Karl du Fresne writes about the po-faced, weirdo, wowsers starting to infiltrate our supermarkets while annoying good, normal, meat-eating, Kiwi shoppers:
My wife and I don’t always agree about things – just choosing a paint colour for the bathroom can take months. But we celebrated a moment of instant accord over breakfast recently.
In front of us was a newspaper account of the black-clad vegan protesters who formed a line in front of the meat shelves in an Auckland supermarket.
Shoppers, who were prevented from buying meat, reportedly lost their patience, lashing out at the protesters.
My wife’s reaction was the same as mine. We agreed that if we’d been there, we probably would have been among those doing the lashing out.
I’d like to see these long, lanky streaks of mobile misery try their protest on somewhere like Te Kuiti. You may be sure that there would be Vegan blood noses running down the aisles of the local Countdown as the no-nonsense rural types take umbrage at the group of urban tossers telling them what they can or can’t eat.
I respect the right of vegans to renounce meat and I’m certainly not insensitive to concerns about inhumane treatment of animals. But protesters are inviting a backlash when they arrogantly assert the right to obstruct people going about their lawful business.
Don’t these Militant activists know that for the very best quality meat you need to treat animals well and kill them quickly? Of course, you don’t need to fight your way past these fools if you buy your meat directly from The Whale Meat Company as that way it goes straight to your meat-eating door (possibly delivered by your local Hindu, vegetarian courier driver who is unlikely to steal your meat, especially if it contains sacred cow).
The right to protest is an essential item in the democratic toolkit and one I’ve taken advantage of myself. But I’ve never assumed my beliefs were so sacred that they took precedence over the rights of others – which is why, although I marched against the 1981 Springbok tour, I avoided taking part in protests that tried to prevent fans from getting to matches.
It’s also why I get mad when I see activists trying to bar people from attending political events they disapprove of.
Unfortunately, the thing about zealots is that they become so convinced of the righteousness of their cause that it overrides all other considerations. Thus we are now witnessing the rise of militant veganism, as was evident in the meat section of the Countdown supermarket in the Westfield St Lukes Mall.
Food has been well and truly politicised, and with that has come a rising level of strident militancy – hysteria, almost – and denunciation of anyone who doesn’t fall into line with the “meat is murder” agenda.
It’s all part of the so-called culture war – the clash between traditional liberal values and those promoted by the radical and increasingly assertive authoritarian Left.
Yes, I’d bet a dollar to a knob of goat poo that these vegan numpties are Green voters to a “they”…the “male” ones certainly would barely qualify as men given how much soy they likely ingest.
A significant recent development was the convergence of two of the great secular theologies of our age: militant veganism and climate change alarmism.
The two came together in fist-pumping union nine months ago with the publication of a report purporting to link climate change with supposedly unhealthy global food production systems.
There you have it: two moral panics rolled into one – pure gold for the ideologues who endlessly lecture us on the supposed failings of capitalism and Western civilisation.
Published in the British medical journal The Lancet, the report – written by a team headed by Professor Boyd Swinburn of Auckland University, a high priest of wowserism – claimed that food production systems, controlled and manipulated by profit-crazed global business interests, are not only driving climate change, but propelling us toward early graves.
How this squares with statistics showing steady worldwide improvements in life expectancy wasn’t explained, but hey – why nitpick?
Nah, let’s nitpick. You see the very report that Karl writes about has been slammed for the wonky piece of political agitprop that it was by none other than the Chief Scientist for the Ministry of Primary Industries.
Swinburn and his accomplices even came up with a fancy new term for this looming apocalypse. They called it a Global Syndemic, or a “synergy of epidemics” interacting with each other to produce “complex sequelae” – a bit of Latin always looks impressive – which ultimately threaten the planet.
There should be no mistaking the purpose of such reports. They are aimed at frightening people into meekly accepting radical changes imposed on us by those who insist they know better.
Neither should there be any doubt about the real target of the reformist zealots.
They may not say it in so many words, but their goal is to dismantle international capitalism. That’s the agenda that underpins almost all the moral crusades currently being waged in Western societies.
Stuff – Manawatu Standard
Part of that crusade includes lawfare against industry and confident opposing voices that challenge their agitprop. One must not dare argue against “the science” is the constant refrain we are beaten with. No matter that the “science” is as weak as a vegan weightlifter.
Karl du Fresne better watch out. Boyd Swinburn doesn’t like being challenged and he likes to lawyer up between his frequent trips around the world proselytising in his battle against “Big Food”. Like climate scientists, he never admits when he’s been wrong and he’s never met a tax he doesn’t like for the targets of his opprobrium.
Karl du Fresne is right, these wowser types are extremely annoying, and wrong.