I had intended to write a piece about the abhorrent actions of a couple of green washed “climate activists” representing Just Stop Oil but then I read Matt Tabi’s article which I am going to share, with my comments at the end.
In my opinion, this isn’t “ activism” its vandalism.
Please note JSO’s demands which are akin to those of Extinction Rebellion and Black Lives Matter. Is it another cookie cutter “activist” organisation funded by deep pockets?
I happened to be rereading Fahrenheit 451 when news arrived that a pair of protesters from a climate action group called “Just Stop Oil” hurled tomato soup at Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” at the National Gallery in London. A spokesperson for the group, Mel Carrington, was quoted in the New York Times saying the choice of art was irrelevant, since the only thing important about “Sunflowers” was that it was famous, “an iconic painting, by an iconic painter.” On the other hand, the choice of Heinz Cream of Tomato was more “symbolic,” because some can’t afford to heat up a tin of soup.
These protests are crazy and at least little bit scary. Maybe, more than a little!
The Van Gogh stunt is part of a wider campaign involving activists gluing themselves to works like Massacre of the Innocents by Rubens, Botticelli’s Primavera, and the Vatican sculpture Laocoön and His Sons. The actions are backed by California’s Climate Emergency Fund, whose founding donor is Aileen Getty, granddaughter of J. Paul. Insofar as these actions have a point, it’s to ask: why are people “more concerned about the protection of a painting” than “the protection of our planet and people?” “Sunflowers” was covered by a glaze designed to protect paintings from cracks, wrinkles, and sunlight, the group claimed it knew this. Much has been made, including in the oddly approving Times piece, of “Sunflowers” being “unharmed” except for “minor damage to the frame.”
Fahrenheit 451, much like 1984, We, and Brave New World, was a warning about a future in which basic human instincts for love, kindness, and decency are obliterated by utopian politics. Written variously in response to mass movements like Nazism, Stalinism, and the Red Scare, the dystopian novels all contain the same themes, one of which is a future where people aren’t merely indifferent to art but hate and fear it, to the point of taking pride in destroying it (and liquidating its admirers). Another theme is indoctrinating the very young and still another is the ritualized assault on familial or sexual love, with the craving for connection replaced by substitute “families” supplied by the state.
In Fahrenheit 451 this comes in the form of the “Parlor Wall,” a giant, endlessly yammering television found in all homes. The main character, a “fireman” named Montag (in the future buildings are made with fireproof material, “firemen” exist only to burn things like books and the houses full of people containing them, and few remember there ever were firemen who put out fires), begins to have attacks of conscience about book-burning. He is opposed by his anxious wife Mildred, who worries her husband’s unorthodoxy might lose her the good favor of her “parlor aunts and uncles.” It’s a bullseye prediction of Twitter or TikTok, even more accurate than the telescreens of 1984, although the latter book nailed another part of the story in Orwell’s descriptions of youth “activist” groups like the Spies and the Junior Anti-Sex League, that forever garnered mainstream press plaudits for “defiant” acts.
“Hardly a week passed in which the Times did not carry a paragraph describing how some… ‘child hero’… denounced his parents to the Thought Police,” is how Orwell put it.
Another phenomenon Bradbury predicted was that the future would be a place where attention spans would be systematically dismantled, in favor of ever-shorter synopses and condensed versions of things, where “everything boils down to the gag, the snap ending.” Even Hamlet is reduced to a “one-page digest.” The dissidents are people who work to preserve the human capacity for recall and learning, committing books to memory as a way to retain civilization in case the chance ever arrives to rebuild humanity. Montag memorizes Ecclesiastes, which in a way is another great prediction since the poetry of religious literature has been among the first genres to more or less completely disappear in recent times, as post-Nietzsche generations tossed it along with belief.
Defenders of the Just Stop Oil stunt point out it got people discussing climate change more effectively than any action in memory, stimulating conversation when even the self-immolation of 50-year old climate activist Wynn Bruce hadn’t. It’s nuts to think there are really people who believe throwing soup at great art will win converts to any cause, but what’s worse is, they might be right, in the current environment. However, even arguing the point assumes there’s really an idealistic impulse in these protests, a dubious proposition at best.
I don’t buy the idea that thought was put into what to throw at a Van Gogh, and not where to throw it. It’s just too much of a coincidence that campaigns of kids dumping on Botticelli and Van Gogh are taking place in the middle of a years-long war on art, literature, music, humor, and even math and science, when there are movements to obliterate entire fields like classics, and professors are fired for everything from reading passages from great books to teaching subjects students deem too difficult. Young people seem more and more to come out of college convinced ancient thinkers have nothing important to teach them, and may even actively symbolize the politics of exclusion, à la Beethoven. Whoever is teaching these kids is robbing them of all the joy of learning, and using them as political pawns. Another theme of dystopian literature that’s proved depressingly on-target is that the youthful urge for idealism would be appropriated for society’s ugliest work, especially destruction. “I’m afraid of children my own age,” says young Clarisse in Fahrenheit 451. “They kill each other. Did it always used to be that way?”
Van Gogh was penniless and lonely and mentally ill and spent his most productive years living in a space smaller than a jail cell, yet he converted his private pain into works of indescribable beauty that touched millions long after he died. The power of art usually has little connection to politics and everything to do with enhancing the individual’s ability to appreciate life and be sensitive to its possibilities. Any person moved by a painting or a book or poem should feel an enhanced connection to the world and a horror of destroying life of any kind. Art is the defense against reaction, not the accomplice of it, and destroying or demeaning art isn’t progressive, it’s just madness. If more oil executives saw and understood “The Sunflower” there would be less pollution, but even corporate greed is less frightening than zealotry. You can buy off an executive, but people who’ll not only wreck things for free but do so with excitement and a sense of pride make for a much harder problem to solve.
Bradbury, Orwell, Zamyatin, Huxley and many others predicted the time would come when people would come to believe in a politics of moral perfection so absolute that it would view memory as subversive and demand constant cleansing and reconstruction. Ask yourself if it isn’t weird that modern mass culture has been so lousy at producing art and literature, but weirdly terrific at forgetting, burning, destroying, and unperson-ing. The Van Gogh stunt was mostly just funny, but something tells me there are more people like this coming, and we won’t be laughing for long.
I very much appreciate Matt’s references to the warnings of the future expressed by Bradbury, Orwell, Zamyatin and Huxley which are rapidly becoming our present reality. However, I do not agree at all with Matt’s comment that, “The Van Gogh stunt was mostly funny.”
I recoiled in horror when I first watched the video of the so-called 'climate activists' throwing tomato soup on Van Gogh’s beautiful Sunflowers painting which hangs in the National Gallery in central London. I think it is absolutely abhorrent that these young people are being coached and encouraged to engage in such criminal acts of vandalism. Their seemingly smug attitude speaks to their lack of conscience
It’s the 14th day of demonstrations linked to the group – which wants the government to stop all new oil and gas licences.
The group’s activists have been blocking roads around Westminster and elsewhere in the capital in the last few days, as Breitbart London reported.
They have also blockaded oil depots and sprawled themselves across the road to prevent ordinary commuters from travelling in London as part of what they have described as an ongoing “occupation” until their demands are met.
These include no new oil or gas extraction licences are granted as well as a redistribution of global wealth is instigated to mitigate the inherent “unfairness” of wealth and ownership of “the means of production.”
[…]
Met Police Commander Karen Findlay, Major Ops and Public Order, said: “Both individuals who have committed criminal damage and aggravated trespass at the National Gallery have been arrested,” and said they are being debonded to take into custody.
“Wholly unacceptable behaviour, not tolerated,” she added, the Daily Telegraphreports.
The climate campaign group targeted Scotland Yard a few hours later, where 24 people were arrested after activists sprayed orange paint on a sign outside the building and glued themselves to the road outside.
Once again the activists appear to come from comfortable homes.
Phoebe Plummer was one of the Just Stop Oil activists at the National Gallery. She said: “Is art worth more than life? More than food? More than justice?
“The cost of living crisis is driven by fossil fuels. Everyday life has become unaffordable for millions of cold hungry families. They can’t even afford to heat a tin of soup.”
Anna Holland, her fellow protester, said: “UK families will be forced to choose between heating or eating this winter, as fossil fuel companies reap record profits.”
Michael Shellenberger included a video clip of one of the ”activists” spraying orange paint on the windows of an Aston Martin showroom as he tweeted the truth of the matter.
I find it deeply disturbing that from Greta to Extinction Rebellion and Stop The Oil amongst other groups sponsored by wealthy globalists, these young people have been brainwashed to believe the lies of the climate change agenda of control. They are being used to aid and abet dark forces who seek to drastically reduce the population and control all aspects of the lives of those who remain.
The sunflower paintings had a special significance for Van Gogh: they communicated ‘gratitude’, he wrote. He hung the first two in the room of his friend, the painter Paul Gauguin, who came to live with him for a while in the Yellow House. Gauguin was impressed by the sunflowers, which he thought were ‘completely Vincent’. Van Gogh had already painted a new version during his friend’s stay and Gauguin later asked for one as a gift, which Vincent was reluctant to give him. He later produced two loose copies, however, one of which is now in the Van Gogh Museum.
Perhaps these entitled “activists” should take note of Vincent Van Gogh’s message and pause to reflect upon all the things they should be grateful for in addition to this ancient sacred land, many of which would not be possible without oil and gas.
Oct 16, 2022·edited Oct 16, 2022Liked by Azra Dale
HI Azra, thanks for posting all the great articles.
IMHO This ( the legislation) is exactly what the "climate change " psyop protests are about, and the lack of police action - criminalising the protests that will come as they introduce the great reset and NWO. There are sufficient laws to deal with them now, they are choosing not to use them . So they are creating a problem, so that the reaction is that people get pissed off so that the solution is that protests have more restrictions on them, so that when the real protests about the NWO /jabs etc come in earnest, they will clamp down hard - Home Secretary to crack down on disruptive protests with new bill https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-63272648
Great article thank you. FYI, 4 corrupt families have been running California for ages: Getty-connected to-Newsom- related to Pelosi and Brown. One of them is usually Governor. Aileen Getty funding this is telling. Thx for informing us.
HI Azra, thanks for posting all the great articles.
IMHO This ( the legislation) is exactly what the "climate change " psyop protests are about, and the lack of police action - criminalising the protests that will come as they introduce the great reset and NWO. There are sufficient laws to deal with them now, they are choosing not to use them . So they are creating a problem, so that the reaction is that people get pissed off so that the solution is that protests have more restrictions on them, so that when the real protests about the NWO /jabs etc come in earnest, they will clamp down hard - Home Secretary to crack down on disruptive protests with new bill https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-63272648
Great article thank you. FYI, 4 corrupt families have been running California for ages: Getty-connected to-Newsom- related to Pelosi and Brown. One of them is usually Governor. Aileen Getty funding this is telling. Thx for informing us.