Right wing authoritarianism isn’t subtle.
edit:
added context:
Here is what Ben is replying to:
Pro-Palestinian protesters a part of a group called “𝐏𝐚𝐥𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐢𝐚𝐧 𝐀𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧,” vandalized a historic painting of Arthur James Balfour at Trinity College Cambridge in England.
Arthur Balfour wrote the Balfour Declaration of 1917 when he was serving as the British Foreign Minister. The letter expressed Britain’s support for a Jewish Homeland in what is now Israel.
Direct link(should work for a bit): https://video.twimg.com/amplify_video/1766117900644151296/vid/avc1/720x1280/pQDXaeuPY2vYbJdX.mp4?tag=14
Tired of writing this, the hand wringing over university property being compared to ~30k lives and ~600k starving people has to stop.
This painting is not some culturally important piece of art. It’s a little over 100 years old (literally painted the same year my Granddad was born), hanging in a university, of a man that was responsible for massacres in Ireland (Mitchelstown Massacre) which got him the name “Bloody Balfour”, openly said that black people should be treated worse than white people, and was a known anti-semite that brought about the Aliens Act of 1905 to try and keep Jewish people out of Britain & Ireland.
Imagine a group of Princeton students cutting up a minor painting of Jefferson Davies hanging in their halls and you get roughly the same amount of “cultural loss”.
It seems to be more about the entitlement of the people representing the movement than about the art itself from what I’m seeing.
There’s clearly a major issue that needs attention, destroying a painting that’s kinda sorta related does nothing but make you look stupid and distract from the actual issues at hand as we’re seeing here. We’re talking about a painting and not about the failing hostage negotiations or the aid that desperately needs to flow…
This vandal should absolutely face criminal repercussions for this though imo. Doesn’t matter what side of the issue you’re on, what this person did was illegal and there needs to be consequences for breaking the laws of the land.