 The gangs that I left weren't street gangs, they were very serious organized crime gangs, but it is very incredibly dangerous. You can get left out into the bush and no one will find you. I realized that they were the defenseless beings that couldn't speak for themselves and they didn't have any rights at all. They didn't even have a right to their own life. When we violate human beings, we have words for that already. Now, what people are asking of me is to use different words to describe what happens to animals, which are like what the industry use, which are euphemisms, like they're the words that make the industry and the public comfortable. Other vegans in that would be like, oh, what are you doing? You're making us look bad. You're making the movement look bad. You're way too extreme and aggressive. I think there is a little bit too much cushy, cushy, cushioning ourselves from reality to the point where you're going to be such a fragile person that you're not gonna be able to do anything anyway. Today, I'm very excited to welcome Joey Carbstrong to the podcast. He's an ex-gang member turned vegan activist whose content has had over 70 million views on Facebook and 28 million views on YouTube. Joey, welcome to the show. Thank you very much for having me. It's great to see you. Now, many of our listeners will know who you are and may have heard you speak at events like Vegan Camp Out. But for those who aren't familiar with your journey, how did you go from being in a gang and I think you were in prison? That right? Yes. So becoming this sort of incredible force for animals. Yeah, it's an interesting story and it's a unique one. Doesn't happen very often. A lot of people who get mixed up with the world, I was mixed up with either stay in that world, end up in prison or with a drug addiction or dead. So it is quite unique to pull myself out of it. I think I had a series of events that gave me opportunities to escape that gang world. And I was luckily enough, lucid enough to take action when I had those opportunities. But basically I just fell into the gang world through my environment circumstances, family circumstances and no father in the house. And just the area I was from and had a bit of a rough childhood. And I looked for kind of male figures that to influence me and probably from the wrong places and end up taking drugs and getting mixed up in drugs and then hanging out with street gangs and then it always progresses into more higher levels of crime and organized crime. And then before I knew it, I was in full fledged organized crime gang. And luckily for me, blessing in disguise I got caught by the police carrying a loaded firearm at the height of one of my, you know, just going berserk on drugs and just really like, just not conscious of what I was doing really. And it was a blessing in disguise because it could have been a lot worse or something really bad could have happened. You know, I was just playing with fire really. But it landed me on house arrest whilst on house arrest I put on a lot of weight. You know, I was depressed, filled with trauma, anxious, alcoholic. And after putting on a substantial amount of weight, I was 115 kilograms, I started looking for a diet to lose weight and that's how I come across the raw veganism, plant-based eating. It was juicing actually, juice fasting. And I did the juice fasting. Yeah, I was, this guy was like a hippie dude. His name's Dan the man. And he was doing a juice fasting and just talking about the power of plants basically. And I did the juice fasting, I lost a lot of weight but what it gave me is this mental clarity that I hadn't had before because I was always eating meat, steak, bacon, eggs, oil, drugs, alcohol. You know what I mean? I was just foggy and you know, but when I started drinking these green juices in that, I just had this like crazy clarity. And basically it planted a seed. It didn't change me completely. Change happens in like stages, but he started talking about like when you eat animals, you take on the fear, everything that animal went through in the slaughterhouse, they don't want to die at the cortisol and adrenaline that happens to every one before they get shot, killed. You know, it just started like playing with my head a bit because like I've seen karma happening in the gang world like bad things would come back around and get you. And in the gang world usually like people that you have altercations with are kind of like in that, you know, world there, it's like them versus you's kind of a, it's almost like a mutual agreement of war in that world. But the animals were very innocent beings. They didn't do anything wrong. You know, so it kind of played on my mind and it stayed with me. And when I got sentenced to prison, I actually didn't have access to drugs and become sober. And part of that sobriety was starting to analyze my life from a new sober perspective, basically. And I started to see the gang world for way differently. I seen jail prison really differently. Like I just seen people doing like 20 years like for like one stupid mistake. And I'd looked at my mistakes and I was like, well, you know, very easily could have landed myself in there for a very, very large long stint in prison. And by the time I would have woken up five years into that, I would have had 15 years left and been like, what have I done? So basically started looking at my life like that. And when I got released from prison, I basically had a conversation with my mom about her smoking cigarettes. And she kind of said, look in your own backyard. And that's when I reflected about eating animals more, the hypocrisy between me eating a cow but saying save the whales. It was at that moment that I like reflected and thought, you know what? I'm asking my mom to better herself but I haven't even bedded myself and I've put her through hell for the last 12 years. And it was like in that moment that I decided to go vegan and I went vegan the next day and I have been vegan ever since and it progressed into me being an activist and the rest is kind of history. Yeah, that's amazing. I mean, I really sort of that story with, you know, your mom really resonates with me because I remember when I first went vegan and I was suddenly like preaching. I was like, mom, mom, listen to this. She was kind of like back off but I've managed to get her to go veggie. So I'm halfway there. But yeah, an incredible story. I mean, give us an example of some of the things that you do. So I am actually like a multifaceted activist and advocate, I do a lot of things. Activism was a natural progression of me seeing a massive issue in the world and wanting to do something about it. I was going to become like a counsellor for misled youth, kids on drugs or people in gangs helping people with mental health issues, things like this because I was sober and I thought maybe I could help. Yeah, it seems more of a natural progression, doesn't it? Yeah, yeah, of course. I was thought maybe I could inspire people to get out of that life. But then like once I witnessed what was going on to the animals, little baby birds suffering and pigs in gas chambers and cows in a knockbox struggling to escape and no mercy for these animals. And I realised that they were the defenceless beings that couldn't speak for themselves and they didn't have any rights at all. They didn't even have a right to their own life. And no one was really from... I didn't realise there was this whole movement going on back then, but from my perspective I didn't see anyone talking about it for where I was in my neighbourhood and I thought it was such an injustice and it made me so angry and that was it then, that was what I was going to do. And I just needed a platform to do it on and then I just started to like... I was very terrified to get on social media actually because which is why I have a different last name that's Carbstrong, but my name is Armstrong and at the time I had just left... The gangs that I left weren't street gangs. They were very serious organised crime gangs and it's a very dangerous world. It's not... There's a lot of things people don't know about that world but it is very incredibly dangerous. You can get killed, you can get put in hospital, broken legs, you can get left out into the bush and no one will find you. So when I come online I was actually afraid that I might red light myself and everyone knows what I'm doing and where I am. I was trying to keep a low profile so I changed my name Joey Carbstrong but I made my first video because I felt it was more important that I leave a positive mark on the world after what I'd spent my life doing, you know? And that was it, like at the start no one really followed me. There was a couple people in there and I started mixing with the vegan crowd and then I just kept going and going and going and I realised how I had more to say and then I realised that this was a bit of a battle and I just kept going, you know? I didn't give up and it was social media really that was the platform to spread the message because that's how you reach a large amount of people with a sort of less energy. So yeah, I didn't really answer your question though. You said, what types of things do I do? And I started to go to... That's fine, I mean, I know you do... I mean, you sort of visit slaughterhouses and things like that. Do you do any undercover stuff or is it more like sort of slaughterhouse vigils and things like that? I like to be where the animals are. So the save movement, I started working with the... Going to the vigils that the save movement were holding in 2017, 2018. Not so much anymore, although I still will. But I do a lot of outreach on the streets. I film my outreach so that more people can see that conversation. I don't like to just have a conversation with one person and no one else learns from it. I started filming my outreach back in 2015 before there was these groups filming and shooting. Basically, I was the first to shoot my outreach and put it on YouTube. And I started an interview series called Joey vs. the Public back then. This was way before there was any of this type of content online where I do the Socratic method and just ask people questions and help them lead to their own conclusion. But yes, later on, I have been in farms in 2018 and stuff. But I mean, from 2021, I started to get more into investigations and did a series called Uncovered where we would go into factory farms and I've done a couple of slaughterhouse investigations and things like that. But mainly people would know me. I've got over 200 million views now on social media. I've been on... I've been nearly in every single newspaper in the UK. I've been on TV in the UK and TV in Australia. I've been in a BBC series called Veganville. So, quite well known for speaking this truth for the animals and I've always had a strong animal message throughout the way. But yeah, being an activist these days is multifaceted. It's all online. I'm sitting in front of a computer a lot of the time directing edits, organising, travelling, shooting. It's crawling around in farms. It's just everything. Do everything all the time. Cooking shows sometimes, you know. OK, amazing. I mean, do you think so? I mean, a lot of the language you use is quite provocative, isn't it? I know I watched the clip of you on this morning and you were kind of on the sofa with Phil and Holly and some farmers and some of the language is kind of rape and murder and things like that. Do you think that kind of activism sort of works or do you think it kind of turns people off? I don't have the data on that particular thing. What I do know, though, is that if we are an animal rights movement and we're asking non-human animals to have basic fundamental rights, meaning that you don't have the right to enslave them and kill them. You don't have the right to sexually violate them, right? Us as humans have those basic fundamental rights. When we violate human beings, we have words for that already. Now, what people are asking of me is to use different words to describe what happens to animals, which are like what the industry use, which are euphemisms like artificial insemination or humane slaughter or, I don't know, you name it. But they're the words that make the industry and the public comfortable. They don't want me out here saying dairy cows are raped against their will. They don't want me to say pigs are murdered in gas chambers. That's what makes... Because otherwise, the implication of that is that they're murderers. The implication of that is that the dairy farmers are actually raping these cows. So whether or not... Your question is whether or not it's effective. I think the truth is effective. So if you have a message, you better damn well make sure it's true and you've got evidence to back it up. And we've got thousands of hours of evidence and here's a photographic evidence of them doing this act. So what I ask people to do is I'm like, it's not murder, is it? So just put yourself in place of the cow in the knockbox. What is it for you? It's murder for you. It's not murder for the cow, though. Even though we know a cow is a sentient conscious being having their own individual experience and when you rob their individual experience from them against their will, you expect me to say that's not murder. Even though if they want to bring out the dictionary, we've got definitions that apply to animals. They want to say, oh, the definition is just human on human. It's a criminal offence murder. No, we've got plenty of definitions that apply to animals as well. But I think it's because it's full frontal, it's like, bang, it's in your face. They don't want that to be true. That human beings are actually mass murdering animals. They want it to be, no, they're just, we're humanely slaughtering them, we're giving them a good life and it's the food chain. That's what they want to hear. You know what I mean? So yeah, whether or not it's effective, I'll tell you why now. It got me on TV. It got me on the radio. It got me all over the internet. It's got me 200 million views speaking the truth. If I was not so full on, maybe it wouldn't have spurred me into the media. Maybe it wouldn't, maybe people would just not take me seriously because maybe I'm not taking the issue seriously enough. And if you don't look like you're taking the issue seriously enough as an animal activist, then why would they take the animals plight seriously? If you as an advocate aren't even representing their plight accurately. Yeah, it's such a difficult one, isn't it? Like going back to my mom, I sort of say things, use some of this language sometimes, but she's so horrified. She wants to sort of hide away from it. And I think that's the attitude of a lot of people. Even myself, when I see activists, when I'm out shopping or anything, even as a vegan of sort of five or six years and someone who cares deeply about all these issues, I do want to run away because I just, I'm scared to see these things, the footage. And it's quite traumatizing. I think there's sort of seems to be two schools of thought because I've had Juliette Galatly from Viva on the podcast before and she very much feels that vegans should watch documentaries that they've produced like Hogwood and other things that aren't comfortable viewing. And then I've spoken to Dr. Melanie Joy who believes that there's a lot of trauma in the vegan movement and we shouldn't force ourselves to kind of view these things and sort of set ourselves further. So yeah, I mean, what do you think? Do you think us vegans should be seeing what actually goes on or? Well, there's a very big difference between Dr. Melanie Joy and Juliette. Juliette is an investigator. She's on the ground, she's witnessing the animals going through what they're going through. She's been having to get vet care in dairy farms to get cows put down there on the spot. She's seen a lot of horrible things and she's on the front lines. Now, Dr. Melanie, I'm not sure of that. She's a psychologist, I'm pretty sure. She works in, yeah, so she's pretty much, she's probably a lot very disconnected from that herself. Now, I do think that for me, right, this is a very important discussion and I think there is nuance to it. I don't think it's black and white. I do believe that there is a problem within the vegan movement of people becoming too disconnected from the issue and then they become apologetic and then they think that other vegans are extreme. And then they say, well, Joey, it's not that bad. You're being hyperbolic, you know. You need to tone it down, you're pushing people away. You're making me feel uncomfortable. I don't wanna go hanging around with my friends and you're saying all this stuff and, you know, but the vegans who get it, get it. And they're like, yeah, it's much more worse than what your words can describe because they've seen it and they've witnessed it, what's going on to the animals. I do think that if you're going to, if you're going to be an activist, right, this is a difference between a vegan and an activist, but if you wanna help create change, you should understand the issue that you're speaking about and you need to witness to some extent what's going on so that you understand it. There are some forms of graphic slaughterhouse footage that you really, I really don't see the utility in you watching it. There are some things that are just so horrific and just gratuitous that I don't see why you would need to know that. I've seen some things that just have, they've traumatized me in the moment, you know, but there are certain practices that are very common that I think it's important for you to know about if you're going to be speaking for the animals. And also if you're going to stay vegan and also if you're gonna be vegan for the right reasons. Veganism is a, it's a movement based on animals and I know the movement's so big and it's so multifaceted now that people are going, well, it's about the climate, it's about this, it's about that. Not really fundamentally, no. It is a animal rights movement and there just happens to be really good other reasons to eat plant based, which is really fantastic, which we should not ignore those issues. But the same token, if I gave everyone the advice, don't watch what happens to animals. It's going to traumatize you. Well, that's not nuanced at all. That's a one, that's black and white. That's saying, you know, there's too much, this vegan's traumatizing themselves. Well, no, not everyone is going to be so traumatized that they feel so helpless that they're going to stay at home with PTSD. That's just not what's going to happen. A lot of the time for most people who are sleeping well, who don't have a history of mental health issues, who are eating well and they're pretty stable in their lives, if they see what's happening to animals, it's going to anger them and motivate them into becoming an activist and seeing the urgency in becoming an activist and understanding the plot of the animals. Do you know what I mean? Like, so, although that self-care is important, I think there is a little bit too much cushy, cushy, cushioning ourselves from reality to the point where you're going to be such a fragile person that you're not going to be able to do anything anyway. Now, the reason there's nuance is because there's certain people who would do them much better if they didn't see even some factory farm food is because you've got to know yourself and they would do really good. And let's just say they've seen it before. It really messes them up to another degree. They don't need to be motivated further. They're not turning all apologetic and beginning to lose their principles and go against other activists by going, oh, that's you too extreme, you know, you're too extreme. They're not that type of person because they're the people I'd recommend to remember what the animals are going through. Go watch it because, you know, you're falling too far the other way now. But the people who are motivated and aren't going to budge on their principles, but it really does, it just affects their work and they're doing some stuff for the animals. They do really good office work. They can organize, which are super important, things organizing, admin, all of these things are so important to help facilitate things in the movement. If it messes you up that much, you can't do that and you've worked yourself out, you know that, then don't. But a lot of people need to see this because we need a movement full of passionate activists. So I don't think there is a one size fits all for everyone, but I do think that for the most part, if you're going to be an activist, you need to know what's going on. Yeah. Yeah, I think you've described me in terms of like, you know, if I see, obviously I've seen quite a lot of, you know, footage and things and it does really mess with my head and I'll be waking up in the night, go. But, you know, it's, yeah, we're all different and I do agree, it does motivate you to kind of get out there and be like, we need to change right now, you know, animals are going through this. Do you think we'll really ever see a vegan world? I mean, obviously we all want that, but do you think it's realistic? So first of all, we have to understand what a vegan world looks like, right? A vegan world means that everyone understands the philosophy of not exploiting being cruel to animals and is also practicing that, no matter their situation, right? So we're talking like, the world is a very vast place. There's many different languages and cultures and circumstances and there's a lot of like untouched, almost untouched places in the Amazon and you know, you've got like deserts and you've got just vast, vast, continents full of different people, villages. A vegan world would mean that everyone there is practicing veganism and no animals being exploited or hunted, you know, fished. So is it possible? Of course it's possible, but is it probable? Not really. The probability is very low. So what is more probable? Because the reason I say that is because like, we almost have universal human rights generally like the UN might jump in if they see, you know, like slavery is, like human slavery happens around the world. Let's face it, there's sex slavery, there's all kinds of slavery happening around the world but generally if it's found out about there will be some type of intervention that can happen, not always but it generally is against universal human rights, okay? But we have human rights in most places like let's just, we could just speak about the West. We have human rights in the West, okay? Australia, UK, America. There's still some things that go wrong, okay? But there's still murder in the rest. There's still people who don't respect that. There's still people who rape and kill and go and mass shootings and do all these horrible things. So even though we have human rights we don't have people who are practicing human rights veganism, if you know what I'm saying. So look at it in the human context, we're not even quote unquote vegan to each other even though we have human rights. So if we haven't even learned to get there with each other what makes you think we're gonna get there with the chickens? So what I will say is more probable is we would get animal rights, okay? Animal rights, not like so let's just say and it would happen in different areas like it might happen. Let's just say we got animal rights in the UK for pigs. Animal rights for pigs and that's to say it extended to chickens and extended to cows, right? And then based on those animal rights you could no longer legally exploit them and kill them because they have fundamental rights. Not the right to drive a car, just the right not to, you know to their own bodily autonomy just to be left alone that their interests are respected and not for financial interest. They're not commodities, you know, they're not enslaved. We could get that in England even though there might be still underground black market meat producers, you know, slaughtering animals it would be against the law though, okay? And then maybe we get it in Australia maybe we get it some place in Europe maybe we get it some place in Africa maybe we, you know in different areas it happens and you know kind of the way that gay rights happen and you know civil rights happen and women's rights happen it happens here and there. It doesn't happen all at once like that because that's not how the world works but we still have people who, you know breach the rights of all these humans all around them and children all around the world but it's against the law. So what I'm saying a vegan world it means what a vegan world actually means is veganism that practiced no exploitation cruelty killing of animals anywhere. So I just don't think that that's very probable but animal rights though, that's a battle we can win even though that even that's a hard battle but I think it's more realistic to fight for. So. I love that idea. I really like that idea. We need to really all jump in that the pigs and the cows just having, you know yeah rights of their own. I mean, you forget, don't you? People say, oh, you know animal rights and you're thinking, yeah stop them being killed but actually when you sort of think about it like you've just said, yes they need, they should have rights of their own they're sentient beings. Yeah, and if you breach those rights you have some type of punishment just like if I were to have, you know people in my basement enslaving them making them do things for me and then killing them. You know what I mean? I would go to prison. That's how it should work for non-human animals as well. And there's still gonna be people who do this to the animals or to people but there should be rights and laws protecting them. That's what I'm saying. That's more realistic because human beings are callous, cold and violent. We're also compassionate, kind and caring and loving but we're also callous, cold and violent, greedy and we go a very sickening, disturbed race. Okay, and we're a very amazing and intelligent, compassionate race as well. But I'm just saying to say that we can solve that you know just in a few hundred years. I just don't know about that but yeah. Do you get lots of trolls online like farmers and people that eat meat and things like that? I mean, I'm guessing you're the sort of person who wouldn't bat an eyelid at things like that. You're not gonna be worried about getting all that backlash. Yeah, so when I first, so it's been a journey for me like obviously like I had from my past I had PTSD from the gang, well complex PTSD. I had anxiety as social issues, social anxiety and things like that coming out of addiction and things like that and when I got online I wasn't used to people saying things to me like that. Where I come from if you say something like that then it's gonna be on, you know what I mean? So I wasn't used to just letting people talk to me like that unless they were a lot more vicious and violent than I was. So it was just like just random people just using me as a hitting post. I was like, so at first I was like, yeah, come on. And then I was like, I can't dare you disrespect me. Do you know how obviously no one knew I was? I come from some neighborhood in northern suburbs of Bloody Swordsbury who's gonna know who I am. But basically after a while I realized like what are you gonna do? What are you gonna do? Go to war with every single person who messages you like who cares? After a while I had to like turn off my native I learned to turn off my notifications but so I started getting bigger and bigger in 2017 I went to England and at the start of 2018 I just blew up all over the media, blew up. They were like, who's this controversial gang member saying all these controversial words? You know, to describe what happens to animals and let's go through all his criminal history. Let's go through his entire Facebook. Let's find every single thing that he's ever said. Let's run him through the ringer. Let's call his whole family. Let's call his friends from seven years ago in Australia. The paparazzi were like just onto me. Let's make all these like smear pieces on him. I started getting really paranoid and then I started getting like all these hate death threats all the time every single day. People saying, when I see you're gone, like I get emails, death threats and violent threats all the time in my emails. The farmers didn't like it too much that I was saying that what they're doing to the cows is rape. Obviously they didn't like that. So I get people making stories up about me. You know, people want to just throw my past of addiction in my face, calling me a junkie, calling me, you know, basically using the fact that I was in gangs to get away with whatever they wanted to do basically now. So they say, well, you did this. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, I've had it years and years and years now, but at the start, the thing that got to me the most at the start that I had to really learn about was that it was people in my own movement that I considered like that we're all a part of and that we're all in it for the same reasons. And you know, that we're all like, yeah, speaking for the animals. And then I realized that it wasn't actually like that. It was, you had people who would focus on the animals and then you had people who were focused on you as a character and how you were advocating and that's not good. That's not how I, you know, so the thing that brought me down a lot was that when I was becoming very well known that people, other vegans and that would be like, oh, what are you doing? You're making us look bad. You're making the movement look bad. You're way too extreme and aggressive. You've done the animals bad, you know. So, you know, it was a lot for me to go on like a radio station with seven million people listening or whatever. And I thought, I've got to defend the animals here. I'm going to try my best. And I come out of it and I was like, well, I just, I thought I did the animals justice and I'd come on my social media and people like other vegans just ripping into me. Like, and I was like, what have I done wrong? Am I not, I must not be a good enough activist. I must have let the animals down. So I got really down about that. So it wasn't, I was getting all this hate and all this death threats and all this, all the meat eaters, you know, all the, that but then I'd get my own movement as well. And I was like, well, I'm, I feel alone right now. You know what I mean? So, yeah, but you know, you deal with it. You have to deal with it. So I don't give myself choices. I don't say, well, it's bad. It's hard. I'm going to stop. No, it was, you're going to do it anyway. So you've got to be better deal with it. Cause this just comes, I started to realize that I started to understand the psychology of people and what people's motivations were for saying that stuff. They weren't there to help me. They weren't saying, Hey man, have you thought about this? Let me, I really want to talk to you about this. Let's have a discussion about it. And no, it was trying to bring me down. It was, it was the, I could see the motivation. It was way different. It wasn't, it wasn't trying to help me out or anything. So then I started to understand what motivates people to say these horrible things. And then I started, it started not affecting me. Cause I was like, oh yeah, well, I can read you like a book now. So it doesn't affect me. And if that, like you start, you start like becoming immune to it. And you start just focusing on the mission. Not, you're not, you never complete the immune to it, but you do build like a tolerance to it. And you have to like kind of let your ego, like my ego took multiple hits. Now, like I realized that, you know, you have to let people, if you're going to be online, you have to let people run, run you through a critical ringer. Otherwise you just can't be in that, that line of work. Yeah. I must admit, I was, I was terrified to interview you, but you are so lovely. I just want to give you a hug. Oh, thank you. You know, you're just so passionate and it's amazing just to, yeah, just to hear you speak and, you know, just it's very inspiring. And I think, you know, what you do is just amazing. Just to finish off, if you could turn one person in the world vegan overnight, who would it be? It would be the person with the largest impact, influence following probably someone like the Pope. Yeah. Because he's got a billion followers. Some someone like that. Maybe God, maybe it would be like the Prophet Muhammad. If I could go back in time, it would be like a billion vegan Muslims. Or like maybe if they're like the leader of China and they could just bang eradicate because 750 million pigs are killed every year in China. And China is starting to do these big multi-story pig farms. I love how that is serious. Yeah. So if there was like someone who, there who could just click their fingers and phase it out, then that would be the type of person I would turn vegan. Someone with huge influence and huge power. Yeah. Not really the British Prime Minister. Probably not. Probably not. Well, we won't go into that anyway. Oh, thank you so much. You've been amazing. And thank you for everything you do, you know, for the vegan movement. If people want to find out more about what you're doing, are you at any events this year? Or what have you got going on? Looking to do something really big next year, but we've been working, working, working a lot. So I'll be out, I'll be out on the ground a lot more next year, is all I can say. I can't tell you too much, but just letting you know that it'll be like a pretty big next year. OK, we'll keep an eye out. Thanks so much, Joey. Thank you very much for interviewing me.