333
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
333 points (92.6% liked)
World News
39032 readers
2318 users here now
A community for discussing events around the World
Rules:
-
Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
- Post news articles only
- Video links are NOT articles and will be removed.
- Title must match the article headline
- Not United States Internal News
- Recent (Past 30 Days)
- Screenshots/links to other social media sites (Twitter/X/Facebook/Youtube/reddit, etc.) are explicitly forbidden, as are link shorteners.
-
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
-
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed. Sources that have a Low or Very Low factual reporting rating or MBFC Credibility Rating may be removed.
-
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
-
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF 10/19
-
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
-
Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
-
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
Lemmy World Partners
News [email protected]
Politics [email protected]
World Politics [email protected]
Recommendations
For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/
- Consider including the article’s mediabiasfactcheck.com/ link
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
This is invalid civil disobedience. The point of civil disobedience is to disobey unjust laws (see: Rosa Parks disobeying bus segregation). So unless they think laws against throwing soup at paintings are unjust, their point is lost.
Is blocking traffic invalid then? Because that was also part of the civil disobedience used in the civil rights movement. Oh wait, they DID claim it invalid then, too!
MLK was brilliant at activism, but not all his actions were created equal. Notably it seems despite his protests, the stall-in never happened. Perhaps everyone realized it was a terrible idea. Then the Civil Rights Act passed without it. How do we know there's not an alternate history where it did happen, pissed off a bunch of voters, and caused the Civil Rights Act to become too politically toxic to pass?
I'm gonna call bullshit on "too toxic." There were literal riots over getting civil rights. There were literal murders over getting civil rights. A lot of the reason why MLK looked so good was because there were those who took extreme actions, and his nonviolent protests would sometimes be treated the same as the violent ones. But you think a stall-in would be too far? Should we use the Suffragettes instead, who also vandalized museums (worse than these guys)? Was that too toxic? What a silly argument.
I'm just making an appeal to evidence. We can't go back and know what changed minds, obviously many factors are at play. But what we can say for certain is that, because the stall-in didn't happen:
I'm guessing most historians would say it wouldn't have made a difference. But even if it were 99% likely to make no difference, if we had a time machine there's utterly no reason we'd go back and risk that 1%. Point being, even in the best case scenario, the stall in logically cannot be evidence of such tactics being successful.
Speaking of riots, I think a more clear example is the protests following the killing of George Floyd, which sometimes descended into riots, with every last bit of chaos being lapped up by Republican media and used as an argument against reform. Ultimately that tactic succeeded and very little actual police reform has passed following a shift in the mood. It got so bad that Congress, with many Democrats signing on, took the rare and extreme step of overruling a DC local criminal code reform in 2022 that was actually quite ordinary, but was very dishonestly portrayed in the media as radical decriminalization. As someone who followed that closely, I definitely think the perception of criminal justice reformers being a brainwashed radical mob, helped along by the riots, was a necessary part of killing that reform. That reform effort also was started in 2016, before the Floyd protests - so it seems that the actual effect of these protests was to set back criminal reform efforts rather than advance them.
You also refer to suffragettes vandalizing museums, which is more similar to this action. It seems this was primarily a British thing, and as this article explains, art vandalism occurred in the sprint of 1914, while suffrage wasn't granted 1918 for some women, and 1928 for all women. Notably, between 1914 and 1918 there was a world war. So it's hard to imagine that in 1918 or in 1928, that the public was still thinking about the vandalism years before. And maybe that's why it was able to pass.
I think we should recognize that these tactics persist for reasons other than their effectiveness. Mainly they're a great way to get attention, even donations. But that attention is pretty much always the wrong kind, and those donations might be coming from the people who aren't truly interested in the cause (see how Russia has donated to more angry/violent protest groups on all sides). In essence they're good for protest leaders, bad for the movements.
You mean like when they blockaded oil terminals and it got not nearly as much attention as this and got them swiftly whisked away?
I do think blockading oil terminals would be much more sympathetic. But it's hard to blockade enough to have a serious effect on oil usage, hence the lack of attention. A better example is the protests against the Keystone XL Pipeline, which included blocking construction. Public opinion eventually turned against the pipeline.
Agreed.