Forget the office, go for the homes of the officers. They’re not doing squat until they’re personally affected.
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Because multiple people replied to me, I’m just going to make a general reply and then I’m done with this issue.
I said what I said because this happens every time there’s a story posted about a form of protest that involves general disruption, vandalism, defacement, etc., rather than a purely informational protest (marching, sign waving, etc.) or a protest targeted directly at the subject of the protest. A ton of people comment basically that, “This is not the right way to protest.” Ok, you’re entitled to that opinion, but this has been a form of protest that’s been around forever, so the comments of “I don’t get it” strike me as bizarre. I think you do get it. You just don’t agree with it. It’s normally people on the right who complain that people aren’t protesting the right way, so it always disappoints me a little when I see that here.
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aah, thanks
False-flag protesters looking to smear liberals?
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You said you were done with the topic, so I don’t expect you to reply but I wanted to say that I disagree with your point.
I don’t get it.
I do not understand why someone would use a form of protest that we know isn’t effective and that is very likely to produce the opposite effect, i.e. to. reduce support for the cause. You say that this form of protest has been used before, but I struggle to think of an example where It has been used effectively , or at all. It can’t be compared to the Bristol protesters tearing down the statue of a slave trader and throwing it in the harbour, for example. In that case the vandalism was directly connected to their goals. They wanted the statue gone, so they removed the statue.
These people don’t want an orange Stonehenge. The world heritage site has nothing to do with their goals, so I don’t understand what they think they’re doing.
I don’t get it.
(And yes, I have looked at the website)
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I still think this kind of thing exists on a spectrum and it’s totally reasonable to be more supportive of some forms of protest than others.
- A college walk-out to protest the genocide in Gaza: Totally get it!
- Disrupting traffic to demand action against police violence: Right on!
- Chaining oneself to a tree to stop logging in a sensitive habitat: OK!
- Breaking the windows of local schools for autism awareness: Wait, what?
- Slapping nuns in the name of protecting giant pandas: Oh come on!
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Ok, I am going to make one more response, just to address the core issue here: does this form of protest work? And that answer is…maybe? It’s complicated. I’m going to link a really good article about this, but here’s a really relevant portion of it to explain this spraying of orange paint on Stonehenge (again, everyone is free to believe this is the wrong approach, I am just not really understanding the lack of understanding, if that makes sense):
When it burst onto the scene in the UK in 2022, Just Stop Oil initially tried to target the oil industry directly. In April that year, the group succeeded in shutting down half of all oil terminals in south-east England. “But we received almost no media coverage,” recalls Just Stop Oil spokesperson Alex de Koning. “Around 80% of all the media in the UK is owned by three to five billionaires, so you don’t get reported unless you are villainised. So we have to do actions that are controversial enough to break into the news cycle. Public disruption is effective.”
De Koning points out that Extinction Rebellion brought 90,000 people to London’s Parliament Square in April 2023 but got very little media attention for its efforts; in the same week, however, two Just Stop Oil protestors threw orange powder paint at a snooker match and received five front-page headlines and several million views on Twitter (now X). Similarly, when two Just Stop Oil protesters threw a tin of soup at Van Gogh’s Sunflowers painting in London, it generated more media mentions about climate than when 33 million people were flooded out of their homes in Pakistan in October 2022.
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The great thing about Just Stop Oil’s plan is that they can continue their campaign of cultural vandalism as long as they want. I cannot possibly pay their ransom, even I wanted to. I suppose that it will eventually make me feel smaller and more insignificant.
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… it’s a long game — eventually, the thinking goes, opponents will be exhausted by their own anger and move on to “bargaining”
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“plea bargaining” perhaps?
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The punishment for doing this is less than protesting at the BP offices.
Blame the Tories for writing and voting for stupid authoritarian laws.
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Im not replying directly to danimagoo (or @-ing them) because I know how exhausting it is when you have said you won’t comment further on something and then get drawn into a debate by the other person not respecting that. So this is a discussion point aimed at everyone else.
I see the calculation they are making that high public support among the group that is aware of you (thanks to corporate media suppressing your more judiciously targeted actions) is less than low public support from the large amount of people that are aware of you after such a stupid stunt.
So I guess I understand now, I still don’t get how they don’t see how counterproductive the antipathy is they’re producing as a byproduct of their awareness campaign. Especially in the current political climate in the UK, where Keir Starmer was forced to condemn them. This means the likely next government is now on the back foot when it comes to climate policy and will likely not be able to legislate as effectively on it.
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They got a lot of media coverage-but it wasn’t useful coverage. It was “look at these morons” coverage. What percentage of people seeing that coverage changed their mind about fossil fuels? If anything, more people were convinced that environmentalists are crazy people who vandalize things. Because that’s what they were being. Just getting attention isn’t necessarily good.
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But… but… INTERNETZ!!! /s
I think that’s the question, and honestly no form of protest works every time and at all times.
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Conflating forms of protest such as marches or demonstrations with defacing UNESCO World Heritage sites is ridiculous. This is not “socially disruptive”. This is destructive. We understand their goals, and I don’t think you’re going to find a lot of people here who don’t believe we are in a climate crisis. But this accomplishes nothing but add fuel to the “eco warriors are a bunch of loons” narrative, and may escalate to the point where we lose something irreplaceable so these people can get more press. AND NOTHING POSITIVE WILL OCCUR AS A RESULT.
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Attention is not awareness. The awareness has become “I am aware these idiots will pop up to deface some cultural icon at some point, just to get attention (and so I do not pay attention any more)” but there is little evidence that the attention to the stunts has resulted in any greater awareness of the need to stop oil or of people wanting to actively (get involved with) support the cause if getting involved involves stunts like these.
ETA I probably owe @BakerB and others some Coke.
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Yeah, that is about what I was trying to say
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Nothing @danimagoo said was defending these actions. Not a word was in defense. She was addressing people saying that they don’t understand their goals by, you know, posting a link to their reasoning and goals… it’s really disingenuous to put words in her mouth here…
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If the accused vandals are convicted, IMO an appropriate punishment would be to make them clean Stonehenge (under the supervision of professionals who make sure they don’t further damage the landmark.)
A few weeks or months of backbreaking work using small brushes and sponges to make the megalith pristine would give them time to consider what they’d done and whether it accomplished what they’d hoped it would accomplish.
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The site of Stonehenge is being vandalised by the current government so the cars can flow.
So I guess that’s a connection.
And the government’s ongoing car related vandalism of the environment, propaganda campaigns against lower emissions and liveable cities, is particularly funny as the current Conservative omnishamlbles state has made the roads barely usable in England. People have apps for flagging and warning about potholes that ruin your wheels.
I was driving around the posh stockbroker belt outside London, very picturesque, where Winnie the Pooh is from, and the roads were a total state. It was like Mad Max in the Shire.
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