Debate: Do meat-eaters deserve to live?

If you’re into the ever-growing youtube scene, you’ve probably heard of Freelee the Banana Girl, who is one of the most famous vegan youtubers on the internet, with almost five hundred thousand subscribers on youtube. Freelee is known for being controversial, and she recently posed the question: “do non-vegans deserve to live?”
And there was an outcry against her answer. And even more of an outcry against the fact that a lot of people in the veganism movement came out as agreeing with Freelee on this! It resulted in people calling veganism a cult, comparing us to the Nazis and Isis.
Now, personally I don’t agree with Freelee’s answer, HOWEVER I do think that people misunderstand what her and other vegans in the movement are saying when it comes to this, so I’ll start off by explaining before I go into my side of the debate.

First off, this is a philosophical question: this means that it is purely hypothetical and has no bearing on the actual actions of the people posing it. Though Freelee and many others may be of the opinion that SOME non-vegans do not deserve to live, they are not going out there and trying to kill them. They wouldn’t be vegan if they did: Veganism means not exploiting or causing suffering to other beings, and humans are also other beings.

Now, secondly, you may have noticed I said Freelee and others think SOME non-vegans don’t deserve to live, not all. That’s the other important gem of information people seem to overlook on this subject: If you actually go and watch her video, and those of the others saying similar things, no one is saying everyone who eats meat should immediately die.
What is actually being said is that if someone has been made aware of the suffering that goes on in the animal agriculture industry, has seen the pain their choices cause, and yet decides not to make the change and continues to eat meat and dairy and knowingly contribute to that suffering, they are not deserving of life.
The whole debate is based on the ethical belief that if you deliberately end the life of another, you deserve to lose yours: An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a life for a life. If someone commits a murder, they deserve to die. (It’s not that new of a concept. I mean, it’s even in the Bible.) Now, this idea does not state that if someone unknowingly causes harm to another they deserve to die: i.e. if someone commits manslaughter -maybe hits someone with their car by accident, or something to that effect- they don’t deserve to die, because they had no intention of ending a life. The moral basis of this is that if you deliberately end a life, or cause the end of a life knowingly, you should lose your life.

I think that the people who say this make some valid points, however now for my side of things:
This argument is basically an age-old argument relabeled and made relevant to the veganism argument. And the argument is, do you agree with the death penalty?

Some countries still have the death penalty, and those that don’t probably used to, until people protested that it was wrong. But a lot of people thought it was a good idea, and some people still do. I’ve even heard non-vegans talk about bringing back the death penalty for animal abusers when it comes to people who beat and kill dogs and cats, which is really mind-bogglingly hypocritical.

My stance on the matter is that the death penalty should not exist, anywhere, ever. It never should have. We cannot justify making judgment on who can live and who should die, and no one is qualified to say who is deserving of life. That’s where the whole problem came from in the first place! Humans deciding they can choose who and what gets to live and what doesn’t. It’s the basis of the meat industry, it’s the basis of much of the oppression and war and killing that goes on in the world. In fact, it’s really the basis of all killing in the world.

I don’t think a pedophile or a mass-murderer or a thief or any type of criminal deserves to die. (I’ll come back to that point later, as it will probably intrigue a lot of people). That's not to say I don't think they need to be taught a lesson, or that they don't deserve some sort of punishment. I just don't think we should kill them. And I don’t think meat-eaters do either. In my eyes, laws exist to protect people, not to punish them. Even if the laws themselves even claim to be for punishment, they exist to prevent people from doing wrong, and therefore protecting the rest of society from them. If someone has already done something wrong, we put them in prison, and I think that’s the right thing to do, but not because I believe they deserve to be locked up: I’m not qualified to make that judgment. I believe they need to be locked up so that they are safely tucked away and can’t harm anyone else, and when they come out hopefully they will have learned the consequences are not worth it, and will not commit the crime again. That’s the real purpose of it. And ending a life should be done only in the efforts of preserving more life, not as some strange form of justice or for any other reason. If it came to it, I would fight back against someone trying to kill my friend or my family member. And I support anyone who does the same, even if it ends in the death of the attacker. But I wouldn’t for one moment suggest that the attacker deserved to die, only that the killer had no choice in the matter and that the means justified the end result: protecting the innocent and preserving other life.

By this logic I would say that steps need to be taken to stop society from killing animals. If I had my way, we would have the same protective and preventive measures put in place to preserve harm to other species. The meat industry needs to stop, and people have no right to end the lives of other beings for their own benefit. But any measures put in place to prevent people from doing that would never be to punish the people, but to protect the innocent victims. And were we to implement the changes leading us to a vegan future, I wouldn’t then want all the butchers, hunters and factory-farm workers of the world to be put to death. Death only inspires more death, and that’s not what the veganism movement is about. We want positive change. Because things do need to change. People need to see the light, and there’s definitely something morally wrong with the people who have seen the pain going on in the world of animal agriculture, and have acknowledged the suffering, and choose not to stop contributing. I would myself go as far as to say there is something mentally wrong with them, in the same way as I think there is something mentally wrong with murderers and rapists. Hence why I said earlier that they don’t deserve to die: they need help, they need rehabilitation. They’re sick in the head. But I’m an optimist, and I will always believe people can change and get better. My opinion is the same with non-vegans. Everyone has the capacity to make the change. For the most part, people all have good inside them, and they just need that potential to be released. 

Now, back to justifying the argument for the people who do think meat-eaters are not deserving of life: this offended a lot of people out there. Most people seem to agree that it’s an insane notion, but it might not be so insane as you think.
If you think that mass-murderers deserve to die, that pedophiles and child-molesters don’t deserve life (a point I can very much understand), that people like Joseph Stalin deserved the death penalty; if you can see any valid argument for the death sentence, and think there is anyone on this planet who should drop dead, or at least understand the opinions of people who do believe this, then it shouldn’t be too much of a stretch to see why vegans apply the same logic to meat-eaters.

Bear in mind that living a vegan life means giving value and worth to the lives of animals. We recognise them as sentient beings that are aware. They are also innocent victims. Many people think that dog molesters and puppy abusers deserve to die, and even those who wouldn’t say it are usually sickened by the sight of a canine-killer when they appear in the news. So it’s not that much of a stretch to say you at least understand why vegans class animals as deserving to live, and apply some rights to animals. We even know pigs are smarter than dogs and that all the main livestock creatures (cows, chickens, turkeys and pigs) are actually far more intelligent than we used to believe, so classing them as aware and saying they are allowed to live is entirely fair.
So if you apply the ethical principle that those who do unspeakable harm to and end the lives of humans deserve death, why is it such a difficult thing to understand the opinion of someone who applies the ethical principle that those who do unspeakable harm to animals and contribute to their suffering and death don’t deserve to live?

I don’t think I’m at all qualified to say who is and who isn’t deserving of life, but I’m at least intelligent enough to recognise the rational thought behind the debate. There are some valid points being made here, so at the end of the day what I’m saying here is: No, I don’t believe that meat-eaters deserve to die. But I also don’t think it’s at all fair to say those who do are acting like Nazis, or behaving like Isis. After all, actions speak louder than words, we’ve all told someone to drop dead or said something of the likes at some point but it doesn’t mean we will actually kill or harm that person, and the Nazis did inflict death upon a lot of people, as Islamic State are now. And when you’re going to draw those parallels: the gas chambers and concentration camps used by the Nazis were inspired by slaughterhouses if you track them back in their history, and the meat industry actively ends the lives of billions of animals on a weekly basis. Vegans live by a strict ethical code of no killing, so comparing them to murderous cults is illogical and irrational, and just makes us more likely to point out the hypocrisy in it. Not so nice when the tables are turned.

Keep living people.

 (I feel like I should state that the majority of the pictures in these blogs are not my own creation. I tend to just google phrases from the blog and fit in the most fitting, most eye-catching or most amusing image. So disclaimer: for the record, they're not mine. Except this one of me at the end here. Hi.)