The libs love it, they're screaming yes queen and slay over a can of soup being thrown at a painting thats behind protective glass. But everyone who isn't a lib sees this is some kind of manufactured campaign. So what's the deal?
The libs love it, they're screaming yes queen and slay over a can of soup being thrown at a painting thats behind protective glass. But everyone who isn't a lib sees this is some kind of manufactured campaign. So what's the deal?
Climate activists have glued themselves to roads in Munich all summer. You can argue that this made international news and glueing themselves to roads didn't, but other German climate protests like the occupation of Hambach forest consistently made news for months, generated massive public support amongst locals losing their home to the mining companies, and were a royal pain in the ass for the country's biggest domestic energy supplier. They managed to halt the destruction of an old growth forest and expansion of a major coal excavation site for over a year. Sure, chuds were fuming about it, but libs could easily sympathize with the Hambi protests. They're much more torn on this thing.
This creates more spectacle, but the spectacle only "raises awareness" of a topic everybody already is aware of. There is a sizeable climate movement in Germany as well, organization has already happened. People can join mass protests, they can join existing militant orgs, they can join existing questionable orgs that focus on spectacle, too. If the point is to create new forms of protest because repression has caught up to older forms of protests, ok, that's a motive i can see merit in. But doing this for the sake of awareness is entirely pointless and regressive.
It is a form of protest, and it might be pointless, but I think calling it regressive is off base. One of the goals of activist groups is to spend as much time in the public eye as possible, all news is good news, and this isn't materially harming any of their previous efforts. XR was an Op because they encouraged members to turn themselves over to police, not because they craked windows and splashed billboards with red paint.
Chuds will always be mad, libs will always critisize and stand still. If you don't agree with it from a left perspective, than whatever but as far as I can see this isn't harming or encouraging harm to the movement. This was, for better or for worse, just a protest to bring awarness to something they care about.
Is there a point where being in the public eye starts to get diminishing returns? This is the first time I've heard about the Hambach forest occupation -- and yet with they were able to achieve concrete victories against mining and energy interests in the country. If it had broken into the news sphere on this side of the Atlantic, how much would that have moved the needle? My gut says, not much. Geographically concentrated support is just more useful than diffuse awareness. Local coverage lead to local support. The soup story has reached international audiences, but can it accomplish as much?
I think all movements are more powerful when the public isn't able to tune out. I also would have liked it to be more immediately impactful, but I guess we'll have to see if they channel this energy towards anything more useful.