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- cross-posted to:
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Climate protest group Just Stop Oil (JSO) said two activists used chalk paint on the grave of the famous naturalist, who is best known for his theories on evolution.
Climate protest group Just Stop Oil (JSO) said two activists used chalk paint on the grave of the famous naturalist, who is best known for his theories on evolution.
What exactly about this is dumb?
It seems like a harmless way to get the message out. Charles Darwin likely would be spinning in his grave, along with Newton, Einstein, and many others.
Pretend the public has no idea who they are or what their message is. The public sees this and, without the context of their published statements, assumes they vandalized Darwin’s grave because they must have something against Darwin or what he represents. Even then, before I read further, my initial reaction was much the same.
The statement of a protest should ideally be self-evident. Sit-ins, occupying corrupt institutions, publicly breaking unethical laws, defacing monuments of reprehensible people, assassinating a CEO, those are all much better approaches to get a message across. Protests that draw attention to issues are effective, protests that draw attention to the protestors less so.
By “the public,” do you mean people who are seeing this in person, or people who are seeing it in news articles on the Internet?
Most of the public would be in the latter category, where the context is in clear display.
Assuming people bother to read more than the headlines, or trust news to not put their own spin on things. The title of this post, and the BBC article it links to, are just “Arrests after Charles Darwin grave spray-painted”. It doesn’t even mention who or why until you get into the body of the article, which tragically few people will bother to do these days.