberation community seems hell-bent on using the struggle in a quest for self-promotion, political agendas, and public relations at the expense of the animals for whom they allege to fight. And the forces that guide the movement have had the net effect of pacifying activism and rendering it impotent and laughable. (But, hey! No one can label it violent!) The state has done its job so well that activists now moderate themselves. Enough! Let them call us stalkers. Let them call us terrorists. As long as they call us effective!“
YES, EFFECTIVE!
TANGIBLE RESULTS, NOT FICTION AND FUTURE.
But let‘s get to the VEGANISM.
Donald Watson, allegedly first man who used the word Vegan, said: „Take the broad view of what veganism stands for – something beyond finding a new alternative to scrambled eggs on toast or a new recipe for Christmas cake. Realise that you’re on to something really big, something that hadn’t been tried until sixty years ago, and something which is meeting every reasonable criticism that anyone can level against it. And this doesn’t involve weeks or months of studying diet charts or reading books by socalled experts – it means grasping a few simple facts and applying them. “
It is apparent that this guy was really sincere. Veganism is growing into the very opposite of that though. Bussiness as usual, self-realization, belonging to a certain community, superiority to other „nonvegans“, relieving conscience, wanabe prominence, fashion, health aspect, profit, funny lifestyle in the stereotype grey, finding new friends, hobby, penchant for cool gastronomy… Those are very common reasons for veganism.
It sounds great to think that by being vegan you not only help, but you supposedly actually save animals!
That is the usual motto of stupid wannabe animal rights organizations.
Be vegan, you save two cows, hundred chickens and ten pigs a year.
Be vegan, you create peace and better world.
Be vegan, the number is growing and one day…bla bla bla.
Cheap talk.
You save no animals by being vegan.
Insignificant community of this world can never influence the animal market! Seriously, no one can ever believe that if ten people out of thousand who bought dead carcasses from factory farms would suddenly stop, it would affect that factory farm. It would not. They will still produce the same amount of carcasses. Maybe they will just raise the price in some time, they will find new customers and if even that would not work anymore, there is the perfect way of subsidies for the animal agriculture! There is no fair fight between producers of vegan food and those who make nonvegan one!
I also cannot find a connection with how the plant based diet helps those who are tortured in labs, puppy mills, circuses, how it fights against domestic violence committed on animals…
That it possibly improves the society‘s morale? The only thing that could lead to a better world?
Frankly, I do not see any morale improvement since the times of Cathars, vegetarians till today‘s vegans.
I see bilions of tortured and murdered.
I see contempt for everything living that cannot defend itself.
Veganism is not connected to morality anymore. If you swallowed the bait that there are more vegans and that we will create a beautiful new world together any time soon, well I am sorry!
All of us will become vegans, just a pity that no one told us that will happen without all fauna and flora since those are disappearing and losing this game and we are too.
And instead of harvestor blockades we organize vegan parties. Since those bring financial or self-satisfying profit to the organizers. They won‘t get that from civil disobedience and sabotage.
If someone thinks that broader offer of vegan spreads in shops is a win and that the number of vegans is growing according to it, then maybe they should be aware that the offer on useless nonvegan products is also evergrowing. Just the same, number of vegans may be growing in the western world, but we don‘t like to talk about the growing number of humans around the whole world. Nonvegans, of course.
I guess it is not hard to notice that the amount of humans and their consumption is growing. Even if the state in which I live in, namely the Czech Republic, becomes strictly vegan, what effect would few milions of people have on the whole world? If someone would really care for animals and not just their own ego and conscience, it still wouldn‘t be enough for them.
And again, it has no connection whatsoever with other forms of animal exploitation.
We often encounter almost popular phrase that everything can be achieved by gradual little steps. After all, we are democrats, not revolutionaries. If I take the time to figure out how to interpret such a SCAM (translator‘s note: in the original it is a play on words with the name of the welfare organization OBRAZ) then I guess it means there is enough time for everything, that people change very slowly. But allegedly they do and number of vegans is rising. If you consider this rate of „growth“ fast enough and you also believe that the veganism will create a suffering-less planet, then I guess it is enough for you. But to anyone who says they care about the fate of animals it should be woefully too little.
As you can read by Screaming Wolf: „Humans have a great capacity for fooling themselves. We feel one way, but think another. We feel that animals should be free to live their own lives, but we think that such freedom would unreasonably conflict with our lifestyles. We like drugs, and meat, and other products of animal exploitation, but we feel sick when we learn exactly what happens to the animals during the production of such products.
… Some people turn off their feelings to suffering animals, and fabricate ideas to justify their acts of animal abuse. Society supports this, since it values thoughts over feelings. These people learn to suppress what they really feel when they see animals suffering. Separating thoughts from feelings is a part of the process of alienation that plagues humankind. Because of this alienation, most people have no sense of where they belong in the world, or who they themselves really are.“
How lucky that we have a community then where we can finally find our own place…
Everywhere I go I hear people say that they consider animals equal, they are their brothers and sisters, a family.
Honestly, I would not like to be a family member of most people from the vegan community. I guess I would find it pretty difficult to hear all that bullshit that there is enough time for everything. That first we have to go for a vegan dinner, vegan potluck, vegan christmas, vegan parade, vegan sport training and only after that to a protest in front of a lab where we will demand immediate release of our brothers and sisters.
Only after that to a fur farm or any other farm where we can free our brothers and sisters right now.
Only after that we will go out at night and destroy useless property that murderers use to torture and murder.
Only after that we will go help to the shelter.
Only after that we will attack the murderers directly…
Yes, directly!
If animals are my family, I (and probably most of you too) would use violence to get them from the thralls of someone who tortures and kills them.
How come that so many vegans (and many members of functioning animal liberation groups, to be fair) say that they consider animals their family, yet they do not want hear a word about employing violence to liberate them!
It is not such a problem to warn the exploiter that if they won‘t stop the violence immediately it will be used against them!
Where is the moral contradiction in that?
I do not see one!
Not many saw it when the german soldiers were killed to liberate people from concentration camps, but most see it if it is about the other animals‘ good.
So where is the equality? Family, fraternity?!
You can use any means necessary to save humans from the oppression but it is still a contradiction if we talk about animals. What a mysterious obstacle. And we are already talking about totaal animal liberation?!
The whole issue of contemporary „veganism“ can be easily summarized.
In these days damn everyone can be a vegan. Mass murderer, butcher, furrier, racist, politician, communist, fascist, slaver, breeder, dictator, every single asshole that comes to mind!
These three examples are a lovely illustrative of that. What connects a vivisector, foie gras retailer and a bussinessperson? What could it be? Veganism of course…
Where else to start than with food. For the first example we will use a vegan raw restaurant that really makes me sick. Annualy they attend a food festival. Their name is not significant.
This is about the principle.
Where is the equality if this vegan restaurant announcing their love for animals has a stand right next to perverts selling foie gras?
Next to murderers selling chopped-up bodies of tortured calves, piglets and their families.
If the stand next to them would sell chopped-up bodies of human babies would you attend anyway? Or would you immediately dissociate? Would you stand side by side with others at the escalated demonstration to get such massacre banned immediately?
But since it‘s just animal bodies? OK, let‘s make some money.
Example nr. two
You can become a respected member of the Czech Vegan Society even if you are a member of the vivisector Radislav Sedláček‘s team working in the nacist complex Biocev.
Not a member of an association fighting against the animal testing, nor a member of an organization that is trying to at least save some of the victims and find a new homes for them after all that horrible stuff.
Not to mention someone who would build their „career“ in science on searching for vivisection alternatives.
How many were killed since she started in this lovely modern venue?
And how many were saved from this merciless fate?
Does it matter? Lectures about plant based diet are so much more important than someone‘s life…
This is called preying on animal suffering. This is a profane business as usual and career at any cost! Love and respect would mean to immediately condemn such a massacre and to make lives of these murderers as uncomfortable as possible!
Vegans have dirty hands and dirty conscience.
If we will not make order in our own house and we will not separate the wheat from the chaff, we will be stuck in one place.
„In 300 years everyone will be vegan…“
Maybe.
Will humans change their existing diet?
Almost for sure. They will be forced by ever worsening condition of animal agriculture.
Will they become vegans in other aspects as well?
Hardly.
And even if they did why should it serve as an alibi that we are not doing anything today?
Veganism does not save lives.
And here we get to our third example. Vegan bubble par excellence.
Buy a VEGAN food, VEGAN t-shirt and join the VEGAN community.
That is the sollution to a compassinate world and FOR THE ANIMALS.
Who cares that ninety percent of that amazing food had to travel across the whole globe and that the brand new wannabe extremist t-shirt was made by little kids in China.
The most important thing – we will make some money and move forward in our self-realization in this subculture at least, since we didn‘t achieve it anywhere else.
It is weird to picture a vegan (who presumably fights for animals) taking their money and spending it on overpriced food and useless crap. What the fuck is vegan on manufacturing and buying useless new stuff?
Shouldn‘t they rather spend it on direct action?
On food for animals in shelters?
On help for others whoever that is?
And how can another vegan dare to make a fortune on other vegans and then just keep it to themselves?
How come that someone who at least hundred times a year says that they are FIGHTING FOR ANIMALS did not ever, not once organize a demo in front of a lab where they would demand immediate release of captive animals? Instead, they are organizing feasts and celebrations…
Celebrations of what?
That we can bake a vegan cake and a fucking pizza?
Or are they celebrating that vivisection is in a full swing (and evidently will be for a long long time since vegans actually don‘t mind)?
What is celebrated on the party FOR ANIMALS?
Seriously, after all those years I did not come up with a single way animals will be positively impacted by all this vegan feasting, whatever its‘ theme.
We are blinded by ourselves.
We are estranged from animals as far as it goes.
And those who are still seeking what is really good for animals are affected by poseurs and shrewds who say:
Punch the boxing bag and you are saving animals. Only if you are vegan of course!
Organize picnics and you are saving animals. Only if you are vegan of course!
Play hockey or checkers and you are saving animals. Only if you are vegan of course!
Just do whatever the rest is doing, just be vegan!
And you‘re done.
Now you are a savior…
Wretchedness!
It doesn‘t matter how many animals you fed last month, how many in need you helped. Of course it does not, since you are the vegan…
WAKE UP!
Veganism does not save any animals.
Veganism is just a NONPARTICIPATION on something bad.
For the majority it is just a slightly better diet. But try to move forward…
Local food?
Zero waste?
Voluteering?
There‘s a time and space, my dear friends! Veganism is already a great asceticism!
But veganism focused on food is nothing! Taking shots of your lunch will acomplish nothing! (Especially if there is not a single local ingredient and you are so hellbent on that local diet, heh…)
Veganism by itself means only to take your hands off. No additional benefits for animals!
Dr. Steven Best said: „If I am opposed to pedophilia and I do not consume child pornography, am I stopping pedophilia?“
Let‘s fight for animal liberation, not for vegan butter in the hypermarket.
If we are able to write hundreds of emails and to call to a producer of vegan food asking why they do not sell this or that already then we are able to send hundreds of emails and messages to a breeder or to a vivisection lab.
We are able to call day and night.
We are even able to gather round and demonstrate.
We are able to complain, to be unruly.
So let‘s do it for the animals for real.
Some alone, some in the group.
Some to break those fucking laws that defend murderers more, some less.
Let‘s not give a value to a useless property anymore and let‘s destroy it if it‘s a part of the exploitation.
There are many ways how to sucessfully work for animals. Let‘s finally stop saying that everything except for a vegan cake and political agreements is way too radical. (And who would still believe in political agreements!?)
How radical would we have to be in compariosn with what is happening to the animals?
So far we have been rather painfully moderate.
When they shut you in the concentration camp and someone comes along, hits the owner in their face and takes you away, will you tell them you shouldn‘t have done that, that was so radical? Or will you say thank you?
However, at vegan festival, vegan box, vegan potluck or vegan christmas we are useless.
Let‘s eat at vegan restaurants only if they are social based, not at a fucking chain that only makes money on new modern thing!
Let‘s return to a solidarity, antifascicsm, antispeciesism of veganism.
To the essence it comes with.
Not the consumption and business!
In shelters and in the streets.
That‘s where we‘re needed.
Not in a cafe or in a gym.
That way we are letting the murderers do their thing.
And logically, they are fine with that.
Moderate obedient vegan that does not limit or threaten them.
From time to time they are shouting something with a transparent in their hands and after that chop-chop into the restaurant.
„Activist“ who takes pictures of their muscles and food and writes a blog about a compassion with animals.
About how they love them and so they will not be a part of a system that exploits them.
But compassion and nonparticipation by themselves are useless.
Let‘s turn our good intentions into action.
We have a great potential but we are not using it.
I have no right to say who should detach and dissociate from what.
But for myself I can say –
I join those who already denounced veganism in this useless form. That is just a poseurity that will not satisfy anyone who wants to work on the animal side! Anyone who wants to become a real liberator!
This essay has only one goal. To wake up and to summon humans with good intentions to the animal side.
Awareness can be hard and sometimes we need to be pushed. (Just remember how you became vegans in the first place.)
I am not so naive as to think that the leaders of welfare shitorganisations, of vegan caterings and fight clubs will concede their self-realization and profit for the benefit of animals and Earth.
But maybe you can.
For those who did not comprehend this. I do not have anything against veganism. On the contrary, I consider it as an essential basics. The stepping stone or another step on the journey to more moral human being.
Also, I have no fascist tendencies to tell someone what to do. I just regard it as my moral duty to denounce those who made the animal suffering into their business and self-presentation and who made deals with others similar to them who work to destroy the good-will movement.
Death to fascism, anthropocentrism, dictate, poserity and capitalism that took roots in veganism too. You cannot reform capitalism and fascism, it will always be a capitalism and fascism. You can only disrespect and destroy it.
ALF – Liberate, sabotage, protest! That‘s the way towards a better world!
In the text I used following quotes:Max
Camille Marino – How “Love & Peace” Kills Animals
Steven Best – We Cannot Bear To Look at the Facts of Reality
Screaming Wolf – Declaration of War
Thank you for publishing.