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Just Stop Oil activists throw soup at Van Gogh’s Sunflowers after fellow protesters jailed
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 27 Sep 2024
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They've done that too, and have encountered media blackouts.
As nice as it would be if they could simply fix the climate problem with the disruption a handful of protests cause, they can't, and need to draw public attention to the problem.
These demonstrations open up the conversation in threads like this - you agree there's a problem, you agree these protests don't fix the problem, so let's talk about what will.
I feel like we’re kind of entering an era where direct action and ecology-motivated terrorism are going to start becoming a thing. And I’m honestly not sure that would be a bad thing.
Peaceful protests have not worked, disruptive protests have been widely villified and the protestors jailed for very long sentences. If you are facing 2-3 years for holding up a banner or throwing some paint seems like criminal damage of a fossil fuel facility isn't likely to net more years. As many have said in the past governments ignore peaceful protests at their peril, because once its clear that doesn't work they become not peaceful.
If everything is illegal, nothing is illegal.
If you’re gonna get thrown in jail if you’re caught regardless, why not go for broke?
To fight another day. If every passionate soul bound themselves to another rather then fizzling out or going up flames then we could become many.
Assuming there's no collateral damage to speak of, I'd argue it would be an act of self-defence for the benefit of all of us. In principle, I'd struggle to find reason to be upset by it.
There will be collateral damage. There always is. The idea there wouldn't be collateral damage is already setting the bar higher than is feasible.
I don't think that's true at all, but if it is, it becomes a question of whether that damage is outweighed by the benefit of the action.
Seems to me that it would be pretty difficult to encounter a media blackout to do this sort of thing at, for example, global climate summits, oil company shareholder meetings, etc.
But I'm not seeing much soup being thrown there.
In Germany, protestors repeatedly shut oil pipelines off and locked themselves to the valves to prevent their reopening, blocking oil flow for several hours every time. I consume a lot of news, both mainstream and in my leftist bubble. That story barely registered anywhere.
The exact same protestors threw mashed potatoes at a Van Gogh. They were the main headline for over a week.
Hell, some guy set himself on fire a few years ago and it was in the news for half a day.
The media blackout is real, but it's not a huge conspiracy. It's just that the media reports on what gets them clicks, and nothing generates clicks like outrage. That's why so much reporting also conveniently forgets to mention that the paintings are protected by plexiglass and nothing ever got damaged. But all the controversy gets people talking, and some people will inevitably question what drives people to do something like that. That is the real objective. If they wanted to be popular, they'd to greenwashed recycling videos on YouTube instead, or whatever else is hip with the neoliberal peddlers of personal responsibility at the moment.
And how will this get corporations to stop drilling for and selling and taking advantage of fossil fuels? How do you get from throwing soup to that?
You stop the problem from being buried under the fact that everyone is struggling to get by, or distracted by whatever the fuck the likes of the Kardashians are up to. You bring it to the forefront and prompt conversations like these - conversations where someone might realise that to stay the course on this one is to roll down the road to the apocalypse, and maybe they'd like to do something about that.
But no one is realizing anything but these idiots throwing soup belong in jail
The idiots aren't the ones throwing the soup - the idiots are the ones more concerned about jailing people for a mess that can be cleaned up with windex, a rag, and 5 minutes rather than jailing the people keeping us all on course for the literal apocalypse.
When has it ever been buried? When? Point out a time when climate change was not a major issue being discussed in the last 20 years. And I don't mean just for a day or two like after January 6th, 2020.
When has there ever been reporting on the subject proportionate to the threat of the literal apocalypse?
Certainly not substantially more now that soup has been thrown than before.
So there's never been proportionate reporting on the issue.
Yet here we all are - talking about the protest and the apocalypse.
As we know, these protests prompt substantially more visibility and discussion than direct action.
There was just a massive hurricane in the U.S. that killed a large number of people and is creating an ongoing disaster.
And climate change has been discussed far, far more in regards to that than any soup-throwing could hope to achieve.
By 'media blackout' they mean 'it was a blip on the radar like this is, but this is NOW and thus relevant and important'
The people who talk about 'media blackouts' also seem to forget that everyone has an internet-connected video camera in their pockets.
What are you even trying to say here? That any bastard with a camera and something to show will magically be seen, or that everyone with a smartphone is going to be aware of everything that affects them? Because neither of those things is remotely close to the way the world works.
You were aware of the JSO protesters shutting down the oil pipeline? If and that's a big "if" so, do you think the average schmuck is? No. But chances are that they're aware of the stunts like the soup.
Yes.
Agreed.
Which helps how? Does it end the reliance on fossil fuels? The world has been aware that fossil fuel dependence is causing global warming. What can you or I do about it? Nothing. We don't control the fossil fuel companies.
This whole idea that somehow "awareness" is going to do anything about this problem after decades of people doing these sort of stunts is ludicrous.
So we rely on isolated groups quietly engaged in direct action at a scale we know for a fact is inadequate to solve the problem while calling for the arrest of people protesting the apocalypse in a manner that can be cleaned up in five minutes?
What's your solution?
How about doing the hard work?
Every time I bring up Karen Silkwood and Erin Brockovich, people get very quiet.
Hard work - got it.
...what hard work?
Do you even know who the two people I'm talking about are? That might give you a clue.
BRB - picking up the law degree and plutonium contamination that would qualify me to do take any action in response to the apocalypse.
Neither of them had law degrees when they started and Karen Silkwood died before she even had the opportunity. But again, you apparently don't know about them or you would know that. I suppose throwing soup is also easier than learning about what activists who put the hard work in did as well.
You understand what a hilariously stupid position it is to insist that any action is invalid if it doesn't follow the actions of these two specific people, and that anyone that doesn't know Erin Brokovich didn't pass the bar before starting her action has an invalid opinion, don't you. I shouldn't need to point this out, nor should I need to point out the importance of diversity of tactics, but here I am.
Then I guess it's good that I didn't say any action, isn't it?
Putting words in someone's mouth is very dishonest.
You've done nothing but vaguely gesture at the concept of hard work, Brokovich and Silkwood. You'll have to forgive me if you've forced me to draw a point out of your vagueries - feel free to articulate one though.
I wasn't being vague at all. I gave two examples of people who achieved success when it came to environmental damage by doing more than performative actions because "awareness."
Throwing soup at paintings and gluing their hands to roads has achieved nothing. It doesn't make people who are already aware aware. It doesn't convince people who don't believe it that they are wrong. It doesn't keep something that is already in the news due to the endless extreme weather events in the news. It isn't what drives legislation.
It achieves nothing other than pissing people who are on the soup-throwers' side off.
I get it that you want easy solutions. There aren't going to be easy solutions.
Stop throwing soup.
We’re at the point where idiots throwing soup are called sing more environmental damage than backwoods yahoos rolling coal. Shall we protest soup abuse? Because that’s more likely to help the environment
People throwing soup to protest climate change are doing more environmental damage than people burning fossil fuels in the dirtiest way possible because that's their gender identity or whateverthefuck? You'll need to explain that one for me, champ.
Yes - people protesting the climate apocalypse are the same as the oil barons, and I'm the moron.
Well, clearly not throwing crap at paintings. Now I want to see these guys arrested and thrown in jail.