Ethics starts with non-violence

Apart from veganism being a great diet, it is also an ethical diet, giving one the opportunity of leading an almost completely non-violent life, but we might not realise how vital non-violence is or how aggressiveness can creep into our interactions.
If we accuse someone of being violent because they eat meat or dairy products, that accusation may be construed as a "violence" in itself and for that reason alone we should avoid doing that. Any confrontation or aggression loses the chance of discussing things rationally. Once someone feels they’re being attacked, they’ll counter attack, and so on. The discussion will go round in circles, we’ll get bogged down in minor details and central arguments will get lost. If we end up ‘shouting’ at people who disagree with us, they can always simply walk away and their hostile attitude towards animal rights will become entrenched; they’ll always be wary of an outburst from us or suspect we have a hidden agenda. They may come to believe that animal activists will only tolerate people who agree with them or that we are people who want to subvert society (by liberating animals).
Instead of seeing us as educators who are putting forward the idea of surviving on plant foods and being compassionate towards animals, we can be seen as spoilers with a grudge. People pick that up by the feelings we show. If we use anger and invective to attack animal foods and animal food eaters we can come across as being destructive and dangerous, and then people become defensive and stop listening to us … and the animal industries cash in on this and up the ante, by pushing for the denigration of food to be made illegal. This is what has happened in some parts of USA. So we, as activists for animals, play right into their hands when we use aggressive tactics to promote our cause. Instead, if we really want to help free the animals we need to be persistent, always non-violent and carefully explain the issues without getting personal or without losing whatever goodwill that is at present. There may not be much of it around but we should build on what exists.