Cancel All Non-Vegans

Content warnings: Discussion of animal abuse, misogyny, racism, and vegetarianism.

Supposedly a fighter for social justice, Jeremy Corbyn spent much of his life eating the products of animal suffering.

It's about time somebody said it. I say it with my chest:

Cancel all non-vegans.

Cancel all non-vegans.

Cancel all non-vegans.

Cancel all non-vegans.

Cancel all non-vegans.

Racists don't deserve platforms, respect, or sympathy. Misogynists don't deserve platforms, respect, or sympathy. Homophobes, transphobes, Israel apologists, and other violent bigots do not deserve to be pandered to, catered for, or listened to. We need them as far out of our social discourse as possible. Most reasonable people accept this. Violent people do not deserve our protection.

So why are we blind to the violence of animal-eaters?

My Dad's a racist. I disowned him for watching a Ben Shapiro video in 2020. My mother, seemingly sweet and kind-natured, regularly eats the flesh of once-sentient beings. In protest of this, I now live in a small tent (not a "lifestyle choice", Suella!) in my house's back garden, re-entering the family house only to make vegan meals for myself and throw Reni Eddo-Lodge books at my racist father, whom I have not listened to in three years. 

All of my time is spent on social media, ensuring nobody's content gets uploaded without a full explanation in the comments section of its disastrously problematic implications for social discourse. I admire the hard work that other full-time comments-section essayists put in to ensure no statement ever goes unchallenged. My particular innovations have come from problematising content that other users seem wary of challenging, such as wedding photos, holiday pictures, and mourning posts about deceased loved ones. It's amazing how many people will post about their 'sadness' at the death of their own child while refusing to condemn the thousands of children bombed to death in the Yemen every year, and blocking anyone who publicly points out their hypocrisy. 

Much to my surprise, though, the more time I spend on social media, the more disillusioned and isolated I feel. I thought I was part of a righteous community, calling out injustices and harmful messaging, ensuring that those violent people who spread hate online are held accountable for their actions. But it turns out, this same community is almost entirely silent on possibly the greatest injustice of all: the 'meat' and 'dairy' industry.

Human beings knowingly pay, every day, for the torture, sexual abuse, and murder of millions of animals. They post videos of themselves at barbecues, Christmas dinners, family gatherings and, yes, funerals, eating the charred carcasses of creatures that once walked the Earth as conscious beings. These animals are bred selectively to increase their body mass, to the point where merely standing up is excruciating. They live secluded lives, often half-starved, subject to 'artificial insemination' (i.e. rape by machine), and mutilation. Disease, ammonia-induced blindness, cannibalism and self-harm are all endemic in factory farms. Every single person who works in this industry is complicit in the suffering these animals go through, and so is everyone who pays for it.

The abuses of animal agriculture are well-documented, public awareness of the conditions within factory farms has never been higher, and there are now more vegan alternatives available on the market than ever before. There are no acceptable excuses for eating meat and dairy products, in the same way as there are no excuses for eating the flesh of human beings, or for bigotry.

Anyone who remains friends with someone after they say something racist is complicit in that racism, regardless of whether or not they express their disapproval of the friend's racism to the friend in question. In the same way, if your friends or family eat meat and you stay friends with them, you might as well eat meat yourself. You're complicit in their continuing consumption.

The only way to avoid complicity in mass industrial slaughter is to avoid absolutely everyone who isn't vegan, and to call them out publicly, as well as their apologist friends, as frequently and severely as possible. Friends of mine have taken an oath that they will never occupy the same room as someone eating meat or dairy products; over Christmas dinner, for example, they lock themselves in their bedroom while the family eats turkey downstairs. I applaud this, but I don't think it goes far enough. 

Non-vegans are most people in the West. They are, therefore, likely to be mostly good-natured. They're your best friends, your siblings, parents, grandparents, teachers, role models. Your favourite writer might compose great works on social injustices, and then tuck in to a piece of dead pig. Our job as vegans is not to 'separate the art from the artist', or to 'persuade' people to 'become vegan'. Our job is to shame. To cut all ties with anyone, including those who love us the most, including human rights advocates, if they have ever so much as eaten a Haribo. Being a child doesn't excuse you either - what does a two-week-old slaughtered chicken care if it's being churned up into a dinosaur nugget for a two-year-old human or a pensioner? It suffers the same.

There are no half-measures here. 'Meat-Free Mondays' means 'Mass Suffering Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays'. 'Vegetarianism' is dairy industry apologia. 'Organic farming' is a contradiction in terms.

There are some people, like activists in Animal Rising, who understand the injustice of animal agriculture. They slash tyres of trucks that transport animals to restaurants, raise public awareness by blockading events like horse races, and mobilise large numbers of people to push for systemic transformation of our agricultural system. This is good. But these same people held dialogues with farmers as a part of their campaign, as if farmers are somehow worth taking seriously. 

Think of how people will look back on our society. You wouldn't look back on a slaveowner of the 17th century and forgive them for being a product of their time. You wouldn't forgive anyone who existed at the time of slavery and didn't actively speak out against it. What are you doing, remaining silent on the complicity of your relatives in this global atrocity?

Transformative justice, coalition-building, and generally being 'nice' to people are unforgivable, violence-apologist behaviours. Anyone who says that things can 'change', that we must engage people rather than shouting them down, that we must work collaboratively and flexibly with a broad coalition of different people to pragmatically put an end to the various systems of global injustice, is evil. Ending racism is not the point of social justice work. Ending misogynistic violence is not the point of social justice work. Ending animal agriculture is not the point of veganism. If it was, we'd all join civil disobedience groups, campaign, make art, and sincerely listen to those doing the harm, in order to better understand their motivations, while still materially disrupting violent industries.

Dismantling injustice is not the point of social justice work, or at least not the kind I take part in. The point is to be morally correct. The point is to be on the right side of history. To be pure. And to punish absolutely anyone and everyone who isn't.

I turned fully vegan this month. That means, for more than 22 years, I have eaten the flesh of sentient beings, condemning countless creatures to untimely, horrific deaths. Unlike most people on the internet who talk about cancelling people for past behaviours, I'm not a hypocrite. This blog post is an open admission of guilt. I am a disgusting, violent, irredeemable human being. I'm not going to try and whitewash my own image by joining an animal rights group, or rescuing animals. I've had my chance, and I made my choice.

Now there is nothing left for me to do but post this admission of guilt, shout a final diatribe at each individual member of my friends and family, and turn myself in to the police.