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.
Civilization is collapsing and taking nature with it. There is no ethical consumption under capitalism - from a vegan standpoint and a collapse standpoint. Each human is another consumer and contributes to the destruction. It can’t be helped in this system. So right now we need less not more. And children are being born today that will likely suffer tremendously due to climate collapse in their lives. Even without collapse, more humans means more animal harm. I think those are some of the common ideas.
That just sounds like Malthusian / eco-fascist lines of thought.
ethnic genocide to help reduce climate change is quite different from not having children, because the latter entails literally no suffering, in fact, any notion of suffering of an unexisting human is meaningless and void
a good analogy would be choosing to abort children with genetic defects, because they will suffer their entire lives and/or possibly need things that would then be unavailable to already existing humans like donors’ organs, medical help etc, which isn’t considered eugenics
also, eco fascism, compared to not having a child in a developed country, is completely impractical (i feel pretty cruel saying this, but i need to somehow stood down to their level to argue against it from a practical point of view), because people in developing and poorer countries typically have the least environmental impact…
the childfree and vegan movement need to tread carefully to not fall into eco-fascism or eugenics, in the sense that people should not be physically prevented from having children and we shouldn’t kill non-vegans, but they should at the same time be aware of what having a child means for you, for them, animals and the earth
more non-vegan people definitely brings more animal suffering, not sure what to add here, this is self explanatory
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?
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 :)
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.
I don’t really have anything to add, I guess you’re right
Some people just can’t wrap their heads around anarchy and free agency. Positive freedom - the freedom to control oneself - is definitively not fascist. Negative freedom, the freedom to control others, is freedom prized by fascism. Of course the distinction is lost in society and so bad faith actors and reactionaries attack positive freedom as if it were negative.
Thanks for standing up for liberation amd empathy. Solidarity.
No, it really doesn’t, but go ahead and provide cover for the real fascists by fash-jacketing anarchists.
Never heard of “anti-natalism”, but I can guess: Vegan-anarchism is often going together with primitivist-anarchist or anti-civ type of ideas, and those can only work if the total world population is significantly reduced.
Not quite an anarcho-primitivist idea, it’s the idea that it’s morally wrong to have children.
Ah because of the idea that they are not aware of their existence (and cannot choose as that) before they are born, right?
Not quite. One of the main reasons is that life is kinda shitty, and by having children you are condemning them to shittines.
Yes, they can’t consent to be born?
I’ve never seen these connected before, id say anti-natalism is more connected with anarcho-nihilism.
Soooo to answer this question i’ve started to translate Emilie Lamotte’s “Birth limitation, or how to avoid Big Families”, in which she has strong arguments against having children. Not finished yet, but you can check it out here: https://pad.riseup.net/p/lamotte
i’ll publish it once translated is finished and reviewed by native english speakers :)
