Just Stop Oil activists throw soup at Van Gogh’s Sunflowers after fellow protesters jailed

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.

While I think this was a stupid way to go about risking jail time for a noble cause, I would like to remind everybody here of what everybody in the 60s thought about MLK and his peaceful protests:

There never has nor will there ever be such a thing as "the right way to protest." The right way to protest means out of sight where it can be conveniently ignored.

1. It was covered by glass, unclutch your fucking pearls already.

2. Van Gogh is my favorite painter, and I would still rather have a habitable planet for future generations than have Sunflowers. If you're more mad about this than you are about what big oil and gas companies are doing, sit down and have a good hard think about where your priorities are. I do not give a shit if you "agree with their message but not their tactics" or if you "think it makes the cause look bad" or whatever other bullshit you want to spew to cover your ass right now. Ultimately, if this caused you to feel a greater sense of righteous anger than the wholesale destruction of our environment for profit does, you are part of the problem. I'd rather side with the people who are trying to make a difference, even if I don't like how they do it, than side with the people plundering our world for personal gain.

I see a lot of confusion and misinformation in the comments about what Just Stop Oils demands are. Their website makes it very plain and you can read through the details yourself. The press has massively misrepresented the groups demands and goals so its best to read it for yourself. https://juststopoil.org/

These are the 3 demands they have.

✅ Demand 1: No New Oil and Gas Licences – WON!

🔥 Demand 2: Just Stop Oil by 2030.

🧡 We need a Fossil Fuel Treaty.

• Demand 1 they only just won when the UK government changed to Labour who have committed the first item, so all their previous actions were with the goal of not expanding yet further the use of fossil fuels.
• Demand 2 is to phase the use of fossil fuels out by 2030. The UK has a net zero goal of 2035 so this would bring that goal earlier but many other countries have a 2030 target in the EU.
• Demand 3 is all about trying to get a world wide treaty signed to stop the use of oil to try and meet the Paris agreement to keep within 1.5C.

There is no immediate demand to stop or anything so extreme, they are largely what the UK has already agreed to do but is failing to achieve.

To everyone in this thread who has nothing but insults for these activists, what are you doing against climate breakdown? Besides sitting on your couch, insulting people who are actually trying to make a difference, facing jail time?

You are the kind of people who would've called the Suffragettes names and said they're hurting the cause, as well.

These pro-acrylic protests are getting out of hand!

🌍 > 🖼️

Just Stop Oil activists throw soup at Van Gogh’s Sunflowers plastic sheet after fellow protesters jailed

I dunno why these newspapers constantly print these phony headlines... Oh wait. It's the clickbait and propaganda obviously.

But like, why don't you go and blow up an oil rig? Or dump paint on an Oil execs car? Or protest directly outside of their house? Sure this sort of thing grabs headlines, but does literally nothing for the cause. If anything it builds momentum AGAINST your cause because you're making people who don't have a horse in the race (whether they should or not) think your entire group is dead set on destroying works of art.

Hot take: I swear a lot of these kinds of "protests" are funded by the oil companies themsleves to make climate activists look like crazy crackpots easy for the media and average Joe to dismiss. Like with the Stonehenge paint bullshit. Really?

Good for them.

They’re getting media attention for their message. That isn’t easy to do.

I'm sorry, but these protests are going to far! That was a perfectly fine soup!

I know Lemmy has mixed feelings here, but I personally applaud these activists for risking prison time to draw attention to a major existential threat.

I find it quite entertaining to see all the art aficionados coming out so shook by them getting a little bit of soup onto some plexiglass and a picture frame that they probably couldn't even describe before these incidents. Close your eyes, Is it walnut or cherry? Painted or oil finished? Ornate or simple? 5 or 7 inches wide? Symmetrical or asymmetrical along a horizontal axis?

These protests, which thus far have involved basically zero actual damage of cultural significance have driven significantly more attention (good and bad) to their cause than anything else that has been done. Their protests are non-violent and generally nondestructive.

That said, the real crime here is the judge sentencing 2 years in prison for getting some soup on the frame of a painting - I don't support violent protests, but I'm pretty sure you could just go around and slap oil CEOs in the face for a fraction of the sentence.

My tin hat tingles with these guys they're either too upper middle-class to actually understand the real world or they're making sure climate activists are a running joke.

I 100% agree with their message, I 20% agree with their tactics.

This is so poorly motivated it makes me wonder if it were in fact staged by the fossil fuel industry to make climate activists look bad.

“I chose to peacefully disrupt a business-as-usual system that is unjust, dishonest and murderous.”

Ah, yes, the murderous system of [checks notes] art made generations before you were born.

Have we considered that these protests are astroturfing by big professional art-restoration backers?

I keep thinking that these guys have to be right wing plants. Can these people really be this stupid? Doing this shit and blocking roads only makes people your enemy. Go throw paint on billionaire's houses or at your nearest court house you idiots

I bet fossil fuel companies love this

Like, holy fucking shit, I'm not against radical protests or direct action. Take a fucking sledgehammer to someone's sports' car for all I give a fuck. Do it to multiple people. I mean, as long as it's someone relevant, not just some rando. But this? Playing fucking games with human heritage? This kind of infantile shit is why museums and public galleries have to invest heavily in security measures anymore. The Mona Lisa has been damaged multiple times by people doing this kind of bullshit. And, like this, no one fucking remembers it in a few years' time.

It's insane that the Solarpunk Climate community is more nuanced on this event that many of the defenders in here. Not because the Solarpunk instance is bad, but because climate change et co is kind of Their Thing.

(Everyone seems to be taking the opposite message from my original post, so I guess I’ll just replace it.)

Here is a pretty good video about the original incident when it happened, responding to some of the criticism of the soup-throwers by comparing their demonstration to the self-immolation of Wynn Bruce, in terms of media attention, cost, and damage:

https://youtu.be/5COJyheLHSE

(I had not heard of Wynn Bruce before the video, so I assumed nobody else had either. Wrong assumption on Lemmy, I guess.)

Van Gogh tried to shoot himself in the heart and missed.

I'm confused who this is for. Even many who agree with them don't appreciate vandalism of art and art galleries.

The article doesn't make clear if the painting was damaged this time or not.

I assume not, but that's the very first thing these kind of articles should be stating up front.

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.

guarantee half the clothes theyre wearing are made at least partially of oilbased material. edit: and 10 people dont know what polyester is or how common an additive it is in textiles

These people are utter cunts.

All this does is annoy people and potentially damage the actual art. If they threw soup at oil execs or something, at least it’d be somewhat related to their message. But attacking paintings does nothing.

If I saw that in a museum, I’d punch them in the mouth.

Just like the Civil Rights Protestors!!

/s

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Bet this was done by big oil. No one is that fucking stupid.

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.