An activist is uni­ver­sal­ly defined as a per­son who cam­paigns to bring about polit­i­cal or social change. Being one ought to be a badge of hon­our. How unfor­tu­nate that it now cov­ers every­one from the gen­uine­ly com­mit­ted to those who equate vol­ume with verac­i­ty, van­dal­ism with civ­il dis­obe­di­ence and do not under­stand that self-right­eous­ness only serves one person.

The stat­ed mis­sion of the protest group Just Stop Oil is to “ensure that the gov­ern­ment com­mits to end­ing all new licens­es and con­sents for the explo­ration, devel­op­ment and pro­duc­tion of fos­sil fuels in the UK”.
Oil com­pa­nies have the tech­nol­o­gy and finan­cial where­with­al to be front-run­ners in what should be a race to cre­ate alter­na­tive ener­gy sources. They’ll only do it if there is prof­it how­ev­er, so forc­ing them to con­front and deal with the issue is a per­fect­ly rea­son­able tar­get for activism.
The form it takes is some­times less so.
A guid­ing tenet the the­o­ry of non-vio­lent protest is that the pow­er of rulers depends on the con­sent of the population.
A fire engine and ambu­lance were among the vehi­cles caught in a block­ade by Just Stop Oil in west Lon­don, prompt­ing some mem­bers of the pub­lic to try to intervene.
One won­ders if the pro­test­ers would have glued them­selves to the road  if it meant their home pos­si­bly burn­ing down, or a loved one not mak­ing it to ER.
Chuck­ing cans of toma­to soup over Van Gogh’s famous “Sun­flow­ers” paint­ing, and shout­ing “What is worth more, art or life?”, also obscures the point.
Is it not pos­si­ble to have both? What is life with­out art, and vice versa?
The activists argue that the imme­di­ate and exten­sive media atten­tion such acts gar­ner puts their cause in the spot­light it deserves and would oth­er­wise not enjoy.
Point tak­en.
But it’s only valid if there’s more to it than fif­teen min­utes of fame.
If the reac­tion is “polit­i­cal solu­tions” — quick fix­es in time for elec­tions, promis­es that are unre­al­is­tic or offered with no inten­tion of them being kept — where’s the win?

              SO WHAT ELSE DOES THE SHOW NEED?

The best, per­haps only way to cur­tail and even­tu­al­ly elim­i­nate fos­sil fuel usage is to reduce its use in lock­step with new forms of ener­gy pro­duc­tion. It requires activism that accepts com­pro­mise and insists on trans­paren­cy and planning.
Activists need to be in it for the long haul.
That means more slog­ging than grand-stand­ing which alien­ates more pub­lic sup­port than it attracts.
Spray paint­ing the front of a lux­u­ry car deal­er­ship and Har­rods is van­dal­ism, not free speech or civ­il dis­obe­di­ence. The for­mer is enshrined in all democ­ra­cies. The lat­ter was pret­ty much invent­ed and per­fect­ed by Mahat­ma Ghan­di, who summed it up this way; ‘I object to vio­lence because when it appears to do good, the good is only tem­po­rary. The evil it does is per­ma­nent.”  Per­haps the most famous advo­cate of that, Dr Mar­tin Luther King Jr, based his cam­paign on break­ing what he termed “unjust laws”, which did not include ones that serve the com­mon good.
Both would I’m sure, have approved of Mar­la Ruz­ic­ka, an effer­ves­cent, irre­press­ible Amer­i­can aid work­er turned activist who made it her mis­sion in life to force war­ring par­ties to rec­og­nize and com­pen­sate the fam­i­lies of inno­cent civil­ians caught in the crossfire.
The first time I met Mar­la in Bagh­dad, like many, I thought she was some­what naïve and out of her depth.
How wrong I was.
Mar­la was killed, aged 28, when a sui­cide bomber aim­ing for an Amer­i­can mil­i­tary con­voy blew his vehi­cle up next to hers on the noto­ri­ous­ly lethal road to Bagh­dad air­port in April 2005.
The Cam­paign for Inno­cent Vic­tims in Con­flict (CIVIC) she found­ed in 2003 “has a pres­ence in over 10 coun­tries around the world, includ­ing Ukraine, Yemen, and Nige­ria, and works direct­ly with the UN, NATO, and the EU to sup­port our mod­el of change”.
Now THAT is activism.

                                           THE ANTITHESE

Here in Cana­da, hear­ings are being held over how the author­i­ties dealt with the trucker’s “Free­dom Con­voy” to protest Covid rules ear­li­er this year.
For three weeks the “activists” used eigh­teen-wheel­er rigs to spew exhaust and clog the capi­tol Ottawa, harassed ordi­nary cit­i­zens for wear­ing face cov­er­ings and blared air horns in the name of “free­dom” – a text­book case of noise dis­guis­ing nonsense.
None of them seemed to be aware of the irony: a free coun­try is the only place where peo­ple can protest in the name of free­dom with­out get­ting their head bashed in or thrown in jail and maybe even executed.
But then, they did draw inspi­ra­tion from the Amer­i­can “Proud Boys”, who style them­selves as pro­po­nents of an “anti-polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness” and “anti-white guilt” agen­da. They might object, but they too fit the def­i­n­i­tion of “activists”.
Among their recent acts was wear­ing Hal­loween-type masks and hold­ing signs to intim­i­date par­ents tak­ing most­ly preschool-age chil­dren to a park to hear a drag queen tell sto­ries, an incar­na­tion of activism to “intro­duce chil­dren to diverse role mod­els and LGBTQ+ people”.
For the record: I think such events, called “Drag Queen Sto­ry Hours” are inap­pro­pri­ate for small children.
The Proud Boys expressed their dis­ap­proval by crow­ing on ‘Telegram’: “Real men stepped up and let this men­tal­ly ill thing know that GROOMING will not be tol­er­at­ed. Most peo­ple who saw us at the entrance were scared and turned around and left.”
Wow. Talk about ball­sy activism…

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