2.03 Kai McBeth

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 Kai McBeth: Her name was Jessie, she was a black and white cardigan corgi, and she was around from my birth until around, I believe, when I was 14 years old, she died. And I think a lot of the time that she was sort of the first real individual that I loved. Obviously, I loved my parents and things like that. But the level of, I guess, innocence and understanding shared between an animal and a child, I think, is something immensely powerful. I think it’s something really important for children to have because, you know, childhoods can be the whole gamut of easy or difficult for certain individuals.

And I think no matter what a child goes through, a companion animal is always there. They’re never judgmental, they’re never sort of a part of what a child is dealing with, they’re always just this sort of constant source of comfort and understanding. And I most definitely think of her as my best friend for those 14 years.

And I think it relates a lot to, I guess, my motivation and drive for the animal rights movement in general. I often think that I’m driven by these sort of sophisticated ideas about animal rights and things like that. But, I think many of us can neglect the emotional aspect of what drives us, and for me, I think much of the groundwork for that was laid in having a very close companion animal as a child, and especially in losing that companion animal.

Still to this day, I’m 27 now, and I haven’t experienced anything as emotionally devastating as losing Jesse. And in that there was sort of this immense loss for me, that was very parallel, I guess, to when I first went vegan and first garnered an understanding of the broader exploitation and abuse of animals. And it was, I think it was four years later. I went vegan at 18, Jesse died at 14. And I think in that there was this incredibly important understanding that the reason that I grieved so much for the loss of my companion animal, wasn’t just because she was some object and I appreciated what I got out of her. The reason that that loss was so substantiate is because I saw that very similarly to myself, that she was a living, feeling individual with emotions and an experience of life and a desire for happiness and an aversion to suffering.

And I think in that was the exact same grounding to a very similar, almost grief or devastation that I encountered when I first properly understood what happens to animals for human consumption. And I think that same parallel was there in that they’re individuals, they’re not objects. They feel and suffer in the essentially the same ways that my companion animal, Jesse, did. And I think, I think of almost multiplying that devastation that I felt simply from Jesse losing her life. She didn’t particularly suffer, she lived a wonderful life, and I was still devastated.

So the idea of having individuals so similar to her living much, much, much more profoundly horrible lives, times 70 billion, was a truly overwhelming thing, but a truly impactful and powerful thing. And I think my motivation and my drive for bettering the lives of those animals was set up from day one in my life because I was able to connect it to my companion animal.

0:04:24 Adam Walsh: If there had never been an animal movement and we started one today, where do you think would be the best place to start? Would it be the place that impacts the greatest number of animals? Or would it be something that we could connect with the public in a more effective way?

0:04:40 Kai McBeth: I definitely think the latter. I often think about advocacy and my role in it as sort of like one of those tycoon games from the late nineties or early two-thousands. I used to play a lot of those on the PC where you’d be sort of like in control of a theme park or a skate park or like some civilization or something. And I think it helps us get a good bird’s eye picture of our movement in general. I just think I’m playing ‘activism tycoon’ permanently in my life.

It’s not a trivial game, and it’s definitely not fun all the time. But I think similar principles can apply. And I think it’s a really interesting one, because essentially you’re asking what would happen if essentially all the ground that we’ve gained right now disappears and we’re back to ground zero. And so what I’m sort of assuming doing in that question, so there’s essentially, there’s no vegans except me. And essentially, I’m not assuming that people don’t care about animals because I think there’s something innately human about compassion for animals. But there’s definitely, you know, there’s no organizations, there’s no, like, I guess, social understanding of it.

So I think you would definitely have to, I would say, go wide initially instead of going deep. And what I mean by that is looking for easy wins to bring people on site instead of looking for the wins that are probably far more impactful, but a lot harder to come by. I think, and this will probably relate to a later question, but I think if you just deleted all the animal rights movement and had to start over the way you start over is by building communities and it’s going to take an incredible amount of time if your community is based on convincing people to go vegan.

And this, this is, again, I’m speaking of, if the animal rights movement didn’t exist at all. It’ll be very slow going, I tend to think. And in the question you sent me, the word used in here was ‘where’. And I thought about that literally. I think you’d probably want to go to universities. If you were like the one patient zero for spreading the animal rights movement, I think that’s where you’d probably want to start. You’d probably want to infiltrate universities because I think the people there, they have a few key characteristics that make them very easy to build a movement out of. And I think things like more openness to ideas and critical thought, but also you’ve got people with high levels of free time who are tending to desire a need for community in their lives at that stage of their lives. And you’ve got people who are usually young and have potential to make great influence in the world.

And probably creating a campaign or movement, maybe it surrounds, I don’t know, something easy for everyone to understand, really low hanging fruit. And you build off that. But the only way you could build is that if you create a community from that initial foot in the door and I think you start layering on top of it.

0:07:37 Adam Walsh: At [a] university here in Melbourne, it was the students who were finding ways to relate what they were studying back to helping animals in labs. So yeah, you’re right. Like they’re not even just open to ideas. Like, they’re active in looking for opportunities to apply their studies to not just real world opportunities, but I guess it’s a 21st century thing to apply it to someone, somewhere that can actively help society or our country or animals or whatever it might be.

0:08:07 Kai McBeth: Yeah, agreed. I think you see it mirrored historically in other social justice movements and many of them get off the ground in universities and college campuses and much of the initial development goes on there. And I think even outside of this hypothetical, I think there’s lessons to be learned in that. I think especially in the animal rights sphere, I think other social justice movements do it better, leveraging the power of advocacy on campus. But I really do think the animal rights movement can do so much more on universities and college campuses and I think we maybe don’t value how much change could be made there. And so I think I’d love to, I think part of my goals over the next couple of years is definitely going to be trying to get a lot more advocacy on campuses.

0:08:55 Adam Walsh: Should advocates change their communication tactic depending on who we are speaking to, or is it more important to maintain a consistent line of messaging?

0:09:04 Kai McBeth: With a lot of these questions, I’m going to give you a ‘yes’ and a ‘no’ answer. The ‘yes’ and ‘no’ of this that I would propose is that what we say should essentially always be consistent. I think how we say it needs to be adaptable. I think it not only not only can it be adaptable, I think it’s essential that it’s adaptable. We can talk about how both those might go the wrong way in that if we have, I think if we have an inconsistent core message of what we say, I’m generally of the opinion that it will simply affect our effectiveness.

I tend to think the best way to make or influence lasting behavior change in people regarding the consumption of animal products is a message focused on animal rights. And it doesn’t mean that spheres related to environmentalism or human health, or things like human rights issues that are adjacent to the animal agriculture industry, it’s not that those movements and those arguments don’t have value, they most definitely do.

But I think the core of the messaging to make meaningful behavior change in people should be an animal rights message. And typically in that, I think the central arguments of that, essentially three really simple ones. And for me and the way I communicate to people, it’s that one, animals are abused for essentially all animal products. Two, individuals support that abuse by purchasing animal products. And three, there’s no need to purchase animal products.

And I think having those three things in mind, those three things are some of the easiest arguments win. And I think when we try to embellish with a heap of other stuff and a heap of other issues, there tends to be this phenomenon, particularly in the vegan advocacy sphere, particularly in, like, street outreach sometimes, where there’s, I feel like there’s so many arguments for a plant based diet that we sort of just like go a bit wild with them and we just like try to drop all these different little factoids because it’s crazy, because there is such a compelling gamut of arguments, environmentally, human rights abuses, health, all that.

And I agree with the vast majority of those positions. But I think when we almost, like, we can overload it a bit, and I think that can sometimes overshadow the true simplicity of the argument for animal rights, which again, are those three key concessions that I just listed, And I found in myself, I think this was probably a year or two into my advocacy, specifically in street outreach, I was probably 1000 conversations deep, and I was using this really big gamut of health and environmental and animal rights arguments. And there was a point where I sort of just started stripping and consolidating.

I think that’s, that’s the case with most things that people get good at is they, like, learn lots of different parts and then, like, the true development comes from, like, stripping away at the stuff that’s not needed. I think you see it in almost everything. And for me, I noted that in my discussions with people occasionally I would lose myself on tangents.

I think when you start getting experienced in animal rights advocacy and talking to people about veganism, once you get sufficiently experienced in it, you tend to have basically arguments for everything. You sort of understand the general lay of the land, and there’s no real arguments that you don’t have counters to. And after that point, it stops becoming about your counterarguments and it starts becoming much more about maintaining the direction of the conversation. Because once you have really good counterarguments to things, people’s biggest strategy to try to escape accountability is going to be to misdirect the conversation.

It’s, it’s a really common strategy. It has a sort of name, informal debate, which is a ‘red herring’. But you see, almost everyone can display aversive tactics, especially when you’ve got really good counterarguments for everything. They feel like there’s sort of nowhere else to go. What I found is when I started focusing on maintaining direction, all my conversations with people became so much easier. And part of that maintenance of direction was sort of cutting the fat from how I advocated.

And what that meant was parking those environmental and health discussions and human rights discussions for another time. For example, I used to. I remember when the now, when the World Health Organization classified processed meat as a class one carcinogen. That was a big thing in general, but a big thing in the vegan and animal rights spheres. And I would use that in my discussions, but every now and then I’d get someone who’d want to debate the classification, or want to sort of go into the nitty gritty, or would say the World Health Organization is controlled by the illuminati or something.

And I felt equipped to go and defend that position. But eventually I realized that it sort of has no bearing on the core argument I’m making about animal rights. If meat wasn’t a class one carcinogen, it would still be the case that abusing animals for products we don’t need is fundamentally wrong. And again, it’s not to speak of the weakness of those other arguments, but it is to speak of the strength of the argument for animal rights. Easy. We really don’t need anything else.

0:14:45 Adam Walsh: That’s very helpful. And I think even in my own arguments with advocating for, on behalf of, I suppose, animals in research, it does get very, very complicated in those same ways.

0:14:56 Kai McBeth: I think maybe, maybe lastly, what I would say is that it doesn’t mean you can’t go into those spheres when they’re related to one of those three central tenants. Because you could have, especially the last one, ‘There’s no need for to purchase animal products’, some people might not understand that and might use health or nutrition as a component of that. And then I think it’s part of the animal rights argument to convey that we can be healthy without consuming animal products.

But I think that’s essentially where it ends. Animal rights doesn’t hinge on meat being unhealthy. We don’t necessarily need veganism to be better for the environment. We just need it to be as good. Same thing with human rights abuses. I guarantee you there’s issues with the plant based supply chain in regards to human rights abuses. The only argument we really need to make to people is that it’s at least not worse than animal product supply chains. Because if it’s equal and then you’ve got one that just horrendously abuses animals and one that doesn’t, the choice should be obvious.

0:16:02 Adam Walsh: There seems to be, like, a current trend of criticizing so called ex-vegans without really acknowledging the situations that people might find themselves in or be forced into or placed into that might lead them to that. And often these criticisms are coming from people who, to be honest, probably are more like you and me, you know, we’re white, male criticizing people for being no longer vegan when we don’t understand all these other things that come along with it. What might the danger being criticizing this group of people, the ex-vegans?

0:16:42 Kai McBeth: I think it’s sort of a manifestation of one of the many consequences, again, of tribalism, essentially. And I’m not going to say that we should absolve people who fall back off a vegan diet from all critique or criticism. I think there is probably a quite important aspect of critique there. But I think it’s often the case that it’s not about what you say, it’s about how you say it.

And I think this is where you see, if I was an out-group, I’d say pretty yucky forms of tribalism. Because I’m in the in-group, I just sort of see it as probably not very effective. And I think that’s the way I think about most of these things, is from a utility standpoint in that at the core of it, we’re all part of this movement because we wanna make change for animals and utility should always be our focus. It shouldn’t be us sort of satisfying our emotional needs to castigate someone about not being vegan anymore.

And I think, again, it goes back to that idea of the utility of the benefit of the doubt. There’s almost always the utility of the benefit of doubt. And it might be the case some people don’t actually deserve the benefit of the doubt. I’m sure there is. But the point of it is that you can’t really know. And it’s always good practice then to assume the benefit of the doubt. And again, I’m not saying that like these people, quote unquote, deserve the benefit of doubt. My argument is the animals deserve for us to make the benefit of doubt. Because doing so is probably going to be the most effective thing at helping animals through influencing people in a meaningful way.

I don’t think it’s a controversial statement to say that people who have become non-vegan after being vegan, and then if they witness people completely railing on them probably aren’t going to be influenced to go back, especially if it means going back to that community.

There’s been a sort of movement in our space, or at least in the street outreach space over the past, maybe half a decade now, of what I would call holding non-vegans accountable, and I think there is a very important benefit to generating a sense of accountability in people. But I worry that that has often been used as essentially an excuse to not think meaningfully about how human psychology works and how to truly influence people.

And I don’t think these are statements simply of opinion. It’s, it’s pretty well established in the sphere of psychology, how to influence people. You see it in the sales world, you see it in the corporate world. There’s not tons of data specifically in the animal rights sphere., there’s a little bit, but not of that much. But there’s so many other spaces that, that show us that essentially criticizing people and only doing that and going at it in a very sort of aggressive manner doesn’t influence people. Again, it doesn’t mean going like, ‘Oh, they’re ex vegan, you know, everyone’s on their journey’, and stuff like that, like, I think that’s an equally harmful mentality. I think there’s, there’s a balance to be struck in meaningful, constructive critique.

And I think it’s important to realize someone’s reasoning can be understandable but still wrong. Like, and I think generally a heuristic that’s incredibly important, and it’s a pretty easy one to maintain, is just speak about people the way you would speak to them face-to-face. I think much of the ex vegan tribalism is generated purely as a result of being online. And it’s the case with almost any online communication. It’s why it becomes so toxic so much of the time.

I try to think deeply, essentially, when I talk about anyone, but particularly if I talk about someone in a negative light, ask myself, ‘Am I happy saying this to someone’s face?’ And there’s some pretty strong criticism that I make of people that I would be willing to say at their face. But again, it goes back to how I say it, not necessarily what I say. And I think that’s what cuts the line between gossiping and tribalism versus meaningful critique. I think both of them are probably saying the same thing. It’s just about how they go about it.

0:21:33 Adam Walsh: Yeah, and that’s, that’s interesting. I hadn’t… I’d often looked at where they’ve gone, you know, from potentially a vegan community to whatever influences that have made them change their minds or their diets or whatever we might say. But I hadn’t thought about the impression of the community they might be going back to if they’re always being criticized for changing. Is that something that we want to use as a tactic to bring them back? It’s almost as if we’re building up a wall and saying, ‘You’re never welcome back.’

0:22:08 Kai McBeth: Yeah, I think it’s incredibly important to have that path back. And you essentially completely blow up that path if you’re going about it in a way that I often see people really going at ex-vegans. And again, it’s, I think it’s that idea of no person is beneath respect, no idea is above criticism.

If someone, you know, take for example, says, you know, I started eating fish because I... Sorry, for example, there’s a famous, he was a fairly famous vegan slavery named Tim Sheath. He stopped being vegan. And his reasoning, frankly, was, to use technical terminology, was batshit insane. He was drinking his own urine, staring at the sun for extended periods of time. And I remember his initial arguments more about him because something about him consuming wild caught fish. And I think in that it’s important to again, separate the ideas from the person.

I think we can probably find a way to understand what he’s been through. I think those ideas he has are absolutely insane and completely wrong. But sometimes those things are appealing to someone and usually they’re appealing to people who have gone through very difficult challenges. The more absurd the reasoning, it probably simply means the more someone struggles to reason well. And I think that’s something, if not, we treat with empathy, we should at least treat with understanding, because that is something we can address in people.

0:23:55 Adam Walsh: Advocating for animals in research, it’s often the small steps that we have to take first, while also trying to push for total liberation, I suppose. But, do you think a welfarist approach can be effective towards animal liberation? Obviously, keeping in mind total liberation as the end goal. In our communities, I suppose, in our activist communities or our vegan communities, talking of a welfarist approach puts you in a certain corner.

0:24:26 Kai McBeth: And again with the tribalism, unfortunately, you often see. It falls back to a distinction in our language and a clarification of our language in that I think there’s an important distinction to be made between a welfarist approach and a welfarist ideology or attitude. I think welfarist approaches are an important part of the movement. I think welfarist ideologies have no place in the movement and should be pushed back against as much as we can.

And what I mean by those two distinctions is that you can have a welfarist approach, say advocating policy-wise in regards to larger cages for battery farmed hens, but you can still have an abolitionist mentality towards that, in that your goal in that is to eventually achieve total animal liberation. As opposed to, you advocate for larger cages and you still consume eggs and you still want chickens to be exploited and used for their byproducts, but you just want it to be a little bit nicer. But you can also look at it from the idea of almost like doing economic damage to the industry through welfare changes, because making them have to have bigger cages is going to make it more expensive for them to run operations, it’s going to make it more expensive for their products to go on shelves. Less people are going to buy it.

So I think there’s definitely a place for the approach. It’s not really my sphere or wheelhouse, but there’s people who do it fantastic work. Again, sort of separating like, ‘Oh, you’re a dirty welfarist’, or like things like that are really unhelpful, but we need to push back on those people in a meaningful way to influence them.

0:26:13 Adam Walsh: Is there something you can suggest that might be… What is the easiest thing that you might suggest someone can do for animals?

0:26:20 Kai McBeth: I think the easiest thing people can do to help animals is really just be honest with themselves. I think almost everyone holds vegan values, that animal abuse is fundamentally wrong. And that’s really all it is at the end of the day, veganism can get politicized and overly complicated all you want, but at the end of the day, that’s really what it’s about. And most people, unless you’re an actual psychopath, agree with that already.

It’s just either a barrier in regards to ignorance, there’s a barrier in regards to personal accountability, or there’s a barrier in regards to not knowing what action to take. But if you’re honest with yourself, and part of that is seeking out education and truthful information. But I think if you’re honest with yourself about how we use animals and how your values towards animals sit, I think almost everyone will find that the logical extension of that is a vegan lifestyle.

I think that’s. the easiest thing people can do. The funny part is maybe there’s a distinction to be made. It’s probably the simplest thing people do, but maybe not the easiest. Because the real barrier that we face is that it’s hard for people to be honest with themselves. But I think it is something that everyone can do. They’re just going to want to.

Transcribed with Deciphr.AI