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Two activists arrested after Rokeby Venus artwork targeted, as dozens of others held after blocking Whitehall

Just Stop Oil protesters have been arrested after smashing the glass covering a Diego Velázquez painting at the National Gallery in London, as police detained dozens of others who blocked Whitehall.

Two activists targeted the glass on the Rokeby Venus painting with safety hammers before they were arrested on suspicion of criminal damage.

The artwork, which was painted by Velázquez in the 1600s, was slashed by the suffragette Mary Richardson in 1914. One of those involved on Monday said: “Women did not get the vote by voting; it is time for deeds not words.”

The Metropolitan police said at least 40 activists who were “slow marching” in Whitehall were also detained and that the road was clear after traffic was stopped for a brief period

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[-] kralk@lemm.ee 73 points 1 year ago

Drawing a direct line up the suffragettes is genius. History will prove them right

[-] HeartyBeast@kbin.social 51 points 1 year ago

Hardly anyone argues again their cause being right. I’m not sure history will show that their campaign did much else than promote the misguided view that environmentalists are arseholes

[-] SkyeStarfall 34 points 1 year ago

..a lot of people do argue against their cause, though, is the thing. We cannot wait for change to happen, we gotta force some hands.

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[-] Lols@lemm.ee 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

people constantly argue against their cause being right, because their cause is we need to work on fixing the problems as much as possible and governments are not doing that

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[-] PapstJL4U@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago

But do you think you would have thought about Climate change this week, if not for this act?

As someone else said ab attack on oil buildings is less news worthy.

[-] HeartyBeast@kbin.social 14 points 1 year ago

Absolutely, I would have, yes. I spent a few hours tinker with my solar panels and booked in on a weekly Oxford University climate society lecture series every Thursday.

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[-] brewbellyblueberry@sopuli.xyz 8 points 1 year ago

Only thing this shit made me think about is how the fight against climate and environmental change is doomed because most people are mentally challenged. And like with the tomato soup protest, that's what most people are going to get out of this. Great, you made the entire fight look like Don Quijote! Good job!

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[-] brewbellyblueberry@sopuli.xyz 10 points 1 year ago

Exactly, I don't understand how this is such a controversial take apparently.

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[-] nautilus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 54 points 1 year ago

Dudes be like nooo stop trying to hurt the nice paper and go protest somewhere else so we can more easily ignore you

Putting the protection of art above what these people are protesting is both hilarious and also extremely depressing

[-] brewbellyblueberry@sopuli.xyz 20 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Great job comprehending what you're reading.

It's a million times more depressing that the majority of environmentalist-minded people apparently see these publicity stunts as positive.

[-] SkyeStarfall 9 points 1 year ago

The arts are like one of the first things to go if shit will start to go down due to climate change

[-] HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

There is this specific absolutely beautiful instrument at the Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix, Arizona. It was made out of trash by people in abject poverty. The arts might change, but it's pretty damn hard to extinguish that creative spark people have.

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[-] joelthelion@lemmy.world 53 points 1 year ago

I don't understand why they keep targeting art. Wouldn't smashing car windows (for example!) make more sense?

[-] topinambour_rex@lemmy.world 67 points 1 year ago

Throwing paint on buildings owned owned by oil companies make more sense, but it never reach the news.

[-] BirdyBoogleBop@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 points 1 year ago

They have also targeted luxury car dealerships. People said the exact same things they always say when they do anything.

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[-] STRIKINGdebate2@lemmy.world 30 points 1 year ago

Because art gets them more publicity. Also if they are going around smashing car windows then they are liable to thousands in fines due to criminal damage, turn the general public against them even more so than they already are and it will likely legitimise tough laws being created against this group.

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[-] tetris11@lemmy.ml 16 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

That would be attacking the public though. Destroying Art is something that is technically accessible to all, but practically only studied and coveted by the wealthy (who have time and financial assets to pursue it)

[-] fubo@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago

I'm guessing it's a class/luxury thing. Cars are mostly owned by workers; smashing them puts the cost on those individual workers.

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[-] HurlingDurling@lemm.ee 22 points 1 year ago

Why do they hate oil paintings so much?

[-] RGB3x3@lemmy.world 26 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Just a misunderstanding. This group is Just Stop Oil (paintings). They hate the medium.

The other group is Just Stop Oil: the anti-oil, coal, and natural gas group.

Same name, so it's easy to get them confused.

[-] brewbellyblueberry@sopuli.xyz 22 points 1 year ago

Aren't these the same idiots who threw food at the paintilngs and people defended them with "well the paintings are covered with protective glass either way so they're not doing any harm, just publicity for a good cause"? Like I'm all for protesting and especially old fashioned ways that do more harm than good, but these people are just assholes trying to destroy invaluable art which is never going to do anything positive for their cause and on top of it all is literally so misguided. No oil company or production or anything is gonna give a fuck about some old painting and this only gives assholes ammo to paint these kinds of movements unhinged. It's like they're paid actors to make it look bad.

[-] STRIKINGdebate2@lemmy.world 54 points 1 year ago

The planet is literally dying. A painting ain't worth shit in the grand scheme of things. This has always been a popular tactic for protests the article mentioned the suffragettes doing the exact same thing to the exact same painting.

[-] fubo@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The planet is not, in fact, dying. A lot of species that humans care about are dying. The bedbugs and termites and rats are doing fine; it's the corals and butterflies and emperor penguins that are having trouble.

(This is an important distinction because of the existence of human extinctionists: those who think that humans should kill ourselves off so that life can prosper in our absence. Thing is, only humans care about what's going on in a different continent from our own. A polar bear does not care what happens to penguins.)

[-] skulblaka@kbin.social 20 points 1 year ago

They'll suddenly care an awful lot when fish dying out means penguins and seals dying out means polar bears dying out. There is no creature that exists in a vacuum.

[-] fubo@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I was being literal. A polar bear can't find out what's going on in Antarctica, nor does it have the mental capacity to think about the environmental systems that affect its well-being. All it can do is get hungry and starve. :(

There is no other species on earth besides humans capable of being environmentalists.

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[-] brewbellyblueberry@sopuli.xyz 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I'm not arguing for the value of the paintings but the idiocy of the protest. If it worked for the suffragettes (where it is even fathom able that it might have some relevance to the protest, unlike here) good for them, but this is nothing like that. This just paints them as idiots and does very little less. A common tactic used by the whatever shitty thing that's supposedly being protested is to make fools of the protesting party. Even though this is apparently just idiots making everybody in the movement look bad. Yay. Lotta good that does...

If these idiotic stunts aren't a smear campaign, these morons are doing their work for them.

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[-] burchalka@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago

Yep, the one where they broke into airport and painted private jets made a bit more sense...

[-] Etterra@lemmy.world 19 points 1 year ago

I find it funny that oil activists funny just go find a random piece of oil pipeline in the middle of nowhere to sabotage. Seriously, the things stretch for hundreds of miles, there can't be a shortage of isolated segments behind no more than a chain link fence at most.

[-] nikscha@feddit.de 29 points 1 year ago

There's actually a pretty good reason why they don't do that. Media attention. Most acts of activism are ignored. Only extreme things make it into the media (sadly). Anything short of blowing up the pipeline won't get them media attention. How do I know that? "Letzte Generation", a German activist group did shut down a pipeline, but nobody bothered to report about it.

[-] brewbellyblueberry@sopuli.xyz 6 points 1 year ago

Only extreme things make it into the media (sadly). Anything short of blowing up the pipeline won’t get them media attention.

I'm really not arguing against the obvious futility of fighting against these giants, but I mean, we're here literally talking about people vandalizing paintings which honestly has absolutely fucking nothing to do with the oil industry and it's hailed as some big statement. It's a sad reality we live in, but things like this aren't making anything better.

[-] faceula@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

Yeah, we should probably do nothing. We're not even talking about it right now.

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[-] alekwithak@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago

Oil leak caused by activists is great PR.

[-] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

Sort of a joke, given how many oil leaks our infrastructure is already riddled with.

Doing a little light domestic terrorism would be a drop in the bucket beside the enormous amount of waste polluting our groundwater and riverways. But new media would fixate on it as the de facto reason why oil spills exist, for the next twenty years.

[-] theKalash@feddit.ch 10 points 1 year ago

But that isn't just a little vandalism, that carries some serious criminal charges.

[-] art@lemmy.world 19 points 1 year ago

"Why would activists pull a stunt that would bring attention to their concerns from the main stream media?"

~ Lemmy Users, Probably

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[-] AllonzeeLV@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I love how civilization is irrevocably fucked by its own hand and there are still peasants at the ready to scold the desperate still clinging to hope somehow for defacing the apple cart in its race to oblivion.

"Herp derp we just need to keep doing what we're supposed to do and everything will be fine!"

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[-] jordanlund@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago

So switch to acryllic paintings? :) Who knew art supply fans were so dogmatic.

[-] NAXLAB@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

It's crazy that they have the right idea about direct action and yet are using it on the worst possible targets.

Disrupting an art museum will not stop pollution or inconvenience the fossil fuel industry.

Take advice from MLK: Be nonviolent, but get in the way. Use methods of coercion.

[-] funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 year ago

This is non violent, and is in the way, and is coercion? And it's exactly the kind of thing that King was criticized for doing.

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[-] ikidd@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

What the hell is a "safety hammer"?

[-] Sheldybear@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago

A hammer designed to smash glass - it's a 'safety hammer' because they are kept in cars to smash windows in emergencies where people are stuck.

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this post was submitted on 06 Nov 2023
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