Veganism and Right Wing Ideology
While most vegans are on the left, their exists conservatives and others on the political right who are vegan. This post will simply highlight some of them and arguments/perspectives that these people have.
Conservatism and Veganism
In regard to conservatives and conservatism, there are groups such as the The Vegan Conservatives in the UK who promote both veganism and conservatism. There are also Christians whose veganism is informed by their spiritual and ethical beliefs, such as the The Seventh Day Adventists, but even some Catholics as well (see 1, 2, and 3 for examples). Christian beliefs, including those of the Seventh Day Adventists, tend to be socially conservative, such as being opposed to abortion, looking favorably upon traditional gender roles, etc.
A staunchly pro-life conservative could come to the conclusion that, in order to be ethically consistent, he must assign animals moral worth. This could be based on the fact that a pig, for example, is more sentient than a fetus, that a pig can suffer, etc when a fetus can't.
In fact, Matthew Scully, a vegan conservative, draws parallels to animal agriculture and abortion, using the the word "abortion" no less than 37 times in a piece entitled Pro-life, Pro-Animal. He also talks about "natural law," a philosophy that has influenced conservatism and is integral to Catholicism, and argues for animal rights from it:
"Then there’s the natural-law tradition that informs much of conservative thought — the basic idea that we all have in common an essential nature that defines the conditions of our fulfillment and happiness, the end or good for which natural rights are the necessary means. This need only be applied to animals to remind us that all creatures have natures, capacities, and yearnings that define their own fulfillment, their creaturely happiness, the good for which they exist in a design larger than any schemes of human devising. Using our own defining capacities of reason and conscience, we can derive from natural law a few rough but at least non-arbitrary standards by which to judge right and wrong in our treatment of other creatures. “Unnatural,” in the treatment of animals, is practically a synonym for “cruel”: Wrong is anything that frustrates or perverts the essential nature of an animal, such as the projects of genetic engineers to make animals more compliant in the stress and misery of modern farming; right is conduct that respects the natures of animals, with a regard for their needs and inherent worth as living creatures, and allows for their expression."
By understanding vegan ethics as congruent with a pro-life stance and interpreting veganism in light of natural law philosophy, Scully's veganism is inherently derived from conservative principles.
There is also a tradition of conservative environmentalism, largely taking a "conservation" approach, which could
also an avenue by which a conservative could embrace veganism given that
a vegan lifestyle is superior for the environment vs an omnivorous or
vegetarian one. Edmund Burke, often considered to be the "father of conservatism, was quoted as saying: "the earth, the kind and equal mother of all ought not to be monopolised to foster the pride and luxury of any men." In the U.S., there are groups such as Conservatives for Responsible Stewardship and others that promote such a green conservatism.
Non-Conservative Right Wing Ideologies and Veganism
Looking away from conservatism and towards right-libertarian thought, there have been libertarians who have made arguments for veganism or vegetarianism that is informed by libertarian ethics. While right-libertarian ethics tend to be contractual, typically excluding animals, certain strands of Rawlsian contractualism can include animals and be used to argue for veganism (see 1 and 2 for examples). Such libertarians might thus expand the original conception of the "non-aggression principle" to include animals. Quilette also published an article entitled "The Libertarian Case for Rejecting Meat Consumption" by Andy Lamey, which draws heavily off of the work of Michael Huemer. Huemer himself is both a vegetarian and libertarian, as well as the author of Dialogues on Ethical Vegetarianism.
Lastly, and this may be a shock to some, there also exists vegans who are fascists/ national socialists. One such group seems to be represented by the "Aryanism" blog, which explicitly promotes ethical veganism, and can be quoted as stating the following:
"Our veganism is a direct consequence of the Aryan instinct of universal compassion. Far from its misassociation with the pacifistic hippy caricatures presented to us by the Jewish media, its most accurate spiritual association is with the archetypical heroic warrior, for only those who have thoroughly renounced initiatory violence can be reasonably entrusted with the means to inflict retaliatory violence."
There exist other occurrences of veganism among fascists/national socialists, a phenomena which has been covered by the media (see 1 and 2 as examples), as well as in academia (see 1 and 2 as examples). This is also covered in the work entitled "Alt-right Ecology: Ecofascism and far-right
environmentalism in the United States" by Blair Taylor, which can be read in PDF form on the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism's website here.
It should now be abundantly clear that veganism as numerous intersections with right wing ideology, and that arguments for veganism can be made from these viewpoints, highlighting that veganism is compatible with a wide variety of political and philosophical doctrines.