Three individuals targeted National Gallery paintings an hour after Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland were jailed for similar attack in 2022
Climate activists have thrown tomato soup over two Sunflowers paintings by Vincent van Gogh, just an hour after two others were jailed for a similar protest action in 2022.
Three supporters of Just Stop Oil walked into the National Gallery in London, where an exhibition of Van Gogh’s collected works is on display, at 2.30pm on Friday afternoon, and threw Heinz soup over Sunflowers 1889 and Sunflowers 1888.
The latter was the same work targeted by Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland in 2022. That pair are now among 25 supporters of Just Stop Oil in jail for climate protests.
I’m confused who this is for. Even many who agree with them don’t appreciate vandalism of art and art galleries.
It’s to get cameras thrust in their face so they ask when oil executives will face consequences.
“Is destroying art worse than destroying the whole planet???”
It’s an idiotic form of protest, it accomplishes nothing but turning the public against you, and forever associating your cause with petty vandalism.
…and yet, here we are talking about climate change. If they’d instead organized a protest of 10,000 people marching for hours it wouldn’t have been international news and we wouldn’t be talking about climate change.
So if throwing paint at a entierly replaceable cover for a dusty old painting is too far gone to be acceptable, what action can we take to stop oil production? Like. It needs to stop. To continue producing fossil fuels is a death cult. It needs to stop, like, a decade ago. I ask genuinely, how is this too far, and what is an acceptable response to an existential threat?
edit: On the off chance someone reads this so long after the post, I just want to point out that nobody actually engaged with my question here.
So if throwing paint at a entierly replaceable cover for a dusty old painting is too far gone to be acceptable, what action can we take to stop oil production?
God, I wish someone could actually trace the train of events that would lead to reduced oil production from this other than some bizarre notion that throwing soup at a priceless artifact of human heritage will Energize The Masses™ or suddenly convince people who think climate change is a hoax or overblown that it’s actually a serious problem.
Imagine if these activists spent more time going after companies benefiting from fossil fuel production rather than throwing soup in museums…
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.
Just Stop Oil has to be the most destructive and idiotic activist group I’ve ever heard of (besides Greenpeace and their anti-nuclear agenda). They make activism as a whole look bad with their pointless stunts.
What does Vincent van Gogh have to do with the current state of the petrol industry? What does any classical artist have to do with the current state of the petrol industry? Why go out of one’s way to try and ruin something that isn’t even remotely related to the subject? They’re only making themselves look like a bad joke.
Doesnt help they’re total assholes either; a few years ago they blocked a motorway in England in protest. Fair enough. But there was a family who’s baby had to be rushed to the nearest hospital, and they weren’t allowed to pass! Seriously, fuck them.
Evidence suggests that disruptive protests actually help, rather than hinder organisations like JSO:
It’s all about raising awareness and facilitating discussions.
Meanwhile petrol companies are doing everything they can to smother protests: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/sep/26/anti-protest-laws-fossil-fuel-lobby
Consider who gains the most from perpetuating the idea that JSO are the bad guys…
only 30% thought disruptive tactics were effective for issues with high awareness but low support
Nicely cherry-picked.
69% of experts thought that disruptive tactics were effective for issues (like climate change) that have high public awareness and support. For issues with high awareness but low support (like anti-vaccination), only 30% thought disruptive tactics were effective.
Lucky JSO are about the former, not the latter.
If they have such high public support why doesn’t the public vote accordingly?
Because we don’t vote on the policies themselves really, we vote on the people who are supposed to vote on the policies in our interests, but the side that claims to be against climate change keeps perpetuating it and we keep allowing them to and reelecting them because learning another guy’s name is hard and they have to have a D in front of their name or else they’re useless, even though those with Ds in front of their name are also useless.
This is terminal murica-brain. My condolences.
