Tomato Soup on $84 million Van Gogh painting

[LuFins Dad]

Let’s pay off $10K of their student loans…

[jon-nyc]

@LuFins-Dad said in Tomato Soup on $84 million Van Gogh painting:

Let’s pay off $10K of their student loans…

They’re Brits.

[Friday]

The T shirts they were wearing should have been a give away.

[jon-nyc]

David Frum:

"Well, at least they got people talking about their cause."

Yes - and what the people said when they talked was: "Their cause sure seems to attract mindless, pathological assholes."

That's success?

[Copper]

@jon-nyc said in Tomato Soup on $84 million Van Gogh painting:

@LuFins-Dad said in Tomato Soup on $84 million Van Gogh painting:

Let’s pay off $10K of their student loans…

They’re Brits.

Maybe that explains why there were no crackers. I like Saltines or Ritz with my soup.

[George K]

In Defense of “Bad” Activism

The stunt was the latest in a series, and apparently “climate protesters across Europe have for months been gluing themselves to the frames of famous paintings.” The Just Stop Oil activists asked onlookers which was more valuable, “art” or “life,” and gave a speech about the cost of living crisis and the destructive effects of fossil fuel use. For context, the U.K. government has recently lifted its ban on fracking and the Conservative climate minister has justified awarding more than 100 licenses for North Sea drilling, saying that fracking and oil drilling are “good for the environment.” (This madness didn’t, of course, get nearly as much attention as the action of the activists.)

Making fun of the activists is the easiest response in the world. I think their choice of tactics didn’t really make much sense. It brings media coverage, sure, but mostly of the “look how silly these activists are” variety, which is not what you’re aiming for. Does it build public support for the movement to end fossil fuel use? Doubtful.

And yet, it’s also important to understand where these young people are coming from. I’d note in their defense that people in their generation are desperate and anxious, because they see their future being stolen from them. They see the climate crisis getting worse, and they are ruled over by an unelected Prime Minister who believes in unfettered free market capitalism. In recent years, the efforts of young left activists in the Labour Party to introduce transformative progressive leadership were undemocratically thwarted by centrists within the party. These climate activists are coming from a place of extreme frustration with the burdens that they know they are going to face in the coming decades. Futile acts like this are the result of a sense of powerlessness.

Some activism is conducted by savvy strategic thinkers who have carefully weighed up the anticipated effect of their actions on public opinion in pursuit of a clear policy goal. But sometimes activism is a cry of anger by those who do not know what else to do except to somehow “throw their body on the gears.” The London activists weren’t the first to deface paintings in the service of a noble cause. The Suffragettes did the same thing. In 1914, Mary Richardson of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) hacked up a Velázquez painting in the National Gallery using a meat cleaver. She was protesting against the jailing of WSPU founder Emmeline Pankhurst.

[Horace]

I spend an unreasonable amount of time listening to and reading leftists communicating with each other. I would characterize all of it as emotional people talking about their emotions, emotionally, in an effort to imagine a world in which all those emotions, which have largely been a source of pain for them through their lives (that is the purpose of emotions, at first approximation), are what makes them special, and better than others.

[George K]

[Renauda]

[George K]

@Renauda yes.

But at least get the cars out first.

[Renauda]

@George-K

Yes, of course.

[George K]

[George K]

Monet and Mashed Spuds

[Copper]

You break it, you buy it.

[George K]

[jon-nyc]

[89th]

The world needs a few more Larrys in this case.

[jon-nyc]

I thought this guy was striking just the right note - moving them firmly but not violently.

[89th]

@jon-nyc Indeed. And luckily, most of those protesters are pacifists so the odds of them fighting back are slim.

[George K]

Saw that a couple of days ago and though, "If you're so dedicated to your cause, why don't you just get up and move back to your previous spot while your friends are being moved?"