Throwing Soup at Van Gogh
Throwing Soup at Van Gogh
Choosing Life by Wasting Food in a Publicly Funded Gallery
Choosing life over art. Coming together to resist. Civilisation is collapsing anyway, you don’t need art or nice things.
On Friday two young people representing Just Stop Oil made a big spectacle of themselves in the National Gallery of London, throwing a can of soup at Van Gogh’s Sunflower painting in the National Gallery in London. They made sure to have their fellow climate activist, cinematographer Rich Felgate, present to film their little performance art skit, which included a clever if unintentional product placement for Heinz Tomato Soup.
In a dramatic cosplay act that captured all the hyperbole + cluster B vibes one would expect from the Extinction Rebellion contingent of environmental activists, the Just Stop Oil muppets occupied a publicly funded art gallery, drawing attention to themselves wasting food + defacing public property to tell us that civilisation is collapsing and fcuk our art and nice things because we all must become utterly despairingly traumatised and tearing our fcuking shirts about it or we are selfish ghouls. Somehow we are to believe that the entire of humanity spiralling into a massive collective despair-riddled, fear-driven panic will save the planet. That’s as anti-science as we can get because fear and survival mode disrupts our higher thinking circuitry and renders us less capable to solve problems.
So we have a group of malignant narcissists threatening to disrupt UK public operations and vandalise UK public property because they demand validation for the their uncomfortable feelings about energy policy? Funded by American wealth? Oh the CEF only funds legal activity though … [um didn’t those two National Gallery muppets get themselves arrested for criminal activity and trespassing] Move along nothing to see here. Ahahahahahaha. The cynic in me says well ain’t this just America being it’s insufferable self?
An ethically self aware American individual with billions who was serious about climate activism would be lobbying his or her own government to effect energy policy change in Washington, not funding the vandalising of a Van Gogh painting in the National Art Gallery of London to demand that the UK government stop all new oil projects.
For a group evangelising to the establishment that it needs to stop producing fossil fuels they certainly have consumed a great deal of energy to get everyone’s attention. Their aggressive social media campaign included a Warholesque promotional graphic of a Heinz soup can and posts on Facebook and Twitter. Twitter for iPhone, the Just Stop Oil posts say immediately beneath the post. Oh and they have a donations page that accepts cryptocurrency, they need your cryptocurrency to save the environment. So a digitally heavy campaign to save the environment, then huh?
Demanding the UK Government end all new oil and gas, says the Just Stop Oil Twitter bio. Oh, okay, The Government. Who is The Government? Well, in a democracy, it’s the elected representatives of the people. So, the American wealth-funded Just Stop Oil muppets basically went and trashed the property of the citizens of UK —because the people own public the art in that gallery—all to demand attention from The Establishment in some kind of horsesh1t plea for solidarity against The Government? How much did this little stunt end up costing the people? You know, because The Government is simply the citizens of the United Kingdom, it’s their tax dollars.
Some questions I have—
Can someone explain to me how willful destruction of property can move people to conserve more than they are doing now?
Can someone explain to me how wasting food during an economic crisis can move people to care more about any cause?
Can someone explain to me how sh1tting on Van Gogh, a mentally ill man who lived in poverty and who loved the environment, helps reduce fossil fuel consumption?
Can someone explain to me how deliberately engaging in illegal activity + getting arrested enhances or saves a young person’s future?
Can someone explain how American billionaires financing anti government climate protests around the world is not simply the American Empire trying to colonise the entire fcuking planet? Oh we’re doing it for your own good, because you don’t know any better.
So, imagine some spoiled brats trashing mum + dad’s favourite painting to get them to stop their fossil fuel dependence, getting their filmmaking buddy to film them doing it then tweeting about it from their iPhone. That’s what this looks like to me— a childish + thuggish stunt designed to disrupt, to create chaos, and to send the populace into survival mode, a traumatising place to live for any length of time. Progressive activism deliberately sets out to emotionally manipulate and it reminds me of that menacing domestic abuse bully who lives to antagonise through a constant stream of unending disruptions to wear you down, to break you.
Look, straight up, I’m gonna say it. This is abuse. It’s terrorising and it’s bullying.
ISIS wanted to draw attention to its cause too, when it destroyed all those ancient monuments and artifacts and art treasures. Those ISIS blokes believed their moral cause justified the destruction they wreaked. That is what they mean by jihad, having co-opted the word for their work—jihad is Arabic for struggle. The extremists doing jihad truly believe they do God’s work. Just like the young people in the National Art Gallery believed their calling to save life required them to waste soup and throw it at the wall whilst being filmed, in a tax payer funded building.
Oh but Just Stop Oil is different, they are doing this for a cause.
Oh, okay. A cause. You mean ISIS and other Islamist extremists don’t have a cause they and supporters believe worthy? That’s a wee bit orientalist. Islamist extremists despise western governments and concentrations of power more than progressive muppets do. American-lead western foreign policy hasn’t exactly endeared the west to any MENA country and that has only served to drive up the extremism in that region of the world + immediate surroundings. The facile way progressives embrace violence and destruction as a method of activism frightens me—it brings them far too close to the immoral piety of Islamist extremists for my comfort.
Once you have decided that you can withhold civility for a moral cause, you have become an oppressor.
