LA Times: Actually, Tossing Soup at Iconic Mona Lisa is Great Climate Crusade Messaging
I foresee more layoffs in the LA Times’ future.
The Los Angeles Times recently experienced a spate of layoffs, due to plummeting ad sales, weak subscription numbers, and (probably) woke editorial decision-making.
Now, a serious publication interested in enhanced readership and profitability might use this situation as an opportunity for self-reflection and course correction.
However, this is the LA Times, so it will double down. For example, the newspaper recently published an opinion piece from a University of Southern California assistant professor of environmental studies that gave the thumbs-up to the recent vandalism at the Louvre in Paris, France.
Shannon Gibson argues that these antics make less aggressive tactics more successful, as bureaucrats become more persuadable to enact climate cultist policies.
By combining radical forms of civil disobedience with more mainstream actions, such as lobbying and state-sanctioned demonstrations, activists not only grab the public’s attention, they make less aggressive tactics more acceptable and possibly more successful.
I study the role of disruptive politics and social movements in global climate policy and have chronicled the ebb, flow and dynamism of climate activism. With today’s political institutions largely focused on short-term desires over long-term planetary health, and global climate negotiations moving too slowly to meet the challenge, climate activists have been radically rethinking their tactics.
…Criticism of extreme activism often misses a crucial point: Public reaction isn’t necessarily the activists’ end goal. Often, their aim is to influence government and business decision-makers.
Objections to acts of climate activism such as the latest food fight at the Louvre are understandable but might miss the point. Protesters’ perceived madness is indeed method.
She really most be enjoying the European farmers protests, then because their activism may make decision-makers more willing to adopt policies that allow agriculturalists to grow the food and raise the livestock that people enjoy eating.
Now, it turns out Gibson is pretty proud of this piece:
Pretty proud to crank this out during week 2 of maternity leave…my first LA Times byline!
My take on #climatejustice civil disobedience and diversity of tactics in the climate fight:https://t.co/UDkr0KGMtA
— Shannon Gibson (@ProfSMGibson) February 1, 2024
However, there is no ability to comment directly on her X-post, as she limited comments to follows or mentions. How much respect is this piece receiving?
I noted that there were a quite a few quote-tweets, so I followed the trail.
When I checked, I realized their thoughts aligned with my own.
Apparently Shannon doesn’t know that attempting to deface art is NOT, by definition, civil disobedience.
Civil disobedience must be peaceful *and* the violation of unjust laws.
The people attacking art are just evil people doing evil things.https://t.co/gxuNnVEBs2 https://t.co/Lfeix2iRma
— Fr. John Naugle (@FatherNaugle) February 2, 2024
Why would a failing newspaper continue to print silly garbage like this? “Reporter” even lacks the integrity to allow comments on her posts. That is all you need to know – this is just silly propaganda. https://t.co/0sZhGcXglO
— John Q. Public (@JohnQuPublic) February 2, 2024
https://twitter.com/KaibaXBT/status/1753409224388813236
There are so may science-oriented challenges I could bring-up here as well:
- We are living an a geologic era of glacial expansions and retreats.
- Climate models are flawed.
- Statistics show that “the effect of man-made CO2 emissions does not appear to be sufficiently strong to cause systematic changes in the pattern of the temperature fluctuations.”
- Carbon dioxide has been 10 times higher than current levels, and life has still flourished on Earth.
But the point I want to conclude with is that it tuition at USC is $67,000 per year. At that price, students should get more from their education than woke activism dressed up as a “studies” program.
I foresee more layoffs in the LA Times‘ future.
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Comments
“Maternity leave?” Get with the program. Children emit lots of CO2. “Restrictions for thee, but not for me.” How could she? s
I was a critic of global climate change, but seeing soup being thrown upon a classic painting portraying the suppression of women under the historic heteropatriarchy has made me see the light, and I shall now devote my life to the cause.
…said nobody, ever.
Soup to Nuts
I imagine this is a Kliban reference?
https://kkfi.org/wp-content/uploads/soup2nuts.jpg
Kliban was a witty cartoonist… but it’s a common (if antique) English phrase meant as a metaphor to a complete banquet (first course to last course).
“By combining radical forms of civil disobedience with more mainstream actions, such as lobbying and state-sanctioned demonstrations, activists not only grab the public’s attention, they make less aggressive tactics more acceptable and possibly more successful.”
I don’t disagree with this statement, even though I dislike that it’s (probably) true. When lobbying, marching, etc. is the most aggressive action someone takes, it gets all the press and it’s dismissed. If there are more aggressive actions, those “take the heat” so to speak, and the lobbying and marching is seen as the sane and rational side of the protests.
It works the same way on the other side, when people do those events where they all open carry ARs at a rally on the state capitol steps, it distracts from the lobbying the NRA does.
I don’t disagree with it, either, but she’s not describing civil disobedience — she’s literally describing terrorism.
The definition of terrorism which I find most compelling is violence (or threats of violence) against uninvolved individuals with no power (e.g., hostages) in order to extort change from other involved individuals who have that power. I prefer it because it excludes violence such as political assassination (which is not using fear to affect policy, it’s directly removing a policymaker), but still includes things like an unruly mob assembling outside a Justice’s home, which threatens wives and kids.
In this case, the “uninvolved individual” is an artifact, but the same principles apply.
What this ditz is saying, effectively, is that “the IRA was a good thing because it made people listen to Sinn Fein.”
“Often, their aim is to influence government and business decision-makers.”
Decision-makers can be influenced in any direction — but should be most attentive to the influence of their constituents and customers.
After all, dangling from a lamppost can be much more persuasive than damaging a priceless work of art.
For those keeping score at home, we’re at the place in our societal decay where praying silently outside an abortion clinic is punishable with a decade in prison while throwing garbage at irreplaceable works of art is applauded.
True. Of note in this case is the demographic for the perpetrators and the activist hack posing as a ‘reporter’.
This is the word salad Kamala Harris would prepare had she half a brain.
Its not circulation at this point, it’s advertisers.
Plenty of groupthink lefties spending those marketing dollars.
I’ve come to the conclusion that the real “climate change deniers” are those people who are trying to stop the climate from changing.
One form of punishment would be feeding them that same soup, out of the can, three times a day, for the duration of their prison incarceration.
Yeah, they won’t serve time, but hope springs eternal.
Monks lighting themselves on fire didn’t stop the Vietnamese war…
Just a thought
Except the key word in that observation is “themselves.”
Even so, Gandhi’s hunger strikes were instrumental in ending the British rule of India.
But Gandhi himself admitted it was not a universally useful tactic — that it worked only against an opponent who had a keenly ingrained sense of “liberal” morality. Used against a more primitive opponent with no qualms about simply executing troublemakers (such as Genghis, Tiberius, or Amin), it is entirely useless.
So according to this “journalist” going to a public place and basically spilling your lunch makes you a “Climate Warrior”?
In that case I am “Captain Freaking Planet”.
“Do what I want, or I’m gonna break things!”
I, myself, am quite persuadable by this kind of direct action. If you try “convincing” me with extortionate disruption, whatever you want, I’m against, not and ongoing.
The correct response to such threat is always a spanking.
Wow. So that’s what a “studies”, er, discipline, gets you.
If the environment actually matters, we’re doomed.
The more the Left justifies uncivilized behavior, the more society becomes uncivilized.
She’s right, though. All this hate she’s getting seems to be from people who didn’t bother reading the excerpt quoted in this article (I didn’t bother following it to the source, but I did read what’s quoted here). It doesn’t matter how you feel about the glowball warmening cause. The point is that when you see people doing stuff like this, and you think “That’s no way to win the public’s hearts and minds”, you’re making a fundamental mistake. the people throwing soup or gluing themselves to the road aren’t trying to convince anyone. Their purpose is to make you reject them, but be more receptive to their colleagues who, by comparison, seem refreshingly not-completely-insane. Once you’ve seen utter insanity, the proposals that last week you thought were insane look downright reasonable by comparison. So you start compromising with them, while behind the scenes the two are giving each other high fives.
That is the point she seems to be making, and it’s true.
Yes and it does work. Until they run into folks who are onto their game and we refuse to play. So the inverse occurs b/c many of us have shifted to put both the extremist and the milder activist into the same box based on their ideology and their policy preferences. Unless the milder versions renounce the extremists and actively oppose the policy preferences of the extremists these milder versions are wolves in sheep’s clothing.
es and it does work. Until they run into folks who are onto their game and we refuse to play.
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” is the mark of a barbarian to defile / destroy something one does nto understand / comprehend ”
a quote read long ago which cannot attribute as don’t remember the source
legions of people across history have thought themselves above the law, immune to consequences, committed evil acts against other people / precious things, etc. with impunity–not all of them died natural deaths
Yes, it is… but writing an essay of appreciation for the age-old threat “We can either do this the easy way or the hard way” is still morally reprehensible.
The author should also then commend the action of a hypothetical random citizen who decides to shoot these soup-tossing mountebanks where they stand, in that he makes it much more probable that those in power will decide it is more reasonable to depose Soros prosecutors and give such drama queens the years-long prison sentences they deserve, if only to save their lives.
It’s terrorism regardless of on which side you cut it.
Yes it works about as well as a toddler kicking and screaming “I want that toy’ ever worked for me with my kids…