140
Just Stop Oil activists jailed for throwing soup over Van Gogh’s Sunflowers
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 27 Sep 2024
140 points (98.6% liked)
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I said this before when JSO used "washable" paint on Stonehenge: they are punching in the wrong direction. Billionaires don't care about human life, so why would they care about a painting?
These works belong to humanity, and by defacing them, you aren't winning converts—you're just pissing people off. Go vandalize something that belongs to the billionaires making things worse for the rest of us; unless you can win people to your cause, you're going to remain small-time vandals that get outsized prison sentences and unflattering media coverage.
Unless you can demonstrate an actual harm that these people are doing to the cause, I am going to give them my support for doing SOMETHING. If it moves the needle a millionth of a percent in the right direction, tear down all the art galleries. We only have one planet.
Many of these cases have had jury nullification, which means a jury of twelve people who have been vetted to remove bias, all unanimously agreed to say "fuck you" to the legal system rather than lock up JSO activists.
That tells me that there is considerable public support for them, whatever you say to the contrary.
Edit: Here's a study about the actual problems facing the climate movement. Support isn't the issue:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-024-01925-3
Abstract:
The abstract of that paper says that the real problem is people's lack of awareness of how incredibly high the support for climate action is, because that informs how likely they are to act.
In which case, all this hand-wringing about which actions increase or decrease support is a red herring, because the support is not actually in danger.
I would suggest that the real problem is people who handwring about the support creating the perception that the cause is less popular than it is.
The worse part is that they started with a plain wrong argument, this is not to attract the attention of billionaires, altough it can too. This is to catch the attention of everyone, to create a higher mass that is needed to change something, and tbh they are making more people aware of the issues, even if they get some stupid arguments against them when they are really doing no real harm as far as im aware.
Okay, and who hasn't heard of climate change by now? Who has been living under a rock that doesn't know that Big Oil is bad?
"Create a higher mass," ffs... You sound like a Christian justifying buying those "He Gets Us" Superbowl ads, as if nobody in the US has heard of Jesus before.
And no real harm? I guess we can just destroy history and artifacts, because who needs to learn from that shit amirite?
What's the point of preserving artifacts if there's no one to look at them anymore?
There’s people (and children, who don’t need this bullshit) standing right there.
What's the point of destroying artifacts if it doesn't accomplish your goals?
https://web.sas.upenn.edu/pcssm/commentary/public-disapproval-of-disruptive-climate-change-protests/
Which artifact was damaged? Because even in your link the article says:
"The New York Times’ ran an article titled “Climate Activists Throw Mashed Potatoes on Monet Painting,” further describing it in the subtitle as “the latest attack on widely admired art.” However, it is not until the fifth paragraph that the article notes that “the food did not cause any damage to the piece.” This raises the question, does the public differentiate between “damaging pieces of art” and “pretending to damage pieces of art” in their views of these non-violent, disruptive protests?
Also comparing having to make people understand the degree of damage we get from climate change vs christianity, its just an amazing analogy lol, what can i even say after that?. Have a nice day, i think you really need it.
That's the thing. Did they know for a fact that what they did was not going to cause damage. I suspect they didn't care, and the fact that they didn't cause damage is likely in spite of their tactics.
As for my analogy, like all analogies, it is imperfect. The point is that the effort to "inform people" isn't enough anymore. Virtually everyone has heard the message that Big Oil is bad and climate change is happening; whether they choose to accept it is a different matter, and on that front JSO is making no headway, as evidenced by that study.
People need a goal and a path to get there, and defacing public art isn't something average people will follow.
Also, thank you for the well-wishes. I hope you have a lovely day, too.