Bad Vegans and Other Stories
Why bother writing in a Netflix and YouTube World?
It’s hard to move these days without running into yet another documentary on veganism. The latest Netflix offering, Bad Vegan, actually has almost nothing to say about plant-based eating. The title says something, though: veganism sells movies.
But do movies and other online media sell veganism? And if so, do they sell the right kind of veganism? If there are bad vegans, are also good vegans?
A few years ago, I wrote a whole book on that question. I didn’t realise it at the time, but looking back I was frustrated by a lot of bad arguments against veganism and what I then thought were some bad arguments for it. Veganism was fast becoming a hot topic in the media, especially social media, with influencers popping up all over the place selling plant-based products as yet another consumer choice. Like a growing number of activists, I wanted to write about doing other kinds of veganism: plant-based diets that are more than a lifestyle, that are also engaged in wider social justice struggles: feminism and queer rights, anti-racism, animal liberation and disability, anti-carceral veganism.
I soon realised that by challenging bad arguments against veganism (all vegans are young, skinny, and white; we survive on diets of expensive junk food; we don’t care about the rights of slaughterhouse workers, and on and on) I risked reinforcing stereotypes by dividing the world into “good vegans” (intersectional and anti–capitalist) and “bad vegans” (consumerist and bourgeois). In retrospect, I also see that my perspective was skewed by the fact that I was reading a lot more about veganism than I was watching or clicking on – probably a reflection of the fact that I grew up in an era when there were 3 terrestrial TV channels and vegetarians ate fish.
It’s true that if we writers compare our audiences to influencers, with their 6 digits worth of followers, or the zillions of likes for that latest vegan burrito recipe, pumping out pages about veganism and social justice for a much small readership does feel, well, a bit demoralising. In response, it would be easy to stand firm on the moral high ground, looking down smuggly on the bizarre world of white jungle-dwelling fruitarians and endless vegan versions of the keto diet.
But the view from sea level is a bit more blurred. And more encouraging.
Last month, while scrolling through Twitter (the platform writers tend to hang out on, though how long that will last after Elon Musk’s takeover remains to be seen) I came across a post from Novara Media advertising an interview with vegan YouTube influencer Earthling Ed (aka Ed Winters). Intrigued, I clicked, expecting a bit of a grilling. Novara is a UK-based independent left-wing news outlet with a solid following among London’s left intelligentsia and a younger, Corbynista crowd. Although its remit is “addressing the issues that are set to define the 21st century, from a crisis of capitalism to racism and climate change”, I hardly associate Novara with animal rights.
The interviewer, editor Aaron Bastani – who, like Winters, probably falls somewhere in the millennial age range – states early on that he’s not vegan. But things go quickly uphill from there. Winters has earned his reputation as a public speaker and debater – he boasts that he’s spoken at more than a third of universities in the UK and his Youtube channel (426,000 followers at the time of writing) features lots of heated discussions he’s had with people from different walks of life. For an hour and a half these two young men have an inspiring discussion about an impressive range of issues, from the environment and the exploitation of farm workers to the problems with mainstream animal welfare organisations and the masculinity of meat-eating. By the end of the interview, I was not only converted to the value of vegan influencers; I almost allowed myself to believe that we can crack one of the hardest nuts in the animal rights struggle: convincing more people on the left to take animal rights seriously.
There were some oversights (for example, no mention of the problem of upholding an unjust prison system by arresting people suspected of cruelty towards animals). And Ed should have acknowledged his sources better (his take on American meat advertising and sexism was lifted directly from Carol J Adams). But it was clear he knows his stuff, and I suspect more than a few of his arguments have come from reading writing on veganism and social justice. He’s even written a book of his own: This is Vegan Propaganda (And Other Lies the Meat Industry Tells You), an impressive collection of evidence of the multiple injustices of industrial animal agriculture, the political and economic power wielded by the multi-billion-pound multinational meat industry, and practical chapters on how to go vegan and convince others to do so. There’s something for everyone. My main takeaway: we should think of honey bees less like the wild pollinating bees they compete with and who are crucial to ecosystems, and more like the genetically modified cows and pigs who are exploited on factory farms. No more “I’m flexible on honey” for this vegan.
But the most important thing I got from the Novara interview was hope. It was obvious that Bastani is concerned as a progressive journalist about the relationship between animal rights, workers’ rights, climate change and capitalism. Moreover, the online comments on the interview (with almost 20,000 views on YouTube at the time of watching) suggest more than a small crossover between Novara’s anti-capitalist audience and Ed’s vegan followers.
The failure to take on the animal industrial complex – with its exploitation of some of the most marginalised workers as well as its inherent violence to other animals and its major contribution to the current environmental catastrophe – is one of the main weaknesses of the left in the UK and internationally today. Watching the interview between Earthling Ed and Aaron Bastani not only made me optimistic that more people on the left – especially younger activists – are waking up to this problem and preparing to do something about it. It also convinced me that when it comes to vegan activism there is not only a place but a need for all kinds of media: from YouTube videos and Instagram recipes to Netflix documentaries and Twitter posts – and even a few books.