Dismissive term for anti-animal socialists needed

[RosasGhost]

Via SpeciesAndClass dot com

Dismissive term for anti-animal socialists needed
By Jon Hochschartner

Vegan socialists need a dismissive term for those on the anthropocentric left. It could be used in much the same way as socialist-feminists use the portmanteaus "brocialist" and "manarchist" to undermine socialists with reactionary gender politics.

I'm awful at coining catchy, new terms, as this task requires. And I imagine that anti-speciesist socialists as whole are capable of brainstorming something much better. But as an initial suggestion, I'd like to offer the term "corpsocialist" to define those on the anti-animal left, which is obviously an amalgam of the words "corpse" and "socialist." I hope the portmanteau would bring to mind the eviscerated bodies of the countless animals whose lives and suffering most leftists ignore or minimize.

In a 2013 letter to Socialist Worker, International Socialist Organization member Benjamin Silverman claimed to have coined the term brocialist. "[It] came about some two years ago in one of my many arguments on Reddit forums, a noted Internet hive of sexism and misogyny," Silverman said. "The word 'manarchist' was becoming popular as a means to describe and call out the prevalence of sexists within the anarchist community, and I felt that there was a need for an equivalent epithet for the socialist movement. So 'brocialist' and 'brocialism' was what I came up with."

Speaking to the New Republic, progressive journalist Sarah Jaffe said brocialists reduce feminist priorities to a distraction from the class struggle. "Brocialists," Jaffe said, are "guys who are so enamored of their own radicalness or progressiveness or whateverness that they are convinced they can do no wrong.”

In an article for the New Statesmen, left-wing writer Laurie Penny engaged in a dialogue with Marxist author Richard Seymour about brocialism and manarchism.

"My experience is that ‘brocialists' don’t openly embrace patriarchy; they deny it’s a problem," Seymour said. "Or they minimise it. They direct your attention elsewhere: you should be focusing on class. You’re being divisive. You’re just middle class (quelle horreur!). Or they attack a straw ‘feminism’ that is supposedly ‘bourgeois’ and has nothing to say about class or other axes of oppression."

Penny compared the brocialist to his equivalent in the anarchist community. "The brocialist's more chaotic cousin is, of course, the manarchist, who displays many of the same traits in terms of blindness to privilege, casual sexism and a refusal to acknowledge structural gender oppression, but has a slightly different reading list and a more monochrome wardrobe," Penny said.

So how might one use the term corpsocialist, or whatever term we decide will better dismiss speciesist socialists? Let me provide an example. At the 2013 Edward Said Memorial Lecture, Noam Chomsky, perhaps the most widely-respected socialist living in the United States, was asked his opinion on animal rights. While Chomsky seems to have expressed more enlightened views on the topic in the past, what he had to offer that day was particularly defensive and reactionary.

"Well, just out of curiosity, do you kill insects, like mosquitos when they're bothering you?" Chomsky asked the questioner to widespread laughter from the presumably omnivorous audience. "Or do you think when mosquitoes are carrying malaria we ought to develop means to kill them off?"

Hearing Chomsky's response, for instance, one might say, "God, for someone with vegetarian kids, he sure is a corpsocialist." Now, let's make corpsocialist happen. For a portmanteau, to quote the film "Mean Girls," it's so fetch!

Via SpeciesAndClass dot com

[Hrafn]

Corpse socialist? Sounds badass. Where do I sign up?

[Sasha]

hey rosa, welcome to the board, just to inform you, we are a discussion board, we dont allow the spamming of articles without participation in the discussion, please make an effort contribute to the forum or you account might be removed.

[The Jay]

I would like to be called a meatocrite, or a fleshist-leninist.

[helot]

hey rosa, welcome to the board, just to inform you, we are a discussion board, we dont allow the spamming of articles without participation in the discussion, please make an effort contribute to the forum or you account might be removed.

As a heads up someone (probably the same person) has also been spamming libcom with articles from this speciesandclass blog without actually participating in discussion.

[rylasasin]

Ah evangelical veganism. Because Tendency-Wars aren't doing enough to divide the left.

[Jimmie Higgins]

How 'bout a persuasive argument for a position rather than name-calling?

[MarcusJuniusBrutus]

Are you fucking kidding me? That's your whole strategy, isn't it? Trite name-calling to deflect from the issue and the facts. The simple fact is that there is absolutely no real reason to apply human ethics to non-human animals. You are projecting your own feelings onto animals. You say things like anyone can see that animals love you when are just seeing what you want to see--confirmation bias. There is nothing immoral about eating animals or using them for biological research. Period. Grow up, for gods' sake.

[Per Levy]

besides the whole spam part, what really strikes me about this rant is how bad it is. 60% of the rant doesnt even bother with the topic the author wanted to write about and most stuff are just quotes that are introduced like "this person said this, and that person that" wich is really bad as it is.

also chomsky a socialist? what a joke. as for the topic of the rant, its a big strawman, "anti-animal socialists" as that actual exists.

[RA89]

A dismissive term for people like the person who wrote this article would be much better.

[consuming negativity]

hey rosa, welcome to the board, just to inform you, we are a discussion board, we dont allow the spamming of articles without participation in the discussion, please make an effort contribute to the forum or you account might be removed.

Welcome to the board? Account was made in 2010...

[rylasasin]

A dismissive term for people like the person who wrote this article would be much better.

We have one.

They're called "spammers"

[RA89]

We have one.

They're called "spammers"

That covers the spamming but not quite the stupidity.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

The thing that bothers me the most is that "corpsocialist" sounds almost as bad as "social-proletocrat". "Brocialist" and "manarchist" work - I mean, they sound ridiculous, but on one level they work - because they have the same number of syllables as the original word. Corpsocialist sounds like how de Man would describe himself after he'd had a few.

[Rafiq]

After this, are there really people who scratch their heads wondering what exactly is wrong with the Left today? This postmodern drivel, this absolute and utter garbage. Are these rightful heirs to the legacy of the Left? Political vegans? For fuck's sake.

[Brutus]

Eat the vegan socialists, after we make them watch us eat their precious animals.

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

Eat the vegan socialists, after we make them watch us eat their precious animals.

The want to hurt or kill animals is usually indicative of some sort of underlining, deeper psychological issue(s) and it psychosis. Maybe you guys should consider counseling? Idkk

[Lord Testicles]

That covers the spamming but not quite the stupidity.

I propose "fuck knuckles".

Why is this in discrimination? Shouldn't it be in shit-chat?

[Rafiq]

The want to hurt or kill animals is usually indicative of some sort of underlining, deeper psychological issue(s)

That's true, but only the desire to hurt animals for the sake of hurting animals. (I'm not referring to you specifically, by the way) I find it ironic that political vegans like to fit their bullshit within proximity of some kind of naturalized, pre-Cartesian tradition, with ecology and other such reactionary postmodern drivel. The irony here is that the first identifiable human societies, hunter-gatherer societies were completely founded on the basis of big game hunting. So much so that towards the end of the last ice age the many animals that were have said to have gone extinct are speculated to have been DRIVEN to extinction by big game hunting. After the introduction of agriculture, so goes the narrative of Engels, began the foundations of class society, oppression and social hierarchy. So isn't that a bit contradictory as far as the ecological bullshit goes?

I mean, I don't know if such a narrative is correct, I am doubtful that such things did not exist before the neolithic revolution - but it's generally believed here that this was the case.

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

That's true, but only the desire to hurt animals for the sake of hurting animals. (I'm not referring to you specifically, by the way) I find it ironic that political vegans like to fit their bullshit within proximity of some kind of naturalized, pre-Cartesian tradition, with ecology and other such reactionary postmodern drivel. The irony here is that the first identifiable human societies, hunter-gatherer societies were completely founded on the basis of big game hunting. So much so that towards the end of the last ice age the many animals that were have said to have gone extinct are speculated to have been DRIVEN to extinction by big game hunting. After the introduction of agriculture, so goes the narrative of Engels, began the foundations of class society, oppression and social hierarchy. So isn't that a bit contradictory as far as the ecological bullshit goes?

I mean, I don't know if such a narrative is correct, I am doubtful that such things did not exist before the neolithic revolution - but it's generally believed here that this was the case.

This is a lot of words. But I'm not rightfully sure what exactly you're getting at. I would say that of course, Neolithic societies shouldn't be romanticized or glamorized and that we have evolved to the point, intellectually and civilly, that we no longer need, as a basic necessity, to kill it eat animals. Regrettably, this seems like a very simplistic response to your post and for that I'm sorry.