I’ve been talking to a couple of people in the farming industry in recent days and the conversations have been preying on my mind a bit. One of the farmers said he was worried about his future livelihood – “everything is vegan, vegan, vegan,” he said. Another told me how his business had disappeared overnight when a contract to deliver milk was suddenly cancelled.
I admitted to these farming folk right away – because I felt I should – that I have been a vegetarian for 30 years and they may have wondered if this makes me unsympathetic to their situation. I hope not. Ideally, I would prefer a society that does not kill or farm other species, but there’s no way I’m going to glory in the problems of farmers. That would be horrible – as horrible, really, as killing and eating animals.
So why do people do it: glory in the problems of others I mean? You may have seen the protests this week at a milk distribution facility in Buckinghamshire in which a number of activists sabotaged some trucks. The same group also went into Harrods and poured milk all over the floor to, in their words, highlight the environmental destruction of dairy.
On the face of it, I should be sympathetic to actions like this. You may be too and think big profit-making industries have it coming to them. History also tells us that change often only happens when people stop being nicey-nice and start throwing things about a bit. I sort of get that, even though I don’t have a protesting bone in my body (I’ve never even signed a petition).
However, the vegan protests are part of an unsettling trend I’ve noticed – you may have too. Increasingly, I’ve seen people who have the same views as me – we shouldn’t eat animals, trans people should have equal rights, and so on – behave in extreme and rather nasty ways. But I have something to say to them: you do not speak for me.
My main problem with these activists is their strange lack of empathy. One of the protesters at the milk distribution place said the plan was to disrupt the dairy industry “until there are supermarket shortages”. People also pointed out in the aftermath of the Harrods protest that the mess the vegans had made would have to be cleaned up by staff on low wages. I think I agree with this guy on Twitter: “Why do you clowns always make trouble for the working classes, never your own?”
A similar lack of empathy was on display at a gay pride event in Dresden the other day. I can’t reproduce the exact language in The Herald, but basically a banner was put up over the main stage asking gender-critical feminists to perform a certain sexual act. Having been to a few gay prides in my time, although not for a while, I was staggered really that such a sign could be on the main stage at a gay-friendly event.
Andrew Doyle, the comedian whose book The New Puritans tackles this subject, says the sexual aggression on display at the Dresden event is the reason so many gay men and lesbians now see Pride as something that no longer stands for them and I think the key word there is “aggression”. At their extreme ends, causes such as trans rights have become associated with violent language and imagery and, combined with the lack of empathy, it’s very disturbing.
You probably don’t need me to tell you why it’s happening but how about this: I heard the other day about a young journalist who “doesn’t like phoning people up” and prefers to get quotes from Twitter or by email and it’s not the first time I’ve come across this. A lot of post-internet young people prefer interacting on phones partly because they fear real conversations can lead to confrontation (which of course they can sometimes). But weirdly, avoiding real-life conversations has also made them more likely to engage in online confrontation, sometimes hidden behind an avatar and often removed from the real-life consequences.
I realise this makes me sound like a revolution-denier, or a diplodocus moaning about the asteroid that’s hit earth – I accept that social media has changed us and that’s that. But what we can do, the rest of us, when a sign at Pride goes too far, or vegans splash milk on the floor for other people to clean up, is we can – politely and firmly – respond with persistent, reasoned, reasonable argument instead. And to violence and aggression, we can say the same thing over and over again: thankyou but no.
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