this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2024
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
If that were true, wouldn't their shenanigans be more destructive? Soup over a glass protected painting and colored corn starch on a monument are not really rage inducing.
it adds credibility. if they actually destroyed stone henge i doubt even the hardest anarchists would follow them
Exactly what I came to say. Those guys ara activists pro-oil performing a false flagg attack.
"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
This is the waffles tweet
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"
They said burning down an oil plant is radical. Are you thinking of the slang definition of radical? The only call to action is the ruffling of feathers.
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.
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.
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.
Yes, and?
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.