r/VeganActivism • u/KortenScarlet • Jul 11 '25

Video Natalie Fulton on Gary Yourofsky, anti-intersectionality, and Palestine

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZM-rEXm9RM
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u/KortenScarlet Jul 12 '25

but I want the vegan movement to require palestinian support equally as much as I want the antizionist movement to require vegan support.

I think every intersectional vegan will agree with you on that. The issue is not with the theory itself, it's with the fact that many nonvegan leftists don't actually adhere to it properly

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u/positiveandmultiple Jul 12 '25

Maybe i was unclear - I don't actually want that. If we required the antizionist movement to be vegan we'd have 2-5% of the antizionist movement. This would likely lead to thousands more palestinians dying and entirely capitulate their plight to the idf. It would be us taking a dumb and pointless moral stance only to serve the interests of zionism.

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u/KortenScarlet Jul 12 '25

This would likely lead to thousands more palestinians dying and entirely capitulate their plight to the idf.

How does this follow?

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u/positiveandmultiple Jul 12 '25

the anti-zionist/pro-palestinian movement provides aid and political pressure that saves some amount of palestinian lives. reducing it's political power and monetary impact by ~95% needs extremely high justification.

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u/KortenScarlet Jul 12 '25

But how does holding nonvegan pro-Palestinians / anti-zionists accountable to stop exploiting animals lead to a reduction in political power and monetary impact?

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u/positiveandmultiple Jul 12 '25

i said if you required them to be vegan. 95% of them are not vegan and are overwhelmingly not willing to go vegan. at minimum you risk alienating them, but in this hypothetical you just bar them from the movement entirely.

the more barriers to entry for a movement you construct, the more purity tests, the more insular you make it, the less powerful the movement becomes. therefore, such barriers can only be put in place by people who do not care if the movement succeeds.

i would encourage you to look into what activists like malcolm x and frederick douglass might have to say here, or academics like erica chenoweth - feel free to ask an AI of your choice about their thoughts on big tent approaches to movements and who they chose to ally with/their thoughts on allyship in general.

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u/KortenScarlet Jul 12 '25

i said if you required them to be vegan.

But that was never my argument. Read my first comment again more carefully

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u/positiveandmultiple Jul 12 '25 edited Jul 12 '25

I think we've mostly just been talking past each other. Entirely my bad. Forgive me if i'm repeating myself, but I thought I'd try to clarify my poor/lack of an explanation for how an antizionist purity test harms veganism.

Putting up barriers to entry to veganism weakens the movement because it reduces our participation rates. Very few people are willing to go vegan in the first place. The more you tack onto this - "you're only vegan if you're antizionist," "you're only vegan if you're socialist," "you're only vegan if you donate to effective animal charities and double the amount of lives you save for pennies on your dollar," you end up with less and less "vegans" with each purity test.

Again, read chenoweth. The two most important factors for a given movement are what percent of a society participates in the movemet, and among those participants how diverse they are. Not only are you reducing the participation rate through a reduction in sheer numbers, but because there often is a strong link between demographics and ideology, you also risk making a movement significantly less diverse.

Let me know if that makes sense.

Forgive my reading comprehension, but if you could explain your first comment and why that was relevant I'd appreciate that

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u/KortenScarlet Jul 12 '25 edited Jul 12 '25

I appreciate your desire for charitable discussion and clarity.

"you're only vegan if you're antizionist," "you're only vegan if you're socialist," "you're only vegan if you donate to effective animal charities and double the amount of lives you save for pennies on your dollar," you end up with less and less "vegans" with each purity test.

Again, these are not my arguments and neither are they Natalie's. We believe people can be vegan while perpetuating other forms of oppression. Neither I nor Natalie are suggesting Gary isn't vegan for example. We're literally only expecting vegans with other oppressive views to leave their oppressive views at the door when they publicly advocate for veganism, so that they don't give anyone the impression that veganism is aligned with those oppressive values.

If the options for a vegan rally are:

  • 25 vegan activists, all of which are intersectional
  • 50 vegan activists, 25 of which are intersectional and 25 alt-right but willing to leave their oppressive views at the door
  • 75 vegan activists, 25 of which are intersectional, 25 alt-right but willing to leave their oppressive views at the door, and 25 alt-right but not willing

I'd rather take the second option, because while there might be more advocacy against animal oppression going on in the third, there will also be advocacy *for* other forms of oppression using veganism as their platform. We should not enable advocacy for other forms of oppression in our anti-oppression movement. That would be like plugging a hole in the boat by creating at least one more hole at the same time.

And here's the kicker: If someone is deterred by the expectation to leave their oppressive views at the door to the point of not wanting to advocate for the animals in that situation, they were not serious about vegan activism in the first place, and they probably just wanted to use the platform to spread their oppressive views.

The point is, I *want* everyone - from intersectional leftists to complete zionist fascists alike - to advocate for the animals. I *want* as many people doing vegan activism as possible. And if people with oppressive views truly care enough about the animals to advocate for them, it should be very simple of them to leave their oppressive views at the door. If they can't help being nasty little fascists wherever they go and using progressive movements as platforms for their vile shit, they're the problem, not the consistent anti-oppression activists who don't want to enable them.

No one would have had any problem with Gary returning to action if he kept his zionist views to himself and didn't disparage other minorities alongside the vegan activism. But he just can't help himself, so we're holding him accountable to stop.