In any case, the protesters were arrested for their actions, and the Last Generation activists who threw mashed potatoes at Monet at a museum in Potsdam, Germany, are reportedly being investigated for property damage and trespassing. On the Last Generation website, the group says it accepts “criminal charges and deprivation of liberty undaunted” for its protests. While some of the historic frames were damaged, the paintings themselves were protected by glass. But his tactic of pushing food onto famous works of art to protest climate inaction has sparked an international outcry. Many wondered if it was hurting support for the cause. (Also Read | Opinion: Why it’s OK to Pour Mashed Potatoes on a Table) Reaction: Disapproving of disruptive demonstrations In a non-representative poll, DW asked Twitter followers how they feel about acts of civil disobedience like Monet’s mashed potato incident. Of the 491 respondents, 22% said it raised awareness and helped. But 56% said such actions hurt the climate movement. “This kind of climate activism is nothing short of hooliganism and a publicity stunt,” one follower wrote. “We should fight for good causes in a responsible way within the bounds of respect.” Although nonviolent but disruptive forms of protest appear to be unpopular, they may still be effective, in part because they gain attention, said Oscar Berglund, a lecturer in social policy at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom. “If you’re not bothering anyone or anything, if you’re just trying to make your voices heard, then those voices often don’t get heard and you don’t achieve any change through your protest,” said Berglund, who researches climate change. activism and the use of civil disobedience. Radical protests attract more media attention The stunts certainly garnered a lot of attention, making headlines around the world and causing a stir on social media. The video of protesters throwing soup at Van Gogh in London, for example, has been viewed nearly 50 million times on Twitter alone. “This disruptive action has really brought the climate issue into the forefront of mainstream society again,” said James Ozden, who directs the Social Change Lab, an organization that conducts social science research to better understand how movements can lead to positive change. “People from all over the world were talking about it in a way that hasn’t happened since the student climate broke out in 2019,” said Ozden, who was also part of the strategy team for climate protest group Extinction Rebellion UK (XR ). which uses civil disobedience tactics. Raising the profile of climate change was precisely the motivation behind the Van Gogh soup protest in London, Phoebe Plummer of Just Stop Oil said in a video posted on social media. “What we’re doing is continuing the conversation so we can ask the questions that matter. Questions like is it okay for fossil fuels to be subsidized 30 times more than renewables when offshore wind is currently nine times cheaper than fossil fuels? This is the conversation we need to have now because we have no time to waste,” he said. Of course, if all that is discussed is the disruptive tactic itself rather than the reason behind the protest and the activists’ demands, then their goal is missed. “While maybe half the overall debate is about tactics, half is about the climate, which is even more so than if the radical protest hadn’t happened,” Ozden said. For Berglund, the attention and subsequent debate that such protests have sparked opens up enough space for some discussion of the issue itself. “Unpopularity doesn’t matter in that sense, and I don’t think it can hurt the climate cause per se, because it also gives room for more reasonable and less extreme voices to speak about these issues,” he said. Do protester tactics affect public support for climate demands? But Rob Wheeler, a professor of sociology and social psychology at Stanford University in the US, says his previous work, which looks at social movements more broadly, has suggested that some extreme protest actions can undermine popular support for a cause. The public generally reacts negatively to protests that involve property destruction, Willer said. And while they may be effective at gaining attention, that attention may not be helpful if perceptions are negative. “These art desecration tactics are exactly the kind of protest behaviors that lead observers to see activists as extreme and irrational, alienating observers and potentially reducing support for their cause,” he told DW. It is difficult to apply research on past protests to current events, but the Ozden Social Change Lab poll found no negative effects on support for climate policies during and after disruptive Just Stop Oil protests in 2020. Similarly, experiments conducted by cognitive psychologists with the University of Bristol found that reduced support for protesters had no effect on support for their demands. And another small representative survey conducted by Cambridge and Oxford Brookes Universities showed a slight increase in people’s willingness to participate in non-disruptive activism such as marches after the disruptive XR protests in 2019. “It’s just not the case that people turn against climate action just because some activists annoy you,” said sociologist Berglund. “It doesn’t mean that afterwards you say, ‘oh well, never mind, then let’s burn the planet. Let’s burn more oil, let’s not use renewables. We don’t see any such changes in opinion at all.” Ozden says there’s a strategy behind disruptive protests called the radical side effect. He believes that having a radical side to a social movement can increase support for moderate factions by making them seem more reasonable. “It’s a good cop, bad situation — but at the level of a large social movement. And that tactic has worked very well in the past,” he said. So even though XR, for example, had the lowest public support in the UK, their actions still boosted interest in the environment and climate, Ozden believes. Do radical protests increase the criminalization of protesters? Ozden and Berglund worry that one negative impact resulting from radical tactics could be a blanket criminalization of climate action and other protest movements. The UK has already passed bills imposing restrictions on protests, including tougher penalties and noise limits. “This is extremely draconian because protests are meant to be noisy and disruptive. And now anyone who disagrees with you can say it’s too noisy and make your protest illegal,” Ozden said. After protests saw activists stick to art and block roads, the UK government is trying to pass a public order bill that creates a new offense called “blocking”, for protesters who cling to objects or cause a disturbance interfering with transport projects or basic infrastructure. The bill would ban certain protesters from associating with certain people, participating in protests, using the Internet or having to wear an electronic target that tracks their whereabouts. Support for such laws could increase if public perception of the protesters’ tactics worsens, according to Berglund. “The danger is that if these protesters are really unpopular and hated, then that could fuel support for these authoritarian laws that are otherwise very unpopular,” he said.
