Not Eating Meat and Other Anti-fascist Things

By Kira Corasanti

1. Intellectual Exploration

Intellectuals, politicians, and others begin to explore fascist ideas. Fascist movements often emerge in response to societal unrest, economic crises, or perceived threats to national identity. 

The first time I saw an animal die, it was a deer. A sharp thud as it hit my mother’s car, and it was gone. 

I stared, startled, at the broken leg in the rearview mirror. I was shaking, unable to move. A body, red with flesh and moving so slowly the liquid inside of me begged to come up. The car door clicked open and my mother threw her hands in the air. Fingers shocked with inconvenience, shaken out in motion as if to free the blood stained on them. 

The body lay silent just off the road. I looked away, my breath as heavy as the car beneath me. 

The tires spun off and I didn’t look back. Better the deer than the car, than you, than me. She tried to justify it in her own way, already ahead of her thoughts. 

“I feel awful,” she threw out, stroking my hair and grinding her teeth. It weighed heavy but she’d already begun rationalizing it, driving off after calling authorities.  

People like to believe that they are logical, consistent, and good at making decisions. When those beliefs are threatened by pressing sources, we do everything we can to prevent our thoughts from spiraling. 

Cognitive dissonance theory, developed by sociologist Leon Festinger, suggests that people become psychologically discomforted by an opposing thought that is not consistent with their current belief. To quell this discomfort, we push the thoughts away, change the belief, or find something that makes us feel logical again.  

On average, there are between 10,000 injuries and 175 to 200 fatalities every year caused by deer accidents. But those “injuries and fatalities” are reserved for humans. Over 1 million deer are hit by vehicles each year.

The message is clear, we’re alive! My mom’s mouth sunk into a Wendy’s burger that we stopped to grab just down the road. I sucked down my vanilla milkshake, eyes glazed. A body mourned is reserved for only us humans. Celebrate.

In 1998, Robert O. Paxton defined five stages that a state takes while descending into fascism: intellectual exploration, rooting, arrival to power, exercise of power, and a descent into radicalization or entropy. 

In the beginning, there is a sense of promise; a restored nation, united by people bleeding for a common cause. 

I have found the descent into cognitive dissonance mirrors these same steps. 

The knowing, the rejecting, the anything to make us feel as if we are just. We give into what people feed us every day; brush your teeth two times a day and if you don’t you’ll get cavities, work a job, get a car, but don’t waste gas or else you’ll be the one contributing to the biggest climate catastrophe of the human era. 

And what do we do when faced with it? We continue to scroll and eat our burgers in ignorance, rejection, or both. 

By this age, I am familiar with societal “shoulds” and “shouldn’ts.” I can play into the regime that wants me to feel guilty about not brushing my teeth, but it's difficult when face to face with increasing temperatures, flooding or a dead deer on the side of the road.

How do I overcome the guilt of participating in systems that contribute to death and destruction? Is there any way to make myself feel better? 

2. Rooting 

As fascist ideas gain traction, these movements aim to gain political power through democratic or revolutionary means. They may form political parties, engage in propaganda campaigns, or build paramilitary organizations to intimidate opponents and assert control. 

The case of climate change is something of a perplexity. For those residing in a resourced country, it often does not impact day-to-day livelihoods, though its effects are noticed. When presented with dire headlines we tend to turn our backs. 

Let’s be honest, it is much more comfortable to sit on the couch than to take action. Four years of studying the environment and I still can’t bother to throw plastic into the bright blue bin. 

It seems like the answer to this dissonance is found in our brains. Neurologists say that part of the reason humans are slow to act in regard to the future is that the human brain has spent nearly 200,000 years focused on the present. “Find food. Make shelter. Survive.” 

We have only just begun to contemplate time, and by extension the future, within the last few hundred years. 

And it seems that making the future tangible is something that is only reserved for people who have the time to do it. Most of the working class around the world are plagued by what they will eat for dinner, when they will get their next food stamps, or when the next rent payment is due. Why should they care about which glacier will melt next?

Usually, the problem has rooted long before the dissonance arises. If lawmakers in the 1980s had taken warnings about pollution more seriously, I might not be facing the dissonance I feel around climate change today. 

Fascism finds the people who are tired of blaming themselves, who want to learn how to feel better about the dissonance. People want something to believe in to get them to the next paycheck, and the government plays with us like puppets on strings. They know that if people only worry about survival, they can’t afford to care about climate change. 

Where does that leave me? Spending the last few years learning about the future of our world, I am privileged to have the choice to consume or not consume.

I know the information, and I have the time, but I still waste too much water or buy petroleum products for my own short-term convenience. It’s comfortable. It’s addictive. 

Then, Vermont towns flooded for the third time since July. The smog this summer from Canadian wildfires made it a hazard to recreate outside. Would it be better to live in ignorance? To tune out the dissonance, reject the rooting?

Sometimes, in shame late at night, I wish I could focus only on the next gas bill and not global catastrophe. 

3. Arrival to Power

Once in power, fascists often use authoritarian tactics to consolidate their control over government institutions and suppress dissent.

We reject what makes us uncomfortable. We keep driving. The basics of evolutionary survival help us mask reality so we can enjoy our burger. 

Psychologists have said people who feel uncomfortable with their moral actions tend to seek information that aligns with and supports current beliefs. This reduces the conflicting belief’s importance or changes their beliefs to reduce feelings of conflict. 

There are probably other people recycling so why do I need to? 

Humans are the greatest species.

Animals are supposed to be eaten, it's biological. 

It’s a high, this dissonance. We are all addicted to pretending, to avoiding, to rejecting. 

There is a story of a fisherman who refuses to accept climate change. The fisherman explains that he would accept the reality of climate change only if a 500-year-old scientist told him it was happening. By making this impossible claim, the fisherman has saved himself from moral action. I wish I were as lucky.

I take a shower and only hear the water rushing out onto the streets of Montpelier in the wake of a flood. The drug of denial is sometimes the only way I can go about my day. 

4. Exercise of Power

With control over the state, fascists implement their agenda, which typically involves the centralization of power, the suppression of political opposition, and the promotion of nationalist and authoritarian policies.

Six years ago I watched the documentary Cowspiracy. My ecology teacher had recommended it, and I sat down on a Saturday to watch, pint of Ben and Jerry’s in hand.  Images of deforestation, beaten cows, soil erosion, species extinction, and virtually every other environmental ill flicked by on my screen. 

I continued to eat meat for a week after that. But I kept watching and reading more. The more this information screamed at me, the more my dissonance screamed back.

That summer, I took the step to become vegetarian. I began learning to cook with tofu, tried meatless chicken nuggets, and learned how a good salad could taste. For some time, the dissonance began to fade.

Although the looming threats of big agriculture and big oil were still ever-present, I was able to gain control over them. It had settled into a strong hate for the system other than myself. It was revolutionary. 

In many ways, fascist regimes are revolutionary because they advocate the overthrow of the existing system of government and the persecution of political enemies. For example, the overthrow of oil and gas industries would bring about more rapid change to the climate change agenda. There are ways in which the existing systems of bureaucracy and government get in the way of environmental goals if they were scrapped. 

Perhaps there is something to be said for revolution and the space for opportunity it creates. 

I had overthrown the existing regime of complacency. I had taken the power back for myself by putting thoughts into action. 

Yet, after the coup, after the revolution, the fascist regime takes on the guise it was intent on all along. When the regime gains power, most seek to push racism, xenophobia, and, most of all, obedience to authority.

We examine one limb, which, of course, can mislead us about the whole beast.

Going into freshman year of college, I was a hippie-loving vegetarian as good as they come. I vowed I was doing good for the planet, that I was somehow saving a cow from a horrible life and our atmosphere from its methane farts. I was zealous. Last fall, I tasted sausage again after four years without eating any meat. And it was good. Slowly, I began to eat my friends’ leftovers. Now, I say I won’t buy meat, but I’ll still eat it. The beast was back. 

Why, even when I tasted victory, did I accept defeat? I guess it tasted good, filled me up, and the jarring imagery of slaughtered cows no longer burned my vision after four years. Yet, it has to boil down to more than just what’s comfortable in the short term. 

There's also that smaller, anti-capitalist voice in my head telling me not to beat myself up about eating chicken once a month. Is there a way to take my power back? 

5. Radicalization or Entropy

In this stage, the fascist regime may undergo radicalization as it seeks to further consolidate power and pursue its ideological goals. Alternatively, the regime may face internal divisions, resistance, or external pressures that lead to its decline and eventual collapse.

If it’s true that humans are hard-wired to be confronted with the dissonance of choice, how do we move forward? How do we cope with catastrophe? 

One way psychologists suggest to cope with dissonance is to challenge our current beliefs. Is it on me to absorb the guilt of climate change? Is it my fault for throwing out the plastic food container that some turtle will choke on? 

We must be able to self-reflect on our own thoughts. To notice the inconsistencies, the missteps where the dissonance begins, and where catastrophe follows.  

While the intentions behind aligning myself to be a “good environmentalist” are certainly admirable, the ideals that are pushed on us societally don’t always let us be our own guides. Societal messages about recycling the right way are intended to make us feel like we are not doing enough. In this way, discomfort becomes our driving force.

Yet, is blaming the system a way for me to wiggle my way out? To put the blame on something or someone else? Or, is there a way I can do my part while also rallying against a power that tries to amplify my dissonance?

And I have to wonder if this dissonance between thoughts is all bad. I wouldn’t want to be human without the grief and the guilt that comes along with it.  

It seems there’s no exact cure, but it’s still possible to heal. To enter into the entropy and pave the way towards my dissonance decline. The deer is in my headlights, do I keep driving? H

Art by Rachel Lamb