Below is one of my essays from a course on Change, Interhuman Processes and Communication that I had forgotten about but recently came across again. I thought to share it as an analytical take on veganism through one possible theoretical lens, the Established-outsider dynamic. For anyone who has experienced veganism from the inside, and the consequences of this identification and worldview then clashing with reality, and wondered what made it so pathologically ideological that it would lead to disassociation and disconnection, as well as such hostile rejection from the community, this framework considers those dynamics. I am right, you are wrong. The chronic disease epidemic, environmental destruction and anthropogenic climate change, as well as the unethical treatment of animals in an industrial agricultural model, are all pressing, arguably urgent and potentially critical issues that present themselves in the 21st century. The conventional model of agro-industry, a consumerist and capitalist society and the commodification of food have all been put in the spotlight of blame. In counter-action against this destructive and greedy status quo lie several niches, one of which claims to offer a solution to the world’s problems in one fell swoop: veganism. Veganism, as a philosophy and way of life that I personally fully embraced for a solid 8 years of my life, as well as the dietary prescription that excludes all forms of animal products such as meat, fish, seafood, eggs and dairy, forms an identity category that uses a framing paradigm to uphold its position and bind its absolutist constructs. The number of vegans in the UK has risen 360% in the last decade and is essentially a mainstream-accepted lifestyle choice and is considered Britain’s “fastest growing lifestyle movement” (The Vegan Society, 2019). The social phenomenon I shall explore in this essay relates to the recent online commotion of a multitude of “celebrity” vegan Youtube influencers with large platforms publicly renouncing their vegan status during the last few months of 2019 for various reasons, and the consequent backlash of the vegan community. Although vegans are still a minority population, the popularity of vegan Youtube is demonstrated by many channels attracting hundreds of thousands of, and a few with multi-million, subscribers. The vegan narrative communicates and positions itself within a framing paradigm that selects fragmented perspectives to construct a social identity as a moral evaluation that ultimately does not match (the complexity of) reality and leads to unintended consequences - and when rubber meets the road and members leave the vegan path, they are consequently publicly shamed, stigmatised and excluded through the creation of a somewhat ironically non-compassionate and hostile insider-outsider dynamic. Implicit and explicit power relations are present on many levels, all the way up to the macro political level that is driving the plant-based agenda forward and into public and academic discourse, as can be seen with the new EAT Lancet report and their proposed (nutrient-deficient) plant-based “Planetary Health Diet”’ that has been heavily criticised based on this bias (Willett W. et al., 2019). My approach to analysing this phenomenon is a theoretical framework based on the established-outsider dynamic of Elias’ and Scotson’s power relations (Elias, N., & Scotson, J. L., 1994), as well as social identity construction together with elements of framing (Ortiz, M.G., 2019). Stephen Duncan stated that Elias’ theory on Established and Outsider Relations “could be applied to a whole range of changing patterns of human inequality”, referencing relations between classes, ethnic groups, men and women, parents and children. Although the focus of this inquiry is radically different than any examples of that 1994 scope, the application of Elias’ theory provides an insightful lens on a “universal human theme” (Elias, N., 1994): human inequality. Much like Elias’ study of a small community, the vegan community is also a minority with the core group of established members and a more recent group of “ex-vegans”, and provides a similar structure upon which to shed light. The difference here consists in the formation of the outsider group as a result of a shift of some members of the core group (of vegans) to ex-members (who are no longer vegan), and this changing pattern creates a power differential as well as a threat to the established group and collective “we-image”. Within the past few months of 2019, a series of “Why I Am No Longer Vegan” videos sequentially emerged from around 29+ well-known Youtube figures promoting a plant-based lifestyle with high profile social media platforms reaching of millions of people globally. This caused a controversial stir in the vegan community and even appeared in mainstream news. I shall narrow down and introduce two case studies to address within the ex-vegan Youtube video phenomenon, recognising that they represent a microcosm of the larger episode of stories. I chose these two based on the criteria that both were long term strict vegans of 6 years and advocated veganism for the triad of health, animal welfare and the environment; both made videos about their vegan to ex-vegan journey; both received severe criticism and hate from the vegan community; and both made response videos to the drama that ensued, enabling me to follow the development within the context of my theoretical framework. Tim Shieff, an elite Parkour athlete and world champion free runner was celebrated as “The Vegan Price” by the vegan community and used his high profile as a platform to spread the vegan message. His Youtube channel has a 176K following, and when he released his video titled “Am I Still Vegan?” (2019) where he explains the health issues he experienced and how and why he has incorporated animal products like wild salmon and pastured eggs, the social media backlash by fellow vegans and vegan leaders in the community escalated to death threats and over 5000 (as of April 2019) abusive comments. The video has 144K views. He was featured in a “VICE I Got Cancelled” interview, where he describes being called a fraud, a murderer, and accusations that he had never cared for animals and that his prime motive was money (Adenuga, J., 2019). He had to part ways with his own vegan clothing company, ETHICS, and is a prime example of being torn down by his own community once a “minor difference” was established through a change of diet (Blok, A., 2001). Yovana Mendoza, known as Rawvana on social media, had also been following a strict vegan diet for 6 years. Her Youtube channel had a following of over 2 million subscribers, which plummeted to half a million over night after her “ex-vegan” scandal. As she explained in her ex-vegan video, after struggling for years with health, such as amenorrhea (loss of menstrual cycle) and SIBO (gastrointestinal condition), and after trying various lifestyle changes like adding more plant protein and fats to remain vegan and alternative medicine treatments, she decided to add fish and eggs back to her diet out of desperation. Her health issues went away within a few weeks. She issued a video explaining her choices titled “This Is What Is Happening” that has nearly 1.2 million views (May 2019), and consequently got a backlash of death threats, character assassination comments as a con artist and abusive response videos by the same and other vegan leaders as Tim Shieff, describing her decision as fraudulent, murderous and shaming her choice to introduce animal products for her health - which goes against “the rules” and norms of the established group. This development was most intriguing for me to observe unfold because not only had I been a strict ethical vegan since I was 13 years old, but because I had also developed serious medical health issues as a direct consequence. Sharing many similarities with the stories above, I convinced myself that a vegan diet was the healthiest way to eat and that there had to be a vegan solution to everything, and so also tried many variations of the vegan diet hoping to find one where I could feel well. Finally, after diagnosis with an autoimmune disease, I started to challenge my own beliefs outside of the vegan framework. What followed was a complete identity crisis and what felt like an existential soul search! Eventually, I came to a radically different, more nuanced perspective that looked at the complexity of the human, ecological and socio-political systems that veganism deals with but does not actually address in a holistic nor grounded way. As I browse the Youtube video titles of the “Why I am No Longer Vegan” list, they pretty much sum up my experience: “My break-up with veganism”; “My vegan diet almost killed me”; “I used to be a militant vegan... now I am a guilty carnivore”; “I finally got healthy when I stopped being vegan”; “vegan activist turned meat eater”. Through my theoretical lens, this demonstrates not just how strong the social identity construction within veganism is, but how deep the internalisation goes. I essentially had to break down my whole belief system and start anew. Feeling disillusioned by the skewed vegan narrative that ignored the on-ground reality and consequences of veganism that didn’t match the proposed benefits, “lied to” by the vegan community, ostracised by my vegan friends for “abandoning my morals”, and frustrated by the vegan echo chamber that exists where you only encounter similar beliefs that perpetuate the reinforcement of existing views in a way that excludes alternative or more complete truths, it became very clear to me that veganism more resembled a dogmatic ideology based on flawed rock logic than a compassionate and thoughtful perspective on how to live in a way that suits the context to benefit the environment, health and promote a better world. It is fascinating to observe this now as an outsider, but when in the jar it is very hard to see the label. The famous and revolutionary psychologist Dr. Edward De Bono in his book I am right, you are wrong (De Bono., 1990) proposed the contrasting concepts of the rock logic of Western thinking based on absolutes and rigid categories and called for a shift to water logic, which is adaptive, integrative and inclusive. The rock logic in veganism is very real, and complexity gets thrown away for black-and-white thinking. I am right, they say, and you are wrong. A brief resume of the response videos provides clear examples of this rigid thinking and cognitive dissonance in the context of social identity and conflict. The arguments the vegan leaders use are circular and rigid in their scope; Mic the Vegan simply notes: "You can have problems on a vegan diet, but you can still solve those problems on a vegan diet". Freelee The Banana Girl, a vegan icon with 789K subscribers, posted a response video to Rawvana titled “Rawvana is a FAKE VEGAN (& no longer my friend)”. The circularity of these arguments is clear - one cannot win; either way, as an outsider, you either “did it wrong” or you were a “fake vegan”, and are thusly in the position to be condemned, and the vegan position justified and cleared of any possible deficiencies. Freelee accuses Rawvana of being filled with “me me excuses” as to why she has “gone back to grinding baby chicks alive and suffocating and dragging innocent fish from their home” (00:20:15 of video, 2019). The hyperbole and misrepresentation in these cases are pronounced and do not take into account the nuance of the context. For example, Rawvana states that she gets her eggs from ethical, organic sources and the devil is in the details in this regard because production methods of meat and eggs vary widely, with a significant spectrum in animal welfare considerations and ecological impact. However, the established vegan group take one extreme end of the spectrum - intensive industrial farming -, apply it as rock logic as the reality for all animal products, and use this frame to paint outsider members, even those who still act in integrity with values of ethical food sourcing, as amoral villains supporting corporate, mass food production. It is a perfect demonstration of the villain, victim and hero framing paradigm in action. No attempt to empathise with the very real and serious health issues experienced are undertaken; “you do not throw animals into the stir fry when you are hungry or gassy or get a pimply face (...), the animals don’t need your excuses” (00:02:10 of video Why I’m No Longer Vegan reponse, Freelee The BananaGirl, 2019). On the contrary, they are actively minimised to insignificant “me me excuses”, magnifying the power superiority of established vegans who do not give in to such “petty” rationalizations. This line of reasoning reveals a political undertone - who is to decide what reason to stop veganism is good enough? Partial truths are taken for the whole picture and alternative paths that rub up against a different reality spark a cognitive dissonance that has to be defended through rock logic and hostility as a reaction to an identity threat. After all, doctrine creates disconnect. How can we grasp the hostility of this response? We could explain the group relation here as a result of objective diet differences, but more accurately in this perspective it is the result of the change, the shift, from the Established diet to a different diet, symbolising a deviant role that harbours hostility by members of the majority group. Furthermore, the implicit message is that veganism is not just a diet, but a set of moral principles that under no circumstances do humans have the right to break, even in the face of deleterious health outcomes. The majority of comments are simply too offensive to quote, but one reads “I am so very disappointed that you turned away from veganism, (...) I simply cannot follow you anymore. You are disgusting for eating chicken periods. There are so many people thriving on a vegan diet. It’s clear you never cared about the animals” (one of thousands of similar comments under a Rawvana Instagram post). The fact that some people are doing well on a vegan diet does not exclude the possibility of others responding poorly, and also does not address the issue of long term versus short term effect, and what is called the “honeymoon” period of veganism. Being healthy as a long term vegan is the exception rather than the rule. Through the construct of absolutes in the vegan paradigm, eating animal products trigger outrage and cognitive dissonance for the established, and an identity crisis for the outsiders. Having been on the other side, the guilt and shame that comes with re-introducing animal foods are very real and stressful. What is interesting about this phenomenon is that it extends beyond physical differences. Due to the ideological nature of veganism, the differences between the inside and “outcast” ex-vegans are also the result of the development of established-outsider relations, and are consequently additionally social in origin. Perhaps in a eutopic Garden of Eden parallel universe not shaped by evolution that resulted in our human nutritional needs requiring nutrients only found in animal products and where native grassland ecosystems need herbivores as much as the ruminants need grass and livestock an important role to play in the carbon cycle and sequestering carbon when well managed on pasture, a vegan diet may indeed work and be part of the solution towards sustainability. This fantasy world seems to exist in the minds of the vegan community, without any grounding in reality but based on faulty rock logic that wears a mask of moral superiority to the parade of power struggles. This mask is used as smoke and mirrors to blur any alternative view and to conceal legitimate justification in order to stigmatise, exclude and frame outsiders as an “enemy”. Indeed, the discourse shares resemblance with the considerable hostility of some religious teachings that discourage any open-minded thinking that is perceived as a threat by challenging the dogma. Themes of power and status arise in the defense of the belief system, quite removed from the claim of compassion. In many way, this phenomenon evinces aspects that go beyond a diet identity but extends towards a moral identity with superiority complexes and distorted, non-inclusive ideas of compassion. Exploring the cases through this lens, I was genuinely shocked by just how much the interactional socio-dynamics involved the creation of an established-outsider relationship, power differentials, abuse of power, social control and, perhaps in the biggest irony of all, complete apathetic disregard to the feelings and internal experience of “ex-members” that resulted in exclusion and stigmatisation with moral judgement by the leaders in a way that was accepted and supported by the existing members, thus reinforcing social cohesion. As Elias points out, strong monopolistic internal opinion is symptomatic of the high degree of control that a cohesive group is able to exert on its members as a regulating force of their conduct (page 30 of Elias, N., & Scotson, J. L., 1994). The microcosm of the phenomenon and individual cases, including my own, pose wider questions that challenge the increasingly popular plant-based and vegan rock-logic narrative that positions itself as a solution for the climate, health and environmental crisis. Furthermore, it elucidates the role diet can play in collective identity construction. Within this context of social identity, what becomes of a vegan YouTuber who is no longer vegan? Online abuse and bullying from their own community, with the worst abuse and moral outrage often coming from other vegan Youtube personalities (Shugerman, E., 2019). The cases further bear witness to the insufficiency of a strict vegan diet and possible detriment towards human health when followed long term, and as such, the breaking down of the whole line of vegan argument. Most claims are founded on the assumption that eating animals for health is unnecessary or even harmful for human health, and this argument is then used to justify framing further lines of reasoning. Vindication of the inherent fallacies and partial truths require rock logic by the vegan community because applying water logic makes apparent the nuances and shades of grey that illuminate a much bigger, more complex picture - one that includes plant-based options but also points to other paths to sustainability, health and ethical consumption-production practices. The vegan philosophy is well-intentioned, but as the saying goes “the road to hell is paved with good intentions” - when rooted in a philosophy of “do no harm”, perhaps the circle of compassion could include other human beings and finding non-violent ways to express one’s wish of a nonviolent world. A shift in perception from rock logic to water logic could facilitate closing the inequality gap caused by the illusion of ethical superiority and reinforce true humanitarian values that dissolve conflict. Wisdom in one of the rare insightful comments among the hostility to Tim Shieff sums it up pretty well: “the most toxic diet is when your diet becomes your identity...”. References Elias, N., Scotson, J. L. (1994). A Theoretical Essay on Established and Outsider Relations. In
The Established and the Outsiders (Vol. 32). London, Sage Publications. Blok, A. (2001). Chapter 7: The Narcissism of Minor Differences. In: Honour and Violence. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. 115-136. De Bono., Edward. (1990). I am right. You are wrong. Penguin Books. Why I’m No Longer Vegan response, Freelee The BananaGirl, 2019. Accessed 06.05.2019. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1z3zO6KC920&t=379s THIS IS WHAT IS HAPPENING, Rawvana, 2019. Accessed 06.05.2019. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHjaKB0A14A&t=1478s Shugerman, E. (2019), The Weird World of Vegan Youtube is Imploding, The Daily Beast. Accessed 08.05.2019. Available at: https://www.thedailybeast.com/vegan-youtube-is-imploding-as-stars-like-rawvana-bonny-rebecc a-and-stella-rae-change-diets Am I Still Vegan?, Tim Shieff, 2019. Accessed 06.05.2019. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jt9Gcnicc6Y Willet., W. et al. (2019), Food in the Anthropocene: the EAT–Lancet Commission on healthy diets from sustainable food systems The Vegan Society. Statistics. Retrieved 02/05/2019: https://www.vegansociety.com/news/media/statistics The Vegan Society. Find Out How Many Vegans Are In Great Britain. Accessed 02/05/2019. Available at: https://www.vegansociety.com/whats-new/news/find-out-how-many-vegans-are-great-britain Ortiz, M.G. (2019, 2 April). Lecture: Social Identity and (resistance to) change. Adenuga, J., (2019). I Got Cancelled: Tim Shieff. VICE. Accessed 08.05.19. Available at: https://video.vice.com/en_uk/video/vice-i-got-cancelled-tim-shieff/5cadf5a7be40775e017928c5
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