2.03+ Kai McBeth (Bonus)

Kai McBeth is an animal activist committed to empowering the animal rights movement with effective communication systems and evidence-based tools for advocacy. As a street activist he has directly outreached over 3,000 people and organised events that have reached people in the tens of thousands. He currently works with global advocacy organisation We The Free in empowering grass-roots communities across Australia and New Zealand with outreach training, event strategy and community building support.

You can find Kai on Instagram.

0:00:10 Adam Walsh: I had a brief conversation with someone about conservatives, because I don’t understand… They’re such a big chunk of the population that… I don’t know, I haven’t seen a whole lot in this space to show how we connect with them or even people attempting to connect with them.

I think it really made me, I don’t know, somewhere between angry and disappointed, when the government changed in New Zealand. They [New Zealand] banned live export with a progressive government and then a conservative government comes back in and they’re overturning it, or they want to overturn it. So live export is going to start up again. And kind of my point is this is what happens when we rely on, you know, [the] Animal Justice Party and The Greens and independents and, when they are supportive, Labor and almost completely ignore [The] Liberals [conservative party in Australia] because they’re going to be back in government whether it’s the next election or the following one, and they’re going to go through the laws that were changed and overturn the ones that they can, [and] campaign against the ones that they can’t.

And if we had even mild support from them… that’s not for lack of trying. There are some things. Someone said to me, there’s a documentary coming out soon, the same guy that did ‘Cowspiracy’ about really religious ways to kill animals and if it’s consistent with their beliefs and stuff like that. So, like, there’s, there’s definitely more being done. But I think as far as, like, reaching conservatives on the ground and politicians in particular, I suppose, [it] still seems to be quite a difficult space to be in.

0:01:45 Kai McBeth: Yeah, I agree. It’s definitely a neglected aspect of things. And I think, I think the the argument for animal rights is so compelling and in all honesty, so, easy that it can be tailored to pretty much any demographic there is. Even groups who might be seen as our most ardent opposition, like members of the industry, pretty compelling arguments can be made to them.

The only true groups that we’re not going to be able to find and argue with are going to be psychopaths. And that’s it really. Anyone who’s a normally function human being is, like, we’re going to be able to make a pretty compelling argument to. Restricting it to only progressives or only certain other sects of people, you know, they might be low hanging fruit, more so than the others, but yeah, agree with you massively that it’s neglected with both the politically conservatives and also the religious crowd majorly.

0:02:44 Adam Walsh: We look at other ways of doing it. But I think, even people who are anti-immigration and anti-abortion and these kinds of things, like they, they have concerns for children, they have concerns for family units, they have all these kinds of things. I think if we boil it down to something that we can relate to, then suddenly we’re not quite as different as some of them and maybe that might help.

0:03:08 Kai McBeth: There’s a quote, and I’m not too sure who it’s from, but I heard it a few years ago, and it’s, ‘No person is beneath respect and no idea is above critique’. And it’s sort of that idea of separating people from their beliefs. And I think there’s just a genuine utility to giving almost everyone the benefit of the doubt. And that utility is in that having the opposite of the benefit of doubt, which is, I would argue, is contempt for people who aren’t on your side, is going to diminish greatly your ability to influence them.

And the end of the day, and I think this is… I guess it all kind of just falls down to tribalism in that the end of the day, what I want to do as an individual in the animal rights space, but in essentially any sphere, is influence people to move towards what I think are like better ways of acting and better ways of thinking. I don’t actually care for… There’s no inherent value in proving people wrong or shouting people down or anything like that. Everything is about behavior change and influencing people and it’s so hard to influence people when you don’t give them the benefit of doubt.

0:04:26 Adam Walsh: What positive experiences have you had in speaking with people who hold more conservative values?

0:04:35 Kai McBeth: I guess there’s sort of a fair few different things that make up sort of like traditional conservative values. Things like traditionalism and free market capitalism, and there’s various other things. But I think can all be sort of bottled down to one word, and it’s almost a bit of a meme, but it’s the idea of freedom. I think that’s really, it’s sort of like the stereotypical battle cry, especially of like, American conservatism.

And I think there’s a great argument to be made regards to freedom for animal rights. Obviously, the clearest one is speaking of the freedom of animals. But alongside that, I think there’s a very important argument to be made about freedom of human individuals. And often, I think the conservative anti-vegan argument would relate to, you know, people’s personal choice, and again, probably hearken to free market capitalism and things like that. And I think it’s strange that that idea is proposed as an argument against veganism because I think it’s really an argument for veganism or at least much of animal rights advocacy, because personal choice is important.

People often ask me if I could ban meat or just snap my fingers and make it illegal, would I? And part of me wants to say ‘Yes’, but the practical part of me always says ‘No’, because personal choice is important. We can’t just have vegan North Korea. Like, that’s not what we want.

And the real fact of the matter is people’s personal choice about the consumption of adult products isn’t being infringed upon by vegans. People like to act like it is, but just because you saw a Tash Peterson video on Instagram or you saw a vegan protest on the street, that hasn’t actually impacted your personal choice. It’s not the case that vegans are coming into your home and trying to force feed you broccoli. The real personal choice that’s being infringed upon is by the animal agriculture industry. And the way they’re infringing on your personal choice, largely, is by withholding information and looking to actively deceive people. This is a pretty egregious violation of people’s right to information. And I think anyone can probably agree on the value of that.

But I think particularly conservatives, especially because part of that misinformation and deception is facilitated by the government, as well. And that can be whether it’s through advertising, the happy [chickens] you see for chicken meat, [a] picture of a chicken in a grass field, when really they’re all in sheds with tens of thousands of them. And that’s just simply lying to people.

Whether it’s through the education system, and whether it’s through the immense impact and sway that the animal agriculture industry has over the education of our children and spreading, again, objectively untrue things. That’s a massive violation of our freedoms because, again, we don’t have the freedom to choose if we don’t know what we’re choosing. And so I think there’s an incredible argument to be made for people who are conservatively leaning for that.

Another strong conservative value is minimal government intervention on things. And it’s not as much the case in Australia, but massively in the US in regards to agricultural subsidies. That’s a huge government overreach. Things like the legal system and how activists are threatened with serious jail time for filming and disseminating information about what the animal agriculture industry is doing.

You see many conservatives prop up whistleblowers in other spheres about exposing unethical things that go on. And, you know, when they’re in those spheres they’re whistleblowers, but when they’re animal rights activists they’re terrorists somehow, when really they’re doing the same thing and should probably be supported as ardently and the laws against that behavior should be seen as immense violations of our rights. And even conservatives generally try to hold a pretty strong focus and emphasis on personality responsibility for things. So there’s a massive component of that in regards to consumer responsibility.

Transcribed with Deciphr.AI