The Future of Veganism is ON TRIAL.

There was a time when vegans got organized to oppose the threats of violence, intimidation, defamation and scandal-mongering that had been tearing the movement apart. There was a time when the followers turned against their leaders and said, "No More". However, the first part of that paragraph was, "There was a time when vegans got organized…" --both organization and optimism are now severely lacking.

 

I'm going back to Chiang Mai, Thailand, to finish my court case against Durianrider. I'm doing it because it's the right thing to do.

 

Yes, in many ways, the court case against him already was a success in 2016, just because it was such a turning point for the vegan movement: it led people to really reflect on the implications of political activism led by social-media personalities who had distinguished themselves --primarily-- by being willing to do anything to become famous, and who engaged in dishonest drama-mongering just in order to stay famous.

 

Many, many people had their lives ruined by Freelee and Durianrider: I wasn't the first, but I started the court case because I wanted to be the last. I stood up to them as nobody had before. Donations made it possible for me to employ a team of lawyers in Thailand to make Durianrider accountable for the harm he'd done to particular people --and, more broadly, to end the harm he still was doing to the vegan movement.

 

There are many, MANY youtube videos I could provide here, to illustrate what the case was, if you don't already know, so I'll provide a link to this playlist, if you want the details, but I'm eager, instead, to talk about the future --to talk about what the case means now, and why it matters for what's next in veganism.

 

 

There was a lot wrong with veganism in 2016: what should have been a wholesome, helpful movement was ruining people's lives --in large part due to the stupidity and malice of the movement's leaders. Yes, greed, lust and envy could be added to the list of sins, but stupidity and malice were of overweening significance.

 

But there was something right with veganism in 2016, too, wasn't there? There was a willingness and an eagerness to build a movement out of a bunch of eccentrics to (unironically) "save the planet" --not just save individual people's lives, not just individual animals' lives, but the planet as such. And in 2022, the need for that kind of spirit is more urgent than ever.

 

Veganism lost a lot of its hope and optimism in 2016: idols were revealed to have feet of clay.  In the years that ensued, most of the leaders discredited themselves --some through misconduct in their private lives, some through the venality of their motives being revealed, some through simply not being vegan anymore, and others simply by failing to deliver on their promises (failing to accomplish anything at all, or failing to even try).

 

In 2022, it's been a long time since any of us traveled anywhere. I'm asking you, seriously: who's willing to meet me in Chiang Mai? I can still speak Thai-and-Laotian to some extent, and Northern Thailand was a special place for me many years before I'd ever heard of Freelee and Durianrider (when I was merely vegetarian, not yet vegan, etc.). Maybe there's something positive we can recapture from the spirit of 2016, just in bringing together vegans, face to face, to dream of a way forward, step by step, toward achieving a world in which slaughterhouses don't exist --or, at least, a world in which eating meat is no longer something people are proud of --a world in which it's instead regarded as something more despicable than smoking a cigarette.

 

 

I would be the first to admit that "the spirit of 2016" was largely based on (1) over-hyped promises of effortless weight-loss, appealing to an audience of millions who had no sincere (ethical) connection to veganism, and (2) the enthusiasm of a smaller core of several thousand people who believed in the improbable dream that they'd be the next vegan to attain a life of wealth, fame and leisure through social media stardom (without having any particular talent of their own, etc.).

 

That's over. That's never coming back. Likewise, the shock and awe of seeing slaughterhouse footage for the first time is something you can't repeat --and it isn't going to suddenly motivate the transformation of our society (as so many vegans promised it would in 2016). Let me ask you, simply: what now? What's next?

 

 

 

Maybe we can take this occasion (the presumed conclusion of this years-long debacle in the court system of Chiang Mai) to meet and present ideas to answer that simple question: what's next for veganism, after we've all stopped believing in the false promises of the past? What are we going to accomplish in the next five years, given that we have so few years left before the consequences of climate change become impossible to ignore?