“But first a word in the ear of the psychologists, provided that they have any desire to study ressentiment itself up close for once: this plant grows most beautifully nowadays among anarchists…” Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality, pg. 48.
Some of the household names of veganarchy are Warzone Distro, Animal Liberation Front, Unoffensive Animal, and some manifestations of Food not Bombs. They express a wide variety of ideas of veganism, but generally align in the concept of Veganarchy: Not just being anarchist and vegan, but that veganism is essential to the anarchist critique and veganism finds its highest expression in anarchy (as opposed to say, liberal vegans). Veganarchy is often synonymous with Total Liberation. As Steve Best puts it, “it is imperative that we no longer speak of human liberation, animal liberation, or earth liberation as if they were independent struggles, but rather that we talk instead of total liberation” (The Politics of Total Liberation, 2014, as quoted in Total Liberation, from Signal Fire & Active Distribution).
However, as someone who is vegan and an anarchist, someone sympathetic to Total Liberation, and to some, a veganarchist, I find this movement to be full of contradictions and weaknesses. Primarily, it seems veganarchists are stuck in a classical leftist moral framework, which they often claim to surpass. To quote “Why Vegan Anarchy?” (2025): -
-Equality is essential for genuine freedom to exist. There can be no real freedom in this class-stratified, hierarchical society riddled with inequalities of power and wealth. Without equality, freedom becomes a mockery -- at best the “freedom” to choose one's master (boss), or representative (president). -Freedom is essential for the full flowering of creativity and dignity for all animals (including humans!). To be dominated by another is to be denied the chance to think and act for oneself, which is the only way to grow and develop one's individuality. (Warzone Distro, emphasis in the original)
I believe I see what Warzone wants to say: self-determination. Not of abstractions of nations or other collectives, but of individuals and affinities. But to appeal to equality is to make a mistake. It is a reproduction of slave-morality. Nietzsche explains:
To refrain from mutual injury, mutual violence, mutual exploitation, to equate one’s own will with that of another: this may in a certain rough sense become good manners between individuals if the conditions for it are present [...] As soon as there is a desire to take this principle further, however, and if possible even as the fundamental principle of society, it at once reveals itself for what it is: as the will to the denial of life, as the principle of dissolution and decay. (Beyond Good and Evil 259)
I am neither a scholar of Nietzsche nor a Nietzschean. I do however take inspiration from him, not so different from how Goldman did: “It does not occur to the shallow interpreters of that giant mind that this vision of the Uebermensch also called for a state of society which will not give birth to a race of weaklings and slaves” (Preface to Anarchism and Other Essays). Freedom, a rugged, unsafe freedom that Warzone calls for, necessarily does not include equality. It means, (in my interpretation of their ideas) an open recognition of the idea of Max Stirner’s “a war of all against all.”
It seems the subject of veganarchy, animals, treated as a neglected part of anarchist critique, mirrors some Third Worldist or identity politic leftism. The neglected Global South, the forgotten intersectional minority, etc. A race to the Left, but it goes beyond the Human. Fundamentally, moralizing veganarchists feel the protected class of “person” does not extend to animals. They say they are not interested in morality, or even posit an anti-moral veganism, but the reality is, they want to develop a political project that expands the idea of personhood to animals (and in some way, Nature as a whole). Ie, equality. The emphasis on equality is not the only example of slave-morality in the veganarchist scene. To argue for this principle, while also opposing “anthropocentric” or “carnist” morality mirrors slave morality’s opposition to and inversion of master morality.
As opposed to equality, we must emphasize freedom, as Warzone Distro rightly does in the second half of the included quote. In our society, the domination of animals (and the biosphere as a whole) precludes freedom for human-animals. The techniques involved in the repression of nonhuman-animals mirrors and informs our own. We cannot love the animals or hate them, only an abstraction of them, as their species, as victims, or as food. An attack on civilization, a collection of institutions that cage us, is necessarily a vegan attack, which I believe Warzone Distro would strongly agree with. It opens the world to the real possibility for the war of all against all: it levels the playing field. Humanity, particularly the dominant classes, have strangled us and stiffened all individuals’ expression. To use Nietzsche again, the aristocrats have become degenerate. Time to free the animals, time for free ourselves.
Submitted by Paranthropus. To be elaborated on elsewhere.
- Is veganism necessarily stuck in a moral framework?
- How can an immoral (or maybe amoral) critique help develop a Total Liberationist outlook that goes beyond “the race to the left” and slave morality?
- What are the possible intersections of veganarchy and anti-civilization? What tensions?
Comments
I don't think I've actually…
anonymous (not verified) Mon, 03/09/2026 - 17:30
I don't think I've actually met any "anti moralists" they are have quite stringent moral values. Its just stupid cope because they don't want to care. They certainly care about their pet moral values. Non of the anti moralists are ambivalent to child rape or racism. They always are super against that. Its just people are too afraid to have values and stick to them and the annoying and hard problems of how do you relate to people who you think do horrible things. Thats tough and annoying and you also have a position to defend. Every anti moralist in the sense they are also against ethics certainly has ethics but they are too afraid to defend them.
There is no beyond anti moralist there are just people high on copium too afraid to argue their beliefs and being edgelords.
oh 17:30
anonymous (not verified) Mon, 03/09/2026 - 20:52
In reply to I don't think I've actually… by anonymous (not verified)
so easy to make big assertions when yo dont do the work to , oh lets say, DEFINE YOUR TERMS...
what do you mean by moralist? anti-moralist? how do the people you're talking about define those terms? hwo do they and you define ethics? why make empty staements when you could with a just a little more effort make full ones?
Whatever-Veganism by Aragorn!
rocinante Mon, 03/09/2026 - 18:48
Whatever-Veganism by Aragorn!
read txt here:
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/various-authors-black-seed-issue-7#toc3
a quote from the intro:
I am a virtue ethicist, an…
anonymous (not verified) Thu, 03/12/2026 - 00:06
I am a virtue ethicist, an indigenous-anarchist, and a vegan. Also, incidentally a Buddhist, so this might actually doxx me.
Instead of a moral prohibition ('thou shall not eat meat') I consider veganism to be the practice of my cardinal virtue, which is compassion for all beings. In this way, it is positive rather than negative -- a means of self-creation rather than self-denial (which, however, are actually identical in the grand scheme of things). I create myself as one who cherishes and loves animals enough not to eat them, rather than a rabid carnivore who has been tamed by the cold, mathematical, and fundamentally Western utilitarianism.
While I personally hope for a world where animals (including humans) will not be slaughtered, that is clearly impossible without inflicting other forms of harm; this is a basic corollary of the fundamentally unsatisfactory nature of the world. Still, I think that most arguments against veganism fail on basic introspection and are motivated by intellectual inertia rather than genuine critical impulse.
Often white anarchists will use Indigenous groups (usually in the Arctic or the Amazon or American food deserts) to argue that vegansim is colonial, which would be true if there were vegan missionaries in those places trying to force the natives to eat tofu.* This doesn't actually stand to scrutiny, however, because the primary opponent of veganarchists are the very Western, very colonial, and incredibly powerful factory farms. "No ethical consumption" arguments equally apply to animal products as they do to slave labor or Israeli companies.
*: Some eco-activists have actually went to the Arctic to protest Indigenous means of subsistence, which involve whaling and seal-clubbing among other things. But these are often non-vegan milquetoast activists like Greenpeace, not necessarily the ALF.
Hi, I'm an intellectuo…
Lebou (not verified) Fri, 03/13/2026 - 17:37
In reply to I am a virtue ethicist, an… by anonymous (not verified)
Hi, I'm an intellectuo-anarchist with an anarcho-empathic temperament who is vegetarian and still believes in retribution :)
https://warzonedistro…
anonymous (not verified) Mon, 03/16/2026 - 10:41
https://warzonedistro.noblogs.org/post/2025/06/23/liberal-radical-nihil…
"Nihilist Veganism:
An anti-speciesist praxis that extends the critique of human supremacy to
include the moralist framework from which humanism (and consequently,
civilization) have materialized. Vegan nihilism asserts animal liberation from an
amoralist position informed by an understanding of "human" as an identity
marker designed to both internally suppress primal animality, and to reproduce
human supremacy on an individual level. Nihilist vegans view the speciesist
treatment of non-human animals to be a result of social programming rooted in
the assigning of moral value to 'human' animals, elevating their status of
importance above other animals. Nihilist vegans generally view industrial
civilizations (whether it be capitalist, communist, socialist, or so on) as blunt
instruments of domesticating power and control over the wild"
Yes, very interesting and…
Lebou (not verified) Tue, 03/17/2026 - 07:05
In reply to https://warzonedistro… by anonymous (not verified)
Yes, very interesting and nice folk to know
Nihilist vegans generally…
anonymous (not verified) Mon, 03/16/2026 - 10:58
Nihilist vegans generally view speciesism and human supremacy as
manifestations of anthropocentric morality, constructed from capitalist, colonial
modes of thinking. Nihilist vegans often favor asymmetrical warfare through
clandestine, cell-structured attacks against all and any aspects of industrial
civilization. Vegan nihilists advocate for total (human and non-human animal)
liberation, expanding tactical diversity to sometimes include violence against
human targets. Rather than being guided by “hope” or a futurist vision of “a
better world”, many nihilist vegans point to a primal empathy as the motivation
to attack here and now, for the sake of even momentary (human or non-human
animal) liberation. Discarding the concept of a linear history (the concept of a
progressive, linear timeline of historical events), nihilist vegans generally accept
that a fully vegan world is highly unlikely. Therefore the urge to wage primal
war against civilized societies, present and future, is accompanied with
accepting permanent conflict as an inevitability.
is there a method behind…
anonymous (not verified) Mon, 03/16/2026 - 16:31
In reply to Nihilist vegans generally… by anonymous (not verified)
is there a method behind switching between "vegan nihilists" and "nihilist vegans" or am i trying to read between your words too hard. and, i mentally converted all of your mentions of nihilists or vegans to "i" spoken in your voice.
Yes there is a spontaneous…
Lebou (not verified) Tue, 03/17/2026 - 07:11
In reply to Nihilist vegans generally… by anonymous (not verified)
Yes there is a spontaneous element to the primal empathy which means diverse non-linear joyfulness/sadness oscillations.
Add new comment