This was originally published on Substack.
We have this one movement that is all about the most innocent beings in the world, non-human animals, and we are trying to take it away from them. One would think vegans would be against human supremacy, and yet we are perpetuating it daily.
I wrote about this in the past, although I could be wrong, and it was just a random conversation I had with myself before I fell asleep, but I will talk about it again. It is one of those things I want to drill into every vegan’s head because we need to do better.
Many years ago, while having a conversation on some political issue, a man looked at me and replied to one of my statements by saying, “Of course, you support that, you’re a liberal!” I had zero idea what that meant, but I knew that it felt rigid and like I wasn’t allowed to express or hold certain opinions.
Soon after, I started listening to Sam Harris and his podcast Making Sense (then called Waking Up). It was probably the first time I heard someone talk about conversing and listening to people we disagree with.
Up until then, I was very left-leaning. I would now describe my then self as a progressive with strong radical feminist views. My free time between 2012 and 2015 was spent on Tumblr, where I was told exactly what to repost, comment and like, if I wanted to be a good person.
As a Directioner and a Hooligan, who dabbled in fandoms about Supernatural, Marvel and FC Barcelona, I was aware of what the demographic of the website was. I was posting GIFs of Obama, warning women about males who want to rape us, and writing about freeing some random place in the Middle East I had no idea about.
But that is what you did to fit in and to belong. As someone who just wanted to be liked and get some followers on my Tumblr page, I willingly played the role.
I was a voter in real life but knew nothing about politics, except that on the internet, we liked Obama (even us, Europeans) and anyone white was a threat to democracy. Basically, I was voting based on the vibes I got when I caught five minutes of a debate on television. Sadly, I was not the first nor the last person who voted just for the sake of voting.
Anyway, finding Sam Harris after years of being politically progressive without knowing what progressivism was or what foreign policy meant meant that I was introduced to a whole new world. Suddenly, I was encouraged to think about the reasons why I support the right to abortion as if saying “because I do, ok” wasn’t enough.
Months into thinking about morality and religion and free will and politics and all the other stuff I never thought about at all, I realised something. I realised that when I was not influenced by what I read on the internet or what my neighbours said about me, I was radical. An extremist, you could say. Someone people fear and politicians refuse to acknowledge.
I was a centrist.
I looked to my left and shook my head in agreement with them on some things, and then I looked to my right and shook my head in agreement with them sometimes, too. I was a left-winger when discussing climate change and gay rights, and a right-winger when talking about drugs or immigration.
The best thing is that I finally felt free and stopped forcing myself to agree with one side on everything when I didn’t agree with them on everything. Yes, I do have a problem with the church, and no, I do not think aborting babies a month before due date is ethical.
Being a new vegan and newly enlightened about my own political views did not help me find a gracious audience. I was a newbie trying to indoctrinate the vegan movement, which is historically progressive and/or leftist, to be open to outsiders. How dare I!
Skipping to today, a decade into being vegan, and a month after taking the old and the updated political compass test, I am here to inform you that I remain a centrist. Now, with a confirmed screenshot on my phone to prove I am not a secret conservative who is too ashamed to admit her truest self.
I wanted to share my short-ish political history because it pertains to what I want to write about today. If you’ve ever visited my blog (tanjajurgec.com), you might be familiar with my passion for welcoming all vegans into our beautiful movement. No matter who they vote for or how they identify.
I honestly just want everyone to go vegan, and if that means shaking hands with someone who thinks I am going to hell for being raised an atheist, I will take it. As long as they stop eating cows, I literally am okay with them thinking I am going to spend eternity with Satan.
Imagine my sadness when I witness my fellow vegans dictate who gets to call themselves vegan, not based on who or what they do or don’t eat, but based on which causes they support, and what they think about capitalism.
At this rate, we are soon going to run out of vegans. If every year we add more rules to who or what makes a vegan, then someday no one will meet the criteria anymore. It’s not about non-human animals anymore, but about humans and our problems.
So far, I have seen many vegans spread around an agenda that if you are not a leftist, communist, socialist, anarchist, Marxist, anti-capitalist, woke, etc., then you are not a real vegan. There are many versions, but one thing is clear: if you are centrist, conservative, or not radically on the left, you are not and never will be a part of this movement.
It reminds me of those radical feminists who think that if you have long hair, you are supporting the patriarchy and want your rights to be taken away.
It is things like this that make me not call myself a radical feminist, and it’s also things like this that will turn potential vegans away from looking into animal rights.
Non-human animals have this one thing for them. This one movement is supposed to be about liberating them from human supremacy and our cruel need to exploit and take away their lives. And there are still individuals out there who will put cows, chickens and pigs behind humans in the fucking animal rights movement.
“Humans are animals, too.” You know goddamn well you would never talk about fish at a pro-choice protest, or call for the closing of zoos across the nation at a women’s rights rally.
“If you care about liberating cows, you have to care about liberating this human group.” No, I don’t have to care about any goddamn human if I don’t want to. I do care about many, even those you want to eliminate, but animal rights is not about humans, so when I talk about lab testing, I don’t think about us.
The audacity to scream about supremacy and colonisation, only to turn around and use your human supremacy to colonise a movement for non-human animals. The hypocrisy of so many of you is disgusting and, quite frankly, the reason why I fight so hard to be the voice of reason as a vegan in 2025.
I am not afraid to accuse you of being a part of this movement only to spread hate and your wicked ideology, because I know so many of you are. You never cared about other animals; you just saw a group of compassionate people calling for peace and decided to ambush them.
Your threats of cancellation or even violence scare people from complaining, because you know exactly what tactics and accusations to employ when you’re threatened.
This shit doesn’t work on me, and I will continue building the bridge between all political aisles, in hopes that we can all achieve absolute and total animal liberation someday. If this is your goal, which as a vegan it should be, then you will want everyone to adopt a vegan lifestyle.
And if we want everyone to adopt a vegan lifestyle, why add new criteria and take the vegan card away from those who are literally vegan by the original definition?
This is not about agreeing with someone or even shaking their hand, but about recognising that they share with us compassion for non-human animals. They share with us the wish to free the most innocent amongst us. They, too, are human.
I swear that some of you are way too comfortable dehumanising your fellow people, and if you can do this to your own species, how long before you do that to those you claim to fight for? If you can’t recognise a heartbeat in someone of your own kind, how can you recognise a heartbeat in a worm?
You need to do better.
We all need to do better.
Tanja
