The reason why this doesn't look rational or 'for the cause' is because the target in question really has nothing to do with the petroleum industry. Johannes Vermeer painted this art in 1665 before the industrial revolution. The subject is just a woman with a pearl earring. So neither the painter nor the work of art have any persuasion or symbolism that encourages fossil fuel use. It seems totally illogical to commit an act such as this. I think the public at large sees no connection between what the activists went after and what they are trying to achieve. When that happens, it delegitimizes the movement in peoples eyes.
What picture exactly is of course not important. Any popular picture with a glass plate in front of it could have done the job. I don't they have any ax to grind about Vermeer, nor will the controversy have any connections to him or his art.
I don't think this is true, for most people. People do not generally stop and think in a deep and reflective way after getting angry about something. What these activists did was not inspiring and it did not look like justice. They aren't Rosa Parks 2.0, they're people throwing liquid at inanimate objects (which people beautiful and valuable) and gluing themselves to objects at a museum. There is no powerful symbolism of defiance here, this is not speaking truth to power. They just look like childish weirdos. Childish weirdos do not make me self-reflect and question if I'm actually the one doing something wrong.
This is correct. The target is an irreplaceable piece of art. It's supposed to stand in for the earth (or some subset like nature). That's the point. The stand-in for the petroleum industry is whatever commodity they are throwing at it
It's also pretty logical because it doesn't actually cause permanent damage, but sensationalist headline writers make it seems like it did. So the stories get more virality then they otherwise would.
the Animal Liberation Front didn't ask the public to destroy slaughter-houses. the sea-shepherds didn't ask the public to attack whaling vessels, and to give an example from fiction 'Avalanche' didn't ask the public to attack power stations.
Di Caprio is rich and support nature conservation. Is not really so much difficult if you are rich. You just buy a chunk of land with a unique ecosystem, keep people from entering on it and you save ten species from going extinct. Is as simple as that.
What I would -not- expect is the children of some millionaires convincing poor or dumb people to perform humiliating, illegal and dangerous stunts in public for a small fee.
Lets imagine the outrage if one influencer would be caught paying homeless people to glue their heads and hands to a wall, and videotaping them while claiming, hey! I do it for the environment!.
This is mocking ecologists, manipulating poor people to perform degrading acts in public and endangering invaluable art. Three in one, all in the same stinking package.
This kind of fun is unacceptable, and should have consequences.
Oh do you mean that land in Hawaii that he blocked native caretakers from accessing and has since been taken over by invasive species?
Not. Try again.
Time has disprove these people. I don't see how this is any different.
I don't think most vegans will quote them for their change, but their activism that gave animal wellfare attention in a attention economy, when it would otherwise simply not have gotten any.
I often eat at a Nepalese vegan restaurant and the food sure beats McDonald's or burger king. Not to mention they actually believe in veganism, they don't just have a token veggie burger on the menu because the market wants it.
They even prohibit consumption of baby food with meat on the premises :)
As for prohibiting baby food, I would kindly tell them to go fuck themselves. Nobody is going to prohibit a parent from feeding their baby with food already prepared and bought. Its exactly this type of rhetoric which makes moderates skip on vegan community (and I eat vegan dishes on a daily basis!)
I don't want whoever to believe, I want a neat combination of healthy, tasty, and good for environment/animal, but in a spectrum. Not extremes, not any toxic belief systems.
(As for McDs and BK there are better veggie and vegan options available but I prefer BK vegan way over McDs vegan, hands down. That we have these options is a sign of time. When I was full-time vegan it was a nightmare to go out eating. Now we have New York Pizza delivering delicious vegan shoarma pizzas.)
Winter of 2022, half of Europe. PETA can frolic naked in the snow if they want.
Why buy an expensive tablet made of nasty coltan if a brat is just going to jump over it?, oh wait... in fact they don't do it.
This hypocrites bully grandmas "in the name of ecology" while using all the time products made of materials that destroy the African rainforests, and never think twice about it.
And in their totalitarian utopia we all wear plastic replacements. Of course plastic fur is super-ecological. Have you heard of particles of "micro-leather" or "micro-fox-hair" contaminating the environment?. Me neither.
They are directly responsible of the death of animals and plants. To start the ruined products that would last a life have to be replaced at a faster pace, so more small carnivores must die for the paint. They liberate chimps in the zoos with the results that the chimps must be shoot and killed. They blocked fixing the American grey squirrel invasion in Italy, so now the squirrels are killing trees and the red squirrels are dying from viruses. Great job lads!. They liberate alien carnivores that kill millions of birds. They are always an obstacle for a sensible ecological management and always take the wrong side in terms of nature conservation.
But of course the rest of people are not moral enough and not saint enough. Not like them.
I would consider myself a person in favor of the ethical treatment of animals, and PETA campaigns like (the now quite old, but eminently memorable) "rebranding fish as sea kittens" [1] are so far out in la-la land, so ridiculous, and go so far in letting perfect be the enemy of good ("let's go after those unethical pescatarians!") that the organization loses credibility.
It doesn't help that in the intervening years, my main interaction with the organization (as well as Oxfam, ASPCA, etc) has been shady third party donation subscription hawkers trying to earn commissions off of tricking me into acknowledging them on lunch hour.
If there have been improvements in the treatment of animals over time, I'd make my own subjective leap to say they happened in spite of PETA, not because of it.
My point was: Effective activism does not have to be likeable. Going for the opposite seems a viable strategy.