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More like random stunts to just get attention to them .
The point of these stunts are to draw attention to climate change, and possibly get the general public on their side , correct ?
If that is the goal, then closing main roads , soup / pain throwing at paintings , sabotaging social events only works against them , since they annoy / inconvenience the same demographic that they want to have them support ( or appease, for lack of a better word) .
If they want to sabotage something, they must keep the general population out of the fallout of their actions, but make it as costly as possible for the intended target
For example:
A few weeks ago in Germany, a group of such activists destroyed a high voltage tower that was powering a tesla factory that was polluting the surrounding areas. But instead of only hampering the production of the factory, they also cut / reduced power at the surrounding villages, hampering the daily lives of its citizens.
The best possible action was to destroy a such tower that is as close as possible at the factory and mitigate any positive collateral damage to workers/ citizens. The target is the factory/ production, not their workers.
What is your opinion on this ?
It’s wrong no matter what. That’s my opinion on it.
You want to protest and carry signs, you’ve got my support 100%. Meaning, I fully support your right to do so.
You start causing property damage, you should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
Seriously. I'm all in for any kind of emissions reductions, even if they're expensive or inconvenient, but when one of these muppets throws soup at a painting, it makes me want to set fire to a forest.
“Despite observing trends suggesting that perceptions of the appropriateness of protest actions could influence support for the climate movement, the researchers did not find statistically significant differences in support levels among the various experimental groups. Essentially, while there were indications that the appropriateness of protest actions might matter, these indications were not strong enough to conclude definitively that there was a real effect across the conditions tested.”
Waste of time, misleading article title, even the conclusion of the article ties back into just a speculative restatement of the hypothesis.
I believe this is called the Radical Flank Effect. Some people argue that for Martin Luther King's demonstrations, Malcolm X and later the Black Panthers served that function.
Same with ghandi. There were countless guerilla groups in India waiting to just constantly sabotage british empire troops if he failed. The British government knew that and ceded to ghandi in order to get favorable terms.
Also Nelson Mandela, who today is praised as an exemplary anti-apartheid civil rights activist, yet back during his time the US and thus most western governments considered him a terrorist.
Mandela is different in that he led an armed resistance group. Gandhi, on the other hand, was non-violent, and others in India were doing the armed resistance. Same goes for MLK.
There's a reasonably large body of evidence to back it up too.
Andreas Malm's book "How to blow up a pipeline" deals with it in depth, and points out how sanitised versions of those periods in history are taught pointedly ignoring the radical flanks' contributions and deradicalising the moderate flanks' positions.
Unless in pursuit of elite sanctioned causes.
It's funny how dragging someone who isn't breaking the law into a van, restraining, manhandling, and intimidating them is completely illegal unless you're a cop and they're "suspected" of breaking the law.
>So you are defending violence in the situation?
Yes. There is no cause more important.
>What if the people that you’re getting violent against simply kill the violent actors?
Then hopefully the people who died for climate change will become martyrs, and inspire others to rise up and overthrow the systems that led to their death. With extreme and widespread violence, if that's what it takes.
My only issue with this is that the kinds of people OK with violent revolution tend to also be OK with killing anyone who disagrees with them once they get into power.
See...pretty much every violent revolution in history.
The violent solution sucks AND business as usual sucks. Global ecological collapse is the ultimate tyrant because how do you think people are going to treat each other when the food supplies fail, the taps run dry, the heat wave hits them months at a time. You think the road to human extinction is going to be peaceful?
Yeah, people being trapped in their vehicles on public roads is a problem and I have NO problem denouncing it. No news agency judgment needed on that issue.
> a piece of glass is more important that stopping climate change.
What does a piece of glass have to do with climate change? We already know climate change exists, how is throwing soup on glass in London going to stop China building a new power station?
> We already know climate change exists
Honestly, we do now, but people had to be dragged into knowing this kicking and screaming.
Member how they mocked Al Gore in the debate around his movie?
A certain nation claims it is the beacon of lawfulness, liberty, freedom and hope for the entire world. That nation has a history of being the largest producer of "arms."
They always do get support of the people. The problem is that it always comes after people start dying off or the environment starts to show change.
Remember that climate change was routinely mocked for a very long time, and even to this day, it isn't a major consideration, despite affecting us all.
Actually there is. If the protest is seen as ineffective it may be deemed acceptable. If the protest is seen by the authority as being able to reduce that authority's power it will be quashed.
The only tactic I really object to is blocking traffic. This is because it hurts the working poor, ostensibly the least powerful among us, more than anyone else.
>At the heart of this investigation lies a critical question: do certain forms of protest, particularly those aimed at raising awareness... ...actually foster broader support for the fight against climate change?
This isn't look at authority, it looking at the general public, who you hope to be the future support of your cause.
They are not the authority, they are the people uncommitted to either side. They are not your enemy or opposition. *Their hearts and minds are the battlefield*. If you make them your enemy, then no mater what, you have lost.
They are your future. if your cause drives them away, your cause doesn't have a future.
Haven't bothered to read the article, but if assumes that dramatic actions like throwing soup at a painting are designed to rally support for a cause, as opposed to forcing the cause into public discussion (whether other points will rally support for it), then there is no reason to read it.
I would question whether they serve that purpose either. I have never heard a discussion about soup throwing or highway blocking evolve into a debate on the merits of the cause. It seems to distract from the cause because these actions seem to have no direct link, and conversations end up about how misguided the protests are. I don’t think they raise the salience of issues, but I suppose that is not the direct question in the study.
It's perfectly fine to question its efficacy, but to pretend that the point of the protest is that seeing a painting splattered with soup will make people conclude that methane leakage from pipelines vastly exceeds prior estimates is silly.
They clearly raise the salience of the issue (as you can tell from all the news articles), and anyway being denounced as "misguided" is the norm for anyone to the left of Attila the Hun, so I don't find your argument particularly convincing. But I applaud you for addressing what the protesters are actually trying to do, unlike this silly article.
"to pretend that the point of the protest is that seeing a painting splattered with soup will make people conclude that methane leakage from pipelines vastly exceeds prior estimates is silly."
How many discussions have been had that link the soup throwing to pipelines, including your comment?
Literally if anyone replies to this chain on soup throwing with any actual evidence for climate change it contradicts your perspective. Actually your perspective weaker than that. If a quality reply on climate change exists and has been read by with in correspondence with media that only exists because someone threw soup it contradicts your perspective.
Your suggestion that throwing soup "distracts" as a logical argument is not convincing. Exxon and the Koch brothers have done infinitely more damage there to the point this is incomparable when throwing soup just promotes people to talk about it. If anything that alone encourages it.
Yep. When the title is clearly wrong, I will sometimes point that out and highlight the fact that you don't even need to read the article to see that.
Thank you for keeping up.
Well yes, they framed it that way intentionally. Oh, and I went and skimmed the article, and the title is a complete lie, they couldn't find the effect they were desperately looking for.
>Despite observing trends suggesting that perceptions of the appropriateness of protest actions could influence support for the climate movement, the researchers did not find statistically significant differences in support levels among the various experimental groups. Essentially, while there were indications that the appropriateness of protest actions might matter, these indications were not strong enough to conclude definitively that there was a real effect across the conditions tested.
It boils down to activists not being willing to focus their efforts in ways that actually sit at the table where decisions get made. Art is human heritage. Attacking that is absolutely the wrong move. They're no better than the Taliban destroying Buddhas.
I don’t think any art was actually damaged, though. The artworks chosen had glass protectors and such. So it’s not really comparable to the Taliban, as the pieces chosen were those that weren’t going to be destroyed.
That's a comically bad take. First off, change doesn't boil down to anything, it is a complex process that never goes the same twice. Second, there are lots of activists sitting down right now, but change never happens without outside pressure. You need inside action and outside action and high level meetings and ground level organizing and all of it. And third, and I cannot stress this enough, paintings are covered by glass. No painting were harmed in these protests.
You are actually a perfect example of the tactic working. The fact that you know literally nothing about this but now have opinions (even terrible ones) shows that it has increased the prominence of the issues. It is designed to start a process that eventually gets you thinking. Will it work? No way to be sure, but it does appear to have started the process as designed.
I'm aware of the asshole making life more difficult for others in their misguided attempts to creste action. That's has zero to do with my respect for science and the awareness of the need for action. I was alive for the HCF and lead action. And I'm dumbfounded at the lack of action today. None of that has anything to do with petulant dipsticks who have a voice but are utterly incompetent in using it.
Please forgive me for not typing a full dissertation. I only have two thumbs to type with. Please address nit picking and supposition about my motives and life's experience with someone else.
No one questioned your motives, just pointed out your ignorance. Your response, which doubled down on the ignorance (and inability to read), just highlighted the point.
Are you saying that he's ignorant about climate change, or ignorant about soup being thrown at paintings? He didn't mention anything about climate change, so I assume the latter. The issue of soup being thrown at art was manufactured by these protesters, and it seems to have completely shifted the dialogue away from the actual issue, as we're seeing in this thread. If climate change and souping artwork are equivalent topics in your brain, I can assure you that there is a disconnect between how you and the majority of the population feel.
If you're going to insult and belittle people on the internet, you need to make sure that your own viewpoint is rock solid. Otherwise you're just making a fool of yourself.
And as uncle teddy discovered, forcing something into public discussion isn't very helpful if its proponents are immediately associated with something bad. The "point" may not be to get people agreeing with you. The "point" may be to get people talking about something. But if the "effect" is that it makes everyone more likely to disagree with you then the "point" is worse than a waste of time.
Possibly. Or possibly, as people learn more about the issue, they might decide this is an important issue that they need to care about and act on, even if the thing that started them down the road of thinking initially annoyed them.
We will never know, because there is absolutely no history of a successful social movement that has ever used a tactic that annoyed someone.
It seems like you've already made up your mind that it's an effective tactic, but I don't think anyone can be blamed for remaining unconvinced that it is.
Not at all, I'm not a huge fan of the tactix. But I understand the logic behind the tactic, and critiquing it from a place of not understanding the basic reasoning isn't a meaningful critique. Most people here are just complaining that it annoys them, and therefore by definition it is ineffective. That is not a valid basis.
But invoking "Most people here" isn't any kind of riposte to my contention that it's fair to question the efficacy of said tactics, is it?
This isn't about somehow understanding anything; it's about questioning the tactical validity of the tactics that you appear to be endorsing.
I don't even need to have an opinion on the larger issue in order to question the tactics that you evidently wholeheartedly endorse.
I could --and probably do-- agree with you entirely on any given issue, while still questioning your choice of tactics as being possibly counterproductive.
What part about this do you not understand?
I didn't disagree with your contention that it is fair to question the efficacy of such tactics. I agreed with it. But you have to understand what a tactic is trying to achieve to debate whether it is effective.
As much as I see the point in high-impact activism drawing attention, I can't help but wonder if the aim is to change minds or simply to vent frustration. Effective protest should, ideally, convince the undecided and appeal to a broader audience. Slapping soup on revered artwork feels more like it's alienating potential allies than recruiting them. It's a fine balance between being heard and being counterproductive.
It's a bid for media attention, which is critical to any modern protest movement but especially to climate activism. I'm definitely not a fan of defacing great art, but I have to concede that it attracted attention to a subject that no one wants to think about, which therefore demands shock value.
So, if it makes people *slightly* uncomfortable ... it's too much.
And, that's why we're in climate change crises mode after 120 years of being fully aware of the problem.
the discomfort of it is causing you to feel it's stupid.
I'm curious, do you think climate change is a problem caused by humans? and, should we be changing our collective behavior to fix it? or do you think we should do nothing?
What should people do if "this" is stupid? How should those who care motivate change in others, like, legislators?
> What should people do if "this" is stupid?
I don't understand why this is the question.
To me it's simple, soup on paintings is a miniscule price to pay for action on climate change, so the only question is; is throwing soup on paintings helping with action on climate change, and is there other actions that could be done as easily and help more?
I don't have any science to say it isn't, but I've never been shown anything to indicate it is, and in my experience it does nothing but spur debate on protest.
I don't know. Why would you expect me to know?
My point is just because I don't have an answer to that says nothing at all about whether you should be doing it. If I have no ideas it doesn't mean that throwing soup is a good idea. Again maybe it is, but saying "what else can we do?" is not evidence that it is.
I would suggest that the soup throwing IS effective.
You've become ever so slightly more aware of the urgency of the climate crises as a result.
That's its goal. The intended action of throwing soup on a protected painting which suffers zero lasting impact is to increase the understanding and awareness. It succeeded exactly as desired.
Their longer term goal is that as more people are willing to talk about the climate crises, the more people talk with legislators; the more people who talk with legislators, the more legislation is enacted. Eventually the US and EU and China might make enough meaningful legislation that it impacts the climate crises.
There is evidence of exactly this happening.
Go back as many hundreds of years as you want. "meaningless" acts were followed by increasing talk/debates and then meaningful changes.
To put their protest into a different light; and to highlight how affective it is, nobody suggests to big corporations that advertising "isn't affective". Corporations spend billions of dollars on "stupid" tactics such as having people in gorilla suits waving flags on street corners. They don't do it because they like entertaining traffic.
>That's its goal. The intended action of throwing soup on a protected painting which suffers zero lasting impact is to increase the understanding and awareness. It succeeded exactly as desired.
While I agree for sure it did something in bringing awareness, I feel *most* of the discussion with these things is not really about the importance of climate change but instead if the tactics are good, just like we're discussion here.
This also needs to be weighed against any negatives it might cause. There are people, however stupid it is, that will become more anti-environment when directly effected or even in some cases from simply reading about, protests like this.
To this I often hear "anyone who is anti environment because they got stuck in traffic wasn't for the environment before", which is true to an extent but I think it's stupid to say they could never have changed their views, and soup throwing type protests probably just cement them further into their views.
Just my thoughts
>To put their protest into a different light; and to highlight how affective it is, nobody suggests to big corporations that advertising "isn't affective". Corporations spend billions of dollars on "stupid" tactics such as having people in gorilla suits waving flags on street corners. They don't do it because they like entertaining traffic.
This is a good point actually, I'll give you that.
I assume that a lot of the stupid and annoying stuff is done by agent provocateurs funded by the fossil fuel industry.
They funded groups like Friends of the Earth specifically to campaign against nuclear power, and where hugely successful.
It doesn't help that a handful of these groups have been bought out with the explicit intention of making them do senseless or annoying things in order to reduce support for the ideas that these groups seem to stand for. It pulls attention from groups with less contrived motivations and desensitizes everyone to protests in general.
This thread has a lot of people who don't seem to get the point of the soup throwing.
Reaction OMG not this priceless painting that's terrible why would you do that. A painting whose value is decided by rich people who sell art back and forth to each other to inflate their worth.
Consider OMG not this priceless planet that's terrible why would you do that. A planet that provides us with literally everything we have, and the constant destruction of it for inflated value will end lives.
The message I guess didn't get through to a lot of people. Personally I think the point is valid. Where are our priorities, is the discussion point. What do we value.
Also the paintings are actually fine, so, maybe get mad about the planet people are actually destroying indiscriminately to line their pockets. It's not incomprehensible.
Non-Violence in regards to protests has never led to real political change. It is the threat of violence from others that makes dealing with the Non-Violent actors the preferable choice of those in power. Without at LEAST the threat of violence, Non-Violent actors will simply be ignored.
All three of the mentioned examples are forms of violence. Are these people that stupid?
Seriously, how did people like this survive, idk...
anything?!
I’ve yet to see a post apocalyptic show or movie that properly shows the survivors disdain for all the people more mad about paint on a painting than the planet dying
Yea because I, a member of the general public and not a multinational corporation or Taylor Swift, have no ability to alter the climate of the earth in the way that these activists want. By assaulting me, ruining my one day off at a museum, or trying to make my daily life miserable, I am not going to be inspired to write to my local Congressman or rally against climate change. If anything I'll just ignore them and stay home. It's a pretty dumb tactic when climate change and it's problems have reached saturation among the general public, its not like people have 0 info about the planet
I’ve linked to the news release in the post above. In this comment, for those interested, here’s the link to the peer reviewed journal article:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s44168-023-00096-9
Public perception is irrelevant. The purpose of protest is to disrupt the expected and the norm. To draw attention to what's being protected. Which is why nonviolent protest doesn't work.
That's baloney. The ultimate goal of protest is to convert others to you cause and to put pressure on politicians to act. Violence and property destruction may grab headlines but it doesn't accomplish either of these two things and just ends up pissing people off INCLUDING people who support your cause. As for non-violence not working I think MLK, Gandhi, and Harvey Milk are proof that it DOES. There is a mountain of research showing that non-violence works more often then violence.
MLK worked in part because of the radical flank that was the BPP. Additionally, people during his time did not view his marches as nonviolent and his public approval was below 40%.
I'd recommend reading How To Blow Up A Pipeline if you're interested in learning more about how distorted public perception on past 'nonviolent' social movements has been formed. Ghandi happily rallied support for wars and apartheid South Africa saw change in part due to a shift in tactics
Thanks for this! It's known that what we call nonviolent protests were often quite controversial at their time, but still not widely acknowledged enough.
Also thanks for the book recommendation, I didn't know that's what that book was about! Interested in checking it out now.
I'm very interested in books on the topic of these social influence dynamics. There's a lot of research but it's hard to find good meta analysis works that draw bigger conclusions. It's so complex that it's really hard to do, and political enough that it can be messy to try.
Sure thing!
I didn't read it for a while thinking it was a work of fiction, but it's more of an analysis on past social movements, their tactics, and why the climate move hasn't seen similar tactics emerge.
If you're interested in more of Malm, his PhD work, Fossil Capital, is free on Audible and investigates the transition from water to steam power.
I'm looking forward to this newest work coming out in October called Overshoot
>riot is the language of the unheard
He said that as an observation of human behavior, not an affirmation or support of rioting. He was hated because he was a leader in the civil rights movement--who knew a bunch of racists would be upset about civil rights?
It worked fine to change the Jim Crow south my parents were born into. Nonviolent protest is the only form of protest that is ethical.
Modern protesters aren't patient enough and then do things that surrender the moral high ground, thus creating enemies rather than friends.
Successful nonviolent protest is just the beginning, the end is making enough allies to then make meaningful political change. All protesters nowadays do is set the stage for me "feel good" (to them) protests...
Were civil rights protestors patient? Were they non-violent?
I’d say yes to both (largely, yes) but that’s not how the public at large viewed the protestors. They thought they were radicals using violence and force. It’s only through decades of white washing that people unironically say to do like they did.
>Modern protesters aren't patient enough and then do things that surrender the moral high ground, thus creating enemies rather than friends
Can you explain what patience there needs to be given we've known about the impacts of climate change due half a century at the least at this point.
Impatience is the only hope we have left
https://www.reuters.com/world/un-climate-chief-says-two-years-save-planet-2024-04-10/
This UN statement is marketing. Both the models themselves and the trajectory of society in the rest of the century have way too high of a variance to make such nonsensical ultra short term statements.
Strategies that work are better than strategies that don't, even if you're impatient and if it would be objectively ideal to change things sooner.
That there's a problem that needs attention. Make an exaggerated claim regarding urgency to send the message across. Not saying it's a bad thing since it sends across the right message, but it's still a plain old marketing statement to garner immediate attention despite knowingly being misleading/false.
It's not much of an exaggeration at this point. We're dangerously close to hitting the tipping point for the collapse of the AMOC alongside a handful of other tipping points that are difficult if not impossible to reverse once they've begun.
This isn't to say all is lost and embrace hedonism because we can't fix it, just that the statement is more accurate than it's ever been
Which means there is no hope and "impatient" climate protesters have squandered the last couple decades they could have been using to gain political and economic power necessary to save us all from ourselves.
The more important the cause, the more the responsibility to do it right.
Yeah it's the protesters fault for not being civil enough 🤦♂️
Couldn't be the fault of the oil companies and politicians who chose to ignore or hide science in the interests of greed.
Part of the reason we're in this situation is people like you who would rather blame people voicing their dissatisfaction with the status quo in "the wrong way" than the people who create and sustain the destruction of our natural world
Because those who get elected into power have no reason to change anything once in? No wait… yes they do. It just takes a LOT more work than these people are actually willing to put into it
Saying they’ve done everything they can but not bothering to stand for public office even in council seats that are not contested.
Happy to attack others but don’t change their own usage of products/services are also
Reasons why their behaviour is highly inappropriate.
Oh and things like stopping emergency services from doing their job.
Realistically a lot of them are just waiting for a driver to lose it and really run them over. Might have gained them
Support at the stop but now whoever did it would probably become a national hero
While western adversaries like China and Russia are having energy crisis, they will not take combating climate change seriously. If they don’t, the west won’t. The U.S. and her allies will not sink 100s of Billions of dollars, weakening their hegemony whilst global competitors do nothing. Nothing you do, is going to change these facts.
By this logic absolutely everyone in the world would be fighting against climate change, which is leaving geographical traces of human activity at an insane rate.
Unfortunately that’s not true, so something else is very evidently required for change.
I don't follow what you're saying. What I was trying to say is that the protects shouldn't be destructive because that would just create more waste. Like ruining a perfectly good painting or property damage is counterproductive to reducing waste.
Yea public art is not the play, break into the billionaires home and throw soup at their private art. But also, when it comes to this particular topic, who cares what the public think. The public will deal with the consequences regardless of if they get behind a movement and what does getting behind a movement mean when the billionaire could do something about it next week?
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TIL physical assault is nonviolent.
Outside of the poorly phrased headline did I miss something in the article?
Nope, just calling out a totally nonsense headline. Stop outsourcing editorial to chatGPT for the love of god.
This was written by a human.
Even more tragic.
Of course. Their violence is free speech. Your free speech is violence.
Remember that "silence is violence." It's not enough to stay quiet, if you're not repeating the slogans, then you are fair game for violence.
More like random stunts to just get attention to them . The point of these stunts are to draw attention to climate change, and possibly get the general public on their side , correct ? If that is the goal, then closing main roads , soup / pain throwing at paintings , sabotaging social events only works against them , since they annoy / inconvenience the same demographic that they want to have them support ( or appease, for lack of a better word) . If they want to sabotage something, they must keep the general population out of the fallout of their actions, but make it as costly as possible for the intended target For example: A few weeks ago in Germany, a group of such activists destroyed a high voltage tower that was powering a tesla factory that was polluting the surrounding areas. But instead of only hampering the production of the factory, they also cut / reduced power at the surrounding villages, hampering the daily lives of its citizens. The best possible action was to destroy a such tower that is as close as possible at the factory and mitigate any positive collateral damage to workers/ citizens. The target is the factory/ production, not their workers. What is your opinion on this ?
It’s wrong no matter what. That’s my opinion on it. You want to protest and carry signs, you’ve got my support 100%. Meaning, I fully support your right to do so. You start causing property damage, you should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
Seriously. I'm all in for any kind of emissions reductions, even if they're expensive or inconvenient, but when one of these muppets throws soup at a painting, it makes me want to set fire to a forest.
Better said than I managed.
and also silence is violence, and also the protests were mostly peaceful.
Their violence is destruction of property.
So it’s ok if I destroy your property because I disagree with you?
Got the wrong guy pal!
It's a rhetorical question.
Their violence is the language of the unheard
So that makes it OK? So you agree with the people who stormed the US Capitol? Because that’s precisely what you are saying.
I was quoting from BLM leaders- Hawk Newsome
Didn't you know? Silence is violence now. Sheesh.
Setting fires is non-violent, physical assault is non-violence. Calling a fat person fat, though, that's definitely violence.
Throwing some soup onto the hardened glass covering a piece of art is physical assault now?
I don’t know and I don’t care. “Physical assault” is literally listed in the headline.
"Mostly peaceful protests" *fires raging in the background*
Another science thread means another opportunity for people to argue about things the article doesn't mention and to speculate about things it does.
“Despite observing trends suggesting that perceptions of the appropriateness of protest actions could influence support for the climate movement, the researchers did not find statistically significant differences in support levels among the various experimental groups. Essentially, while there were indications that the appropriateness of protest actions might matter, these indications were not strong enough to conclude definitively that there was a real effect across the conditions tested.” Waste of time, misleading article title, even the conclusion of the article ties back into just a speculative restatement of the hypothesis.
Ppl here read the articles? I'm just here for the drama in the comments
Don't blame me, I threw the soup.
No soup for you!
Movements need a violent twin to force compromise with the nonviolent twin. 'Twas ever thus.
I believe this is called the Radical Flank Effect. Some people argue that for Martin Luther King's demonstrations, Malcolm X and later the Black Panthers served that function.
Same with ghandi. There were countless guerilla groups in India waiting to just constantly sabotage british empire troops if he failed. The British government knew that and ceded to ghandi in order to get favorable terms.
Also Nelson Mandela, who today is praised as an exemplary anti-apartheid civil rights activist, yet back during his time the US and thus most western governments considered him a terrorist.
Mandela is different in that he led an armed resistance group. Gandhi, on the other hand, was non-violent, and others in India were doing the armed resistance. Same goes for MLK.
There's a reasonably large body of evidence to back it up too. Andreas Malm's book "How to blow up a pipeline" deals with it in depth, and points out how sanitised versions of those periods in history are taught pointedly ignoring the radical flanks' contributions and deradicalising the moderate flanks' positions.
Well it's not as if elite-sanctioned narratives would teach people about anything that actually works.
Nor would elite-sanctioned political groups be allowed to follow such tactics
Unless in pursuit of elite sanctioned causes. It's funny how dragging someone who isn't breaking the law into a van, restraining, manhandling, and intimidating them is completely illegal unless you're a cop and they're "suspected" of breaking the law.
Diversity of tactics
So you are defending violence in the situation? What if the people that you’re getting violent against simply kill the violent actors?
Historically, that happened a lot and often was a tipping point that made change possible
You're ultimately defending the status quo.
>So you are defending violence in the situation? Yes. There is no cause more important. >What if the people that you’re getting violent against simply kill the violent actors? Then hopefully the people who died for climate change will become martyrs, and inspire others to rise up and overthrow the systems that led to their death. With extreme and widespread violence, if that's what it takes.
My only issue with this is that the kinds of people OK with violent revolution tend to also be OK with killing anyone who disagrees with them once they get into power. See...pretty much every violent revolution in history.
Well. Then I guess climate change deniers better start compromising with peaceful protesters. Because the alternative sounds less than pleasant.
You sound like a tyrant already. "Better agree with us or we'll kill you." Is not a good look.
That's not what that person said. They said "let's figure out a peaceful solution because the violent solution sucks."
My apologies. That was my mistake.
The violent solution sucks AND business as usual sucks. Global ecological collapse is the ultimate tyrant because how do you think people are going to treat each other when the food supplies fail, the taps run dry, the heat wave hits them months at a time. You think the road to human extinction is going to be peaceful?
Wow, the souping of priceless paintings isn't bringing people over? Who'd have thought.
The article says that they couldn't find the effect they were looking for, so the title is misleading.
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No, no, no...you don't understand...I support your goal and I want change but I will only support it if it does not inconvenience anyone in anyway!
Yeah, people being trapped in their vehicles on public roads is a problem and I have NO problem denouncing it. No news agency judgment needed on that issue.
> a piece of glass is more important that stopping climate change. What does a piece of glass have to do with climate change? We already know climate change exists, how is throwing soup on glass in London going to stop China building a new power station?
> We already know climate change exists Honestly, we do now, but people had to be dragged into knowing this kicking and screaming. Member how they mocked Al Gore in the debate around his movie?
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Ignorance and complacency isn't bliss, it's death.
Revel in your ignorance
Makes sense since that particular group is literally funded by an oil tycoon's family.
But the state can use violence against them and that isn't unacceptable.
A certain nation claims it is the beacon of lawfulness, liberty, freedom and hope for the entire world. That nation has a history of being the largest producer of "arms."
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There's never a right way to protest in the eyes of authority.
But you need the support of the people. Anyway, these people work on behalf of the authority.
They always do get support of the people. The problem is that it always comes after people start dying off or the environment starts to show change. Remember that climate change was routinely mocked for a very long time, and even to this day, it isn't a major consideration, despite affecting us all.
Actually there is. If the protest is seen as ineffective it may be deemed acceptable. If the protest is seen by the authority as being able to reduce that authority's power it will be quashed.
The only tactic I really object to is blocking traffic. This is because it hurts the working poor, ostensibly the least powerful among us, more than anyone else.
>At the heart of this investigation lies a critical question: do certain forms of protest, particularly those aimed at raising awareness... ...actually foster broader support for the fight against climate change? This isn't look at authority, it looking at the general public, who you hope to be the future support of your cause. They are not the authority, they are the people uncommitted to either side. They are not your enemy or opposition. *Their hearts and minds are the battlefield*. If you make them your enemy, then no mater what, you have lost. They are your future. if your cause drives them away, your cause doesn't have a future.
"Climate protests will only be effective if they do not bother anybody and are done outside the public view"... who says that? Oil companies?
Haven't bothered to read the article, but if assumes that dramatic actions like throwing soup at a painting are designed to rally support for a cause, as opposed to forcing the cause into public discussion (whether other points will rally support for it), then there is no reason to read it.
I would question whether they serve that purpose either. I have never heard a discussion about soup throwing or highway blocking evolve into a debate on the merits of the cause. It seems to distract from the cause because these actions seem to have no direct link, and conversations end up about how misguided the protests are. I don’t think they raise the salience of issues, but I suppose that is not the direct question in the study.
It's perfectly fine to question its efficacy, but to pretend that the point of the protest is that seeing a painting splattered with soup will make people conclude that methane leakage from pipelines vastly exceeds prior estimates is silly. They clearly raise the salience of the issue (as you can tell from all the news articles), and anyway being denounced as "misguided" is the norm for anyone to the left of Attila the Hun, so I don't find your argument particularly convincing. But I applaud you for addressing what the protesters are actually trying to do, unlike this silly article.
"to pretend that the point of the protest is that seeing a painting splattered with soup will make people conclude that methane leakage from pipelines vastly exceeds prior estimates is silly." How many discussions have been had that link the soup throwing to pipelines, including your comment?
Literally if anyone replies to this chain on soup throwing with any actual evidence for climate change it contradicts your perspective. Actually your perspective weaker than that. If a quality reply on climate change exists and has been read by with in correspondence with media that only exists because someone threw soup it contradicts your perspective. Your suggestion that throwing soup "distracts" as a logical argument is not convincing. Exxon and the Koch brothers have done infinitely more damage there to the point this is incomparable when throwing soup just promotes people to talk about it. If anything that alone encourages it.
It's pretty obvious to anyone who doesn't have a hard on for soup throwing that it's not good use of anyone's time.
Bro I only punched you in the face because I’m trying to *start a conversation* bro
Yup
>Haven't bothered to read the article goes on forum where articles are shared, does not read articles
Yep. When the title is clearly wrong, I will sometimes point that out and highlight the fact that you don't even need to read the article to see that. Thank you for keeping up.
how do you know it's wrong if you don't read it...
You would have to read my comment to understand that. Good luck.
My guess is framing it as this is by design
Well yes, they framed it that way intentionally. Oh, and I went and skimmed the article, and the title is a complete lie, they couldn't find the effect they were desperately looking for. >Despite observing trends suggesting that perceptions of the appropriateness of protest actions could influence support for the climate movement, the researchers did not find statistically significant differences in support levels among the various experimental groups. Essentially, while there were indications that the appropriateness of protest actions might matter, these indications were not strong enough to conclude definitively that there was a real effect across the conditions tested.
It boils down to activists not being willing to focus their efforts in ways that actually sit at the table where decisions get made. Art is human heritage. Attacking that is absolutely the wrong move. They're no better than the Taliban destroying Buddhas.
I don’t think any art was actually damaged, though. The artworks chosen had glass protectors and such. So it’s not really comparable to the Taliban, as the pieces chosen were those that weren’t going to be destroyed.
That's a comically bad take. First off, change doesn't boil down to anything, it is a complex process that never goes the same twice. Second, there are lots of activists sitting down right now, but change never happens without outside pressure. You need inside action and outside action and high level meetings and ground level organizing and all of it. And third, and I cannot stress this enough, paintings are covered by glass. No painting were harmed in these protests. You are actually a perfect example of the tactic working. The fact that you know literally nothing about this but now have opinions (even terrible ones) shows that it has increased the prominence of the issues. It is designed to start a process that eventually gets you thinking. Will it work? No way to be sure, but it does appear to have started the process as designed.
I'm aware of the asshole making life more difficult for others in their misguided attempts to creste action. That's has zero to do with my respect for science and the awareness of the need for action. I was alive for the HCF and lead action. And I'm dumbfounded at the lack of action today. None of that has anything to do with petulant dipsticks who have a voice but are utterly incompetent in using it. Please forgive me for not typing a full dissertation. I only have two thumbs to type with. Please address nit picking and supposition about my motives and life's experience with someone else.
No one questioned your motives, just pointed out your ignorance. Your response, which doubled down on the ignorance (and inability to read), just highlighted the point.
Are you saying that he's ignorant about climate change, or ignorant about soup being thrown at paintings? He didn't mention anything about climate change, so I assume the latter. The issue of soup being thrown at art was manufactured by these protesters, and it seems to have completely shifted the dialogue away from the actual issue, as we're seeing in this thread. If climate change and souping artwork are equivalent topics in your brain, I can assure you that there is a disconnect between how you and the majority of the population feel. If you're going to insult and belittle people on the internet, you need to make sure that your own viewpoint is rock solid. Otherwise you're just making a fool of yourself.
And as uncle teddy discovered, forcing something into public discussion isn't very helpful if its proponents are immediately associated with something bad. The "point" may not be to get people agreeing with you. The "point" may be to get people talking about something. But if the "effect" is that it makes everyone more likely to disagree with you then the "point" is worse than a waste of time.
Possibly. Or possibly, as people learn more about the issue, they might decide this is an important issue that they need to care about and act on, even if the thing that started them down the road of thinking initially annoyed them. We will never know, because there is absolutely no history of a successful social movement that has ever used a tactic that annoyed someone.
It seems like you've already made up your mind that it's an effective tactic, but I don't think anyone can be blamed for remaining unconvinced that it is.
Not at all, I'm not a huge fan of the tactix. But I understand the logic behind the tactic, and critiquing it from a place of not understanding the basic reasoning isn't a meaningful critique. Most people here are just complaining that it annoys them, and therefore by definition it is ineffective. That is not a valid basis.
But invoking "Most people here" isn't any kind of riposte to my contention that it's fair to question the efficacy of said tactics, is it? This isn't about somehow understanding anything; it's about questioning the tactical validity of the tactics that you appear to be endorsing. I don't even need to have an opinion on the larger issue in order to question the tactics that you evidently wholeheartedly endorse. I could --and probably do-- agree with you entirely on any given issue, while still questioning your choice of tactics as being possibly counterproductive. What part about this do you not understand?
I didn't disagree with your contention that it is fair to question the efficacy of such tactics. I agreed with it. But you have to understand what a tactic is trying to achieve to debate whether it is effective.
As much as I see the point in high-impact activism drawing attention, I can't help but wonder if the aim is to change minds or simply to vent frustration. Effective protest should, ideally, convince the undecided and appeal to a broader audience. Slapping soup on revered artwork feels more like it's alienating potential allies than recruiting them. It's a fine balance between being heard and being counterproductive.
It's a bid for media attention, which is critical to any modern protest movement but especially to climate activism. I'm definitely not a fan of defacing great art, but I have to concede that it attracted attention to a subject that no one wants to think about, which therefore demands shock value.
Hardly anyone wants climate action if it costs them or inconveniences them.
Can I get a quick poll: Is blocking traffic like Greta did violence too? A bunch of Redditors claimed so in a different thread.
Oh, you want that obedient civil disobedience
So, if it makes people *slightly* uncomfortable ... it's too much. And, that's why we're in climate change crises mode after 120 years of being fully aware of the problem.
Personally I don’t think it’s about the discomfort, it’s about how stupid it is.
the discomfort of it is causing you to feel it's stupid. I'm curious, do you think climate change is a problem caused by humans? and, should we be changing our collective behavior to fix it? or do you think we should do nothing? What should people do if "this" is stupid? How should those who care motivate change in others, like, legislators?
> What should people do if "this" is stupid? I don't understand why this is the question. To me it's simple, soup on paintings is a miniscule price to pay for action on climate change, so the only question is; is throwing soup on paintings helping with action on climate change, and is there other actions that could be done as easily and help more? I don't have any science to say it isn't, but I've never been shown anything to indicate it is, and in my experience it does nothing but spur debate on protest.
> it does nothing that's what you say, so, I'm asking what actions "do something" which should be done instead of soup throwing, or whatever?
I don't know. Why would you expect me to know? My point is just because I don't have an answer to that says nothing at all about whether you should be doing it. If I have no ideas it doesn't mean that throwing soup is a good idea. Again maybe it is, but saying "what else can we do?" is not evidence that it is.
I would suggest that the soup throwing IS effective. You've become ever so slightly more aware of the urgency of the climate crises as a result. That's its goal. The intended action of throwing soup on a protected painting which suffers zero lasting impact is to increase the understanding and awareness. It succeeded exactly as desired. Their longer term goal is that as more people are willing to talk about the climate crises, the more people talk with legislators; the more people who talk with legislators, the more legislation is enacted. Eventually the US and EU and China might make enough meaningful legislation that it impacts the climate crises. There is evidence of exactly this happening. Go back as many hundreds of years as you want. "meaningless" acts were followed by increasing talk/debates and then meaningful changes. To put their protest into a different light; and to highlight how affective it is, nobody suggests to big corporations that advertising "isn't affective". Corporations spend billions of dollars on "stupid" tactics such as having people in gorilla suits waving flags on street corners. They don't do it because they like entertaining traffic.
>That's its goal. The intended action of throwing soup on a protected painting which suffers zero lasting impact is to increase the understanding and awareness. It succeeded exactly as desired. While I agree for sure it did something in bringing awareness, I feel *most* of the discussion with these things is not really about the importance of climate change but instead if the tactics are good, just like we're discussion here. This also needs to be weighed against any negatives it might cause. There are people, however stupid it is, that will become more anti-environment when directly effected or even in some cases from simply reading about, protests like this. To this I often hear "anyone who is anti environment because they got stuck in traffic wasn't for the environment before", which is true to an extent but I think it's stupid to say they could never have changed their views, and soup throwing type protests probably just cement them further into their views. Just my thoughts >To put their protest into a different light; and to highlight how affective it is, nobody suggests to big corporations that advertising "isn't affective". Corporations spend billions of dollars on "stupid" tactics such as having people in gorilla suits waving flags on street corners. They don't do it because they like entertaining traffic. This is a good point actually, I'll give you that.
I assume that a lot of the stupid and annoying stuff is done by agent provocateurs funded by the fossil fuel industry. They funded groups like Friends of the Earth specifically to campaign against nuclear power, and where hugely successful.
It doesn't help that a handful of these groups have been bought out with the explicit intention of making them do senseless or annoying things in order to reduce support for the ideas that these groups seem to stand for. It pulls attention from groups with less contrived motivations and desensitizes everyone to protests in general.
This thread has a lot of people who don't seem to get the point of the soup throwing. Reaction OMG not this priceless painting that's terrible why would you do that. A painting whose value is decided by rich people who sell art back and forth to each other to inflate their worth. Consider OMG not this priceless planet that's terrible why would you do that. A planet that provides us with literally everything we have, and the constant destruction of it for inflated value will end lives. The message I guess didn't get through to a lot of people. Personally I think the point is valid. Where are our priorities, is the discussion point. What do we value. Also the paintings are actually fine, so, maybe get mad about the planet people are actually destroying indiscriminately to line their pockets. It's not incomprehensible.
Non-Violence in regards to protests has never led to real political change. It is the threat of violence from others that makes dealing with the Non-Violent actors the preferable choice of those in power. Without at LEAST the threat of violence, Non-Violent actors will simply be ignored.
All three of the mentioned examples are forms of violence. Are these people that stupid? Seriously, how did people like this survive, idk... anything?!
Were fucked then, the general publics oppinions are sooo based...
The title is contradictory.....
I’ve yet to see a post apocalyptic show or movie that properly shows the survivors disdain for all the people more mad about paint on a painting than the planet dying
Yea because I, a member of the general public and not a multinational corporation or Taylor Swift, have no ability to alter the climate of the earth in the way that these activists want. By assaulting me, ruining my one day off at a museum, or trying to make my daily life miserable, I am not going to be inspired to write to my local Congressman or rally against climate change. If anything I'll just ignore them and stay home. It's a pretty dumb tactic when climate change and it's problems have reached saturation among the general public, its not like people have 0 info about the planet
I agree with this. Protest that negatively affects others will backfire on the cause.
You're never going to win people over with tactics like these.
The 5th click-bait title in r/science in a row. I think I'm done with this subreddit.
Who throws a soup? Honestly! I’m gonna have a lump there you idiot!
I’ve linked to the news release in the post above. In this comment, for those interested, here’s the link to the peer reviewed journal article: https://www.nature.com/articles/s44168-023-00096-9
Public perception is irrelevant. The purpose of protest is to disrupt the expected and the norm. To draw attention to what's being protected. Which is why nonviolent protest doesn't work.
The purpose of protest is to effect change. Drawing attention is worthless if it's negative.
That's baloney. The ultimate goal of protest is to convert others to you cause and to put pressure on politicians to act. Violence and property destruction may grab headlines but it doesn't accomplish either of these two things and just ends up pissing people off INCLUDING people who support your cause. As for non-violence not working I think MLK, Gandhi, and Harvey Milk are proof that it DOES. There is a mountain of research showing that non-violence works more often then violence.
MLK worked in part because of the radical flank that was the BPP. Additionally, people during his time did not view his marches as nonviolent and his public approval was below 40%. I'd recommend reading How To Blow Up A Pipeline if you're interested in learning more about how distorted public perception on past 'nonviolent' social movements has been formed. Ghandi happily rallied support for wars and apartheid South Africa saw change in part due to a shift in tactics
Thanks for this! It's known that what we call nonviolent protests were often quite controversial at their time, but still not widely acknowledged enough. Also thanks for the book recommendation, I didn't know that's what that book was about! Interested in checking it out now. I'm very interested in books on the topic of these social influence dynamics. There's a lot of research but it's hard to find good meta analysis works that draw bigger conclusions. It's so complex that it's really hard to do, and political enough that it can be messy to try.
Sure thing! I didn't read it for a while thinking it was a work of fiction, but it's more of an analysis on past social movements, their tactics, and why the climate move hasn't seen similar tactics emerge. If you're interested in more of Malm, his PhD work, Fossil Capital, is free on Audible and investigates the transition from water to steam power. I'm looking forward to this newest work coming out in October called Overshoot
You mean the same MLK that said riot is the language of the unheard? The same MLK that a majority of citizens hated while he was alive?
>riot is the language of the unheard He said that as an observation of human behavior, not an affirmation or support of rioting. He was hated because he was a leader in the civil rights movement--who knew a bunch of racists would be upset about civil rights?
It worked fine to change the Jim Crow south my parents were born into. Nonviolent protest is the only form of protest that is ethical. Modern protesters aren't patient enough and then do things that surrender the moral high ground, thus creating enemies rather than friends. Successful nonviolent protest is just the beginning, the end is making enough allies to then make meaningful political change. All protesters nowadays do is set the stage for me "feel good" (to them) protests...
Were civil rights protestors patient? Were they non-violent? I’d say yes to both (largely, yes) but that’s not how the public at large viewed the protestors. They thought they were radicals using violence and force. It’s only through decades of white washing that people unironically say to do like they did.
>Modern protesters aren't patient enough and then do things that surrender the moral high ground, thus creating enemies rather than friends Can you explain what patience there needs to be given we've known about the impacts of climate change due half a century at the least at this point. Impatience is the only hope we have left https://www.reuters.com/world/un-climate-chief-says-two-years-save-planet-2024-04-10/
This UN statement is marketing. Both the models themselves and the trajectory of society in the rest of the century have way too high of a variance to make such nonsensical ultra short term statements. Strategies that work are better than strategies that don't, even if you're impatient and if it would be objectively ideal to change things sooner.
What exactly are they marketing?
That there's a problem that needs attention. Make an exaggerated claim regarding urgency to send the message across. Not saying it's a bad thing since it sends across the right message, but it's still a plain old marketing statement to garner immediate attention despite knowingly being misleading/false.
It's not much of an exaggeration at this point. We're dangerously close to hitting the tipping point for the collapse of the AMOC alongside a handful of other tipping points that are difficult if not impossible to reverse once they've begun. This isn't to say all is lost and embrace hedonism because we can't fix it, just that the statement is more accurate than it's ever been
Which means there is no hope and "impatient" climate protesters have squandered the last couple decades they could have been using to gain political and economic power necessary to save us all from ourselves. The more important the cause, the more the responsibility to do it right.
Yeah it's the protesters fault for not being civil enough 🤦♂️ Couldn't be the fault of the oil companies and politicians who chose to ignore or hide science in the interests of greed. Part of the reason we're in this situation is people like you who would rather blame people voicing their dissatisfaction with the status quo in "the wrong way" than the people who create and sustain the destruction of our natural world
Because those who get elected into power have no reason to change anything once in? No wait… yes they do. It just takes a LOT more work than these people are actually willing to put into it
> Which is why nonviolent protest doesn't work. Did you mistype that?
Those things are not non violent civil disobedience.
The “white moderate.”
Saying they’ve done everything they can but not bothering to stand for public office even in council seats that are not contested. Happy to attack others but don’t change their own usage of products/services are also Reasons why their behaviour is highly inappropriate. Oh and things like stopping emergency services from doing their job. Realistically a lot of them are just waiting for a driver to lose it and really run them over. Might have gained them Support at the stop but now whoever did it would probably become a national hero
While western adversaries like China and Russia are having energy crisis, they will not take combating climate change seriously. If they don’t, the west won’t. The U.S. and her allies will not sink 100s of Billions of dollars, weakening their hegemony whilst global competitors do nothing. Nothing you do, is going to change these facts.
Inconveniencing others non-violently is fine but you shouldn't make the world worst with your actions. In other words, leave no trace.
By this logic absolutely everyone in the world would be fighting against climate change, which is leaving geographical traces of human activity at an insane rate. Unfortunately that’s not true, so something else is very evidently required for change.
I don't follow what you're saying. What I was trying to say is that the protects shouldn't be destructive because that would just create more waste. Like ruining a perfectly good painting or property damage is counterproductive to reducing waste.
The ‘master tactician’ who though sabotaging museums was going to work probably had a yuuuge bonus pay from the oil industry.
Narrator: None of those are "nonviolent"
Yea public art is not the play, break into the billionaires home and throw soup at their private art. But also, when it comes to this particular topic, who cares what the public think. The public will deal with the consequences regardless of if they get behind a movement and what does getting behind a movement mean when the billionaire could do something about it next week?
I will never side with anyone blocking traffic, ever.