anyone who reads this thread will know i’m right.

You certainly did not convince me. I gave rationale. If you don’t like the rationale, it’s on you to counter it. Good luck trying to convince others.

https://www.baeldung.com/linux/wav-mp3-to-text-speech-recognize

https://www.bbc.com/audio/brand/m002mqm3

And you got it wrong. So if you’re trying to recycle the same claim rather than articulate a new “leap” in logic claim, it’s futile.

And?

Both of those social movements were initiated and driven by members of the dispossessed and excluded groups themselves, not by benevolent men or white people acting on their behalf.

Nonsense w.r.t to abolition of slavery. The most significant work was done by white outsiders. Source: https://www.bbc.com/audio/brand/m002mqm3

That counters Rutger Bregman’s research. Citation needed.

There is no single magic bullet. An effective method is not a singular tactic or event against a complex problem. You need many effective methods and campaigns, one of which is vegans doing their individual boycott. Slavery reduced over many generations. It cannot even be solved in a single generation. As Rutger Bregman states, it often takes one generation just to work on awareness and influence before the execution of actions. Only 1 of major initiating actors in abolition of slavery lived to actually see it fall. IIRC, it was the same for the suffragettes. Only one of the key players in the fight for women’s rights lived to see the day when a notable stride was made.

That’s a meaningless claim when you don’t articulate the “leap”.

What are you calling effective? You have an increasing population. You have a rise of meat-eating car-driving right-wing nutters voting fascists into power. What do you expect? The fact that we can walk into a restaurant and ask for a vegan menu proves positive effect occured. The fact that even prisoners can specify that they are vegan and get a vegan meal while incarcerated shows it was effective.

To be clear, “effective” does not mean “mission complete”. Abolition of slavery was very effective. That does not mean slavery is entirely eradicated. The fight against slavery will likely continue throughout our lifetime.

(edit) I suspect if you find a chart for the numbers of vegans, that will also be increasing.

As I said, the vegan movement proves that individual boycotts are effective. Apart from that, you lose insight if you talk the talk without walking the walk. You must live the lifestyle to gain the insights on what needs to change and what to demand. Otherwise it’s like trying to fight in the dark from the outside. Like trying to fight for change in a country where you have never lived.

If you don’t actually boycott Cloudflare (for example), you have no idea the full extent of the damage it does. The superficial view of CF without experiencing life without CF does not equip you to know where the battleground is or what it looks like. You are working blind.

Only if you don’t know the nuanced difference between “endorsement” and “supports” will you fail to take it seriously. Endorsement deals with deontology (intent) whereas support is utilitarian in meaning.

so when you said “what he’s essentially saying” you were lying

Not at all. It’s very long and wordy article. It would be inefficient to requote the whole thing. I assume people have read it. It’s important to be concise in what I am responding to, and to transparently show my interpretation of what I read so someone has a chance to say “that’s not right” (which you have done, but failed to effectively support).

what you could have truthfully said is “i’m afraid he might mean”.

That would falsely misrepresent my confidence. I am confident that I have comprehended Doctorow as he intends.

No, that difference between those words is important. My stance is in fact that Doctorow does not endorse oppression but he supports it through his actions and advocacy – unintentionally of course.

I don’t know what you mean by “re-interpret”. I interpretted his article once because I only read it once. Of course I can only have my own interpretation. I am not a mind reader. If Doctorow feels he is being misinterpretted, he can revise or add clarity.

and yet you still added to it.

It’s on you to show that. I don’t believe I added anything to his claims. I’m not going to quote the whole (very wordy) article. I quoted bits and attacked his thesis.

It’s on you to show that. I quoted him. Those words have meaning. He restated his points in multiple different ways so there is no question about his thesis. You can’t cling to this strawman claim without actually showing a difference between his words and the ideas I am opposing.

Like a politician, Doctorow is telling people what they want to hear. They want to be told they don’t need to make a potentially sacrificial personal transformation or accept the burden of personal responsibility by opting-out of being an enabler of an oppressor.

Conversely, I tell people what they /need/ to hear, as brutal as it may be. Which is aligned with Rutger Bregman’s ideology.

Of course it’s not the whole of my position. The comment you are replying to is just one facet of the problems with Doctorow’s stance, which you misunderstood as indicated in the comment prior.

Read the quote:

The problem with “conscious consumption” is that it comes out of the neoliberal tradition in which every political matter is supposedly determined by your individual actions, and not your actions as part of a union or other political institution that works as a bloc to overthrow the status quo.

“Conscious consumption” is what he uses to describe boycotting by an individual. He describes it as a “problem”. Again, it’s not just a single statement. It’s his thesis littered throughout. You’ve missed the major point in his work.

BTW, in the quote above he pushes a false dichotomy fallacy. You can (and should) boycott individually AND act in union with others taking actions. They are not mutually exclusive.

I quoted him. Read my first comment. If he did not mean what he said, he should revise his statements and position.

(edit) Also, read Doctorow’s article. He repeats several times with different phrasing that an individual action is “problematic”. You’ve grossly missed his thesis. It’s one of his main conjecturing claims.