• TheoryofChange [they/them]@hexbear.net
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    3 months ago

    Obviously people should stop buying meat, Israeli goods, items produced with child labor etc to the best if their abilities and it is extremely silly to imply otherwise, smacking of treatlerite tendencies. However as folks have pointed out individual consumption choices are not the political mechanism which will bring down child labor/Zionism/meat farming. Therefore going on endlessly about individual consumption habits instead of encouraging some kind of collective action or actually effective intervention also comes across as performative and deeply unserious. Some one who eats an occasional cheeseburger and blows up a slaughterhouse is objectively a better vegan than someone who never touches a cheeseburger and doesn’t blow up a slaughterhouse.

    • OBJECTION!@lemmy.mlOP
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      3 months ago

      Hard disagree. Eating meat and blowing up a slaughterhouse undermines the image and makes it look like you just wanted to blow something up. If you want to get public support, you should at least make a token effort towards nonviolent tactics even if you don’t expect anything from them. This is one of the reasons Lenin argued for participation in bourgeois elections (in a communist party ofc).

      • TheoryofChange [they/them]@hexbear.net
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        3 months ago

        you should at least make a token effort towards nonviolent tactics

        Nothing in my comment in any way detracts from nonviolent tactics. I support collective action and effective direct interventions in all shapes and sizes. Also, blowing up something is only violent if it is occupied when you blow it up (or if it is empty because of the threat to blow it up). It is important not to conflate property destruction with violence

        • OBJECTION!@lemmy.mlOP
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          3 months ago

          “Hi, I really care about animal rights so I’m putting together a group to blow up some slaughterhouses! Oh but I’m not vegan, meat just tastes too good and it’s too much effort there’s no ethical consumption under capitalism anyway, amirite?” fedposting

            • OBJECTION!@lemmy.mlOP
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              3 months ago

              I think you’re missing the point.

              Organizing a group around blowing up slaughterhouses would be inherently dangerous and would rely on establishing trust, and one way of determining whether you can trust someone in such a group would be to see if they are actually committed to the cause. If someone is willing to commit so far as doing adventurism, but isn’t willing to commit to doing some safe, everyday thing, that’s a fed. Or it’s a 20-something with a deathwish. It’s an enormous red flag.

              Honestly it’s such a ridiculous concept that it sounds like a bit.

                • OBJECTION!@lemmy.mlOP
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                  3 months ago

                  “The Adventures of the Meat-Eating Chapter of the Animal Liberation Front”

                  • A bunch of people sitting around a table discussing how disgusting and repulsive the conditions in slaughterhouses are and their plans to attack, while chowing down on filet mignon and being like, “Wow, that’s actually really good, how’d you make this?”

                  • Getting to the ranch and the farmer sees them and starts talking to them about how his wife went vegan and he’s been conflicted and he’s just unsure about making the leap, but they have no advice or resources to give so they just shoot him. As they free the cows, one of them spots one that’s especially plump. “Hey, you still got those butcher tools? Why don’t we keep this one?”

                  • They finally succeed, all the factory farms in the country have been shut down and a communist utopia has been established, they go to the co-op looking for meat but they’re all out because doing it ethically is less efficient. As they’re walking along, dejected, they come across a closed down factory farm. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” “Maybe it’s a good thing we didn’t hit this place!”

                  I think it’s hilarious.

              • Le_Wokisme [they/them, undecided]@hexbear.net
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                3 months ago

                Individual action is the atomic unit of collective action.

                no it isn’t. you cannot add up individual actions and get a collective action. 10 people doing something each by themselves is fundamentally different than those same people doing it together as a group.

                • meatcringe [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                  3 months ago

                  As collectives consist of individuals, so too do collective actions consist of individual actions. The group does the organizing but the members show up.

                  • Le_Wokisme [they/them, undecided]@hexbear.net
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                    3 months ago

                    if you cut it up it stops being a group. the atomic unit of collective action is at least two people, and it’s different larger numbers depending on the action. you talking to your boss isn’t collective bargaining no matter how many of your coworkers take turns.

                    once you do it together at the same time it becomes a collective.