Yesterday, two activists from an organization called Just Stop Oil threw soup at a glass-covered Van Gogh painting in the UK’s National Gallery. The painting is undamaged (although the frame was slightly) and it was back on display within hours, clearly a target chosen because of its protective glass. Nonetheless, for some reason this protest exploded online. My entire Twitter timeline was talking about it, and it has been written up in every major news outlet in both the UK and the US: The Guardian, the BBC, the NY Times, the LA Times, the Washington Post, etc.
Most of the reaction I saw—across the political spectrum—was commenters remarking on how bad and counterproductive they thought it was. Some of this had to do with people incorrectly assuming that the painting was damaged, but even after that information was widespread, outrage was the dominant perspective. There has also been some conspiracy theorizing because Just Stop Oil is funded by rich people, but that just makes it the same as nearly every other nonprofit with all the well-documented limitations that come with that.
Just Stop Oil emerged out of Extinction Rebellion, a justifiably controversial organization known for civil disobedience, and its stated purpose is to get the UK government to “immediately halt all future licensing and consents for the exploration, development and production of fossil fuels in the UK.” This is a fairly modest and reasonable demand given the state of the climate and ecological crises we are facing. But no matter how righteous the cause, people love scolding activists for protests. Inconveniencing or upsetting anyone is derided as counterproductive for persuading the public to your side.
This was basically a constant reaction to the 2020 uprisings against police violence. Such criticism is often made in bad faith from people who pretend they agree with the cause in theory but they (or an imagined public as a rhetorical stand-in) simply cannot countenance such transgressive, monocle-popping actions. But it is also sometimes made in good faith. For example, there have been many left critiques of the soup protest, including that it will turn people off to the cause or that it was simply useless.
Direct action as a tactic comes in many forms, but the purpose is usually either to disrupt an activity and/or garner attention. It is hard to do either of those things without annoying or angering some people. The soup protest was obviously aimed at attention, and by that metric it was wildly successful. However, I think raising awareness is generally overrated as an aim. Appealing to the wealthy and powerful people who are causing the problems in question is a dead end because of their material interests and the ideological blinders that come with them. And majority public support is not a prerequisite for meaningful political change; our problem is not a lack of awareness.
As the gap between the urgency of ecological crisis and ameliorative political action escalates—alongside and intertwined with social and political breakdown—people are going to feel more and more desperate and may increasingly take action in myriad ways that are good, bad, and (most likely) ambiguous. It is bizarre to get more outraged by damage—real or imagined—to inanimate objects—Van Goghs or otherwise—than the destruction of our biosphere and the overwhelming and unnecessary violence and exploitation that takes place in this world on a daily basis.
Ultimately, I do not think the soup protest (or similar actions) will have much effect, positive or negative. I would also advise against a strategy of getting arrested, which has serious costs in time, money, and entanglement with the legal system without a great theory of change. I think that direct action is most effective as part of a larger strategy connected to more durable forms of organizing which, in the long term, can transform our relationships to each other and the rest of the planet. While class traitors are welcome, it is unlikely that wealthy philanthropists will reliably fund this sort of activity that can actually redistribute power. So while not a conspiracy, certain tactics and strategies have more resources behind them than others, which favors (or disfavors) their deployment.
With that being said, it is important to always remember that we do not know what is going to work to transition off fossil fuels and build a just and sustainable society. A certain degree of humility is required alongside experimentation and rigorous evaluation, which arrogance erodes and forecloses on. Even tactics that at first glance seem ineffective could have ripple effects we do not anticipate, and there are a whole lot of fronts that we need to be fighting on. My hope is that people in groups big and small can collectively figure out how to best pool and channel resources, effort, and courage to do things that have never been done before in conditions that have never existed.