Why does there seem to be a connection between vegan anarchism and anti-natalism? The idea of anti-natalism makes me incredibly depressed, and I do not agree with it, but I’m open to commentary and debate.

  • free_appalachia
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    4 years ago

    I resent the idea that vegans need to tread lightly to avoid the spectre of eco-fascism a term that seems to be any idea that suggests the desire to procreate has consequences. At present we are witnessing the beginning of apocalyptic climate collapse due to the impact humans have had on the planet. I’d go so far as to say, vastly disprotionately due to industrialization and extraction based imperialism exported to the world from Europe. So a caveat to anti-natalism might be that the idea should disproportionately affect the descendants of colonizers, but the fact is its entirely optional. You don’t agree, go ahead birth children into the apocalyptic world where they will invariably suffer terribly, nobody is gonna stop you from creating that harm just as we can’t stop people from eating meat. This is about as far from fascism as an ideology can get. There are no laws, only data and ideas on what to do about that data. No forceful, violent imposition of will unlike the relationship of meat eaters on animals. Yet we are constantly told to be careful of becoming eco-fascist by people that have created and engage regularly with a specieist holocaust of unfathomable proportions. At the end of the day it comes to this… Each day a human needs roughly 2000 calories, we need housing, we need clothing, warmth, etc. Those things are not just magically put forth in the world, we clear forests for that lumber and to make room for pasture and roads and infrastructure and quarry metals and lithium and everything else we need to support each additional human. The earth may be able to carry more humans but at what cost to the environment, the animals that live there and the people already here being thrust into climate catastrophe already? Anti-natalism is a completely opt-in idea about trying to mitigate the impact, to me, it is also a method of decolonization when descendants of colonizers opt-in and it literally harm’s nobody. What exactly is fascist about veganism or anyi-natalism, or voluntary human extinction?

    • k_o_t
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      4 years ago

      i never said that either veganism or anti-natalism are intrinsically fascist (lol) or whatever, I actually agree with most of the things that you wrote, I merely said that anti-natalism could maybe lead to more extreme eco-fascist beliefs, and veganism to lead to kill people who are unkind to animals (although the latter is much less likely tbh, yeah, i take it back, the last thing we need to worry about is extreme vegans :)

      • free_appalachia
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        4 years ago

        Saying that we need to tiptoe around these issues over things I’ve never heard a single vegan advocate seems silly. I’m mostly just frustrated at the expectation especially in leftist circles that vegans shut up and submit to ridiculous scrutiny based on things no vegan would ever advocate is absurd. If anything I think we could be a bit more aggressivevwith education, particularly in combating these absurd ideas. Like you said we don’t really need to worry about right wing extremist vegans, at least not until they become a thing. Otherwise its just trying to frame vegan ideology as that for some other reason. I think there are probably anti-natalists that are eugenicists and so that makes more sense, but you can be anyi-eugenics and anti-natalist and again the answer isn’t tiptoeing, its educating on the difference. We spend too much time back tracking based on things none of us are advocating.

        • k_o_t
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          4 years ago

          I don’t really have anything to add, I guess you’re right