this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2026
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I'm still on the fence about Just Stop Oil. They "shut down" oil terminals for the span of a single Friday morning, but the blow back led to laws that are still on the book today.
Their operations seemed purposely created to create as much outrage as possible without actually effectively damaging the oil industry in any measurable way.
It doesn't help that they were funded by a fucking Getty oil heiress. So it's hard for me to determine if it was actually a false flag operation or just the good intentions of a incompetent billionaire.
Without showing my hand too much, I did do some actions with Just Stop Oil, so have some insight here.
The whole Getty thing has some basis in reality but has been ran with far too much. JSO received funding from the "Climate Emergency Fund", who Getty co-founded. That group has donated money to 250 different NVDA groups, according to them. A vast majority of JSO's funding came from donations from supporters.
While I obviously can't really speak for anyone but myself, everyone I interacted with, including the founders, seemed 100% genuinely committed to the cause, if a bit misguided at times. You're right about them trying to cause outrage, the whole idea was to keep the topic in the news, get JSO spokespeople interviewed etc. Everyone was well aware that we'd be treated with contempt but were okay with that, if it shifted the overton window a bit. There is theory behind this: Radical flank effect
Effectively damaging the oil industry is ideal, IMO, but it's incompatible with being an "accountable" movement (i.e. chooses to get nicked), as you will spend your life in prison.
Effectively, those laws were already in place. If the first time a tactic is used against powerful people, it is outlawed, it was never actually allowed. The laws getting passed at least shows people how the law is being used to benefit the rich and powerful. The previous unspoken rule gave the people in power plausible deniability. I'm not some huge fan of Just Stop Oil but the edges of the laws should always be probed by activists, imo.