How should vegans talk to the public?
Youtuber David Ramms hosted a discussion between Paul Bashir (Anonymous for the Voiceless) and myself on pragmatic vs more absolutist communication and tactics. We talked for almost two hours. The video is below (somehow a typical youtube doesn’t seem to fit on this quite cerebral forum—sorry :-)
Interested in your thoughts.
Quick summary of Paul’s position:
Direct abolitionist stance: He believes the only ethical and effective ask is to go vegan immediately, not to reduce.
Three-step outreach method: (1) Hold people accountable for animal suffering, (2) make them empathise by putting themselves in the victims’ position, (3) deliver a call to action to change right now.
Guilt as central tool: He argues guilt is the best and “only” effective way to push people to change.
Dismisses reductionism: Views flexitarians/vegetarians as complacent and harder to convert because they feel they’re already “doing enough.”
Focus on action, not attitudes: He downplays what non-vegans say about messaging, insisting only behaviour (actually going vegan) matters.
Rejects incremental strategies: He does not favour reducetarian campaigns or system-level gradualism, seeing them as delays or distractions from abolition.
Quick summary of my position:
Paul’s approach (accountability, guilt etc) can work, especially with those already open for the topic
the approach can create reactance in others, pushing them further away, entrenching their views
we need ways to speak to the people who are not ready for this approach as well
we can do that with different asks (reduction), styles (friendly, encouraging), and arguments (health, environment…)
research shows follow on reducetarian asks is much higher than on vegan asks
reducers are wins: research shows there is more chance they go vegan
also: the high amount of reducers is responsible for higher demand and thus supply. more alternative products make it easier for everyone to shift towards the vegan end of the spectrum
behavior change can influence attitude change: once people are already eating vegan now and then, there’s a bigger chance that hearts and minds open for animal arguments (they now know they don’t have so much to lose)
other past and present social justice movements were incremental/pragmatic as well. the anti slavery abolitionists had non-absolutists asks (e.g. abolish slave trade) and used different arguments (e.g. health of British sailors, economic ones…)
I’m not discounting Paul’s experience on the street, but going by what people say they will do, under some kind of pressure, seems like a shaky metric. The reply that we’d need to have private investigators to go into people’s houses in order to really now seems to be a bit of a copout for me. Have people at AV thought of asking email addresses to follow up? (not that it would be fool-proof, but it would be something)
meta 1: in my book (How to Create a Vegan World) I use the term pragmatic for my approach and idealistic for Paul’s. These terms are meant to be non-judgemental
meta 2: science and studies are important, we don’t know everything, and they don’t tell us everything, but we shouldn’t discount studies, and get better at them, do more of them.
Ultimately, I wish Paul every success, and I’m very glad anonymous is out there. I agree we need both approaches. I will experiment some more with his approach in personal interactions, and I will participate in some cubes.
Thank you for taking on this debate, Tobias. Like our target audience in creating not a vegan community, but a vegan world, I share very personal frustration with the guilt and shame approach; not in spite of me wanting the same “total abolition” which the anti-welfarists and anti-incrementalists do, but because I want it. I can see why Bashir is convinced by the anecdotes he’s able to tell, and it reveals to me why science and studies, if done well, is the collection of many helpful anecdotes from a wide and varying population to inform how to work toward everyone’s goal: a world without factory farming that stays without factory farming.
Bruce Friedrich convinced me that vegan activism as it’s been for the past fifty years isn’t working and sent me down the road of meat alternatives as a solution. I’ve been having trouble doing anything to advance it now, so I’ve been looking into dietary incrementalism as another solution to learn about alongside it, which is why I watched the debate. It seems up to each of us to be honest with ourselves about what we’ve tried, how well it’s working, and what other options we have to work toward our goal that hasn’t changed.
On behalf of the voiceless animals, thank you for everything that you do. I’ll remember your book in case I decide to explore reducitarian advocacy further.
thanks for your message.
i think that indeed vegan advocacy doesn’t have much to show for after several decades—at least not in terms of the number of vegans. But I do believe in some virtuous cycle between advocacy and alternatives, where the two can reinforce each other (more awareness means higher purchases of PB products means easier awareness...).
I hope you can find a role in the movement that fits you and that has impact! :)
Thank for bringing this up @tobiasleenaert
One challenge I notice in our movement is that many vegans (myself included at times) lean heavily on moral outrage and emotion when talking to the public. It comes from a real place the suffering of animals is unbearable, and that drives the urgency. But when communication is mostly emotional, it risks losing clarity and persuasiveness. The message can get lost in the translation of the narrative because it feels more like an expression of personal pain than a grounded argument that someone outside the movement can follow.
Without balancing emotion with logic, strategy, and evidence, the communication often doesn’t land. It convinces those who already feel the same, but it rarely shifts people who are indifferent, defensive, or simply pragmatic in their worldview. That’s where I see Tobias’s point about research and incrementalism mattering: not because the emotional voice is wrong, but because by itself it isn’t strong enough to carry the broader public along.
thanks, i tend to agree. I guess emotional appeals are often lacking, and so is rationality. Though there are people for whom either can work. One just needs to find them, and tailor the message and communication style to them—but it’s easier said than done :)