Revision as of 19:17, 9 April 2018

Note: This is a work in progress, and may contain factual errors. If you see any mistakes, particularly about people, please let us know and we'll fix them ASAP.

For most vegans, racism could not be more distant from veganism. As a rule, vegans abhor it as much as or more than speciesism.

However, veganism, being something of a counter culture, often finds fertile soil in the same minds that are attracted to other more fringe ideas from Flat-Earth to unfortunately racism and White Nationalism; and unfortunately a tolerance of these beliefs and their advocates is being promoted as analogous to tolerance of meat-eaters.

Definition of Racism

The Harm

Number six of the Seven Deadly Sins of Bad Vegan Activism is "Loudly advocating unrelated fringe claims."

Vegan Nazis, white nationalists, and other racists are certainly harmful to veganism (these aren't popular beliefs, even among conservatives who are more tolerant of them), but racism is special among most of those claims.
Where something like Flat-Earthism is ridiculous and makes veganism look ridiculous by association from people who advocate both, it's otherwise relatively benign (aside from promoting scientific ignorance and conspiratorial thinking). We're at no risk of hosting social policies or electing Flat-Earther political candidates who will act in accordance with those beliefs to do actual harm. Racism is different: it's actually harmful.
In the United states, in an unfortunate turn in 2016 for the once respectable Republican Party, Donald Trump courted support from avowed racists and the Ku Klux Klan, propelling him into the highest office where he has done substantial harm to immigration reform and emboldened white supremacists whose terrorism is on the rise while Trump cuts funding to fight it[1], despite the number of deaths resulting from right-wing terrorism being only slightly less than Islamic terrorism[2] although spread out over a larger number of attacks, which may make them less sensational to report on and create a reporting bias[3].

Racism will lose. This is not a viable ideology, and there is no serious risk of White Nationalist policies taking hold. However, in their struggle to bring their beliefs to fruition make no mistake: racism is not a benign absurdity. Both promoting and apologizing for racist beliefs is inherently harmful.

Relevance to veganism

Racism is harmful, so what? Why do we, as vegan advocates need to care?

Guilt By Association is one reason; we don't need literal vegan Nazis sullying the image of veganism. But beyond fighting something evil in the world: a little bit of good social karma? Vegans are often accused of only caring about animals, and ignoring harm to humans done by our own only reinforces that even if nobody assumes veganism and racism are related. Vegans have some obligation to police bad behavior among our own, if not intrinsically, then by mandate of general opinion. We see the same kind of mindset in the belief that Muslims should be doing more to speak up against Islamic terrorism. There's something to be said for not overdoing it and becoming vegan police, but beyond the possibility of a vegan going on a serial killing rampage, this pretty much takes the cake. It's also a very politically safe position to take; racism isn't going to grow in popularity; if you're worried about coming down on the wrong side of history, don't be.

This does NOT mean expelling anybody from our ranks with the slightest appearance of racism.
Disagreeing with affirmative action, or some other political position, isn't racist.
Not usually being attracted to other races isn't racism (being against other people having interracial marriages is).
Voting Republican isn't racist. Not thinking the racist things that candidate has said are more important than other issues isn't either.

Conservatives should be welcome, and that includes people who are even -- in effect -- a little bit racist. "Racist" in the most general baseline sense of cultural racism.
They might make some bad jokes, or laugh at them. They certainly fail implicit association tests, and they sometimes say things like "I'm not racist, but... [insert something that sounds kind of racist]" without thinking about it. There are a lot of people who simply don't realize what's inappropriate, or might not have thought about these things much or may hold some misconceptions about race. There's nothing malicious or intentional there. This common passive form of racism is a social problem, but it's not something to condemn individuals over when they can be educated, and in many cases it's probably not worth bringing up directly; they just need to have some friendly contact with people outside their social bubbles.

The problem comes from the overt, and even proud, racism, white nationalism, and open promotion of the pseudosciences and ideologies these people rely on.

Nazism

Adolf Hitler

Hitler wasn't vegan, and he probably wasn't even a vegetarian by modern standards (he does seem to have avoided most meat for reasons of a sensitive stomach). The Nazi party, however, did have some strong policies on animal welfare for the time (which seem ironic given how they treated other humans). It may have all been propaganda, or there may have been a legitimate concern there (Even Hitler probably wasn't pure evil).

Whether there's a hint of truth in or or not, the point is that many Nazis believe the propaganda about Hitler as an animal lover, and that has seen a disturbing trend of vegan Neo-Nazis, particularly among Nipsters (Nazi Hipsters).

The Golden One

Not vegan, but has promoted the vegan diet.

Links viewers to Nazi propaganda film "The Greatest Story Never Told".

Believes a major part of what sparked WW2 was "Germanic people and Slavic people in the East Germany west of Poland, they're competing for the same fucking territory of land, we clearly learned that multiculturalism, having different ethnicities in the same place will lead conflict, that's the only fucking thing we can learn and that's also majorly what sparked world war two that poles were committing transgression against Germans".

Holocaust denier, says just 300,000 Jews died of malnutrition at work camps.

Prefers the term race realist, doesn't adopt the nazi name or image for fear of alienating nationalists who were harmed by the war.

Vegan Neo-Nazis Actually Exist (Beneath Contempt).

Why Nationalist Political Parties Should Consider Highlighting the Issue of White Genocide and what the Difficulties Would Be – Case Study: the French Front National by The Golden One

It may not have escaped you that we are living in a time where we (that is to say white European natives) are fast approaching a critical point relating to our place, and possibly even our very existence, on Earth.

Before us lie two paths; the first consists of our gradual succumbing and submission to the relentless waves of third world immigration, the second, our return to national pride and reinstatement as the dominant demographic in our respective countries in all things ideological, political, economic and social.

John Rose

...

• Yes, I am calling you a Neo-Nazi: Fully Raw Kristina & John Rose.
• Kristina. Please. Stop.

SimplyVegan - JAYME LOUIS LIARDI

...

• The Vegan Vanguard E04: White Nationalism, Anti-Semitism and the Vegan Movement
• So 'Simply Vegan' Became a Neo-Nazi!

JackGreen

He's cautious not to give too much away, but is reading and greatly enjoying 'Mein Kampf' and 'The Decline of the West'1 by Oswald Spengler, and is excited to get his hands on 'The Bell Curve' by Charles A. Murray.

JackGreen on White Nationalism and Mein Kampf

I was introduced to the ideas on nationalism, I already could tell that a lot of it, if not most of the media was full of shit, and their anti-white propaganda just sickened me, but I learned to question more and more of history, developed an interest in my own lineage and ancestory. . .

Why have the desire to perpetuate your own race when it could result in you getting screwed over and leading a life of slavery and misery. . .

Maybe a potential solution for people who are or are starting to become MGTOW's and nationalists at the same time, it may be time to start thinking about adopting a kid of your own race, or having a surragete child, that way you don't have to deal with marriage and women, and you'll be able to instill your ideas in your kids and continue your own race.

Promotes Tara McCarthy and The Golden One.

Horrible approach to vegan advocacy, defending the alt-right at every turn, playing into peoples concerns about not taking human genocide seriously:1

Wants the vegan movement to adopt the propaganda tactics laid out by Hitler in 'Mein Kampf':

yeah, so think of the lowest common denominator in society, the lowest, think of the lowest intellectual common denominator and appeal to that cunt.

Green_Humane autonomy

An actual Vegan Nazi on YouTube promoted by Vegetable Police during his brief affair with Nazism.

Formerly named 'Vegan Reich' and 'Freedom is_Not_a_Right,' he has produced videos with titles such as 'Adolf the great' and 'Judaism is satanic'.

Vegetable Police

Created a "Vegan Nazi" t-shirt and advertised it on YouTube.

Echoed a series of Holocaust denier claims and the belief that a conspiracy of Jews were running the world.

Probably isn't an actual racist, just likes collecting conspiracy theories like the idea the earth is flat. Has tried to distance himself from the mistake. "Not a Nazi, just stupid".

Was sold on the idea by John Rose.

White Nationalists

Cory and Tara McCarthy

Cory and Tara are husband and wife, and are both outspoken white nationalists who believe in inherent differences between distinct races.

Tara (arguably the worse of the two) has owned the title "racist" while Cory has rejected it on questionable semantic grounds, insisting that racism is based in hate (which allows virtually anybody to cop out of racism on the grounds that there's no "hate" whatever that is held to mean), or on the grounds that he doesn't consider any race superior to another (which is often part of simplistic dictionary definitions).
This denial of superiority is common to white nationalists, and like them Cory argues that he is not a white supremacist because he doesn't believe any race is better or worse than any others, just different.
However when you examine the "virtues" ascribed to whites compared to other races (except Asians) by white nationalists and their actual rhetoric, whites being intelligent, civilized, etc. it becomes clear they haven't put much thought into how these races are supposed to be equal to each other when virtually every virtue of modern society is ascribed disproportionately to whites: the equality of races of their Motte which they retreat to when challenged but don't in practice believe in.

Apologists

Isaac Brown

Isaac has made a hobby of defending Cory and Tara McCarthy, echoing and confirming the racist beliefs of much of his fan-base, defending himself with the claim that they're just facts, and arguments like 'facts can't be racist'.

This clip is in response to some of Tara McCarthy's racist tweets.

"Facts" absolutely can be racist when they are unsubstantiated or imply certain underlying beliefs that are not substantiated. That is, when "facts" about race are false, and are only shared as talking points of racists, and you choose to believe them without research and parrot them without qualification, you're either a racist or playing it up to please your racist fans (it's unclear if that's better or worse).

Isaac claims to disagree with the "moral conclusions" of white nationalists: namely, he doesn't think non-whites should be expelled from predominately white nations or that they necessarily have less moral value, he "only" agrees with all of their supposed "factual" claims about the intellectual inferiority of certain races. His disagreement with their moral conclusions is based on his belief in his Name The Trait argument, although unsurprisingly he has either not attempted to convince them otherwise or he has failed miserably at the attempt and as an ally to them has only served to defend and reinforce the core beliefs upon which their racism is founded.

FullyRawKristina

Promotes John Rose, after having watched him for years and met him.

Yes, I am calling you a Neo-Nazi: Fully Raw Kristina & John Rose.

Racism Against Native Peoples

Vegans are often accused of racism against native people for saying they should go vegan or criticizing traditional practices like hunting and whaling.
Unfortunately these accusations are typically based on fringe idiosyncratic definitions of "racism" that do not fit with common usage and are counterproductive to rational discussion[4].

For example, most of the natives and their allies making these accusations are confusing race and cultural practice, and they see any criticism of culture from an outsider to be racist (even legitimate criticism). The simple answer to this is that it's very clear that most vegans are criticizing ALL cultures for using animal products, and they are not just targeting the cultures correlated to certain races (which might be racist in the true sense) so even on the basis of such a confusion the accusations don't usually make any sense. It may be worth mentioning that vegans criticize all cultures, but due to identity politics unless you are a person of color arguing the point is probably futile because the idiosyncratic definition being used has actual racism baked into it (a double standard applies and criticism of white people/"settler" cultures is always acceptable and even required, but it's only considered acceptable for marginalized people to criticize marginalized cultures).

Due to the vast majority of accusations of racism against native people being completely unfounded (based on idiosyncratic definitions which would even call all white "settlers" racists just for remaining on native land where they were born), finding actual examples is a needle-in-haystack exercise. Although thus far no smoking guns of actual racism have been found, there are some issues worth considering/discussing which may look like they could potentially involve some racial biases due to inconsistency (although likely products of ignorance rather than racist beliefs).

Ignorance of Differences

Obviously criticizing somebody's diet is not racism, although sometimes it can be naive in cases of poor food availability where it isn't as easy to go vegan (as in the Arctic circle), and this is where cultural criticism can appear biased by race. The inductive fallacy where we may assume everybody has it as easy as we do is a huge stumbling block to activism of otherwise well off activists to marginalized people who have unique difficulties. Failing to understand this is not racism, but it is ignorant and influenced by privileges of affluence which is correlated to race.

Likewise, targeting native hunting practices may not be racist, but it may be speciesist for vegans to be more concerned about hunted animals than about factory farmed animals: why is a deer more important than a cow? Much anti-hunting rhetoric is based on the target species, claiming that these animals are not meant to be farmed: but neither are cows, chickens, and pigs in any cosmic sense. This is overt speciesism, and when there's no justification for this and species consumed is correlated to race, it can be misinterpreted as racism (and in fact is probably influenced by cultural biases which are correlated to race).

It may also be a problem to be even equally concerned about hunting and some other native practices because it's also very likely that animals living free until death have better lives than those living much of their lives in confinement. It may even be environmentally ignorant to regard these as equal, because these practices are often (although not always) the lesser of evils compared to mainstream animal agriculture.

Dedicating even equal attention to opposing more sustainable native hunting and to animal agriculture seems inconsistent because the return on activist investment is probably not good for opposing native practices, and doing this knowingly would very plausibly be due to racial biases.

Effective altruism means focusing on the most return for our time and money investment, and focusing on small populations that may already be doing less harm per capita than mainstream society is not a good return. Because of this, focus on protesting native activities is probably not evidence based, but rather based on ignorance and influenced by cultural biases. It's true that even being unfairly biased against another culture is not racist, but it is something that can easily appear racist due to the correlations present between race and culture (here the excuse that we focus equally on all cultures doesn't work, because not all cultures demand equal focus for effective activism).

Sea Shepherd

Sea Shepherd is not a purely vegan organization, but the founder, Paul Watson, is vegan and promotes veganism, many members are vegan, and they claim their ships are vegan. Conflict with Native whaling rights may have more evidence of racist rhetoric behind it which can not be excused purely by naivety.

Sea Shepherd echoed the rhetoric of the organized anti-Indian movement, declaring erroneously that upholding Makah treaty rights would be “tantamount to extra special rights for a group of people based on race and/or culture.” Anti-Indian activists use this same language in their quest to terminate tribal governments and abrogate all treaties.[5]

In no way is a treaty with a sovereign government like giving a particular race within a country special privileges. Saying U.S. law should be enforced upon another country like Japan would be transparently absurd. Considering that an acceptable thing to say about a Tribal government does seem racist, and it is at least relying on racist talking points shared by anti-native White supremacists and white nationalists.

We're still awaiting comment from Sea Shepherd on this.

Like Tolerating Carnists

In their defense, apologists often make accusations that carnism is worse than racism, and other people are friends with carnists and as such they are hypocrites.

There are some elements of truth to this analogy, but many other points where it doesn't compare and makes for an absurd claim.

1. Harm & morality of racism/carnism

Racism for most people (who hold the view but aren't part of a lynch mob) is in some objective sense probably less harmful than carnism (which is also a practice, which both kills animals and harms the environment which harms people too). However, racism is also arguably more evil than carnism; on a personal level, a racist can be more easily condemned, because it's not a position of social normalcy. There are rare people like Derek Black who grow up isolated in deeply racist subcultures[6] and for them it IS cultural normalcy, but for most racists, particularly the ones who 'figured it out' for themselves like many on Youtube, this isn't the case. People mostly have to go out of their way to be racist, it's not an ideology of convenience, and it's not something people are socially punished for by abandoning.
Carnism, on the other hand, is invisible and culturally ingrained. Most people have no idea that they even hold the ideology, and practice is the cultural default in most parts of the world. It's convenient, and abandoning it often has some social cost; usually in the form of modest teasing, but sometimes exclusion.

A person in the modern world who makes the concerted choice to be a vocal racist is not the same in any sense as a person who fails to make the choice to go vegan (and has probably not been particularly vocal against veganism).

A vocal racist today isn't even the same as a vocal anti-vegan (although this is getting closer). A vocal racist is more on-par with somebody who vocally rejects the notion that any non-human animals have any moral value at all, like the Randian Objectivist who argues it should be perfectly legal to nail a living cat to your wall and there's nothing inherently wrong with doing so. We're talking about overt rejection of socially recognized moral value.

Would you be good friends with that kind of carnist? One who universally rejects animal welfare, or even prizes suffering? Because that's the only appropriate analogy when it comes to questions of human character.

2. Lack of choice

Vegans are not exactly spoiled for choice when it comes to friends. We make up something like 1% of the population, and we don't magically share all of the same interests. You might be able to find one or two vegan friends in a city, but chances are you will inevitably need to be tolerant and include non-vegan friends in your social circles.

The same difficulty does not apply to finding people to socialize with who aren't howling racists. Excepting the more subtle social kind of racism mentioned earlier --which is not the same-- you would almost have to go out of your way to find and befriend vocal racists. You could very easily choose a non-racist friend over one who made advocating white supremacy (or white nationalism) a hobby.

Even from a pragmatic perspective of finding friends, this analogy doesn't make any sense at all, since there are many orders of magnitude of difference between the difficulty of refining those two options.

3. Social effects

This is the only potentially valid point in favor of befriending racists. Derek Black was not deconverted from his racist beliefs by social isolation, but rather by making friends with others (including Jewish friends)[7], Daryl Davis famously befriended Ku Klux Klan members and got them to disavow their beliefs.[8][9]

However, in all of these famous cases it was the social exchange and friendship with one of the "others" that these people hated that did it. And in no cases is there evidence that making friends with yet another white person, who worse still, vocally agrees with their fundamental beliefs at the root of their racism (such as race and IQ) and defends their validity has anything but the effect of reinforcing these beliefs.
The fact that some of the apologists disagree with violence, or have more moderate political positions, isn't particularly convincing as a defense for being part of a support network that nods along with most of their racist talking points and even echoes and amplifies them to a larger audience.

Promoting these racists on your platform is of course the most harmful, but even outside that context failing to collaborate in the social ostracization of racists could be harmful too. If you're not challenging those ideas, and those ideas are themselves fringe ideas, it can remove a powerful motivator for them to change to befriend them at all. Shame and social exclusion is a very strong psychological pressure. Even without argument, it can compel people to change their beliefs (of course we prefer argument, but most societal norms don't work on that basis). Social shaming and exclusion only works when you're in the overwhelming majority, though, unfortunately. Thus: why it potentially works against racists, but not against carnists. Befriending racists sabotages this project, and failing to consistently press argument against their racism (unless you're one of the hated races, in which case your friendship IS an argument) replaces it with nothing.

While almost everybody thinks themselves rational and invulnerable to peer influence, the chances of the racist influencing you should also not be underestimated. Even without argument, being friends with racists (who you may initially have viewed negatively, for good reason) may soften your view on them AND their beliefs. That is: their friendship is effective on making you move toward racism in the way your friendship (unless you are a hated minority or press argument against their beliefs) is virtually useless at bringing them away from it.