The most hilarious part of this whole thing is the Daily Mail having to reluctantly pretend to be on the side of the neo-pagans they usually consider hippy parasites because they were mad it interfered with summer solstice.
Me, taking my rifle to defend not Cadillac Ranch but Carhenge
People are too focused on the washable paint, not focused enough on climate change, and even less focused on the underground base beneath Stone Henge where Dr. Andonuts and Apple Kid are being held hostage.
I don’t think vandalizing an archaeological site is going to suddenly change Big Oil’s mind. If you want to take down Big Oil, direct action against it is a good place to start. These rich kids just put an unnecessary burden on the working class people who now have to clean up their mess. This self-indulgent shit pisses me off.
These rich kids just put an unnecessary burden on the working class people who now have to clean up their mess
So you’re saying these protests create jobs?
NO? Did you know that there are permanent cleaning jobs regardless of the size of the mess? You sound like the punk kid who kicks trash cans down the street claiming he’s making sure cleaners have jobs.
I’m 32 and I worked as a janitor for 4 years.
There’s no such thing as “permanent” jobs. If people are considerate and always cleaned up after themselves then fewer people get hired to clean and the inverse is also true, if people make more messes they hire more cleaners. In the end it doesn’t matter, the boss always makes sure to force the maximum amount of work onto the fewest people. You can’t actually make their job easier.
This isn’t even a bad cleaning job. At least no one shit anywhere.
It’s not going to change big oil’s mind. Nothing short of torturing executives and hanging their bodies off a bridge will change their minds. But at least this makes people mad which is the next best thing.
If you plan well, you can, by choosing your targets very carefully, disrupt the board of directors of a major oil company and thus affect its activities for some time. The most direct and effective way to do this, however, is by sabotage. I am not particularly advocating any of these strategies, I firmly believe that the only solution to climate change is socialist revolution, but these kinds of tactics can culminate in a revolutionary movement, while this other one that you say that “makes people mad” apparently does nothing to develop a revolutionary spirit.
These protests do work. And is suspected to be largely behind why a fair fraction of the population care about climate change. And working class people will be pressed into cleaning up the mess of direct action too, so I don’t understand the argument there.
Fucking up rich people’s pretty shit is a perfectly valid, if somewhat toothless, response. Yes, direct action is better, but is also more heavily violently cracked down on, the mass movement needed to make it viable isn’t there.
These protests do work. And is suspected to be largely behind why a fair fraction of the population care about climate change.
This claim lacks evidence.
And working class people will be pressed into cleaning up the mess of direct action too, so I don’t understand the argument there.
It’s one thing to create unnecessary burdens for working class people by doing some self-indulgent shit, but quite another to do so when you’re actively fighting for the future of the entire working class. And no, rich kids who vandalize historical sites and works of art aren’t doing that.
The claim does lack evidence, I agree! I’m only speaking anecdotally - But that’s a little more evidence than the claim that the protests don’t work.
I think the heatwaves and floods and winters without snow are why a fair fraction of the population cares about climate change.
I know a couple people who outspoken about climate change for scientific or observable reasons.
But I know more who are outspoken because they’re polarised against fuddy-duddy conservative anti-climate-protestor attitudes.
The revolution won’t be televised. Direct action is largely toothless. Iirc somebody lit themselves on fire to protest climate change and it was barely reported on. But somebody puts paint on the Stonehenge or even mildly inconveniences the public and it draws attention via outrage for a while. Literally all a protest is trying to do is draw attention to an issue. And this is one of the only methods I’ve seen that still works. Srsly why bother with direct action when it won’t achieve anything
That’s because lighting yourself on fire is counterproductive and doesn’t work. Direct action is fundamentally mass action and the action of groups, not individuals.
Strikes are a prime example of direct action. It’s also important that workflow is disrupted. Other forms of protest are nil, really.
Strikes, sabotage, political assassination, anything is better than this kind of protest, which only succeeds in turning people against the cause and giving the protesters a self-indulgent sense that they have done their part.
Direct action is largely toothless
What
Iirc somebody lit themselves on fire to protest climate change and it was barely reported on.
That’s a public display of total despair, not direct action against the responsible group.
I think that in large part direct action has become less effective as corporations have learned how to deal with them. And the way they deal with them is by ignoring the problem until people forget about it.
MY TREATS MY TREATS THERE’S ORANGE PAINT ON MY TREATS THEY’RE RUINED
