My Favorite Vegan Memes
June 23, 2025
It Starts with Animals: The Slippery Slope of Dehumanization
The first victims of injustice are rarely the last. When a society permits cruelty toward animals, it creates a moral loophole. It teaches that some lives matter less. Once that belief takes root, it spreads like a virus. The same mindset that justifies factory farming, vivisection, and slaughterhouses begins to excuse violence against people, especially those already marginalized.
Dehumanization always starts by drawing a line between “us” and “them.” Animals are the original “them.” They are objectified, commodified, and silenced. When society learns to turn away from their pain, it becomes easier to turn away from the pain of human beings who are labeled as different, whether by race, class, gender, immigration status, disability, or poverty.
This is not just philosophy. It is history. Many of the world’s worst atrocities were made possible by first stripping the victims of their perceived humanity. But before these horrors reach people, they are practiced on animals. Animals are experimented on, confined, mutilated, and killed. And all of it is justified by the claim that they are less than us. That lie becomes the foundation for other lies about human groups. It creates a culture where empathy is suppressed and violence becomes routine.
In today’s America, this lesson is more urgent than ever. We live in a deeply divided society where “othering” is normalized. Political rhetoric degrades immigrants. Media narratives demonize the poor. Legal systems disproportionately punish people of color. This is a culture that still justifies putting children in cages, locking up the mentally ill, and destroying the planet for profit. At the same time, animals are tortured by the billions behind closed doors, kept out of sight and mind.
But these things are not separate. They are connected. When we say animals do not matter, we are teaching that might makes right. That dominance is a virtue. That empathy is optional. This is not just a threat to animals. It is a threat to our democracy, our morality, and our future.
The vegan message is not just about diet. It is about justice. It is about recognizing that the way we treat the most vulnerable shapes the soul of a nation. If we want a compassionate society, we must expand our circle of care. By speaking up for animals, we strengthen our capacity to care about anyone who is voiceless, unseen, or cast aside.
Oppression begins in silence. It ends with victims. But we have the power to break that silence, to reject cruelty in all its forms, and to build a culture of compassion from the dinner table to the voting booth. The time to start is now.
Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale is a chilling depiction of a dystopian society that thrives on the exploitation and dehumanization of women. Set in the theocratic state of Gilead, the novel explores how systemic oppression can become normalized under ideological frameworks that prioritize control over compassion. A striking parallel can be drawn between the treatment of women in Gilead and the domestication of animals, as both rely on hierarchies that justify exploitation and violence. Scholars like David A. Nibert, in his groundbreaking work Animal Oppression and Human Violence, illuminate the historical interplay between animal domestication, human violence, and systemic oppression. These connections reveal that the vegan ideology—based on compassion, equity, and the rejection of exploitation—offers not only a path to ending animal suffering but also a critical framework to curb the societal slide into authoritarianism and dystopian nightmares like those portrayed in Gilead. Read: https://michaelcorthelll.substack.com/p/exploitation-and-oppression-parallels
The domestication of animals was a turning point in human history, but not solely for the reasons often celebrated. While it allowed for settled agriculture, population growth, and technological advancements, it also introduced systemic violence, institutionalized hierarchy, and laid the groundwork for capitalism and authoritarianism. Scholars like David Nibert argue that the subjugation of animals provided a model for human oppression, legitimizing slavery, class division, and the exploitation of both people and nature. The same forces that enabled humans to dominate animals were later used to justify human-on-human oppression, dehumanization, and the rise of fascism and capitalism. Understanding these connections is critical to dismantling the structures of domination that continue to shape the world today.
https://essayx.substack.com/p/the-roots-of-violence