Rectangular Squares AKA Abolitionist Vegans

The first time I met their leader I was a fledgling vegan, about three months old. I came to their page because I saw the posters. I was excited to become part of any vegan presence on the internet since in my own new world I was the only vegan I knew. (except for my fiance)

Within 30 minutes I was condemned, called names including a happy exploiter of animals, bullied and then blocked from his page. I was simply asking questions about how to talk to people when they say plants have feelings too (every vegan knows that when you first switch, someone says this to you and it blindsides you if you haven’t heard it before) and are clams and human fetuses sentient.

I wasn’t sure what had just happened but it left me with a really terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach. At that point I decided veganism was not the ultimate enlightenment. Kindness and non-discrimination are because these things, for them to be true about a person, means that person must practice veganism.

It should be of note that at the time of my conversation with their leader I was 100% vegan – eating no animal or insect products including the lesser known gelatin, white sugar, etc. buying only products with the leaping bunny, threw out a bunch of shoes, no honey, carrying spiders outside, and sitting on lawn chairs in my living room because my furniture had been leather. As a single mom earning less than 30,000 a year I could not afford to replace it. And I had just adopted a dog whose behavior was such that no one else wanted him – peeing and pooping indoors and biting, described as violent on his surrender document. But according to their leader I was an exploiter of animals. What impression does this give an all alone brand new vegan of veganism?

Their leader helped me to realize that veganism is not enlightenment.

Kindness with 100% non-discrimination are enlightenment and if you are these things, as everyone should be, then you will also be a practitioner of vegansm because you can’t eat an animal and also be kind or a non-discriminator.

What their leader doesn’t know is that the phrase abolitionist vegan is redundant. It’s like saying a rectangular square. All squares are rectangles and so it goes that all vegans are abolitionists. I know of no vegan, no ethical vegan, that does not wish for all animal exploitation to end completely. So it is never necessary to say abolitionist vegan. Just like it sounds silly to say rectangular square.

Since my first encounter with the rectangular squares aka abolitionist vegans I have had many more opportunities to interact with them. What I’ve found is that they all respond in the exact same manner as their leader did to me. They use the exact same language as well. And the pattern is always the same one: you may question nothing, your opinion may not differ in the slightest, if so then you are shamed or bullied or called names and usually a combination of all three, and then you are abolished from their page.

It is always the same.

In history many men have risen to power and we wonder how? How did that guy have all those followers? Especially when what he was doing was so destructive? This is called a cult of personality. In a cult you must fit into a mold completely. There is no room for individuality. And you will follow a set of rules even if those rules are destructive. You will believe. You’re either in or you’re out. There is no in between. This requires total dedication to one person, one line of reasoning, and to accomplish this requires brain washing. We’ve all been there as before we were vegan, brain washed by the culture. Therefore none of us are immune to it again.

The main theme of the rectangular squares aka abolitionist vegans (I say it that way so you know who I am talking about because the truth is that all vegans are abolitionists) is to say that single issue campaigns are a waste of time but then they proceed to waste their own time trying to tear down vegan people, groups, pages or organizations that are trying to help animals.

If you’re an abolitionist vegan aka rectangular square at this very moment then you can’t see it because you have been manipulated. But I wish someone had come to me when I was eating animals and said to me “It is possible that the culture has manipulated you into doing something that is opposite to who you really are inside”.

All vegans are abolitionists. If you leave the abolitionist movement you will still be an abolitionist vegan I promise you this, it’s just that you won’t need to say it like that anymore because it goes without saying.

I encourage you to read this article about what welfarism really is. Because your leader has not defined it properly. He has caused you to believe an untruth. Any ‘leader’ of any ‘group’ that seeks to make everyone exactly the same, seeks to make himself and his way of looking at things the only way, and causes all of his followers to believe in untruths and promotes the shaming and worse of others who have the exact same agenda – which all vegans want to abolish all use of animals, to free them all – simply because they do not fit perfectly into his mold. . . . .

I am here to tell you that you must think using your own thoughts, not your leader’s, about who you are allowing yourself to become. About what the animal wants – not what your leader wants. And about how you are treating others. Use your mind . . . your words.

Someone should at least point these things out to you. If you dig your heels in further and adhere even more to abolitionist veganism then you are allowing cognitive dissonance and confirmational bias to override your ability to think for yourself and these two things are the very things that allowed us to eat animals and use them in the first place – so try not to fall back on what allows humans to justify something terrible.

I am only asking you to think for yourself.

What do the animals want? This is important. Way more important than what any human leader wants.

Peace