The ‘Vegan’ Brand Is an Anchor, Not a Sail

Reflection #3418 from the field and a conversation with Rutger Bregman.

We are the butt of jokes. We are the subject of SNL sketches. We are the stereotype that makes it easy for people to dismiss us before we’ve said a single word. And every time we lead with vegan identity, we hand our opponents the easiest possible way to tune us out.

I interviewed 55 leaders, farmers, campaigners, historians and funders in the farmed animal protection space and they all referred to the same problem: We have a brand identity crisis.

One major philanthropist was emphatic- we need to move away from divisive identity language and unite around opposition to factory farming. Not veganism. Not animal rights. Factory farming -the specific, concrete, widely disliked system that is actually causing the harm. That moralistic framing pushes audiences away before the conversation even begins. In short, we are trying to sail with an anchor attached.

Rutger Bregman, a leading historian who studies how moral revolutions succeed, offered me a useful frame. He has spent years examining the social movements that actually won and what they had in common. His observation: the movements that changed history did not lead with the identity of their members. They led with the concrete harm they were fighting, and they built coalitions around shared opposition to that harm. The abolitionist movement didn’t ask people to become abolitionists before they could participate. It named an injustice and invited people to stand against it.

We keep asking people to become something -vegan, animal rights activist, part of our team -before they’re willing to join us. And then we wonder why the tent stays small.

I say this as someone who is vegan

I’ve been vegan for most of my adult life. I believe deeply in the ethics of this choice. So I want to be precise about what I’m saying and what I’m not.

I am not saying that veganism is wrong. I am not saying people should stop being vegan, or that the movement should abandon its values.

I am saying that veganism, as a public-facing brand and primary identity for this movement, is a strategic liability. There is a difference between what we are fighting for and how we invite people to join us. And right now, we are conflating the two in ways that are costing us.

Bregman made another point that landed hard: broad public sympathy is not the same as power. He noted that just having the majority on your side isn’t enough. You need dedicated groups of people -not millions of casual supporters, but committed coalitions who care deeply enough to act. And those coalitions are built not around identity, but around concrete, shared opposition to a specific harm. The factory farming system is that harm. It’s the villain that almost everyone, across political lines, can agree on when it’s described honestly.

The coalition hiding in plain sight

Here is what I find genuinely hopeful: opposition to factory farming is not a niche position. When you describe what actually happens in these facilities -the scale, the conditions, the corporate consolidation, the impacts on farmers and workers and rural communities and public health -people across the political spectrum respond.

I have personally seen the power of an unlikely ally. I have worked to expose how farmers are victims of the very system we’re fighting -trapped by corporate contracts, unable to make independent decisions, and financially squeezed by the same industrial model that exploits animals. The corporations at the center of factory farming are not just harming animals. They are turning independent farmers into modern-day serfs.

That framing changes everything. Suddenly the coalition isn’t “vegans vs. farmers” -it’s farmers, workers, rural communities, public health advocates, environmentalists, and animal protection groups, all united against the same corporate consolidation of the food system.

Factory farming is not a left issue or a right issue. It is an everybody issue. But we can’t access that coalition if we’re leading with an identity that half the country has already decided isn’t for them.

What this means in practice

This is not about abandoning who we are. It is about learning to speak to who they are.

Bregman describes this as building a “conspiracy of decency” -a coalition of people who don’t necessarily share an identity, but who share opposition to a specific, concrete wrong. The original abolitionists understood this. Ten of the twelve founding members of the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade were entrepreneurs and businessmen -people who combined moral clarity with practical organizing ability, and who knew that winning required building a coalition far wider than the ideologically committed.

For us, that means finding messengers who don’t carry the vegan identity marker but who care deeply about the same harms. Farmers who have watched corporate consolidation destroy their livelihoods. Faith communities who understand stewardship of creation. Parents worried about what’s in the food supply. Rural communities living downstream from industrial operations.

It means testing messages that lead with shared values -fairness, accountability, health, community -rather than with a lifestyle prescription. It means asking not “what do we need people to become?” but “where do we already agree, and how do we build from there?”

It means being willing to sit at tables where not everyone eats the way we do, and trusting that the conversation about the system can happen before the conversation about personal choices. Because it has to.

A bigger tent is not a moral compromise

I want to address the discomfort I know some people will feel reading this. There is a real fear -understandable and worth naming -that broadening the message means diluting it. That meeting people where they are means letting them off the hook.

I’ve felt that fear too. But I think it gets the strategy backwards.

The movements that have won -really won, systemically, durably -have figured out how to hold a clear moral center while building a wide enough coalition to create change. The historian was emphatic on this: moral revolutions take decades, and the ones that succeed are the ones with long vision, not just righteous anger. Outrage gets you started. Coalition gets you over the finish line.

A bigger tent is not a moral compromise. It is a prerequisite for winning. The goal is to end factory farming -the vast, industrialized system that causes suffering at a scale almost impossible to comprehend. That goal requires political power. Political power requires a coalition. A coalition requires people who don’t already agree with us about everything.

What gives me hope

After 55 conversations, I came away with a lot of worries. But I also came away with this: the insight is out there. People in this movement understand the problem. They’re already experimenting with different frames, different messengers, different entry points.

Bregman’s long view is actually comforting, in a way. He reminded me that the abolition movement looked impossible for decades before it didn’t. That the people who started it couldn’t have imagined, in the early years, how it would end. What they had was clarity about the harm, commitment to building the coalition, and the patience to think in decades rather than news cycles.

We have clarity about the harm. What we need is the strategic patience to build the coalition that can actually end it -and that means being honest about what’s getting in the way.

The anchor can be lifted. The sail can catch wind.

This is part of an ongoing reflection from the Growth and Opportunity Project -a series of 55 interviews exploring strategic gaps in the farmed animal protection movement. Follow along if you’d like to hear more.