Gary Yourofsky

Gary Yourofsky was (and in many ways still is) an immensely influential figure in the Vegan Community, and is credited with converting hundreds of thousands of people to Veganism. He initially started his activist career by engaging in acts of civil disobedience, however, he eventually abandoned this method of activism in favor of an education-based approach. He gave tens of thousands of students lectures across the United States, with some of them being recorded and becoming viral. His Georgia Tech speech is said to have converted 8% of Israel's population to veganism (from 5% to 13%), and this number doesn't even take into account all the others he's convinced all over the world (as his speeches have been translated into dozens of languages).

After his lectures became accessible to everyone, he stopped traveling the country to do lectures and did a quick stint on YouTube beginning in 2014 that helped people along with their Vegan journeys and countering typical anti-vegan arguments.

In 2017 he decided to retire from activism, citing his exhaustion with trying to get people to go vegan, combined with misanthropic views that ultimately burned him out. Despite this, his videos and essays are still available online, so despite his retirement, he is still influencing people to this day.

In 2020 after the COVID-19 pandemic hit, he returned to YouTube to do a quick series of videos that were basically a collection of (unfunny) rants about why he hates everyone and why humans are the scum of the Earth and blah blah blah, typical r/im14andthisisdeep stuff. Somehow he managed to come back even more resentful and pissed off than he was before. He also did a video in response to the violence that happened on the Capitol Building but that video was taken down (likely due to him advocating violence against President Donald Trump). We'll dive into this all shortly.

While Yourofsky has done more for veganism than almost anyone else and has influenced many others to go into vegan activism, he is not without his share of faults... and there are many, many to list. While he has done so much for veganism, none of us here really consider him to be a particularly reliable source of information, especially when it comes to science and philosophy (frankly, he's kind of an idiot).

We can start with the good, but we really need to address the bad.

The Very Bad

Anti-GMO

This one is honestly pretty cringy.

When asked about his thoughts on GMO's, Gary's position is more or less an appeal to nature in the most embarrassing way possible. He says some stuff about how God designed food perfectly and we shouldn't interfere with it... Oh boy, where to begin.

Even if God did design fruits and vegetables, the ones you're eating are not how "God" designed them. Look up unmodified banana if you want an idea of what I'm on about. The plants you're eating are artificial; man-made. They're about as natural as the device you're using to read this on.

Almost all plant foods are selectively bred (not GM modified) versions of their original selves. You go to the produce section of your grocery store, probably over 90% of that is modified from its original version (again, not GM modified, mind you). While there is an argument to be made about how the selectively bred foods have less nutrition overall (as they've been bred for taste, not health), they haven't become poison, they're just slightly less nutritious (and they are tastier than their original versions; If them being tastier helps people eat more of them, they're probably healthier in that respect).

As for actually Genetically Modified Crops, they are perfectly safe to eat, and pose no health risk to anyone, and are a crucial tool towards sustainably feeding a growing global population. The fear-mongering on this is leading to more environmental destruction and greenhouse gas emissions (as GM crops are much more efficient than non-GM crops, and ESPECIALLY organic crops).

Gary has said in one of his speech Q&A's that he doesn't care if something's 'natural' or not, but this is highly doubtful, given all of this.

To make matters worse, he often says that animal agriculture is the root cause of world hunger (which is very likely isn't, though it does cause problems with food security), despite the fact that fear-mongering over GMO crops is probably a bigger cause; Wealthy countries have offered poorer ones food aid, but it's often turned down because it's genetically modified (again, thanks to promotion of fear-mongering around it), meaning food that would have fed their hungry population was rejected. This type of ignorant Western pseudoscience is making its way to the developing world and making citizens of these countries scared of technology that can save their lives. You'll see similar stuff like this with Nuclear Energy and Vaccinations.