Welcome to The Vegan Report.
My name is Ryan and have you ever been disappointed by our political class thinking that our dearly
held values of compassion as vegans were simply not represented?
Feeling politically homeless?
Well, today let's confront those sentiments.
Let's have an open conversation on the left, the right, and the place of veganism in that
political theatre.
To discuss this topic, I have with me Joel Matthews.
Joel is a writer and academic preparing to publish a book called Human Supremacy, which
is a fascinating reflection on the role of religion and Western culture in our exploitation
of animals.
He has thought deeply about society and often shares his insights on social media.
Visit the link in the description below to connect with him.
Thank you Joel Matthews for being here.
Welcome to the show.
I was truly looking forward to this conversation.
I'm curious to know how you identify on the political spectrum and in preparation for
this interview, I decided to take the political compass test.
I think it's an online test everyone can take and it's very interesting because they show
you where you are on the political spectrum in terms of the left and the right.
And then they also have another indicator which is the authoritative left or right and
then the liberal or libertarian left and right.
And when I did the test, I was pretty surprised with the results because I was shown to be
more on the left and more on the libertarian left, but not that far from the center.
So I was wondering, where do you locate yourself on the political spectrum, landscape, all
of that?
This is a really good question.
I've always described myself as someone who is politically on the left and very liberal.
And writing this book and talking about and thinking about the treatment of animals and
others in general, it kind of reaffirms my commitment to others and helping and supporting
others.
And on the basis that I don't live and no one lives in a vacuum, we're all fundamentally
connected, interrelated, and the product of others and other systems and fortunate enough
to have opportunities based on existing systems and society.
And so I don't exist in a vacuum.
The opportunities that I've been given in education are the product of my parents, their
socioeconomic background, society's treatment of them and how it's affected me.
And so I have a very close relationship with society and contributing to society.
And so in that sense, I would describe myself as someone who's on the left.
To be honest, I don't know how this would feed into liberalism.
I understand that libertarianism is much more prominent in North America.
It's not really not often discussed or it's not discussed in the UK.
It doesn't feature in our political discourse.
I think maybe because of the geography of the UK, we are literally, physically always
close to government, close to London.
I was in the United States.
I have got friends who I visited several years ago in Kansas and they are physically, geographically
very, very far away from Washington, DC.
And I think that that does have an ideological or psychological impact on individuals' relationship
with government.
But in the UK, we're always close to London.
You can't get that far away.
And so the political discourse is either left or right.
And so to answer your question, I would say on the left.
That's a good point you're bringing because, yes, my audience is pretty much international.
I would say I have more American listeners than anything else.
And it's weird how left and right are adapted to those different cultures.
So for instance, when I think about conservatives, Canadian conservatives, they're nothing like
American conservatives.
Like in Canada, for instance, the debate on abortion, that has been closed for a few years
now, actually maybe a decade or more.
But it is still an open debate in the US and you still have conservatives in the US who
oppose it, who oppose the pro-choice argument.
And same thing with gay marriage in Canada has been legal since, I think, 2005.
So it's weird how there are those different definitions of the left and right.
It's not truly universal, which makes me a bit not suspicious, but distrustful a bit
of that political compass.
I don't know if they take into account the country or your culture, but it's truly not.
I don't feel it's a universal, there's a universality to this left and right paradigm.
When you bring up the United States, the United States is the introduction of the kind of
conflation between the political realm and the religious theological realm.
Maybe I would suggest that the political left and right is us human beings as citizens and
our relationship to society and government.
I do have an explanation for the United States and their relationship with things like abortion.
I think that stems from the United States origin of the movement of the Puritans having
an extremely potent religious views.
On paper, of course, 200 years later, there were secular founding fathers who wrote in
the Constitution separating church from state.
But I have a very good metaphor for the strange situation in the United States, because of
course on paper, it is secular, and yet in reality, it is very religious.
The metaphor I have is that when cars were introduced into the UK, legally it was written
into our law that to flash our headlights in a car in the UK, that meant I'm here and
I'm going to move forward, and be careful because I'm about to move forward.
However, when cars were introduced, drivers decided, and still to this day this is how
we operate, when we flash our lights, it does not mean watch out, I'm about to move forward.
It's the opposite.
It means you go first.
In other words, the public have collectively rejected what's in the law, and we've just
changed it.
I think that's what's happened in the United States.
Written in the Constitution, there is a separation of church and state.
Let's go down to the Carolinas, and I don't think there will be many people who will acknowledge
that.
The potency of the church, still in the 21st century, is the main reason that is offered,
and your explanation for that is because unlike the UK, in which the church is written into
our constitution and governance, in America it has been separated, and so in a sense religion
is fighting for its life, whereas in the UK we don't have to.
In the UK we are surrounded by churches, it's a fundamental part of our culture, we have
religious kings and queens.
If you're religious in the UK, in England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales, there's no problem.
We've got religion forever in a sense, whereas in America there's this constant threat that
it's going to disappear, it has to continually advertise itself.
And so that produces the kind of paradoxical situation in which you've got a secular America
which is more religious than a religious England.
That's fascinating, that is truly fascinating.
I love your analysis of the situation.
Let me go back to my first question.
So you identify as being on the left, which is pretty typical in the vegan community.
And I want to ask you, why is it the case?
Why are most vegans on the left?
Because they have an underlying acknowledgement of the interconnection of all others that
can suffer in the world.
And that awareness and connection is one of compassion.
I would suggest, and I know this may be very contentious and controversial, but the political
right to be conservative, an English conservative, that political view is fundamentally uncivilised.
As I said, no one exists in a vacuum, whether you're a billionaire or a well-heeled right-wing
politician, you are the product of some very fortunate conditions, circumstances that has
allowed you to occupy the space that you're in.
And yeah, I think that's my explanation.
I think the contentious view that I have is that the political right is fundamentally
uncivilised.
But wait, the word uncivilised, I usually hear it from right-wing pundits.
They're the ones using most this word, civilised, or the civilised world.
So how can you associate this word, and actually its opposite, uncivilised, with those same
right-wing people?
Because it's just simply not true.
I can't state that heavily enough.
It's not true because it's inaccurate.
To be civilised is to cooperate productively with each other, whether it's a small community,
whether it's a tribal community in sub-Saharan Western Africa or in Western secular societies,
just cooperating and acknowledging that we're all interconnected.
And of course, right-wing pundits in North America, they would like to categorise left-wing
movements as being uncivilised.
But when you just have to just a cursory look at these movements, show us to be the opposite.
Let me phrase that, or give another perspective to this question of why do most vegans identify
on being on the left, or at least being liberal, not being conservative.
Why aren't more conservatives adopting the vegan philosophy?
What are the obstacles, mind obstacles that stop them from considering seriously the vegan
argument?
Yeah, that's a very good question.
I think it would go back to their relationship with society and others.
In a political perspective, we're of course talking about human beings.
Obviously the vegan conversation is broader than that.
But I would say that this demonstrates the depth or awareness or the intellectual depth
of the vegan conversation because it acknowledges the very latest insight and understanding
of the natural world, which is that human beings are part of all life on Earth.
We have all emerged and evolved on this planet together.
The human race, human beings, we're not aliens.
We haven't appeared.
We've all emerged together.
So human beings are animals.
The very notion of species is fluid.
And vegans, I don't know whether you'd call more sort of intellectual vegan people, we
know this, we're very aware of this.
Whereas people on the right, forgetting all non-human animals, people on the political
right, they almost by definition in the UK at the very least, don't care about all other
human beings and society to begin with.
To this day, the political discussion is anchored to particular ideologues, most notably Margaret
Thatcher in the 1970s, who famously said that there's no such thing as society.
So there you have it.
There it is almost in black and white in a sense.
There is just a fundamental rejection of the very notion of society, which is a, you know,
you can have that view.
But let's see if you still have that view, if you have a broken leg or a pregnant partner
and you're in urgent need of health care or the police, at some point you will be relying
upon community, friends, family, social services.
And yeah, and I think in the largest possible scale, these particular ideologies aren't
sustainable, this selfish, uncivilized approach and attitude towards the world is unsustainable
and will contribute to the end of the species, but that's only the biggest possible scale.
You recognized how religion was a big chunk of the identity of the typical conservative
person.
And I wonder if religion is playing a role here in stopping people from considering again
the vegan argument.
And there's a piece of news that I absolutely I'm obsessed with it.
This is from the US.
So in 2023, there's the I think they're called the Temple of Satan, something like that.
They decided to expose to put a behemoth statue inside the Iowa State Capitol.
A satanic temple has set up a display inside the Iowa State House.
It's the holiday season and even secular government buildings display decorations for holidays
that are rooted in religion like Christmas trees and menorahs for 14 days.
The satanic temple has erected a display alongside these major religious symbols inside the rotunda
of the Iowa State Capitol.
Lucien Greaves, co-founder of the satanic temple, spoke to KCCI.
We're going to really relish the opportunity to be represented in a public forum.
We don't have a church on every street corner.
Though the temple went through the correct administrative channels to present in the
rotunda, the display is getting pushback.
One, I hope people realize spiritual warfare is real, that there are evil satanic forces
that are trying to infiltrate our state.
And for those of you who don't know, you know, that is like the head, like a satanic head,
you know, it's a clear symbol of satanism and, you know, clear anti-Christianism.
Anti-Christian sentiment.
And of course they did that in the name of freedom of speech.
So you are allowed to be explicitly religious in our, you know, political spaces.
So we're doing the same.
And you should not be offended by our religion, you know, as we are also tolerant of yours.
So that was the exercise, an exercise in free speech.
But I read the situation like, you know, I found it so fascinating that so many, you
know, Christian Americans and conservatives, you know, Republicans were deeply offended
by that Bahamian statute.
That if you present them with an Iowa, you know, slaughterhouse footage and you show
them the evil of what is being done to cows, pigs and the rest, they still eat their bacon
and they'll still, you know, sleep well at night.
Yet the statute itself, the symbol, that's what's offensive.
That's what's, you know, evil, not what's happening in the slaughterhouses.
So what is the role played by religion in all of this?
So I would begin with how human beings or any individual engages with the world.
And after 2,000 or 3,000 years of human philosophy, there are two clear schools of thought.
There are two ways, two ways, possible ways in which human beings engage with the world.
The first is through the senses in a naturalistic, physicalistic way, direct, quote unquote,
direct engagement with the world, and it's through the senses that we acquire information,
data, and we put that together and interpret the world.
The other is through thinking or the rational self, but thinking, contemplating alone, and
we can build up a picture of the world through our thoughts and ideas.
I stated in my book, and I have often stated that I don't know, I don't know which is the
best method, but I have a lot of evidence which I would suggest it is the, a natural,
honest, empirical engagement with the world that presents us with the best chance of survival
in the world and the most ethical engagement with it and others that can suffer.
And so the problem and the challenge that religion has is that by definition it is fundamentally
rooted in revelation and individual, individual's ideas about the world.
So when we talk about North American Christians, the origin of North American Christianity
is with Abraham, and Abraham was walking in the desert and he has been recorded as stating
that he had some kind of engagement with God that presented him with a particular covenant
protecting his immediate family and grouping.
And so immediately we have exclusivity, we have moral exclusivity.
He's only interested in his immediate family or close grouping.
And so the problem, the problems stem from there.
I propose that we engage with the world with what I describe as a natural attitude, a naturalistic
way, an honest, ideally unbiased engagement with others that are suffering.
And so we're now in the 21st century and we see Christians in Iowa who cannot, their compassion
for non-human animals has been catastrophically damaged.
Their ability to engage with these animals has been entirely distorted by these particular
religious ideas of humanity, the human species being fundamentally unique with this special
wall surrounding it.
And as I said, I don't have the fundamental answers, but I am suggesting that as a catastrophic
moral oversight to have these particular ideas and allow all these animals to be killed entirely
unnecessarily.
And so on balance, it's a religious approach to the world is, has fundamental flaws and
far greater than a naturalistic approach.
I can crystallize this in quite simply.
Since the scientific revolution, we now know that the earth, our planet, disregarding the
climate crisis, that the earth has a limited lifetime because of the lifetime of our sun.
We know that because of science, in other words, a naturalistic engagement with the
world.
If it wasn't for that naturalistic engagement and the insights that we've gleaned about
the world, we would still have people of religious faith or more broadly an idealistic approach
to the world, which is this thought-orientated engagement with the world, contemplating and
discussing things, and the earth would die, including all these religious people of faith.
It is the scientific naturalistic engagement, which at the very least is now shows us the
finitude of planet earth.
And already in the 1960s has demonstrated that we have the ability to leave this planet.
And so on that basis, I rest my case.
We're talking about Christianity here, but would you feel comfortable putting that same
analysis applying it to other Abrahamic religions like Judaism and Islam?
Absolutely.
They are fundamentally morally exclusive, and I would respectfully say that they are
on that basis, they are morally reprehensible.
As someone who is interested and has a commitment to the alleviation or ideally the abolition
of suffering in the world.
You either, so I ask people of faith, whether they're a Muslim, a Jew or Christian, are
you interested in the suffering of others and the alleviation of that?
You either are or you're not.
And I suggest that whether it's Christians, Muslims or Jews, they are not engaging and
receptive to the experience of the gay community, the trans community, or indeed women.
If you listen carefully, you'll hear the experiences of people who are excluded and depressed and
their civil rights have been withdrawn.
I have, I'm not interested in their particular ideas about the world.
What I am interested in is the suffering of others and others, of course, includes anyone
that can suffer and that includes non-human animals.
Having said all of that, you know, having truly shed light on the problem with the right,
I still accept the fact that there are strong arguments out there for adopting a vegan diet
and lifestyle that could be presented to a right-wing person.
For instance, the place of government, the power of the government and how limiting that
is a vegan argument because we don't want the government to give subsidies to private
companies.
That should be a right-wing thinking, you know?
So do you also accept that there is a strong right-wing argument for veganism?
And I think the best one who represents that is Matthew Scully.
Actually, he wrote an entire article about that.
I should have prepared better and gave the title, but it's something like the right-wing
for veganism, something like that.
He published that a few years ago and he goes in depth in details on what would be convincing
for a conservative person.
So do you accept that there is a good argument to be made and directed to right-wing people?
Yes.
I'm probably not the best person to...
Or maybe I am, I'd have to practice, but I would have to privately translate my ethical
language to cater to what I would consider an uncivilized right-wing political outlook.
And I think you're absolutely right.
Even the ethics aside, we now know that the main contributor to the climate crisis is
animal agriculture.
And if there is one thing that defines the political right, it's arguably conservation
tradition.
And I would say the underlying sort of existential motivations for that, which are expressed
in these political adjectives, are the maintenance of an individual's family and legacy and power.
And so, of course, if we have a climate crisis and we have no climate, these right-wing family
legacies cannot exist.
And so I would suggest that you're absolutely right.
Maybe vegans have to translate or kind of reduce down the scope, the ethical scope,
maybe even taking ethics out of the equation and showing them that the right-wing people
will not be able to maintain their family legacy and power in society if the climate
is under experiencing a crisis.
And so we should encourage them to eat.
I personally would say, kill no and harm no animals.
But maybe if we're trying to communicate to people on the right, we should be taking a
more, a welfarist position.
But it's extraordinary that, I mean, I've actually said that because I'm passionately
an abolitionist.
But the reason why I suppose I now found myself talking about a welfarist position is because
I'm aware that I'm engaging people who, from the outset, say that they don't care about
society and that's human society.
But, I mean, reflecting on what I'm saying in the moment, I do have faith in humanity
and I, with my book and my approach to people and the world, I have great hope and I personally
am aiming and targeting young people who are not being, having, being entrenched in these
particular exclusive ideologies.
And so, yeah, if we can, if we can focus on young politically right orientated people,
maybe we can, maybe we can talk to them about ethics and compassion, but maybe the older
generation, we have to talk about climates and a welfarist scope, if that makes sense.
It does.
And I am of the opinion that our priority should be animals, non-human animals, their
well-being.
So, although it might make some of us uncomfortable with adopting that stance and trying to build
that bridge with people who are not on the same political side as we are, we should be
reminded of that, that animals are the priority here, that we're doing this for them, not
for us.
Yeah, yeah, I completely agree.
Yeah, it's not, it's not, it's not a diet.
It's not, it actually, it isn't about climate, climate in itself.
I have a lot of good friends who are climate activists and I say to them, you know, what,
the first question is which climates are we talking about?
Are you interested in the climate?
When you say climates, are you talking about the climates on the moon?
And of course they're not, they're talking about the climates on Earth.
So I say, well, that's very interesting.
What is it about us and Earth's climate that makes, that warrants us to be so concerned?
And of course, we're back to animals.
So the climate, ironically, just like the Earth's atmosphere is a, the climate protesters,
their main subject is a thin veneer.
You only have to ask two or three questions and we're back to others that have the ability
to suffer.
Exactly.
So there are always, we're in summer here, except for, I think Australia and on the Southern
hemisphere.
But there are, there have been lots of wildfires here in America where I am, I bet in parts
of Europe, in the few forests that you have left.
And the thing is every time there's a wildfire, I look at the news and they're talking about
how it's horrible that it's linked to climate change, that it's putting pressure on all
sorts of communities, that it's, you know, polluting the air and the air quality, but
they never, never, they never talk about the animal, the non-human animal victims who are
being, you know, they're burned alive in those horrifying fires.
And they meet their end in the most horrifying way.
And what, you know, they're not even worth mentioning, not even quickly how many animals
have died in that forest fire.
Yeah.
Is this reporting in, as you said, is this in Australia or in the Southern hemisphere?
Well, I, well, it's general, you know, general, like for instance, right now, as we're talking,
it's August and there are lots of news coming from British Columbia here in Canada and they
have lots of wildfires and no mention, absolutely none about, you know, the animal lives cost
of those natural disasters.
Yeah.
No, it is strange.
I don't, I don't, I don't have an explanation for that.
I mean, I am aware that the climate crisis has a, or the environment in general has a
PR problem in that we can't, it's not tangible.
We can't immediately see it.
I mean, it's on the, on a quite a large scale.
And currently journalists and the media, they're not doing a great job at bringing it closer
to home and connecting it with the reason for, let's say, particular, the movement of
migrants and asylum seekers in and around Europe.
So in the UK, particularly in the past week, we've been witnessing the most horrific scenes
on the streets involving essentially modern racists and right wing fascists, young idiots
doing Nazi salutes who can barely hold a coherent sentence together.
And the, the, the origin of these, these people and their lack of coherent thought is with
the media, I think.
We have with recently up until about maybe 10 years ago, we've had terrible tabloid,
a culture of tabloid journalism.
And it's extremely lazy.
And yeah, they've done that.
I'd say that it's the media in general, which is lacking and has a fundamental part to play.
And most notably, it needs to translate or communicate the science of the climate closer
to home and explain to people that the reason that they hate people from Pakistan is not
because of their skin colour and these terrible, ridiculous, morally reprehensible attributes
that they subscribe to particular skin tones, but it's because of the climate crisis.
It's the climate crisis that has caused people to, to move around.
And yeah, I would suggest that journalists, they have a part to play.
So yeah, going back to these scenes of forest fires, it's a curious situation because I
would have thought that showing particular animals in horrible situations, that is good
to use the modern terminology click baits.
But yeah, no, if they're not using that, then I'm not sure why not, because I'm sure that
would grab headlines.
And it's a great shame that they don't bring that to the public's attention wherever they
are in the world.
Well I looked up the numbers.
Do you remember the Australian wildfires that happened, I think in 2019 or 2020?
I think they were big, like it, and every news outlets was covering that.
Would you want to guess, you know, how many animals lost their lives in those wildfires?
Like if you had a number in mind?
I mean, depending on the types of animals, it would have to be beyond, I mean, it would
have to be close to a million or beyond a million.
Well, I looked it up and according to various, you know, wildlife nonprofits and all of that,
the number is three billions.
Academy fellow Chris Dickman first estimated that half a billion animals had been killed.
But as the fires continued to rage, he now puts that figure at over a billion.
And that number doesn't include frogs, bats, fish or insects.
So a lot of species that have small populations or small geographical distributions, if the
fire affects the entire habitat where they occur, then they're at risk of imminent extinction.
And even if they survive the fires, they still must deal with the loss of habitat and food
and the threat from feral animals such as foxes and cats.
Wow.
Which is, this is astonishing.
This is just the number that just, and again, even as us vegans are not truly aware of the
depth of that disaster.
But yeah, we don't talk about them, the three billion lives lost in those gigantic wildfires.
I think that there's an old saying that an individual person can be highly intelligent,
whereas people en masse are stupid and behave accordingly.
So I think that's absolutely right.
When I see these people voting in right wing fascists into modern 21st century government
buildings, the explanation I have for that is that we have to remember that despite our
modern technology, the ability for us to travel from our home planet to our nearest moon,
and us walking around with essentially computers in our pockets, we are still animals.
We are still saddled with the same evolutionary, biological, basic impulses.
And so on that basis, we can be stupid and dangerous.
And I think that in order for us, if we're interested in surviving as a species, we do
have to think about things more long term.
We have to continually, constantly place the grand scheme, the largest macro scale at the
forefront of our minds, whether it's the conversations about the climate or voting in political leaders.
It's amazing that people are more interested in asylum seekers than the climate.
Other than believing that the earth is flat, it's got to be one of the most stupid beliefs
that you can have in the 21st century.
And so, yeah, we need to be continually reminded of the grand scheme of things.
Yeah, so I just think it would be important to add to that.
Well, given that right-wing people are usually the furthest away from our position and are
playing against the interest of animals the most, given that, and given the fact that
there are plenty of right-wing solid arguments that we could present them, my question, which
always frustrates me and is always in the back of my mind, is why are we not making
those arguments?
Why are we satisfied with staying in this left-wing vegan echo chamber?
Why are we not welcoming right-wing people?
Why are we not putting more efforts where they need to be?
What is this lack of flexibility from our part?
And I have to say, I tried with this podcast, I tried to play with daring ideas, and I invited
two wonderful people who identify as being right-wing to Americans, and the barrage of
just hostility I got from everyday vegans from that initiative, accusing me of the worst,
because what?
We had a conversation with two right-wing people.
Those are your neighbors.
Those are half of your country population, and those are the people you should be making
the vegan arguments to.
And those right-wing people were vegans.
They were.
And why not?
Why not invite them?
Why not put shed light on them and show that it is possible for the next person who identifies
as being conservative?
So can you explain that to me?
Yeah, I would say that the best chance of persuading someone, I should say it around
the other way, young people offer the best chance of considering our views, whether they're
politically, they come from a politically left household, or a politically right conservative
household, because young people, there's debate about whether this is specific to the post-war
side of human history, but young people are innately revolutionary, compassionate, idealistic.
And that is why I, with my book, I'm carefully and cautiously being divisive.
I am not interested.
I have a limited lifetime.
I want to spend that time focusing on the people who present the best chance of listening
to compassionate approach to the world.
And those people are our youth.
There is a lot of hope with our youth, and I don't see it with the older generation.
Of course, these are great, grand sweeping stereotypes.
But I am more focused on our extraordinary, brilliant young people.
And yeah, I'm not interested.
When I do street activism, for example, I'll talk to someone, and I can see that they will
tell me that I'm not making any impact whatsoever, and they walk away.
And it's very frustrating.
And I'll speak to some other members of the group, and they'll say to me, Joel, don't
do that, because if you weren't here, he's now just behaving and carrying on with his
life regardless.
You shouldn't focus on him because he was going to do that, whether I was here or not.
It's the people that I do make an impact with.
And I would suggest that it's with our young people that offer the most hope.
There's evidence to show that young people are the more, as I said, liberal and more
left-wing.
There is an old adage, which is that we are born liberal and die conservative.
There's various reasons for that.
But I think I recognise the potential in young people in taking up moral consideration of
non-human animals.
And I want to make this presentation as exciting and engaging as possible.
Young people stereotypically like to rebel against their parents.
And so I want to incite and encourage a compassionate and rational revolution.
And parents are perfectly entitled to get angry at me and to say that I am being irresponsible
and divisive.
I'm certainly being divisive, but you're more than welcome to join the side of compassion.
And not harm animals.
Yeah.
And so basically, to answer your question, is I would say that the way I see it is that
I'm aiming my conversation towards the people that statistically offer the best chance of
consideration of our viewpoint.
But how would we know since there are no initiatives targeting right-wing people?
You talked about how some arguments don't resonate with people.
Well, if we're not talking their language, if we're not talking about governmental subsidies,
and even there is a pro anti-abortion argument for veganism, I'm sure you're aware of it.
But if we're not talking, if not using this language, then how can we even hope to resonate
with people on the right wing of the political spectrum?
Yeah, that's a good point.
I think, yeah, I'm not sure.
I would suggest that there is evidence.
Did you say that there isn't a great deal of data or initiatives in the first place on
vegan outreach towards right-wing people?
Yeah.
I mean, who is doing the outreach right now?
I know of one group, I think they're called Vegan Conservatives UK.
And I think they're the only one.
I tried to contact them, get them on the show, no answer.
I don't even know if they are active.
I know of a few Facebook groups of conservatives out there, but that is grassroot and mostly
not really, it's not an outreach effort.
It's mostly a way for conservatives to try to find community and support because they
don't find it in the vegan community since vegan community is mostly left-wing.
So where are the initiatives targeting right-wing people?
I think, yeah, it's a really good question.
I don't know.
I haven't actually looked into it.
I would still suggest that, again, to use another philosophical quote, you'll never
jump into the same river twice.
In other words, a river is constantly flowing and changing.
It's not a static entity.
And that is the same for the human race.
And to be perfectly blunt, the older generation or the...
I'm now aware that I'm equating or conflating the political right with the older generation.
But yeah, maybe I should stick to the political right.
I would say going back to the older generation that to be blunt, these people, these ideas
are going to die away, pass away with them.
And those ideas are stereotypically uncompassionate.
And so I would suggest that that's not a bad thing in the interests of the welfare of existing
people in the world.
But no, yeah, so for the people on the right, yeah, I absolutely take your point.
I think the people, the political, the subgroup of humanity that are, that do identify as
being on the right is far more potent in North America.
And it's not something that we have seriously considered in Europe.
And I think you're absolutely right to actually consider and pursue.
And with the aspects of the vegan movement, which is climate change and maintaining our
species, but maybe when it comes to the political right, focusing on maintaining their particular
society and their particular class of people, people who look like them, speak like them,
have the same skin colour.
And yeah, that is a really good, sophisticated ambition, I would say.
Yeah, fortunately, in Europe, we don't quite have that sort of stretch in our political
bandwidth.
The our, certainly English, politically right, my politically right, voting people are not
as far away from the left as they are in the United States.
If that makes sense.
It makes sense, and I agree with you that older people tend to be more conservative.
But that words me because all of those young people who we're targeting and we want them
to become vegan, first of all, they don't have purchasing power.
And then once they grow up, chances are they'll go to become more right wing.
That's what we see in terms of studies that have been done on the topic.
Once you start paying your taxes and look at the role of the government, and I guess
psychologically, you become more and more attracted to the right to conservatism.
So there is a big problem there.
I mean, we should also be present in that stage of their lives.
Yeah, you're absolutely right.
It's not something that I can, I've considered as someone from the UK and Western Europe.
There is a, well, I mean, I think France has just voted in or there is a rise on the right
in France and there certainly is in countries more East like Hungary.
But no, you're absolutely right.
And I think that is an important initiative for the vegan movement to pursue.
Yeah, it's not something that I've particularly considered because of the kind of relatively
smaller bandwidth.
Maybe that's not the right terminology, but the political spectrum, I should say.
And so it isn't as a significant issue here.
But no, these things should be pursued.
And yeah, this is, yeah, I mean, arguably, this is more important than the discussion
in the UK because the North America is larger with a much greater population.
Yeah, it's a really, really good point.
The origin of my book was with my background in philosophy and theology.
It's not so much with politics.
And so yeah, I may have to leave that to someone else to pursue because it's very difficult
for us all to advance the moral consideration of non-human animals in all directions simultaneously.
So we're back.
We had to stop the recording and start again.
This time, I think one day has passed since we stopped.
That's the wonders of podcasting.
You always have some unforeseen circumstances that lead you to do things.
But yeah, that's also the magic of editing.
You don't have to listen to an entire day of silence before getting to this.
OK, so Joel, before we end this conversation, I have two punchy questions for you.
Here's the first one.
We talked about the philosophy of left versus right and how there is this place for veganism
wherever we go on the political spectrum.
That's one thing.
But then when we think about the politicians and the political parties, I see lots of vegans
who again tend to be liberal or on the left find that leftist parties and leftist politicians
are more on their side.
And that is something I haven't seen, maybe on the margins.
But I feel like every political party and every politician, wherever they are on the
political spectrum, are speciesist and are against animal liberation and are alien to
veganism.
And let me give you a quick example from American politics again.
So recently, you know, Kamala Harris has, you know, true, chose a new VP.
I think his name is Tim Walz.
And interesting how Tim Walz, this person considered a radical left by the right, is
a hunter.
He's a weapon carrying hunter.
And in a time honored Minnesota tradition of deer hunting, Governor Tim Walz teamed
up with hunters from across the state, officially launching the gun deer hunting season.
I grew up hunting.
I said I'm a big pheasant hunter was my thing.
But we hunted deer and things growing up.
And picking this up as the governor in this was just incredible.
My host, Jim Vots, had me out in one of the most beautiful piece of property you could
see.
We watched deer for an hour and a half.
Turkeys passed up a shot on a doe waiting for the big deer, the big buck.
But that's the way it goes.
And then they revealed they published the first Tim Walz ad, I think on TikTok.
And what do you see?
I think in the second or third picture frame of the video they released of him promoting
him.
You see him feeding milk to a poor calf in a dairy farm.
Governor Walz visited a dairy farm in Lesour to highlight the state's work on agriculture.
Earlier this year, the governor signed an agriculture bill that provided new support
for the ag industry, includes new investments for dairy farms, grain and livestock producers,
broadband, farm safety and emerging farmers.
Twenty, thirty years ago, the price of milk was still the same.
So that tractor cost a heck of a lot less than it costs today.
Diesel fuel is 80 cents.
Not what it was.
The agriculture and broadband bill provides four million dollars for the Dairy Assistance
Investment Relief Initiative, along with 10 million dollars to establish the state's first
grain indemnity fund.
So there you have it.
That's the typical leftist politician.
That's how sympathetic they are to the vegan cause, in my opinion.
That is a great illustration of it.
And then you have the political activists who love to preach about compassion and inclusivity
and how we should be mindful of the environment.
And then they stuff their mouth with steak and dairy and that hypocrisy is just it angers
me.
It angers me so much.
It's so shocking because at least the right will proudly talk about hunting and all of
that.
But then the left has this opposite discourse versus their actions.
So I'll let you first comment on that because I know you've and I encourage people to visit
your social media.
You post a lot about that hypocrisy.
I mean, I would say that politicians are they just reflect and they themselves are part
of society.
They are human beings, too, despite some of that strange behavior.
And we talk about one of the pioneers of the animal rights movement.
Peter Singer wrote a book entitled The Moral Circle or he would refer to our expanding
moral circle, beginning with the rights of women, people of color, different sexualities.
Sorry about that.
Turn that off.
And yeah, it's now we now see it seriously for the first time, spreading to the moral
consideration of other species.
And I think it will it may just take a few more generations to impact the political class.
So as we were talking about before we started recording that the you know, we've got we've
got to come from somewhere and there is always progression and advancement.
That's what we see throughout history.
And so, yeah, I have great faith that in future decades to come, we will have politicians
who who will be who will identify as vegetarian and vegan.
And a quick follow up question, do you think it is even possible for politicians because
we talk of them as our representative, but can they even and I'm getting philosophical
here in your lane, is it even possible for them to embody the interests of millions of
voters and of nuanced and complex philosophies?
And we talked about how relative the left and right was.
So you know, what do you think of that?
I think it's just a case of education and putting investment into education to seriously
adhere to a commitment to raise the level of awareness amongst the majority of people.
I think that we have you can compare the consideration of animals to other rights that we see within
humanity.
We don't despair and worry that we are going to that we're going to just walk around or
we don't kill each other.
We've put in place some legality surrounding the murder of other human beings.
So and that's we now take that for granted.
Of course, it does happen, but it's not acceptable to kill someone on the high street because
they've bumped into you.
And so it's just a case of shifting the dial a little bit further along.
And we have done that.
And yeah, I just I see that as something that is in a way kind of inevitable, I think.
I love your optimism.
I hope your vibe.
Okay, as a last question, Joel, and again, thank you for your time.
What made you want to write this book?
And I'm saying that with the understanding of how from having talked to other writers,
it's such a big commitment of time, of efforts of brainpower.
So why why did you decide to write this book?
So I studied philosophy aspects of theology and cosmology.
And I worked with a theologian and cosmologist.
And it was 20 years later or so after realizing what we do to animals, that the consideration
of animals was not once mentioned by my by the theologian I worked with, who happens
to be a wonderful, kind and caring man.
And I just considered that a catastrophic moral oversight.
And so I decided that this needs to be rectified, corrected.
I see what I'm doing as comparable to the moral consideration of women and the gay community
with the church's view of same sex marriage.
In other words, they've incorporated these things to a certain degree.
And I want for the church to for them to incorporate the moral consideration of other life on earth.
And what keeps me going is that I just cannot bear the witnessing, violence, cruelty and
suffering.
And I just astounded when I hear people suggest that there's anything other than other anything
other more, anything more important than trying to alleviate the suffering of others in the
world.
It just seems so obvious to me.
It might I may be fortunate if I can say it like this in the I kind of experienced bits
of anxiety myself in the past and having that first hand experience.
It gave me an insight into the experience of suffering to some degree.
And when you are experiencing that, it's the most terrible thing, but it's the most important
thing.
And so I just have this innate commitment to alleviate these things for others, because
I wouldn't want to be in that situation myself.
And so, yeah, if I can help correct this, then I'm going to because I don't know of
anything else that's more important with the finite time we have on earth.
I want you to comment on something that came to my newsfeed.
And that is what happened to Robert Sheik.
I don't know if you're familiar.
He wrote a book called The Impactful Vegan.
And I welcomed him on the show, you know, a couple of times.
And I read the book.
It's a great book and I encourage people to get the book.
And then later on, he wrote a newsletter in which he describes how he was not able to
yes, he was able to publish the book, but he was not able to sell the book.
And that made him incredibly depressed and he wrote a whole newsletter.
He has a personal newsletter about this.
It's heartbreaking.
Let me read just a few lines.
You know, he says, I didn't have a plan B. I went all in on the best book I have ever
written hoping that it would resonate with readers, have a strong performance and help
take my writing career in a positive direction.
I gave it everything I had.
I bet on myself and I was wrong.
And he goes on and on on the just depressing, just realization of that.
And then I thought maybe it's just because we're talking to a niche of readership.
Maybe his expectations were just too great.
You know, how many people are vegans?
And then how many people who are vegans are interested in doing activism?
And then then you go down the.
Yeah.
And I was thinking, you know, what would you say to Robert Sheik and how would you react
to what happened to him?
Yeah, I mean, I completely sympathize.
And with that experience, it's absolutely awful to end up in that.
Not that it's not a realization, but feelings that you're in that temporary space that the
world and other the majority of people aren't listening.
I mean, there is something to be said that, you know, the phrase being ahead of your time
comes to mind.
I mean, that literally.
Maybe maybe the case.
What I would say is that and something that I I talk about online and is part of my book
is that with any rights movement, as we've seen in history, they are rights activists
are demonized.
Veganism is methodically distributed out in order to keep them at the periphery, in order
to maintain status quo.
And this is happening.
This happens with the vegan movement.
So much so that the negative connotations which are conjured in the minds of people
who eat animals arrives with the just the word vegan alone, which is why I don't I rarely
use that word.
And I rarely use that word because I feel that I'm using the language of people who
eat animals.
I feel that it's a it's a box that we are encouraged to climb into and we are moved
to the periphery of the discussion.
I'm in the future.
People won't use the word vegan in the same way that there is no word for not racist or
not homophobic.
It would be strange to introduce to someone at policy your friend and say, oh, this is
my friend.
He's not homophobic.
If someone said that, you'd think, well, OK, well, I didn't think that they were.
And that's because the majority of people are not homophobic to a certain degree.
And it depends on where you are in the in the world and in the country.
But fortunately, there are lots of spaces where it's unacceptable.
And so I want to represent and I want to occupy the normal, compassionate, rational middle
ground.
I'm not a vegan.
I don't eat vegan food.
I'm a normal, compassionate person that eats food.
And it is you that eats and pays for animals to be killed.
I want to occupy the normal middle ground.
And so the reason I mentioned that is that with my book is that I'm trying to not talk
about vegans and veganism or even animals as such.
I'm talking about violence, violence or moral exclusion and oppression and then subsequent
violence.
And this is violence towards the gay community, trans community, women, people of color and
animals.
And if I can encourage Robert to connect all these things together to because I feel that
that will have the best he will have the best chance in communicating the message by by
talking specifically about animals.
People switch off.
Yeah, so that's my my response, I think.
Amazing.
That's an yeah, I never thought about it this way.
I'm glad I asked this question.
So Joel, I don't want to take more of your time.
Did you have anything to add before we stop the recording?
No, not really.
I just wanted to thank you, Ryan, for the opportunity inviting me on the show.
And yeah, it's just been an absolute pleasure talking to you.
And I've learned a lot, particularly about what's happening in North America, it's things
that I haven't considered myself.
So I just wanted to thank you, and I'm just so impressed with the podcast that you have
and if I can support it in any way I can, I'd love to.
Thank you so much, Joel.
This was truly, truly a pleasure.
Like I said, you know, before I was looking forward to this conversation, and I had the
great privilege of reading already some of the chapters you wrote.
And I am just excited for people to discover this book, to just get stimulated by the nuggets
of wisdom that are there.
So looking forward to the book getting published.
Yeah, thank you.
Thank you so much, Joel.
Thanks, Ryan.
Thank you.
Thank you, everyone, for listening.
I kindly invite you to share this podcast with the vegans you know.
Let's encourage more people to take action.
Again, thank you so much for caring, and I will see you next Tuesday for a new episode.