Table of Contents
Going viral
Mother of shit what a year it’s been. 2020 was the year where God chose to finally punish degenerate cucknivores for their depraved eating habits. A plague was sent from on high and while it technically started in the wet markets of communist China, be assured that its provenance went back further, all the way to 1.5 million BC in the savannah of the Omo-Turkana Basin, where Homo erectus first began killing animals for food. That disgraceful first hominid who picked up a rock and battered a defenceless zebra unconscious so it could finish it off, skin it, cure it then roast it in rosemary and olive oil surely set up a deadly payload for his human descendants. That rancid flat faced fuck really did a number on us, because it was the meat trade that caused the cuckronavirus and anyone who tells you otherwise is a filthy goddamn liar.
So disease, despair and chaos reigned in a once-in-a-century planetwide panic. Yet in the darkness there was light. The vegan movement grew stronger still, the momentum of recent years growing exponentially fuelled by the inescapable logic of the pandemic animal husbandry had caused. Even hardened cucknivores were forced to examine their choices. Much like sanitation pioneer Kamal Kar confronting people with their own shit, Covid-19 rubbed people’s noses in their mess and screamed “Look at what you’ve done! Is this what you want? You sick pieces of shit! How could you do this?”
It did more than a thousand Pube of Truths with Hoey Carbstrong, a 64-gigabyte thumb drive of Freelee The Banana Girl vids or heartrending Netflix documentaries no one ever watches. When the tanks are parked on your lawn, you start to pay attention.
It wasn’t all about the pandemic though. Naw dog. 2020 had crazy vegan action, much of it positive, some of which you may have missed. Let’s run down the major points and take pride in being part of a bottom-up grassroots insurgency that is changing the world on the daily for the better. Hit it!
January
We kicked off the year positively with a ruling that confirmed veganism as a protected ethical belief, in Jordi Casamitjana’s legal battle against his former employer League Against Cruel Sports. While most of us didn’t have that on our 2020 bingo card, it was a good sign that we are being taken seriously. This was confirmed when the Masonic World Order vouchsafed our entry into their diseased rituals for the first time. We are happy to report no deaths in the stampede that followed. Further affirmation came from Hollywood when the Golden Globes menu went entirely vegan, a first for an industry awards ceremony. The move was applauded by international youth worker Leonardo DiCapreteen, prompting a nervous breakdown from celebrity shit eater Dan Wootton.
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The sensitive showbiz editor would have been further triggered by ITV’s first plant-based cooking show Living on the Veg which aired its first episode in January. Also on the box was BBC3’s Veganville, where a group of vegan influencers tried to batter carnist paradise Merthyr Tydfil into submission with falafel wraps and weapons grade condescension, with results best described as “mixed”. As a record 400,000 people pledged to go vegan for Veganuary, the discredited, broken, morally bankrupt flesheater delusion suffered another blow as supermarket meat sales dropped by £184.6million. With Gregg’s new vegan steak bake flying off the shelves, it became increasingly clear that the New Normal everyone was talking about was plant-based.
And in a downmarket Adelaide shopping mall, viral road rage sensation DurianRider got a cauliflower arse courtesy of vigorously applied ground-and-pound from a bonehead acquaintance. What kind of world?
February
February saw academia turn its attention to the hostility veganism faces as social psychologist Hank Rothgerber said “By their mere existence, vegans force people to confront their cognitive dissonance. And this makes people angry.” This is hardly news to vogons but still nice to hear by someone who studies cognitive bias for a living. It made a nice change from having to listen to the likes of right-wing dingbat Shane Jones who made a twat of himself attacking the plant-based massive in a way so predictable you could set an atomic clock by it.
On the dessert trolley, Ben & Jerry’s blessed us with some new vegan ice creams, including the intriguing 80s throwback Crème Brûlée Cookie. It was exactly the kind of thing that would go down well with the millennials who are rejecting meat and dairy the way Blake Lively rejected nice guy manlet Aziz Ansari – brutally, repeatedly and with no compunction. With the feral youth cocking a snoot at them in record numbers, it’s not surprising that farmers squealed like the stuck pigs they torment daily. National Farmers Union president Minette Batters warned against Joaquin Phoenix demonising farmers, in a passionate cri de cœur. No one said farming was an easy gig but at the end of the day you can go home and not be breakfast. Count your blessings, Batters.
Millennials are rejecting meat and dairy the way Blake Lively rejected nice guy manlet Aziz Ansari – brutally, repeatedly and with no compunction.
March
As the base reality of the plague hit home and pensioners dropped like vocal opponents of Vladimir Putin, consumers voted with their feet and sales of vegan meat rose by 280 percent. It was now obvious to all that the meat trade caused the coronavirus, and as omnivores looked back on a lifetime of poor choices they reflected for the very first time that they may not have have been 100 percent right on the whole ‘eating the dead’ issue. Slow burner epiphanies are just the best.
Also blowing up was the vegan leather sector, estimated in March to be worth close to $90 billion by 2025, demonstrating it’s not just ethical food on the rise. That League Against Cruel Sports tribunal was settled with Jordi Casamitjana claiming victory against his former employer when they admitted he had not done anything wrong in raising concerns about the organisation’s default pension scheme. It was a bit of a mixed blessing as Casamitjana is a slamdunk crank – avoiding public transport as it may harm birds and insects and refusing to touch leather straps on buses on the occasions he is forced to use them. Still, as Tony Soprano would say, what are you gonna do? *shrug*
April
April is the cruellest month, particularly if you’re employed by baldcel manlet and vegan thundernause Moby. Testimony from employees at his Little Pine restaurant suggested that the Grammy nominated DJ showed exactly the kind of care and attention to his workers that he showed to Natalie Portman’s 18-year-old vagina, leaving them “high and dry”. There was always something off about that dude, don’t @ me. Looking through the other end of the telescope, there was the heartwarming tale of special ops sniper and hunter turned anti-poaching vegan Damien Mander. His journey from childhood bullying victim to hyper masculine Chad and finally to ethical vegan saw him found the International Anti-Poaching Foundation and served as a timely reminder that every now and again people surprise you in a good way. Meanwhile, over in Australia, animal agriculture stared down a $3.2 billion loss over the next 10 years if they did not meet “changing consumer attitudes to animal welfare.” Well, that kind of loss would be just criminal. Thoughts and prayers, guys. 🙏🏻
Moby showed exactly the kind of care and attention to his workers that he showed to Natalie Portman’s 18-year-old vagina, leaving them “high and dry”.
May
Are you depressed? Anxious? Suffer from existential angst? That’ll be all the dumb headlines you’ve read this year. When you read “Vegetarians ‘are more likely to be depressed and meat is good for mental health’” it’s exactly the kind of thing likely to prompt you to reach for your revolver, Xanax, noose – delete as applicable. It’s a glorious self-fulfilling prophecy. In a completely predictable stunning reverse, it turns out that the study (part-funded by the beef industry) found nothing of the kind, with the authors explicitly stating “Across all studies, there was no evidence to support a causal relation between the consumption or avoidance of meat and any psychological outcomes.” So maybe don’t murder-suicide in your local McDonald’s just yet.
Cheerier news came with the release of a report identifying the swift growth of the vegan food sector and linking it to celebrity endorsement. While lauding vegan celebrities has been known to backfire, we should remember that in general it delivers a strong net gain. Not saying flush those antidepressants or anything, just take the victories where you can.
June
Pretty much nobody had a more tumultuous year than Jon Venus. The walking gun show had the kind of 12 months that would make Rudy Giuliani himself say “look at that fucking jerk off – he’s embarrassing himself!” June saw Venus pussywhipped into renouncing his ethical veganism in favour of a back-to-the-planet hunter gatherer shtick that amused as much as it appalled. He would later renounce his renouncement before turning a couple more 180°, leaving him and us as confused as a slow learner kid playing Blind Man’s Buff on a bouncy castle. Whether it was the heat, lockdown mania or his manifest stupidity, it was clear that his sizeable vegan audience would not be trusting him again any time soon.
Trust was in short supply in general as we reached the year’s halfway point. Workers at No Evil Foods said that employees involved in union drive were treated as “high graders, aggregating, organising cocksuckers” in the style of Deadwood’s Al Swearengen. While preaching revolution on their social media, the allegation goes, they sacked organisers on bullshit pretexts in an attempt to scupper unionising. In fairness, it should be pointed out that the founders strongly dispute these claims alleging, among other things, a history of corruption in the union in question.
Corruption in a labour union in the United States? Sorry, I just can’t.
July
Baiting former vegans is a bloodsport, the only bloodsport we endorse at Plant Based Savage, and no one offers as much sport as Tim “Human Timothy” Shieff. The piss drinking parkour maven hit the headlines in July doing a walk of shame around Londung wearing nothing but a face mask around his junk. It was Tim’s protest against the government lockdown, an action taken to protect the most vulnerable in the country and ease pressure on the blitzed NHS. Showcasing an unparalleled ability to make it all about him, Tim nailed the not inconsiderable achievement of lowering our opinion of him even further.
More balls were on display but this time for the good of mankind as IKEA launched its vegan meatballs in its stores for the first time. Curious homeowners, picked up the tempting bites and for the very first time got a taste of what it would be like to eat cruelty-free. Yeah flat pack and chill is all very well but have you ever aligned your eating with your ethics? Priceless.
In food tech, exciting developments reached us. News of a 3D printed steak coming to market in 2021 was announced. Israeli startup Redefine Meat’s steak may have looked weird as shit in its raw state but looked alarmingly convincing cooked and only a complete schlemiel would deny its potential. Over at the milking barn, the ever-growing field of lab-grown dairy got a shot in the arm with Perfect Day raising $300 million for their endeavour. Investors have seen the future and increasingly it’s one to make cows breathe a sigh of relief before doing a giant poo in a field.
Showcasing an unparalleled ability to make it all about him, Tim nailed the not inconsiderable achievement of lowering our opinion of him even further.
August
You have to hand it to cucknivores. They are nothing if not resilient. No matter how many times their arguments get slapped down, they rise up like the antagonist in a shitty B-movie to be clobbered down once again. The crank science belief that vegan men have lower testosterone levels was once again turded by a study. This came as a surprise to no one who knew the actual existing literature but came as a bloody blow to Simple Simon omnis who have constructed their entire identities on some alpha male paleo scaffolding that was never meant to hold such a thing.
The L’s kept on coming for the bloodmouths with Jordan Peterson falling foul of the ‘rona and his psychopath daughter’s cucknivore diet. That the unhealthiest family on the planet continued to charge hundreds of dollars for wellness advice proved to be a reliable source of lolz in challenging times. With Miyoko Schinner winning her battle to describe plant-based products as dairy it was not surprising that meat eaters and dairy drinkers were tailspinning. One imbecilic employee went full All Lives Matter after a vegan club started at his workplace, setting up a meat only club in response. It was frankly embarrassing and they were only getting started. Sustainable Food Trust’s abysmal exhortation to drink cow’s milk to save the planet was up there with the most laughable omni efforts of the year, in a crowded field. Cucknivores – when will they learn?
September
It was mentioned earlier that celebrity endorsement veganism was a mixed blessing and the downside of that became apparent when Miley Cyrus appeared on our dear friend Joe Rogan’s podcast announcing that she was no longer vegan. The Savage asked his readers to cut Miley some slack while showing absolutely no chill dismantling her arguments. Rogan could barely contain his glee but it’s not something to get too agitated about. As mentioned before, you’ve got to let Hoe be a Hoe.
In the retail sector, Asda rolled out their long-threatened vegan food aisle to positive reviews as people said “oh, that’s where they are”. Conveniently organised grocery shopping was all very well but over in the Holy Land, miracles occurred when 35 percent of the Israeli population clocked a pro-vegan TV ad for the first time. It was an impressive milestone that was quickly past when the French created the first realistic vegan eggs. For many, that particular Holy Grail is up there with the moon landings. Let’s just hope Stanley Kubrick didn’t fake this one.
October
The Devil stay busy, as we know, and this was particularly true in October as Big Meat flexed its muscles to place restrictions on the labelling of vegan and vegetarian products in the European Union. The upshot was that veggie burgers can still be called veggie burgers but that certain types of plant-based dairy ‘almond milk’, ‘vegan cheese’, ‘yogurt-style’ and ‘cheese alternative’ will have to come up with different names. Ah well. We got our hair mussed up a little but it was all worth it to see the fear in their eyes as they confront their impending redundancy.
On the awards circuit, PETA dished out a gong to architects of the chicken genocide KFC for the best vegan chicken. Much as we may be conflicted about this it doesn’t help to be puritan about these things. In an imperfect world, you deal with the devil as you must, smile and go on about your business. Que vida!
November
Things got political down under with Vegans For Trump homophobe Mark Da Costa branding his Sydney vegan café a safe space for Trump supporters (as long as they’re not gay presumably). Australia continued its proud tradition of producing the worst vegans in the universe with Da Costa edging out caucasoid freak Freelee The Banana Girl and flatlining jailbird Joey Carbstrong. You can see why Aussies love their meat so much.
Even more laughable was the ever-reliable Frank Tufano who chose November to quit the carnivore diet in his signature understated manner. That his testimony was about as believable as his vegan girlfriend was immaterial. More pressing, was the EPIC-Oxford study on vegan fractures and the inevitable disconnect between the headlines and the correct inferences to be drawn from the work. Concerned? Naw dawg – chillin’ like a villain. Frankly, I was about as worried as I was about Beverley Callard’s ersatz veganism on I’m a Celebrity which worried me about as much as Archer‘s fake conversion to Islam in Scum.
Oh and anaemic soy boy Lewis Hamilton won a record-equalling 7th Formula One world title. How he dragged his feeble emaciated body through this marathon once again is a mystery for the ages.
Australia continued its proud tradition of producing the worst vegans in the universe with Da Costa edging out caucasoid freak Freelee The Banana Girl and flatlining jailbird Joey Carbstrong.
December
And so came December and with it another thrilling co-sign for our movement. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the lab grown steak of Aleph Farms as “delicious” and “guilt free”. It was an important endorsement as if anybody knows about being guilt free it’s murdering racist psychopath Bibi. Still, props on the cell-based grub you guys!
It was a busy time on the celebrity front, with Ellen Degeneres offering one more reason for the world to hate her by shitcanning veganism for no reason at all. Skunks gon’ skunk I guess. The altogether more palatable Venus Williams launched a vegan protein company with her tennis millions so God bless the less successful Williams sister for that. Anya Taylor-Joy capped off her mesmeric performance in The Queen’s Gambit by saying she feels healthiest when on a vegan diet. And while I have several questions about Robbie Williams returning to veganism after his mercury levels shot through the roof I will forego asking them for now, assuming, as I must, the best intentions.
2021 – whenever you want to make your entrance, we are ready for you. Expect fireworks.