Stonehenge sprayed with orange powder paint by Just Stop Oil activists
Two people arrested, say police, while Rishi Sunak’s comments on protest prompt response from Labour donor
If you ever wanted to read about fake druids vs. environmental activists, now's your chance.
Not paint, literally orange corn flour that'll wash off with the first rain. Stop spreading disinformation for big oil pls. Idk why they went for this instead of classical art, but acting like this is some terrible evil crime is exactly what oil companies want you to think, they want you to root against people protesting climate change, no matter how tiny their vandalism is in the grand scheme of things
I can root for people protesting climate change and think this was incredibly idiotic.
What is it the activists wanted people to think? Did they consider their actions might lead people to turn against them instead of against the oil companies?
The article says it came out of a spray can. So how am I spreading misinformation?
Not misinformation, disinformation. You read the article, yet choose to act like this is comparable to spray paint or something else that won't immediately wash off. This is like getting indignant bc somebody threw a couple eggs at a great pyramid. It's stupid and irrelevant to climate change, but sharing articles where the title says they threw acid instead of eggs is just fucking wrong, and serves no purpose besides discrediting climate activism
Edit actually this article says nothing about corn flour, sorry for accusing you of ignoring that. That's super shady and shitty on the Guardian's part, a detail that majorly changes how actually harmful this act was
Double edit you're still acting like they threw actual paint, so nvm my apology. Stop being such a blatant oil shill
I get that the stunts will draw attention to the environmental issues the activists are protesting for, but surely not pissing off the public would be beneficial in spreading a message to them?
The uninvolved public would just remember the attempted defacings, and not care about the damage being temporary or minimal.
Yeah, I agree with the sentiment, but I feel like the methods are pointless and even might have a reverse effect. Doing this does nothing really to help the cause, imo. Any minimal publicity it gets, I feel, just invigorates the right leaning conservatives to have more fuel to hate "the left" and "liberals". I just don't see any benefit to these types of stunts.
This isn't minimal publicity, minimal publicity is what they got when they directly targeted fossil fuels by blocking the supply lines.
https://wagingnonviolence.org/2023/12/the-method-behind-just-stop-oil-annoying-madness/
Are you seriously really upset at coloured cornflour being spread over some rocks?
Man big oil has it easy with all these slacktivists shitting in public and calling it a protest.
I think this action lacked some supportive commentary, a spoken idea why they did it and what does it mean. It comes of as an attention bait without a clear message. It's also too random to associate it with climate activism without a context.
After hearing about that I thought what would become our Stonehenge if we fail miserably (Statue of Liberty, like in Planet of the Apes?), or if we get back into a new Stone Age making this circular monument both the past and the future of humankind. I would not probably care that much if they actually damage it a bit if that's for creating a powerful symbol, adding to it's (contemporary) significance instead of taking from it. But that's too much to ask, it seems, all we can do is orange paint.
Orange cornflour
As always, while I support their claimed ideals, I can only see them as petty vandals who care more about attention seeking than their cause. They certainly won’t get any of my time or attention. If you’re against Big Oil, protest Big Oil and half the population will agree. If you’re intentionally seeking my outrage with unrelated crap, you got it: rot in jail
It's orange power which washed off with water
They do it because the stuff you're asking for doesn't work that well, but this does (that said they do still engage in those actions as far as I'm aware). Activism is about making noise, there aren't many tools beyond that and they've worked for all sorts of issues in the past.
The point is that JSO doesn't exist in a vacuum.
https://wagingnonviolence.org/2023/12/the-method-behind-just-stop-oil-annoying-madness/
the stuff you're asking for doesn't work that well, but this does
I didn't think that this works. The examples where people claim "is just like this" I don't see as being like this.
The ones that work are ones that have some relation to their cause. Forcing everyone to really think about an issue Inherent to the act. For example, going about and doing this to parked private jets, which they did.
Just doing anything to get attention isn't useful if there's no Inherent message in the act itself. Especially with climate where everyone already has awareness, just not action.
Being merely loud is not going to sway hearts and minds in your favor.
Yeah I don't know why they wouldn't block the entrance to an oil refinery. Some people would be unhappy about this especially the people that work there. But the general public could understand, who knows it could possibly slow production for a few days.
They have. Compared to this, it got barely any news coverage.
That is why they do this. Their only goal is attention, and they do that quite well.
The way they seem to operate is quite smart, actually:
The last bullet seems to be the target audience of the group. And they're the ones who will actually do anything.
Just stop oil is funded by the oil industry to make environmentalists look like morons.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Rishi Sunak condemned the action, saying: “This is a disgraceful act of vandalism to one of the UK’s and the world’s oldest and most important monuments.”
A senior druid and pagan priest, King Arthur Pendragon, said he “totally” disapproved of the Just Stop Oil protest and that the group’s actions “alienate any sympathy” for their cause.
Pendragon, who is standing as an independent parliamentary candidate for the area, said: “Stonehenge is a living, working temple at times of celebration and pilgrimage such as the summer solstice and, as a well-known protester myself, I totally disapprove of such behaviour as demonstrated by these people, who do nothing to enhance and everything to alienate any sympathy anyone has or had for their cause.”
The priest has previously been involved in several protests at the monument and lost a legal challenge over a £15 car parking charge at the site in 2017, claiming the fee breached his human rights.
Mike and Julie, who did not wish to give their surnames and had come from the west coast of the US to visit Stonehenge, said it was a shame the path around the stones was closed after the incident.
In a statement, JSO said it was time for “megalithic action” and called for the next UK government to agree a plan to stop the extraction and burning of oil, gas and coal by 2030.
The original article contains 645 words, the summary contains 230 words. Saved 64%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Those stones will be suuuper useful to us after we died because our global ecosystem collapsed.
Maybe we should set up our own stones for explaining to future generations why we didnt do anything about climate change until it was too late.
I'm not sure how this helps though. These people can say to future generations, "well, we didn't get people to stop using fossil fuels, but we did damage a 5000-year-old monument that was made long before anyone had the idea of burning fossil fuels to make people aware of a problem they were already aware of but powerless to do anything about."
This isn't going to stop oil companies from drilling for oil.
It reminds me of a friend of mine I used to follow elsewhere on social media. Every day, she would post pictures of 'death row dogs' in nearby shelters that were going to be euthanized. There was fuck all I could do about it. I already have two dogs, from shelters. I don't have room for more and I couldn't afford more. So all it did was make me feel like shit. Then she started posting photos with "too late" messages and I stopped following her.
How does that help?
but we did damage a 5000-year-old monument
As far as I could find out, they used orange cornflour that will just wash off the next time it rains. The most amount of damage anyone could seriously bring up was that it could harm/displace the lichen on the henge.
That's not to say that I specifically condone the action, but it's a lot less bad than this article makes it sound. It's the same with the soup attack on one of van Gogh's painting, which had protective glass on it. So far all the JSO actions targeting cultural/historical things (at least the ones that made it to the big news) have been done in a way that makes them sound awful at first hearing, but intentionally did not actually damage the targeted cultural/historical thing.
I think the biases of the journalist/news outlet/etc. are somewhat exposed by which parts they focus on and which they downplay or omit entirely.
Many of the recent protests about climate change have been less direct and more about stirring up controversy to force the public to actually think about their decisions.
My hat off to them as so far this style of protest has been working and has resulted in many of us pushing for better climate control.
You're right this isn't going to stop companies, but even if you disagreed with them it puts climate change in your conscious mind. Even if that simply means you'll try to make slightly more climate friendly decisions moving forwards, that's a win.
Personally I don't know if I agree with the technique, but I do feel like it has been working in terms of making people discuss this topic more.
Your example shows exactly what people are missing. Just because you did not have the capacity for more dogs doesnt mean that other people never got convinced to save one of those dogs. If those pictures convinced even just one person to adopt a dog, then it was worth the minor inconvienience that you had to go through.
Similarly the actual damage from this protest is slim to none (if they used the same stuff as usual that just washes away with water) and if it convinces somebody to get politically active for climate change then it was already worth it.
You thinking that you are powerless, shouldnt result in other people being forced to be powerless when they are not.
Here in the US we have one of the two main political factions regularly threatening terrorism, execution and even war.
When people are already arguing to take you out behind the chemical shed and shoot you, it's a little out of touch to think they give two shits about your future health in a changing climate. Or our planet, they probably think they can get to Mars with Elon or something, or god will rapture them, or whatever they think, I don't know.
You think people should care about future generations? They probably should, but we have parents that don't give two shits about their own kids, much less anyone else's.
These activists make fighting to end climate change harder every time they pull this shit. It's pure asshole behaviour.
At this point I feel like it's akin to art that people just don't get. The average person doesn't understand the message or point.
These protestors are committing simple acts that threaten to damage something that people value. People are so very angry that biodegradable paint was sprayed on an ancient monument, or that soup was tossed onto the glass protecting a famous painting.
Yet they continue on with their lives and refuse to hold many corporations accountable while those corporations make our planet less habitable. This would become a wall of text that nobody would read if I tried to just outline the existential threat human society faces thanks to the reckless behavior of many of the organizations. The suffering, loss of life, economic damage... unimaginable... yet we are basically barreling toward that inevitability at full steam.
But I'm sorry, how silly of me. How could I forget that some scientists might lose the opportunity to study undisturbed lichen on Stonehenge this year.
People are so very angry that biodegradable paint was sprayed on an ancient monument, or that soup was tossed onto the glass protecting a famous painting.
What is so maddening about this comment is how much it proves my point that you don't see. You need to accept it doesn't matter if the overall damage is none existent. Just like how a magician is never in danger or a wrestler isn't getting punched in the head. And we're all still left with strong feelings and compel us, sometimes even to action.
The real danger is not as important as the perceived danger. You're showing something to so many people that the average opinions becomes very important and the average opinion doesn't view this favorably. This is obvious to everybody but the activists who convince themselves this is the height of civil action.
And the end result is scientists don't get funding. Scientist funding is funded through public interests. Organizations, industry and taxes go to fund research. And when activists start stirring shit up, it makes many shrinking back like turtle heads until it blows over.
People here keep saying it raises awareness. Who isn't aware at this point? And why do they think doing this sort of thing helps the cause? Pissing people off doesn't get them on your side, it does the opposite.
Yea I struggle with understanding that explanation too. I think something that plays a huge part of this is personalities that group together. Most people understand how important social game is. All activists seem like they have no social awareness. Their only goal is attention. They take the idea that there is no bad publicity to an extreme. I really believe many of these activist are being organized and funded by the oil industry without even realizing it. I say that because why wouldn't they in this day and age. Its easy to funnel money to organizations secretly. We have proof they did this in the past.
https://www.climatefiles.com/exxon-knew/ are full of examples of this.
Great website for anyone interested on this topic. Full of documents from industries going back to the 50s showing internal documents and memos of how they knew and planned to discredit climate action
They're terrorists.
Not activists, terrorists.
That word... I do not think it means what you think it means...
We for sure have felt the terror they wrought.
Terror, I tell thee!