This is going to be a sweary rant, because I am fucking pissed off.
Another week, another day and another set of bullying white leftists achieve their goal of shutting down the voice of someone they disagreed with. This voice is a queer, black voice that speaks critically, clearly and coherently about veganism, queer rights and racism.
Disclaimer: I’m a white, cis, middleclass hetero-passing queer man from the UK. I know what (some of) my privileges are and I’m exercising one of them right now.
This past weekend saw one of the largest vegan events in Europe happening in London — VegFest. One of the scheduled contributors to this was Christopher-Sebastian McJetters. He’s been part of Vegfest several times in the past, is a part-time lecturer at Colombia (teaching about power, oppression and privilege) and has given lectures across the US and Europe. He’s got the chops.
If you are interested in learning more about his social activist work then go look at his facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/christopher.mcjetters or read his contributions (particularly about Radical Veganism and achieving liberation) here: https://strivingwithsystems.com/ or just google the name and you’ll find a TON of YouTube videos if that’s your thing.
Lemme tell you some other things about Sebastian. He’s fiercely loyal, he’s fiercely queer, his passion is in helping other people learn, develop and grow. He’s pretty *and* he’s petty. He is NOT here for your respectability bullshit and has called me out….oh a time or 10.
So, how did this weekend go? Did Sebastian enjoy his time facilitating at VegFest. Did he fuck. He didn’t get to go. He didn’t get to be with the speakers that he’s helped to arrange. He didn’t get to go to the two events he’d curated. He didn’t get to be part of the plenary sessions he’d prepared for over the past 6 months. He couldn’t even attend the event as a visitor. Why? Because he had to act on police advice not to go for his own safety and for the safety of others attending VegFest.
Who was the threat? White nationalists? Militant carnists? Furious straight men? Angry gay men not liking seeing a femme black queer in a public space? Nope. A bunch of fucking white people who don’t like it when a black man stands in front of them and tells them that they need to look at the vegan movement and see the commonalities between animal liberation and racism. Who stands in front of them and makes them feel defensive when they have to interrogate their whiteness. Who challenges the fact that within the Animal Rights movement, minorities are systematically and routinely sidelined and their contributions minimised.
Anyone who is involved in any form of social justice advocacy and activism inevitably ends up pissing off a few people along the way. Vegan politics is incredibly tribal. There are various groupings around white men who have spent careers saying the same thing over and over and these acolytes don’t like it when their old white hero’s are challenged.
For months (if not years) a group of white (self identified)* fucking leftists has been looking for a reason to attack Sebastian and demonstrate that he is as problematic as the rest of us. To steal a quote from him “all your faves are problematic”. Over the past week they found a chink. Not a big one, but enough. And they took it. They went at Sebastian HARD. This was a co-ordinated and sustained attack that included threats of violence and threats to disrupt VegFest. It had a single aim; to silence Sebastian. These small-minded, scared white leftists who couldn’t stand it when a loud uppity queer black man told them they were doing veganism wrong wouldn’t stand for that so they taught him a lesson. They pursued their racist agenda with fierceness and with single-mindedness.
They both succeeded and failed. They succeeded in winning a tactical battle in making sure that Sebastian couldn’t be part of an event that he had invested considerable time and effort into. They haven’t (yet) beaten him to the point that he withdraws. I hope that failure burns their fucking racist souls. I hope that everytime they see a video of him and read and hear from him in the future that the full weight of their failure grinds them into the fucking dust. They are pitiful cowardly people who are not worthy of being called activists and have zero part of any social justice movement. They chose to target someone who was different, someone they thought was vulnerable. Fucking hypocrites.
Just for clarity and in case it wasn’t already obvious, I take this EXTREMELY personally. I’m not writing this on behalf of Sebastian. He doesn’t need my protection and he certainly doesn’t need me to speak for him. He’s a strong and tough individual who is far more articulate than me. This is just my little show of support for him and a challenge to all those fucking bigoted white leftists who think they are superior to all.
*A note for any basic white people here; don’t try and get clever and pull up my grammar. You aren’t that fucking clever. I’m being deliberate. Whiteness is an identity we are taught, we choose and we identify as. As is leftism. The ‘self-identified’ can apply to both or either. Fuck you and your grammar high horse. See — I can reject respectability (but I have the safety of my identity to do so).
