- cross-posted to:
- world@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- world@lemmy.world
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No, Just Stop Oil is not an “activist” group. They’re in cahoots with the enemy. They’re defamation, and their intent is to give the radical right something to point to.
Just Stop Just Stop Oil.
EDIT: There are waaaaaaay too many assumptions happening in this thread.
Huh. This is actually the most sensible answer.
I once read a pretty good write up somewhere on Reddit with proof that they were getting reasonably large financial support from the daughter of an oil baron, and it’s unclear if she supports the left or right.
On the other hand, a friend of a friend was arrested at a just stop oil rally in Manchester, UK a few months back, and I know him well enough to absolutely believe he thought he was doing what was best for the world, although I’m unsure if he’d deface anything.
Those two things are not incongruous. Your friend was deceived by the leadership who is in the pocket of oil companies.
“Protests must be polite and not ruffle any feathers” is what I’m hearing.
Sorry. But as climate change gets worse and corporations continue to annihilate the living beings on this planet while governments uphold their ability to do so, the protests will only become more radical. We’re long past the point of polite protests, and they didn’t work.
Radical in my mind is burning down an oil plant. Going after a piece of history is disgusting. At least ruffle the feathers of the people you’re standing up to.
I’ve read the other replies to my comment, but yours is the only counter that I mostly agree with.
Yes, going after an oil plant would certainly be a much more radical form of protest. The main issue is that targeting something like that carries massive risk and is unfathomably challenging. That isn’t to say they shouldn’t do it though.
My comment was more a response to some of the general negative sentiment that I see in response to other protests that are disruptive. It’s usually reactionary claims of “you’re making people mad, so it’s counterproductive”, while ignoring the fact that nothing else has worked.
Protests should be disruptive in that they incite change, not in that they incite rage. This.
Protests will always incite rage. The question is “is it justified?”. In this case, sure, but your unhinged comment that started this thread is just reactionary drivel.
I was literally agreeing with you, but alright
and somebody else should be taking that kind of risk for us, for you?
This is the waffles tweet
Explain
They give an example of what they consider radical and you respond with “so they should risk everything for you.” That’s like responding with “so you hate waffles” to a tweet saying “pancakes taste good”
I don‘t think so. He says burning down oil refineries would be great and says himself that the other form of protest is bad. I didn‘t position myself about that. He did, and I think he‘s a hypocrite for doing so.
Okay but could they please target things that are actually causing the problem and not thousands of years old stone monuments that can’t possibly have any bearing on anything.
Otherwise they’re just being vandals. And then bean vandals is counterproductive to their own stated course.
This is so hilariously wrong. There’s a lot of stuff I won’t admit to since this is a public account and a public identity. Kairos. What I don’t support, however, is vandalism of historical monuments. Especially when the monument in question is so incredibly irrelevant to the crisis at hand.
There’s a lot of stuff I won’t admit to since this is a public account and a public identity.
haha
Yes, and?
“Protests must be polite and not ruffle any feathers” is what I’m hearing.
I don’t think that protests have to be polite, however protests do have to be productive. If your environmental group’s political agitation only results in turning public opinion away from the greater movement…I’m not sure if that’s a productive use of political capital.
I think it’s perfectly reasonable to question a group’s motivation who are participating in unproductive political agitation. Especially considering that their funding comes from an oil heiress, who could be using her vast fortune to be lobbying to the people whom actually have access to the power that can bring about real change.
the protests will only become more radical.
I’d hardly say paying some teens to “vandalize” a painting that your family owns is really a radical act of protest. Now if they were conducting these types of actions against oil companies, or the political bodies who support them… That would be radical.
I’m sorry dog but spray painting an ancient wonder isn’t an environmental protest.
It’s corn starch. The ancient wonder suffers more defacement in the form of erosion because it rains every 4 seconds in the UK. Stonehenge will be perfectly okay.
My wording was trash. It’s not so much the “damage” done but that it doesn’t feel like a productive protest and that it’ll piss of more people than anything.
Non-violently blocking the entrance to an oil refinery = good protest
Defacing ancient monument temporarily = bad protest
More or less. Painting the jets was pretty awesome too. I’m just afraid the monument is going to make fewer people take them seriously.
you got some proof for that?
https://whynow.co.uk/read/who-is-funding-just-stop-oil-the-billionaires-backing-the-art-vandals
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/10/climate/climate-protesters-paid-activists.html
Sorry about the Times article, it’s a citation used on Wikipedia. Top one is not paywalled.
So let‘s talk about the first article. It‘s written by art critic Alexander Adams who likes to talk about things like „why the Left hates good art“
https://soundcloud.com/user-923838732/alexander-adams-why-the-left-hates-good-art
Just the style of writing in this article gives away a lot:
The self-professed aims of these organisations and their millionaire backers are to bypass politics and implement radical measures upon the world’s population without democratic consultation.
the referenced piece here is written by a Breitbart editor by the way.
Anyway, so Just Stop Oil are going to bypass the world‘s democratic order? Yeah? By demanding them to follow through with their climate pledges? Oh man.
Also, it is no news, that the Getty heir is contributing to various funds, so what. I am a landlord and support Extinction Rebellion, does that make their actions inauthentic?
The reality is that the UK is using pretty straight forward laws to prevent this kind of protest, they don‘t need some kind of internationalist cabal to do that for them.
There’s no proof but what else could be these people’s problem? They have to know what they’re doing to the image of people who do care about the environment. It’s not like they’re helping. I don’t get it.
There’s no proof
Then shut it until you can show evidence.
All I’m really trying to say is their methods make the environmental movements look bad. I hate that. I want things to get better. I don’t think they’re doing anything to help that. Go after something relevant.
MLK’s protests made the civil rights movement look bad. People fucking hated him at the time, despite how history has whitewashed him.
Every effective protest pisses reactionaries and “moderates” off. If it doesn’t piss them off, it isn’t effective.
Except this doesn’t make me care about oil one damn bit. What I do care about it harsh penalties for the perpetrators(including community service and paying for the damage to be undone) and protecting heritage sites like this from other shitty humans. Its not activism, it’s vandalism. It has nothing to do with oil. It would be the same as setting the Mona Lisa on fire and screaming about oil. It’s just unhinged.
Except this doesn’t make me care about oil one damn bit.
So what? Nobody cares what you think, least of all the Just Stop Oil people. They don’t have to win people to their cause; they just have to keep making themselves a nuisance until everybody’s so pissed off that The Powers That Be are forced to capitulate just to make it stop.
Not to mention, it takes extremists like them to make the more moderate environmentalists look reasonable. It’s the same way that the government was eventually forced to concede to the demands of people like MLK: because it became clear that the demands of people like Malcolm X, not the status quo, were the alternative.
Sure but you can hardly compare this to any of MLK’s protests. As far as I’m aware, he never harmed pieces of ancient history. He got to the root of the problem and did things like sit-ins in white only restaurants. It’s two different kinds of pissing people off.
it doesn‘t seem logical to you that some people are freaking out because everybody is talking about climate change while it is clearly happening and it is becoming obvious that too little is being done too late?
Man I agree with you. I just feel sick when I see harm being done to such an ancient piece of history. What reason is there for it? Go after something actually related to the problem at least.
I think very little can be done to cause public outrage, which is what they want to do. This did it. Also I see no lasting damage being done to Stone Henge. And that‘s true for all their actions, as far as I know.
But are their actions causing public outrage at: a) the causes and purveyors of climate change, or b) the people protesting climate change?
I don’t think the “any attention is good attention” adage applies to something as politically polarized as climate change.
fair point. I think it is heart breaking that they seem to be losing this battle. No matter what kind of protest they choose, I keep hearing: Well, that‘s not the kind of protest I would support. So yeah, maybe they are at a dead end. But maybe not because they chose the wrong kind of protest, but because the public don‘t want change. Look at the European elections. It seems the other side‘s propaganda works a lot better, yeah.
Exactly what I came to say. Those guys ara activists pro-oil performing a false flagg attack.
Normally I’m tepid on this kinda headline getting, but I feel like Stonehenge of all things is not the ideal target for the supposed intent of these kinds of protests.
I have the suspicion for a while that the people behind those new climate movements are paid by oil companies and others to make climate activists look bad, and shift the public opinion about climate action.
All the actions seem to deliberately targeted to anger the mainstream about them.
Making the naive climate activists at the front the tool of conglomerates.
deleted by creator
But it raises the question why some paint on some big old rocks is more outrageous than anything the oil & gas lobby did in the past 50 years.
No it really doesn’t, getting called stupid is far below the standard of even the minimal consequences oil and gas companies have faced in those 50 years. Or the public condemnation of such.
These people are the “bUt DeMs SaMe!” of facing the consequences of their own actions. The only way you could genuinely think nothing is being done and that some forever student college kids are getting harsher treatment than the most hated companies in the world is if you’re in a position of blinding privilege that obscures the real world movement in the situation.
There are thing done, yes, but these are too little too late and only after massive protests and public outcries for any kind of legislation to somewhat mildly stop climate change (with tummy ache).
So on one hand we have multi millionaires and billionaires actively destroying the planet, spend decades spreading lies about it and bribing politicians (but it’s called lobbying so it’s ok)
On the other hand we have people in their teens and 20s who throw soup at glass and paint at rocks and sit on the street.
Guess which one goes into preventive custody and gets officially declared a suspect of extremism by German intelligence and which one every now and then has to accommodate to some laws taking effect 10 years into the future, which will most likely be abolished before then.
I just wish it was the other way around…
You’re just saying all this because you think anything short of guillotining them is “too little too late”, I work in renewables, I literally have a paycheck because of how flat out objectively wrong you are about almost everything you just said.
They want you to despair and to think they’re untouchable, don’t be the idiot who actually buys what they’re selling.
Why not? They used starch. It’s not like Stonehenge is actually damaged. And using symbols people care about is the only way to convey that the crisis we’re facing is actually threatening things we care about. Everything else will be, and has been, ignored.
Because it was built by Naturepath druids.
They vandalized a structure that represents the purest distillment europeans may have achieved of their ideal vision thus far in human history.
That’d be like me demanding bike infrastructure by bombing Amsterdam.
I’m not sure I’d describe practitioners of human sacrifice in quite the same way, myself.
It was the Bronze and Iron age, even the people who swore they didn’t do human sacrifice had sneaky backdoor rituals that played out human sacrifice, cough cough Romans cough cough
The intent is to get people to talk about them and their message.
Well known monuments are great for that kinda stuff.
Yeah, we’re all talking about what unhinged dicks they are and wishing for them to be disbanded. Great job!
The best part is I haven’t seen the name of the organization mentioned once in the comments so far.
News about climate change: i sleep
News about climate protests: REAL SHIT?
I hate how people are more interested in talking about protests than actual climate change.
It doesn’t help several of these protests have been proven to be started BY polluting companies to discredit climate protests.
Or you fell for the propaganda that’s discrediting them.
At the end of the day it doesn’t matter. Far too little is being done against climate change, on every level - socially, politically, economically, individually. One would have to wonder what the fuck is happening if we didn’t have some form of protest. They are necessarily going to become more extreme as time goes by, and they will have every right to do so.
Where did you get that information? Didn’t here that before.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/10/climate/climate-protesters-paid-activists.html
They’re pretending to fund these groups because they care about the environment but it’s obvious all they’re doing is paying radicals to create hate for environmental groups.
At least someone is doing something. The governments are way to slow imho. Also, there is literally no harm done. So everybody hyperventilating in the comments should maybe calm down a little.
They’re not doing anything except virtue signalling.
What did you do during the climate crisis, grandpa? Did you canvass politicians? Did you install solar panels? Did you vote for the green party? Did you blockade drilling sites? Did you run for Parliament?
No Jimmy I sprayed paint on some old rocks
May as well stay at home and stab yourself in the head with a fork until you black out.
What have you done against the climate crisis?
Well so far I’ve painted all the rocks in my garden neon yellow, so I’ve done about the same as those twats.
Oh, and also all the things I mentioned in my previous post (except run for Parliament), so there is that.
Doesn’t actually take that much fucking effort. I can’t guarantee that my actions will have definite results, but what I can say for sure is that at least I’m doing things that are actually targeted at fixing the problem and not just getting attention so that a bunch of useless wankers can feel self-righteous.
Certainly my solar panels will contribute something at least.
So, what have you done?
lmao keep complaining and sitting on your lazy ass
Rebecca Watson has an interesting video on this. The way things are going right now, people in 50 years will look back and say activists were the only people trying something, while most of us just waited for the shit to hit the fan.
I’m all for peaceful environmental protesting, but destruction of property and historic monuments/items only makes your movement look worse. News will spin it as the protesters being vandals and go about their day. Most people won’t think beyond that and will probably associate environmental activism with negative things such as vandalism or whatever else their favorite news calls what they’re doing.
There’s no need for the media to spin anything, the protestors committed vandalism and, unless they are protesting the existence of prehistoric monuments, they did a really shitty job of even calling attention to their cause.
good thing no historic monuments/items were destroyed and your comment is completely off topic.
Powder, its quite likely water soluble
Yup, its starch based and water soluble. It’ll come off with a little water, no harm done.
Is cornstarch paint?
By that logic, could water be considered paint?
No. But it does make for a good shitty click bait title.
Climate protesters seem to have a knack for doing really irrelevant shit to bring attention to climate change.
No one dies? No one loses their balls? No beatings?
Is the planet dying or not? If so wtf is powder paint gonna do except fuck it up more???
it’s the only way they can get the news to engage with it
Why Stonehenge? What does Stonehenge have to do with climate change?
Maybe go sink some yachts or spray paint some Saudi oil dealers.
They are doing it to get attention. Because there is not enough attention on climate change.
Look at the raging reactions in the comments to a little bit of starch. If they would actually destroy something, let alone hurt someone, they’d be framed as terrorists and prosecuted in a heartbeat.
That will teach those neolithic druids to think about their long term impact on the planet!
People will use this to galvanize efforts against climate action, and it will work. If you want to seriously do something, go after the people causing the crisis.
Cool. How?
Do crimes
How is that gonna help?
How is that gonna help?
It will inspire people to take more drastic action, and highlight the urgency of the cause in a way that targets those who are causing it. It’s also more likely to create sympathy, since the ones causing the problem are the ones being punished for it.
The climate crisis is not caused by certain individuals.
Policy is what drives the climate crisis, and policy is primarily controlled by the rich and powerful, especially in countries like the US where corporate lobbying reigns supreme. You could argue that it’s ultimately capitalist incentives that create this paradigm, but I would say that those incentives are upheld by the same powerful individuals who benefit from them.
tl;dr, the climate crisis is caused by certain individuals.
the whole “the climate crisis isn’t the fault of people” is an excuse for the religious and rich and stupid to continue with business as usual until the environment collapses and we are all dead
reasoning with them is like trying to de-program a cult member (the religious), get a drug addict to give up drugs (the rich and their avarice), or teach a windows user to learn linux (the stupid and learning new things that make sense)
the intelligent people need to stop trying to reason with these three tar pit groups and force them to adhere to our will
but the reality is that this should have happened 50 to 100 years ago and it’s probably too late. we’re sort of of at the “is it better to be in the blast zne or slightly outside the blast zne” phase of environmental collapse. the problem is mostly religion, which has doomed us.
Activists (try to) do that as well. But it’s much harder to get close to a rich person or their property, than it is to do something in public spaces. They, too, have to see what they can do with their limited resources.
Next, the media coverage is very unequal, as well as reader’s interest. You are much more likely to click on an article covering a potentially outrageous action, than you are to read about something which does not bother anyone. Although you can rest assured, these things are tried and done frequently.
So naturally, to the uninvolved reader, it may seem as if activists don’t do anything but stupid stunts. And naturally, each outsider seems to think they have a much better grasp of strategy and what actions might make sense than the people who are actually involved in these things.
Of course, a particular action can still be silly. I just want to draw attention to biases at play, in general.
And if you really have a much better idea how to do something about the climate crisis, then go ahead and shine as an example. Not only would you author an actually impactful action (which in itself should be reason enough), you could also show all these rookie activists how to get things done. If your example is convincing, you should see less media coverage about inferior actions.
It’s particularly funny because Stonehenge is almost entirely a reconstruction and not a partially destructive one at that. Iirc there are even legit photos of the henge stones in piles on the ground.
Ed: you can down vote but it’s true, it’s been continually knocked down and rebuilt throughout its history.
The motion to run around punching mothers in the face lost out to this.
Srs, these ‘activists’ are fucking up by being shitheads. I hate them.
Yeah yeah it supposedly washes off, i get it. It’s still really stupid.
How so?
If the idea is to get people talking about their ideology, then we can be sure it’s worked.
I support this.
The only thing people are talking about is what assholes they are. If they didn’t have a description in their name no one would even know what they wanted.
Hey if this is working for you, watch what happens when we piss in the produce aisle! People will really get the message then! Probably. We should call ourselves “Pissing in the Produce Aisle to Stop Oil” though, just so it’s clear.
When you attack Stonehenge I’m not listening to what your ideology is. Because all I see is you being a jackass. Attacking works of arts or in this case Stonehenge to me looks like a child in a restaurant yelling and screaming that they want a cookie. I’m not going to give in to the demands of the child just because they’re loud. You’ll notice I don’t talk about the ideologies, I talk about their actions, so it didn’t work.
@HowRu68
Oh no, the stone structure that stood exposed to the elements for 5000 years has a bit of paint on it.This pearl clutching is ridiculous.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Environmental protesters sprayed paint on Stonehenge on Wednesday, with footage showing an orange powder covering some of the stones.
Two protesters dressed in white were seen running towards two of the megaliths and spraying paint, as another person attempted to stop them, in footage released by Just Stop Oil, an environmental activist group focused on the issue of human-caused climate change.
The prehistoric structure dates back to somewhere between 3100 BC and 1600 BC, according to archaeologists.
Just Stop Oil has drawn criticism for targeting public treasures in the past, including the vandalism of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers with tomato soup in a publicity stunt at London’s National Gallery in 2022.
Less than a year later, two protesters from the group disrupted play during the Wimbledon Tennis Championships, running onto the court throwing confetti from a picture-puzzle box featuring an image of Wimbledon’s famed Center Court.
On the eve of that tournament, celebrities including Richard Curtis and Emma Thompson had called on Wimbledon to end its partnership with Barclays Bank over the institution’s multibillion-dollar support for fossil fuel projects.
The original article contains 161 words, the summary contains 161 words. Saved 0%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Good bot.
It’s not much but it’s honest work.
Oh no! The history that we could have all have enjoyed in the future (if we weren’t all about to die due to environmental collapse) has been slightly marred!
Good.
