Visitors at Louvre look on in shock as Leonardo da Vinci masterpiece attacked by environmental protesters
Two environmental protesters have hurled soup on to the Mona Lisa at the Louvre in Paris, calling for “healthy and sustainable food”. The painting, which was behind bulletproof glass, appeared to be undamaged.
Gallery visitors looked on in shock as two women threw the yellow-coloured soup before climbing under the barrier in front of the work and flanking the splattered painting, their right hands held up in a salute-like gesture.
One of the two activists removed her jacket to reveal a white T-shirt bearing the slogan of the environmental activist group Riposte Alimentaire (Food Response) in black letters.
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…why the need of throwing food at a piece of art…?
or paint, that’s been a thing.
really pisses me off, environmentalists attacking art, of all things. random art didn’t cause environmental issues, and they’re undermining their own message with the sheer absurdity of it.
They attacked a pane of bulletproof glass; if destroying art was their objective they wouldn’t have had to walk far.
Are there any examples of these protests that have caused lasting damage? What I’ve seen was very visible but didn’t actually threaten anything.
It’s a weird message for sure but they don’t seem to malicious to me.
The goal is always to get on the news.
But it’s super weird. For example: any of the PETA BS ever worked for most of society? All it does is trigger the extremists while pissing off nearly everyone else.
Are you joking?
Veganism and vegetarianism is massively on the rise and firmly in the mainstream. McDonald’s does a plant based burger ffs.
PETA have even managed to position themselves as a certification agency for “cruelty free”. If getting companies to self-regulate and accept you as the rule maker for that regulation isn’t above your standard of “working” then I don’t know what is.
Whatever object was thrown, aside, i wonder if this is some kind of act attributed to their primitive parts of their brains that command the following: Monke throw poop.
I’m not usually inclined to conspiracy but I honestly think this group is planted by somebody to make environmental activists look bad.
They aren’t even protesting about (necessarily) environmentalism! It’s crazy the number of people outraged that soup was thrown on glass that was in front of a painting and didn’t even get to the part where it says this is about food security.
I know it’s a minor point and food security is an actual very practical concern and valid reason to protest, but I feel like one of the tenants of a successful protest is very much like advertising : make the target directly relevant to the message. “Art and historical conservation efforts aren’t worth your concern as much as (blank)” feels like it’s a muddy message when the whole point of art culture is that it is kind of frivolous. Quite frankly you could throw anything at a beloved historical conservation peice and make the news even if your reason was “I felt like it”. People are probably gunna treat it as a bare faced stunt for attention because it’s already been done and the response is predictable. Our society wide fascination with historical preservation is immediately hostile to anything that seems to be spontaneous. It’s the opposite of exploiting a weak spot in people’s thinking.
I understand and am sympathetic to their cause but I am pretty sure there’s some property damage or mischief stunt that could have been immediately more effective by being somehow tied more directly to food, convenience culture or contemporary targets.
That just shows why this isn’t an effective form of protest. I’ve seen a lot of comments about how “this gets attention” but fail to see how no one is actually talking about the “point” these protestors were trying to make. Which basically ruins anything the protestors are trying to do as no one focuses on the issues expressed.
Although part of it might also just be the classic issue of people not reading that much past the headline. People see “protestors throw soup at Mona Lisa”, and not get much farther than that.
Or more likely that news doesn’t get paid to put it in the headline.
I would argue it’s a slightly effective form… but only if they advertise the point. There’s been plenty of times I’ve seen this for environmentalism, and people start talking about it in the comments. Not completely directly, but it gets them talking. Like when they would super glue their hands to the ground, in one video one of the protestors threw the bottle into a drain. So people started talking about how hypocritical it was because that’s bad for the environment. Which was a small thing, but the conversation was happening.
People used to make fun activists who would throw red paint onto fashion models wearing fur. But over the years, that slowed down because designers stopped using real fur. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of it was because they were afraid of getting their stuff ruined, but now most designers won’t use fur for ethical reasons. Because they realize animals don’t need to be bred and killed for their suits.
The only real downside is that it does make them come off as assholes, but also no real way to turn that around. Like black people would do sit ins at restaurants, and a lot of white people hated them for it… but then other white people also got to see them get abused for it. Things like that can help change people’s perspective. With this, they throw it, and then it mostly stops there. They’re just assholes. It gets the conversation going, but not enough, because it just stops at them being assholes.
I agree with everything in your post except them being assholes. What part of this makes them assholes? Nothing was damaged and no one was hurt or inconvenienced, except for maybe a few museum employees who had to clean up a mess. The whole setup for viewing the Mona Lisa causes far more inconvenience than these people did. It’s a tiny painting in a packed room. You can’t really see it anyway.
What form of protest gets your rubber stamp of approval?
Well the guillotine seems super effective. Start there.
I love you types that add nothing to a conversation except “WhAt dO yOU ApPRoVe???” Like that’s a useful response to the conversation of “is this effective in getting a message across.”
If only you held yourself to the same standard before yet another generic “This isn’t an effective form of protest even though it made the news, and I’m talking about it, and I know what it was about” comment.
Or fuck, even in this reply, where your “useful response” was “you should protest with murder”.
Looks to me like you just didn’t like your opinions challenged, you just wanted to make sure everybody knew what they were.
Of course WE know what this is about. We’re both reading the article (and most likely have a similar view of how important food insecurity is across the globe and in our own countries/states/provinces/cities). I’m not concerned about you or I getting the messaging. I’m question if the general public will get the messaging. The people who don’t know about food insecurity, or food waste, if they get the messaging. Even next door in Germany DW interviewed the communications head of the organization that protested and they couldn’t really point out how this was beneficial for their argument. They talked about wanting access to high quality food, so they mysteriously threw high quality food on the Mona Lisa? Wouldn’t a better protest of the same variety to have been throwing shit food at it? Or maybe blocking deliveries of crappy food to markets?
So here we are, on the internet, having a conversation about the Mona Lisa being hit with pumpkin soup. The messaging isn’t clear from the protestors and the demonstration just goes to show why we need better organization amongst people who realize this is an issue. We need clear messaging to relay to the every man. The person who maybe doesn’t experience it themselves, or who maybe doesn’t see how good insecurity has a wider impact on people and keeping social-economic classes in the same groups.
Challenge my viewpoint, prove to me how this protest has brought attention to their cause that’s meaningful rather than just notoriety to the Mona Lisa (that it didn’t already have), and that the every man is viewing this as a reason to help stop food insecurity.
For-profit, neoliberal media will never fairly cover any protest that may impact the profits of other neoliberals. It doesn’t matter what form the protest takes, nor what the protest is for.
It’s been that way ever since “Occupy Wall St”, when news anchors feigned carefully practised bewilderment and asked "But what are they protesting. Of course if you asked any of the actual protesters, they were happy to make it clear.
So they just didn’t ask.
Measuring any act of protest by metric of “the media covered it in a way that will bring the great unwashed on side” ensures that no protest will ever meet your standard. You may as well advocate that people don’t bother and just politely wait for the end of the world. You won’t even be alone in doing it.
Fortunately, those media companies don’t control every method of communication just yet, so we can discuss it on social media or look it up independently.
What we can’t escape is the endless protest policing, where people complain “that’s not how I would have done it” on social media.
So maybe it’s time for those people to unveil their perfect protest strategy that gets international attention, doesn’t inconvenience anybody, gets fairly covered despite the millions spent to prevent it and doesn’t require 3 wet wipes to fix.
My money is on their big reveal being “do fuck all and try and die of old age before it matters”.
lowhanging psyop spotted
my personal conspiracy theory is that these people are funded, if indirectly, by big oil. in the same way PETA smears the name of vegans, these mfs are designed to make you, the viewer, hate environmentalists.
the worst part? it works
In the Balkans, whenever people rise in peaceful protest against a corrupt goverment, that particular government sends 50 or so crack heads to join the protests and start demolishing stuff, so that an overwhelming police force can then disperse the legitimate protests. I’ve seen it play out times and times again.
That’s why trade unions in France maintain their own security forces, trained to spot troublemakers or hysterical militants and reign them in. Perhaps is this what makes for successful démonstrations.
Centuries of experience helps.
We do that here in the US too, we might hide it better though.
Makes sense, tbh. If you can’t control the opposition, you can instead try to defame them
I love a good protest … But this isn’t a good protest.
What’s the most important thing?” they shouted. “Art, or right to a healthy and sustainable food?”
Yeah, no. I think in a civilised world we should be able to have both and that sort of argument is weak as fuck.
Destroy all art because it is more important that we conduct research into cot death. Oxygen is more important than art and yet look at you, with your galleries.
It’s infantile posturing of probably well off middle class kids who want their Rosa Parks moment for Instagram clout.
Further to that, attempting to destroy something that essentially belongs to everyone is just going to bring negative press. How about going after something owned by the head of Nestle? No? Is that too difficult and requires too much work?
You are talking about it right now.
That means it worked, regardless of how “good” you think it is.
We are talking about the protest, not the subject of the protest.
That’s one of the problem with protest stunts. They get attention but often the attention drowns out the intent.
How would you protest then?
Fair question.
I haven’t protested about this specific issue, but I have done about others. Specifically, the erosion of human rights in the UK.
Here’s a video of a performance protest we made last year:
It’s pretty blunt, it’s about how wealth is used to distort rights and the meanings of language. The full thing took over four hours to read out. We held a talk and a symposium as well as educational visits with schools. I’m a big believer in education as social justice.
Hypothetically then, in their case, I would make art that engaged with the subject. Just like picasso did with Guernica, an image that still resonates the horror of war.
I mostly agree but I mean it’s not like they were trying to destroy art or suggesting that all art should be destroyed. There’s plenty of unprotected art in the Louvre. In the same room as the Mona Lisa There’s a huge painting on the opposite wall that’s arguably more interesting than whatever view of the Mona Lisa you can get from 6 ft back and they didn’t go after it. They’re trying to get attention, like most protests.
I get that. And I broadly supported the stop oil protests that took a similar form. But I do take objection to the weird value judgement they are making.
What’s worth more, art or sustainable food…
If I wanted to get complex about it I’d highlight the numerous ways in which art and sustainable agriculture have traditionally interwoven through folk practices, but I’m going to keep it simple and say that the sort of false equivalence they just used is the rhetoric of fascism.
In the UK it is frequently used to defy art that may be oppositional to political and corporate interests.
And that’s it, art is, more than anything, a vector for public discussion and protest in its own right.
Their protest and the reason behind it is fine. The daft shit they said during it undermines everything else and could do easily have been avoided with a small amount of thought.
I recently saw someone on Lemmy point out that the UK has an emergency plan to move precious artwork to bunkers in the event of a nuclear attack, but no such plans exist for the people. Paintings can be replaced or remade. People cannot. The planet cannot. There are many things in this world far more valuable than art, in part because life is the source of art.
I’d actually say the reverse.
Our collective learning, as captured in our literature and art, is unique. It’s the result of countless human lives. It is what would allow us to rebuild a society after a nuclear war.
Populations are replaceable. As long as enough people survive, the population will recover. On an individual level, of course, each person is unique but most are unremarkable.
You may find what I’m saying abhorrent, but for the potential success of any post-nuclear society I think it’s more important that knowledge and culture survive than individuals.
I think an important consideration is who gets to decide what knowledge and culture get preserved. For example, I would say that medicine, agriculture, and human language would be much more important to preserve than computer science or economics, but I’m sure someone would disagree.
In general, I think art is very valuable and should be protected when possible (and not just European art), but if the choice is between a painting or a human life… the painting goes every time.
That’s like saying playing with unloaded guns is completely harmless. You don’t do that. All it takes is one accident or a crazed person to make it worse.
You want to protest? Go to the buildings of oil companies or politicians who are the reason for this or have the capability to make a change. The art is entirely irrelevant to this.
The only attention they’ll get is a bad one. And from whom? The same people you are advocating for?
And what did you do this week to prevent environmental destruction, recycle some sody pop cans?
What a brain-dead form of protesting. It only upsets people and makes no sense.
The painting, which was behind bulletproof glass, appeared to be undamaged.
This is why education is important.
eh idk. they probably knew about it. they wanted headlines, not damage, and they got them
Again?!
Didn’t another group do this exact same thing last year? I believe it was Stop Oil last time.
You’d think they just stop anyone with a thermos or other vessel capable of holding soup.
I believe that they did it to a Van Gogh painting which actually was more note worthy as that was not behind bullet proof glass
Im almost positive this is either the same exact story being posted a year later, either way I distinctly remember the same argument of “it’s behind glass, dumbasses” being mentioned last time.
Living in one of the most expensive cities in the world and complaining about sustainability…
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You need to work on your reading comprehension, lol.
They’re complaining about food security, but regardless it doesn’t invalidate their message.
Maybe if they weren’t passing a bunch of money around at the top, food would be more accessible.
Complaining by wasting food certainly invalidates the message however.
A can of soup isn’t going to change anything. What kind of an argument is that? With that logic, any protest uses energy, so all of it is invalid if it’s about any form of energy or food usage. That’s not a valid argument.
I suppose in a purely symbolic way, maybe it’s not the best, but scale matters. Wasting one can of soup when you need 10 million is not really a big deal.
Climate change is an issue but this is not the best way.
What way would be better?
Actual propaganda, not this shock headline provoker
Why not both? Direct Action gets results.
blockading freeways 👍
idiots
God damned soup nazis
It worked. Good for them, no damage was done and the news is talking about the issue
Usually when this happens, the articles forget to mention the glass and the comments are all centered on how stupid the protestors are. Good to see an exception here.
Edit: Never mind. I scrolled down and it’s bad as it always was on reddit.
sigh
It’s a dumb action, and this is from someone that supports direct action. How people are talking about an action is critical: the context matters.
The first thing people are going to ask is “why did you do this?” and the answer needs to make sense. Throwing soup on an oil exec, painting their office, etc – something sparks a conversation in a way you can exploit to further the cause.
“Vandalizing” a famous piece of art not even tangentially related to your cause is just going to make people think you’re an asshole and shuts down that potential for a productive discussion.
Some of the most successful stunts of extinction rebellion over here were painting private jets orange, and my personal favourite declaring a golf course a nature reserve and planting all kinds of indigenous plants there.
Not even the pearl-clutching “but that’s property damage!” types tend to be really mad about that kind of stuff.
Yeah and I’m pretty sure the issue with climate change isn’t a lack of awareness…
Right? Raw shock value is only useful when something isn’t well known. Everyone knows about climate change and has a position.
Great, use “shock value”: but make a worthwhile statement with it too. The goal is to force people to confront an issue, not effortlessly write it off as a childish tantrum and ignore it.
It’s doing more harm than good for the climate cause.
This one weird trick makes everyone in the immediate vicinity instantly despise you! Click for more info!
The painting, which was behind bulletproof glass, appeared to be undamaged.
Wow, who would’ve guessed.
It’s bulletproof not soupproof.
Also, it’s not the real Mona Lisa.
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I suspect the protesters knew about this.
If it’s anything like the other times, that’s exactly why they targeted it instead of something unprotected. They aren’t trying to destroy art, they’re trying to make a statement.
Almost like the spectacle is the point, and now people are talking about it
They did studies that demonstrated this kind of thing can make political progress more difficult because politicians don’t want to look like they’re weak to it and voters don’t want to be associated with it.
But they, and I guess you, don’t really care, it’s not about actually making positive change it’s about feeling like a hero and getting followers on social media.
yeah, they really advanced environmentalism with this dumb shit. 🙄
It just appeared to be undamaged.
Who knows, there might be some soup doing quantum tunnelling and plopping itself right in-between the canvas and the paint.Well, they never said it was soup proof glass.
Now we know. Every article from now on has to call it bullet- and soupproof glass. It is the law.
It’s actually a fair point. Bullets move in straight lines. Liquids splatter and drip. The painting might not be safe from all directions.
I really hate the destruction or attempted destruction of art in order to bring awareness to a social cause. I get in this case the painting is highly protected,
but there have been plenty of other instances where this has happened to other art where that wasn’t the case.Not only are you a self-entitled piece of shit for tying to destroy something that is on display for public enjoyment, but you are virtually guaranteeing that anybody who didn’t already agree with you won’t take you seriously because you are acting like such a piece of shit.
Seriously, there are a lot of legitimate reasons for civil disobedience and public protest. This is not the way to go about that, and if you think it is then fuck you in particular.
Edit: I didn’t think this was going to be such a divisive issue. After some further research I am retracting my earlier statement about other art being damaged in these protests because I don’t see much evidence for that after all. It seems like these protestors are often targeting art they know will get maximum media exposure without causing lasting damage.
HOWEVER, I still think this type of action is counterproductive when you are trying to, hopefully, win over people that either do not support or are not aware of your message. Collective action is an effective means to make change in society. I am, again, not disputing that. I just think that if the goal is to gain broad support for your cause you need to choose targets that are more representative of that cause; rather than art, which does get media exposure, but which ultimately serves to obfuscate or overshadow the true purpose behind your protest. Being savvy about your target audience goes further and deeper into the social zeitgeist than simply getting headlines for being angsty.
I get in this case the painting is highly protected, but there have been plenty of other instances where this has happened to other art where that wasn’t the case.
Which ones? I’ve heard a lot of complaining about people destroying art that was protected and not damaged. The target of this kind of thing isn’t the art, it’s the headlines. They don’t actually want to damage the art, so they purposefully target famous art that is protected. The media will quickly try to minimize that it was protected and lead people to believe they caused actual damage though, so that often gets lost.
Ah yes it is the media’s fault for not providing free advertising for them.
No, the problem is that money decides which issues are important in the first place.
No, it’s societies fault for not doing what we need to do. It’s the medias fault that this gathers attention and makes it an effective and harmless method of protest.
Ah yes “society”. We used to have the devil but then we killed him. Now we are so smart we invented him again.
The Mona Lisa is behind bullet proof glass and everybody knows it. Relax.
No art is touched in these protests. Its like y’all never heard of glass before.
You nailed it. I’ve never heard of this group before, but out of principal I don’t support them. You’re a better ways to get attention. This is a kin to a child during a temper tantrum, destroying things to get attention.
So now they’ve caused no damage and you have heard of them, yet for some reason you don’t support them? What better way to gain your support should they have tried? Should they have just asked nicely?
This was a cheap and effective way to make international news. It caused no damage and no one was hurt in the process. This is what people who complain about protesting say the ideal outcomes are, yet still they complain. If they block traffic, that’s disrupting people’s lives. If they damage proterty, that’s bad because you aren’t supposed to cause damage. If they do neither, that’s bad because they aren’t supposed to make you consider them. Come on. What method is the right one in your opinion?
You can think of a single way to get a message out there outside of this act… Really…
Gosh if there was only a method to communicate with people all across the world… Perhaps social platforms or mediums of which to put forth an idea that could just naturally get shared with everybody else… Terrible shame nothing like that exists.
Saying that the painting wasn’t damaged is very shortsighted. What if these places determine that the risk just isn’t worth it. Sure it’s behind bulletproof Glass but not everything is. I really hate it when people assume that the repercussions for their actions are either immediate or they won’t exist.
Saying that the painting wasn’t damaged is very shortsighted. What if these places determine that the risk just isn’t worth it. Sure it’s behind bulletproof Glass but not everything is. I really hate it when people assume that the repercussions for their actions are either immediate or they won’t exist.
They specifically target painting that are behind glass. It wasn’t a mistake that they didn’t damage the painting. It was by design. If it weren’t protected by glass they almost certainly would choose one that is. The point isn’t to cause damage. It’s to get articles written about them. Social media posts won’t get anyone’s attention.
Wasting our fucking time. These shits keep breaking stuff and wonder why no one is treating their ideas worth of respect.
What did they break?
If they had broken something would your argument change?
Charitable interpretation. Assume your interlocutor is logically consistent. If they support this on the grounds that nothing was damaged, it stands to reason that they would not support it if something was damaged.
I don’t see where my argument has anything contingent on damage not being done. Your argument was contingent on damage being done however, and none (besides a little cleanup) was done. If I said protest was only valid if it doesn’t do damage, then I’d need to consider your argument, but it isn’t. I’m perfectly OK with some amount of damage and never said otherwise.
You’re the one that has to reconsider their position as it was based on damage where there was none. Has your argument changed?
What better way to gain your support should they have tried? Should they have just asked nicely?
Yes.
If they block traffic, that’s disrupting people’s lives.
And emergency vehicles. I don’t know why no one else thinks this is a big deal. Do you really want fire trucks and ambulances and people going to the hospital to be blocked? What about regular people? I have to pick up my kids from aftercare mon-friday why would it be a good thing that my kids have to spend who knows how many hours stuck there?
If they damage proterty, that’s bad because you aren’t supposed to cause damage.
I agree. Please don’t damage property.
Come on. What method is the right one in your opinion?
Peaceful protest, dialog, websites, YouTube videos, social media posts, pamphlets, books, seminars, lectures, speeches, letter writing campaigns, change.org…
Protestors will almost always allow emergency vehicles through their roadblocks.
People always bring this up, but the reality is they just don’t want protests to cause the most minor of inconveniences for them.
Protestors will almost always allow emergency vehicles through their roadblocks.
Load of crap. That group Just Stop Oil managed to delay a woman getting her kid to the hospital. And the peices of shit who run it refuse to apologize. It doesn’t matter anyway because when the road is blocked up it still delays everything. Also who the fuck made them god? When did they get permission to just decide for the rest of us who gets to go and who doesn’t? I didn’t vote for them.
People always bring this up
Yes people tend to mention when you do shit that hurts people. Maybe there is a fucking reason for it?
but the reality is they just don’t want protests to cause the most minor of inconveniences for them.
Oh look a bloody mind-reader here! Everyone stop we got a guy here who can read the minds of thousands of people across multiple continents across decades. Hey since you are a mind reader what do you think I am thinking about your cavalier attitude towards human life right now?
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you’re the one claiming
Two wrongs make a right? Kinda “logic” I should expect from someone who blocks ambulances.
no one even knows what it is about"
You can read the comments for yourself. That is if you aren’t too busy making sure ambulances are blocked. You don’t need ESP to read.
without evidence -
Literally in the comments and in the article.
nd the most tone-deaf comment bordering on self-awareness
Tu quoque. Logical fallacy. Ding ding ding ding. The mind reader ambulance blocker committed a logical fallacy. Ding ding ding.
Even so, it’s just an objective fact that blocking traffic hurts the working poor far more than it hurts the wealthy and powerful high-status people who wield real power in society. It also, at least in the US, just further alienates blue collar people from the Democratic party and the political left, a demographic that they should own, but are losing and continuing to lose precisely because they are so tone deaf. The right does not block traffic, at least not as a tactic in itself, because they are smart enough to know that it just pisses people off. This difference is diagnostic of why the Democrats are steadily losing support from non-college-educated working people of all races.
Dude, these types of people are not working for the democratic party. The democratic party doesn’t want to change anything, which is the issue. That’s why other methods have to be used. Asking nicely and voting doesn’t cause the change that needs to happen. Sure, do it also, but don’t stop where the ruling class tells you to stop.
This was a peaceful protest! No one was hurt and nothing was damaged. It also reached a lot more people than a post on social media would and way more than a picket would.
You think they don’t do these other things because you don’t hear about them. That’s why they do this. The other methods no one hears about.
No change has ever happened from purely peaceful protest. If that were effective it wouldn’t be legal.
Destruction of property isn’t peaceful.
It’s a good thing no property was destroyed then
And if it had been would the argument change?
This is not the way to go about that
What is your way to go about that?
If you aren’t doing anything, what way(s) would you deem acceptable? If you know acceptable ways, why aren’t you following through? Honest if-questions, not meant as assumptions.
Healthy and sustainable food seems to be a decent goal. People should be able to get behind this. So if all the disagreement is about the right approach, where are the people with the right approach, and where are all the people voicing their concern about art supporting them?
Please help me out. It feels as if people are more concerned about pieces of art which they may never see, than about healthy food, the climate, or other major issues which affect everyone.
I get why it puts people off, these points exist. I just wonder what the “right” alternative to these “wrong” approaches is, and wether the critics walk the talk.
What is your way to go about that?
If you aren’t doing anything, what way(s) would you deem acceptable?
They’re not doing anything except ruining the day of normal people around them. And after they give themselves morale immunity from any responsibility for anything bad that happens.
If they want to protest they should sink yatchs, ground private airplanes and drag billionaires by the hair out of their bunkers and execute them. That would actually be something. But they choose to disturb random working class peasants trying to enjoy a minute for themselves instead of being crushed by capitalism for one pretty moment.
Useless arguments are thrown around like hot garbage here. Of course they won’t do what’s excpected for change because they don’t want change. They want a free pass from any personal responsibility.
Raise money and awareness through non-destructive means, start a program, work on the problem yourselves and hope more people join in. Start a fucking tik-tok challenge, I don’t know, honestly.
But throwing soup at art is just cringey and makes you look weird. No one is going to be on board with that but other soup-throwers. Then you just have a whole group of people travelling around throwing soup at monuments and nobody knows what the fuck your point is, as evidenced by this comment section.
Raising awareness through destructive means is exactly what France is good at, and exactly why they have far more equality than most of the people on the planet
They take no shit
There hasn’t really been many instance of art getting destroyed. This is legitimate imo, it gets in the news and no real damage is done. Personally, I think it’s not far enough.
If oil companies get their way, whole countries are going to be destroyed, not just paintings.
It’s also plain to see that any form of protest against oil companies is quickly villainized by the media. There’s an agenda at play when you can’t march, stand in traffic or just throw soup at glass.
Blocking traffic is pretty shitty though because you’re hurting working people as opposed to the people who have real power and status in society. These are people who depend on hourly wages and often have multiple jobs together with childcare scheduling commitments and the like.
Just wait until they find out how inconvenient widespread environmental catastrophe is.
Wasn’t even about climate change.
To think sustainability in agriculture is not about climate change is rather a narrow definition of climate change.
They were supposedly upset about food security. Yeah this right here is a great example of why these performative protests don’t work. No one can even agree why they did it.
Performative protests are a warning that things aren’t right. And French history has shown a penchant for heavy sharp falling objects to the back of the neck as the next alternative.
Yes French history, a week over two hundred years ago.
That’s the thing about a threat, it doesn’t have to lead to violence, but it is the performative act of violence. And the commitment to do violence or at least suffer the consequences, in this case arrest. That’s what this was. You can understand it or not.
If oil companies get their way, whole countries are going to be destroyed, not just paintings.
Relevance?
It’s also plain to see that any form of protest against oil companies is quickly villainized by the media.
LOL what? Maybe if by “the media” you mean Fox News?
