It’s Time Vegans Stopped Playing Alone in the Corner
We only have 30 years to make a difference... If we're lucky
When you read my Substack articles, you’re getting a window into my evolving thoughts—some freshly formed, others rooted in years of experience. I don’t claim to have all the answers (even if it seems that way at times), and I invite you to engage with my ideas as just that: thoughts worth considering.
I spent the first 4-5 years of my life as a vegan activist on the more "logical" side of activism. You could say I was direct, without compromise, and focusing on abolition. I focused on the inconsistencies that most of the public hold. How they see certain animals as worth protecting, and other animals as nothing more than resources to do with as they please.
This is how the vast majority of people operate throughout their daily lives, and we, the vegans, seem to be the only ones who are fully aware of it.
Early in my activism journey, I decided the best plan of action would be to go in hard and hold people accountable for supporting violence to animals. And I did this by confronting people directly, and without compromise.
This was up until the last 1-2 years or so, when I started to feel I was screaming into the void. I started to realise that my approach wasn’t getting the results I had hoped for. In fact, what I was mostly seeing was the opposite - I was mostly seeing harsh resistance to what I was doing and saying.
I would soothe myself with stories of “well I mean, we know most people who leave comments are negative, that’s just the nature of humans online. There’ll be tonnes of people who don’t say a word but are listening intently and taking what I’m saying on board”. I even gave this advice to other activists. And don’t get me wrong, I think there is some truth to it, but is that really a get out of jail card for receiving masses of aggressively negative responses?
Outreach with a heart
It was around this time that I discovered another activist making waves in the street outreach space with his videos. He was receiving incredibly positive and powerful responses from the public, while also having a number of viral videos. “Who the hell is this white haired Irish guy?” I asked myself. I started observing his strategy to find out what was working.
His name is Clif Grant, and Clif sent me down a new path of questioning not only my own activism, but the activism of those around me who I’d been looking to for inspiration and ideas for years.
Clif’s special power, I guess you could call it, is that he diffuses conflict by simply appealing to the better nature of people. He speaks calmly and with compassion, while explaining all the important points about veganism.
Here are the 3 questions he uses to get people thinking:
What do you think of animals?
What do you think of people who abuse animals?
What about the animals in farms and slaughterhouses?
This trio of questions along with a calm, understanding demeanour leaves people not only mostly remaining calm, but agreeing with Clif. On many occasions they even thank him for opening their minds.
And it got me thinking - have I been acting in ways that have been holding my activism back? Have I fallen into what could be called “the vegan bubble”? Looking over many of my videos with a critical eye, I realised that a good amount of them were designed for a vegan chamber. They were videos that vegans could get excited by, agree with, and share, but that most non vegans would be overwhelmed by, not fully understand, and feel excluded by.
If that is the case, which I think it is for me and possibly others, I think we have to do something about it. I think it’s time we stopped sitting in the corner playing by ourselves. It’s time we learn how to play with others, so we can create real change for animals.
So I added a new goal to my activism - gain more knowledge on human behaviour change. And to do that, I needed to step out of my comfort zone. I needed to go to places I hadn’t considered going to before.
Expanding the perspective
I first attended the International Animal Rights Conference in Luxembourg, and then the Animal and Vegan Advocacy Conference in Washington DC. I rubbed shoulders with activists from all around the world in all different areas and fields. I met people working within government, food technology, photographers, filmmakers, investigators, sanctuary owners.
I took in many perspectives and got invaluable information about the state of the vegan movement and all its parts. But probably most notably for this blog, I came into contact with Tobias Leenaert. I had already heard a lot about this man, but it hadn’t been good. I’d been told that he’s an apologist, welfarist, anti-animal terrible human being (yes, that’s what I’d heard from other vegans). So when I sat down to listen to his presentation, that’s what I expected. What I got couldn’t have been more the opposite.
Tobias gave a rousing speech, discussing his 20 + years working to create a better world for animals. He spoke about the frustration he feels with trying to be effective. He explained how the effective ways to create change aren’t always the ways that are most satisfying to us as activists, and how we have to make compromises. Compromises we don’t feel comfortable with, that we feel guilty about, but that have a long-term impact, and create change.
This aligned with what I’d been thinking. There has to be a better way to create change that doesn’t involve slamming your head into a brick wall and hoping some pieces fall off (figuratively), right?
I had a few light conversations with Tobias after his speech, and promised to read his controversial book that had earned him the titles of apologist, welfarist and anti-animal person, “How To Create A Vegan World: A Pragmatic Approach”. I have now read the book, and again, I can say it’s the opposite of what I expected based on what people had said about it.
There was one point of contention, where Tobias suggests to expand the meaning of the term vegan to include people who occasionally consume animal products. I don’t agree with that. Aside from that, this was an eye opening read and I found it truly transformative. People eat meat because they eat meat. Their beliefs about why they eat meat come after they’re asked, but ultimately their behaviour drives their beliefs, and not the other way around. This was a key learning and helped me understand the importance of behaviour change in creating a better world for animals.
My main takeaway from the book is that we as vegans have created a highly exclusive group, and most of our activism serves this highly exclusive group. But at the same time, our goal is for everyone to join this highly exclusive group. You can surely see the issue here. But how do we change that without changing the definition of veganism to include non vegans? I think I have an idea.
What I’m realising after reading and digesting this book as well as after all my experience in this movement since 2017, is that we can and should be vegan. We should keep all our vegan values intact. However, I’m not convinced we should be discussing all of these values with everyone all of the time. And I’m not convinced we should be pushing people to adopt all of our values all of the time. Let me explain by first giving an account of a different movement, one that vegans often reference when arguing with other vegans about strategy: The abolitionist movement of the trans Atlantic slave trade.
Controversial comparisons
When some vegans are arguing with other vegans about the best ways to advocate, they will state that to be taken seriously, we must advocate for abolition and nothing less, just like the abolitionists did. They will also use this line of reasoning to argue against any welfare related activism, stating that the abolitionists never fought for bigger boats, for example. They fought for abolition! I have made these points myself, so I know them very well.
But after further reading and research on this, I realised that after years of saying these things myself, I was wrong. The abolitionists did use welfarist strategy to end the slave trade. Abolitionists in the UK realised that abolition was not going to be possible, at least not right away. Economically and socially, slavery was seen as an essential part of life for the British Empire.
So they decided to be pragmatic, compromise, and pivot. They turned their attention to the slave trade. At this time, the British Empire was trading slaves mostly with France and the USA. The abolitionists thought that if they could use patriotism and nationalist sentiment in Britain, they could succeed in getting the trading of slaves outside of the Empire banned. But a huge point of contention for them was that this would mean they would be abandoning the millions of slaves already enslaved in the Empire. This strategy would not help them at all, and at worst, it might be seen as supportive of their captivity.
After much debate, they went ahead this strategy. From the outside, it looked like they were abandoning and even betraying the slaves by only trying to ban the slave trade, which weighed heavily on them. In the end, they succeeded in banning the trade. Trading was still ongoing within the Empire, but no new slaves were bought. There were still new slaves, but they were born, which significantly reduced the amount of slaves that could be “obtained”.
What was the result of this strategic move? The banning of the trade, which remember was achieved by patriotic and nationalist motivation and not by morals, led to the degradation and economic failure of the slavery business within the British Empire. Thirty years later, thanks in part to this strategic move by the abolitionists, attitudes had changed. Slavery was no longer seen as essential, and the UK abolitionists were able to get slavery abolished.
If the slavery abolitionists had to compromise in their activism to save humans, we are going to have to compromise in our activism to save non human animals. I worry we may have jumped the gun with our ‘no compromise abolitionist messaging’. Before we can consider that being an effective way to advocate, surely the conditions for animals need to be the same or at least similar to the conditions required for that messaging to work for humans? Economically and socially, surely society needs to view animals with at least the same level of consideration as those human slaves? Could it be that we’re many years too early?
Currently, animals remain at a level of consideration far, far lower than humans and especially human slaves ever were. And it’s obvious to see why. Even though slaves were treated terribly, even though people tried to claim they weren’t human; they looked like humans, ate like humans, slept like humans, and in every way behaved like humans. Because of course, they were human. Even the most evil slave master had to have realised on some level that his slaves were in fact human. That alone would have made the mission to abolish slavery significantly more achievable than the challenge we face to abolish animal exploitation.
Just like the abolitionists had to navigate complex social and economic realities to achieve long-term change, I believe we need to recognise that for animal rights, the path might not be as straightforward as 'no compromise' activism.
With this being the case, I worry that our passion for moral consistency and our demand for immediate abolition is blindly optimistic at best, and counter productive at worst. I’m not saying that we need to compromise on abolition, or that we compromise on our goal of a world without animal exploitation. I’m saying we need to compromise on how people view us. I think we need to entertain the idea of allowing people to view us as allies. As people who work alongside them, and not as their sworn enemies hellbent on destroying the industries they see as essential, and enjoy.
This would also include allowing some vegans to see us as “apologist”, “welfarist”, “letting the animals down”, and all the other insults that come your way when you aren’t overtly demanding abolition. This is a compromise I feel we may have to make if we want to start seeing behaviour change on the scale that animals need.
A controversial debate
You may be asking how this looks practically. So far we’ve only really outlined this idea in theory. I can give you an example of a debate I recently had with an animal farmer who buys chickens, pigs, rabbits, and I believe geese, keeps them on his farm for a while, and then kills them to feed his family. He’s not involved in the industry so to speak, he says he does this because he disagrees with the farming industries. Both animal and plant. He wanted to take control over his family’s food supply.
My interaction with this farmer began when he made a video mocking vegans. I responded to his video, and he responded in kind by continuing with a derogatory and mocking attitude towards vegans. I decided not to give too much of a reaction to his inflammatory anti vegan comments in our debate. Instead, I focused on analysing his points and looking for agreement. My main intention for the debate was to build bridges, and find common ground.
Now of course, I don’t agree with this farmer when it comes to what he does to animals. In our debate, I encouraged him to seek non-animal alternatives to feed his family, even if it meant outsourcing his foods. The farmer himself admitted that he cries when he kills animals, as he cares for them and grows attached. So sourcing his nutrition without putting animals, himself and his family through this violence is a good choice.
But with all that being said, the bulk of our discussion wasn’t actually about him and his farm. The majority of our discussion was discussing his opposition to factory farming. It became more of an interview, with the farmer explaining why he felt factory farming was terrible. He explained how animals have complex emotions, feel pain, and don’t deserve to be r*ped (his words), abused, torn apart, and to be forced to live in their own feces and urine.
He acknowledged that factory farming is where the vast majority of people source their animal products, and that if people can’t avoid supporting those industries, they should eat plant based. He had some concerns over what a world where everyone ate only plants would look like, but we agreed it would be a significantly better situation than the one we’re in now. A world of factory farmed plants would be better than a world of factory farmed animals.
How did I get these powerful statements from an animal farmer? I focused on behaviour change, instead of focusing on abolition. Of course I believe going vegan is the right thing to do, and ridding the world of animal exploitation is the right thing to do. But if I spent 2 hours focused on “holding this farmer accountable”, would I have gotten anything other than vegan debate porn?
Instead I got a farmer saying that he disagrees with how 90% of animal farming is done, and saying he believes the majority of the population should eat plant based. Could that not influence more behaviour change that benefits animals? I think so.
I shared a clip of this exchange where the farmer explicitly states that people living in cities should be eating plant based. And, as expected, there were vegans accusing me of welfarism, and suggesting I’m not taking this movement seriously. This is the compromise I spoke of earlier. We need to stop sitting alone in the corner playing by ourselves. We need to start getting messages out there that inspire everyone else.
Unfortunately, it seems losing the support of some vegans is inevitable if you choose to go down this route, but I’d like to believe most of you aren’t trying to change the world for vegans, you’re trying to change it for animals.
We don’t have long
I’m not saying I’ve stumbled on the holy grail of activism that is guaranteed to change the world, but I do feel like I’ve been fighting for animals with one arm tied behind my back for the last 6 years or so. Don’t get me wrong, my work has helped animals. I’ve directly rescued many of them with my own two hands. And the love and support from vegans has been overwhelming, allowing me to take actions for animals I never would have been able to without that support.
But the response from the people I’m trying to convince? That has been overwhelmingly negative. I’d say around 9 out of 10 people are at best resistant, and at worst, aggressively opposed to my “no compromise” activism. I’m beginning to doubt that we’re going to achieve animal liberation by repeatedly smashing our heads into a brick wall and celebrating when little pieces fall down. This analogy is a good to way describe how my previous activism has been feeling.
We have an incredibly short time alive on this planet. Probably about 75 years of highly conscious life. If you’re working a full-time job from a young age, you’re losing approximately (according to ChatGPT, I’m bad at math) 17 years of your life to a job (with 2 weeks of holiday), and 25 years to sleep (assuming you sleep 8 hours a night). You’re losing about 3 years to cooking and eating, assuming you spend only 1 hour a day on that.
Assuming you spend every living minute aside from those tasks on fighting for animal liberation, you have just 30 years to make a difference. It took the UK slavery abolitionists 30 years to go from getting the ban on the slave trade to getting the abolition of slavery in the British Empire. I hope you’re starting to see my concern.
The other day I asked myself this question: When I’m on my death bed, do I want to look back and say “I’m happy that I spent the last 30 years using zero compromise messaging, and with full logical consistency. Despite how much they hated me, and how little I achieved, I was in the right”. Or, do I want to look back and say “I’m happy that I was able to influence millions of people to change their behaviour and nudge the needle to a more animal friendly world through encouragement. I’m proud that I built the foundations for the abolitionists of the future to pile on that pressure when the time is right”.
I came to the conclusion that feeling good about myself and my staunch morality is not the way I want to go out. I want to go out knowing that I actually made a dent for animals before I checked out. Knowing that I laid strong foundations for others to pick up and finish the job.
This isn’t welfarism, this is strategic abolitionism.
I will close on what I think is an important but very overlooked reality of human history. History rarely remembers or celebrates the incredible people who played the long-game to achieve massive change for the oppressed. Who do you think of when you think of social justice heroes? I’m betting it’s the figureheads, the leaders, the ones who stood strong without compromise. History favours the loud, powerful voices who arrived much later. Those who stood tall on the foundations built by many “nobodies” who’s names you’ll never hear outside of a textbook or maybe the occasional daytime TV documentary if they’re lucky.
I think many of us, inspired by the stories of these incredibly people, are trying to be the trailblazers in a situation where we still need to build the foundations. Are we willing to play the long game, laying the necessary foundations for future abolitionists to finish the work? Or will we continue pushing for immediate change, even when it might not be achievable in the current climate? For me, the answer is clear: we need a strategic, long-term approach that makes real, lasting change possible.
Q&A
Aren’t you just watering down the message to make non-vegans more comfortable?
I understand why someone would see it this way, hell I would’ve seen it this way a few years ago. But I don’t anymore. I see this change in tactic as a way to influence the way people behave, in order to influence what they believe.
Instead of asking people what changes they could make to help animals, and allowing them to start altering their behaviour, my old style of activism applied an “all or nothing” ultimatum. I would demand they change right now, or they were bad people. But I now know that all or nothing thinking can lead people to making no changes whatsoever, or making short-term changes before completely reverting back to their past ways (as we see with ex-vegans).
I believed this was the morally right way to advocate, as it’s what animals would want. But the reality is that animals would want us to do what works, not only what is morally right. I want people to become vegan, but I’m no longer convinced that framing it as an all or nothing decision someone needs to make immediately is the best way to create long-term behaviour change, and this is what animals really need.
Those previous conversations were good for starting discussions online. But I believe I can find a balance between creating behaviour change and sparking discussion/debate. My latest outreach videos implemented this new strategy. Both resulted in the people I was talking to committing to making changes, and both outperformed many of my older outreach videos in terms of views and reach. There were less comments though, so I’ll need to keep refining to find a balance.
If we’re too focused on playing nice, aren’t we just delaying animal liberation by appeasing those who contribute to exploitation?
I don’t believe so. I am more convinced that we could be delaying animal liberation with our attempts to “other” people who don’t agree with us. We end up turning the majority of the population into our enemies, and unfortunately I doubt that’s going to bring about animal liberation any time soon.
How can we expect people to take veganism seriously if we're willing to compromise on the abolitionist message?
This is an important question. I don’t believe we need to compromise on abolition, we only need to compromise on our public perception. For example, someone working for the European Parliament in a department focused on animal welfare could be an abolitionist vegan, but revealing that would lose them their position and their ability to influence. For the sake of progressing animal rights, it’s important that this person is strategic. I believe we can have success by applying the same strategies in our work with the public. As long as our actions help animals, and help to create a better world for them, I don’t believe whether people take veganism seriously or not needs to be an issue.
Isn’t using welfare strategies essentially endorsing the same incrementalism that we criticise in other movements?
Welfare strategy for the sake of welfare as an end goal deserves criticism. We don’t want our work to end at making life more comfortable for animals, we want every action to be part of a larger movement that leads to massive change in the roles animals play in our society. We want an end to the systems that hurt them.
Any strategy that brings us closer to that goal should be considered, regardless of whether we perceive them as welfarist. I believe welfare strategy as a tactic used with abolition in mind can be a powerful way to bring about change.
How do you justify aligning with figures like Tobias Leenaert, whom many see as undermining the core principles of veganism?
Something I believe we can improve on as a movement is our willingness to listen to those we dislike or disagree with. We’re human, so unfortunately we fall victim to believing rumours and hearsay, and we make unfounded judgments of others. We also form tribes or clans, and although that helps us bond, it sometimes involves the unfair demonisation of others within our movement.
In the case of Tobias Leenaert, I admit that initially I believed the rumours, and cast judgment without even listening to what he had to say. This was a mistake, most of the time this kind of behaviour is. I don’t think Tobias is right about everything he says, I disagree with him on some substantial points. But our movement needs people who disagree. We need to expose ourselves to ideas we don’t like, because this is how we innovate. This is how we become a stronger, more united movement.
Casting someone out because of a disagreement in strategy only hurts the ones we are trying to help - the animals. Diversity of thought is essential to keeping our movement sharp, and reaching new audiences.
When you read my Substack articles, you’re getting a window into my evolving thoughts—some freshly formed, others rooted in years of experience. I don’t claim to have all the answers (even if it seems that way at times), and I invite you to engage with my ideas as just that: thoughts worth considering.