“Veganism must be the baseline if we are to have any hope of shifting the paradigm away from animals as things and toward animals as nonhuman persons.”
These are the words of Gary L. Francione, renowned white middle-aged male vegan guru.
“Yes, animal agriculture is a plague upon our shared landbase, but… it’s still a symptom. To ‘save’ the planet, the disease we must address and eradicate is capitalism in all its deceptive and myriad incarnations.”
These are the words of another white middle-aged male vegan who is absolutely not a guru and would prefer no association with all the justifiable disdain the word “vegan” provokes.
Yeah, that would be me.
All About that Baseline?
Many if not all consumerist vegans love to declare (without a shred of evidence) that their lifestyle “saves animals” while they conveniently ignore how capitalism works. As a result, it’s typically the carnists (or curious vegans) who present the more compelling arguments (e.g. it’s less ecocidal to eat insects instead of grains or opt for a diet of, say, invasive carp or bi-valves).
Before you assume I’m positioning anti-capitalism as the “moral baseline” or touting the consumption of oysters, please allow me to clarify: I’m not. I am simply — and yet again — begging readers (especially vegans) to open their minds, question their beliefs, and choose a bigger picture perspective.