this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2025
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I'm trying really hard not to say something rude right now. Maybe I need to just step away. Because it is infuriating to see someone try to compare genocide and settler colonialism to factory farming of animals. Like can you just not trivialize an ongoing genocide by comparing it to factory farming. It does the opposite of what you seem to be intending. It makes vegans look ridiculous.
They're just pointing out the underlying logic behind the argument, and how applying that logic to other situations produces absurd conclusions. At no point did he claim the two were equivalent. In fact the whole point of the comparison is that the settler-colonialism is indisputably bad.
Let me make a similar argument to demonstrate. When I was in school, sometimes certain teachers employed or threatened collective punishment, if one person did something wrong, and no one confessed, then the whole class would be punished. Collective punishment is pretty awful and unjustifiable as a concept, like, the exact same logic behind it has been used to justify a lot of terrible war crimes, it was even used during the Holocaust, and it is explicitly prohibited by the Geneva Convention.
Now obviously, whatever punishment my class had to deal with in school is in no way comparable to the Holocaust. I don't think it would be fair of you to get angry at me for "comparing" the two, because my point wasn't that the scope of harm was the same, only that if we can clearly recognize that collective punishment is a horrible war crime when the stakes are high, then we're left wondering why, in this other situation with lower stakes, would it suddenly become valid?
Likewise, we can see in the high-stakes context of settler-colonialism that if someone says, "Yes, it was bad to kick the Palestinians out of their homes, but now that it's done I might as well move in" that logic is obviously not valid. Why then, does the logic suddenly become valid when it's applied to the lower-stakes situation of someone saying, "Yes, it was bad to kill this animal, but since it's already dead, I might as well eat it?"
What part of that reasoning do you take issue with? What part of that "makes vegans look ridiculous" or makes you want to say something rude?
With all due respect, you only feel that comparisons between factory farming and genocide of humans are disrespectful because you do not have respect for the other living, thinking, feeling creatures we share this Earth with. You might benefit from listening to vegan survivors of genocide, such as Alex Hershaft, a survivor of the Holocaust. He directly compares factory farms to the horrific genocide he narrowly escaped.
But correct. How much more respectfully can someone point out your speciesism which is necessary for you to continue your role in the animal holocaust?
What exactly do you hope to accomplish with nonsense like this.
That you realise that booty is disagreeing as respectfully as possible, but that your material interests have you interpreting it as a personal attack.
It was a personal attack. As was you calling me "speciesist" and saying it's necessary for me to "continue my role" in "the animal holocaust."
What I don't understand is why neither of you will take accountability for your words. If you truly believe an "animal holocaust" as you call it is going on and has been going on for decades (if not longer), I would think decorum would not exactly be your greatest concern. I'd also think that trying to shame people into boycotting on the internet would not be your greatest concern, considering how limited the power of both unorganized boycotts and personal shaming are. I am trying to put myself in what I can best imagine as your perspective and it makes no sense to me with a charitable analysis. The direction I keep leaning toward as an explanation is that it's such an emotional thing for some people, they lose perspective on it in relation to everything else, but that seems like an unfair way to see it.
I just know that I could not function as a person if I took on the whole weight of the atrocities of capitalism and imperialism, let alone one issue. I could say that China sucks because it is not doing enough on the issue of Palestine, in spite of its global power and influence. I could rail against every country and individual who is not sacrificing to bring an end to it. I don't think that will be effective though. I honestly don't know what will be effective. I am scared that people are just going to keep getting murdered and it will be too late for them as a people. I am scared for the other peoples in the region, who also face threats from the colonial project there. I think about it near every day and if I felt I needed to chastise someone about it, I would not be concerned with someone viewing it as a personal attack because I would feel it is justified to do; I would only be concerned with the rules of the forum and being disruptive to it, if that is part of the context. So I would probably own it. If that's what this feels like for you, then own your behavior and accept that it's something you feel is justified in that moment.
It seems you believe it is disrespectful to have a different opinion at all.
This is what you said about me almost immediately after saying "with all due respect". Based on absolutely nothing. Make up your mind. If you want to be disrespectful, just do it, don't pretend you're being "nice."
Well, no, this is based on your outrage at vegans pointing out the horrific crimes we commit against our fellow inhabitants of the world. If you had respect for cows, or pigs, or chickens, of which we murder such incredible numbers that it is difficult even to wrap our heads around the scale of the horror in question, you would fully understand why it is appropriate and reasonable to compare their plight to other genocides that we all recognize.
I'm not being disrespectful, I'm just disagreeing with you. If you can't handle disagreement, reconsider posting on a public forum.
It is disrespectful to paint someone as having no "respect for the other living, thinking, feeling creatures we share this Earth with" based on zero evidence; because you disagree with what I said, you decided to vilify someone you don't know and whose perspective you clearly don't understand. Now you portray me as being "outraged at vegans" which is also baseless. I expressed outraged at a person trivializing an ongoing genocide of human beings by comparing it to factory farming, which I believe is a reasonable reaction and still do, and believing that does not somehow mean I don't care about animals. If that were how things worked, then it would never be reasonable to insist one issue is worse than another, lest you are accused of not caring about the "lesser" issue.
Prior to that, what I did was go through a perspective, one which is common in socialist/communist circles for talking about capitalism as a whole, for why the solution to something is not as simple as individuals making the "correct" moral choice in their individual lives. This is an issue with capitalism that we talk about over and over and it doesn't suddenly become irrelevant just because it's an issue you might care more about.
And BTW, the more shock value rhetoric and spurious attacks you and others pull out on this, the harder it becomes to take any of you seriously. I will still believe factory farming is an issue either way and I will still support those who go vegan for trying to do something about it, no matter how small. But I certainly don't see any reason to listen to any of you who have gone 0 to 100 at me about it.
Again, not zero evidence. My evidence is the words you said. The words which stem from your lack of respect for other animals.
A vegan
comparing one horrific crime against innocents to another.
That you frame it this way stems from your lack of respect for the innocents in question.
In my opinion it does.
Murdering ten people is obviously worse than murdering two people, but you would never accuse someone of "trivializing" the murder of ten people if they compared these two hypothetical events.
The issue isn't that you see one issue as wrong and another issue as worse--you don't see genocide against non-human animals as wrong at all. That's why you find it outrageous to compare it to genocides against humans, which you do see as wrong.
Okay. Let's consider this perspective in regard to another issue. "You choosing not to buy from Israel isn't going to instantly end the genocide in Palestine. Therefore it is completely cool and okay to give any amount of monetary support to Israel." You surely wouldn't agree with this statement, right? Then why express this stance with regard to other crimes? (The answer of course is that you don't think animal abuse is a crime, you like and support it and would prefer if we vegans would simply stop pointing out how horrific it is.)
You're the only one attacking anyone by smugly saying how much restraint you have not to hurl insults at us for holding basic vegan positions, and by saying we "can't be taken seriously" and so on.
That's something you're projecting onto me. I'm not trying to be smug at all. When I said I was trying not to say something nasty, I meant it very literally because I was upset about what the other person had said and was quite literally trying not to devolve into insults/rudeness over it. When I said "I certainly don’t see any reason to listen to any of you who have gone 0 to 100 at me about it", I meant that too very literally.
Not everything is about feeling morally superior. Maybe I just don't want to listen to you go off on me. Would you want to listen to yourself?
Dawg this is a 1. I'm being very polite. The problem is that any disagreement with you is a 100 in your mind.
Yeah actually. I originally went vegan because of people being at least a 50 compared to my 1. And I realized, "Huh, this person is right. I have no logical response to their criticisms of my unethical behavior." Then I went vegan.
It's your turn. Look into your heart; you know you're wrong, but you don't want to admit that you've spent your entire life up till now being wrong. Believe me, no one cares. The time to change is now.
it's insane how you're getting hit with downvotes.
I am somewhat lost yeah. If you replace factory farming with all kinds of forms of capitalist exploitation that happen to human beings, people are in my experience usually fine with the kind of position I put forth, but when it's factory farming, it's being compared to genocide.
The ultimate conclusion of the implication that factory farming is anywhere near equivalent to genocide would be that veganism is at best the liberal position and we should be doing everything we can to stop factory farming in its tracks with organization. Maybe I'm just not tuned into vegan ideologues, but that is not something I can recall seeing said much. Mostly what I see in passing is people encouraging veganism and arguing for why, and that is something I made a point of agreeing with because I figured what I was saying might come across as opposing veganism otherwise. But that seems like a very mild stance and way to live as a response to the situation, if the belief is that factory farming is on the level of the worst mass crime human beings can do to one another.