By Monica Showalter
What is it about leftists and glue?
The protest crazies from the left’s environmental front seem attracted to it, the way moths glom to incandescent light bulbs.
Here’s their latest outrage, according to the National Catholic Reporter:
ROME — Italian environmental activists staged a second museum protest in as many months, gluing their hands Thursday to the base of one of the Vatican Museums’ most important ancient sculptures, the Laocoon.
The statue wasn’t damaged, said the environmental group Last Generation. Vatican gendarmes removed the three protesters and they were processed at an Italian police station. It wasn’t clear if Vatican criminal prosecutors would eventually take up the case since they have jurisdiction in Vatican City.
The protesters are demanding the Italian government increase its solar and wind power and stop exploring for natural gas and reopening old coal mines in Italy. They affixed a banner to the statue’s base reading “No gas, no coal.”
Who the heck cares? These people elect all the leftists they can, meaning that everyone in power over there is all-in on their extremist greenie environmental agenda.
What they’re doing in this case, though, is worth a word.
They glued their hands to an absolutely ancient and beautiful statue, one so rare and advanced in its artistry it gives one pause and wonder about the beauties of the ancient world. It was one of just three of its kind in the Vatican’s collection, certainly one of the most valuable treasures there, and an important element to preserve within all the world’s heritage.
The unkempt environmental wackos didn’t notice the value of the thing — they just said they targeted it because it was a rendering of Laocoon, the ancient priest who warned the Trojans not to accept the Trojan horse gift from the Greeks they were at war with, as it was a ruse to let the Greek army within the walled fortress of Troy — which happened.
They couldn’t paint a picture of Laocoon themselves on some old newspaper and stamp their hands on some finger paints to “glue” themselves to that to get their message out?
No, they had to attack and very likely vandalize something that belongs to all the world’s people to treasure and cherish, something that has been lovingly taken care of by the museum staff in order to make sure all can marvel at it, and frankly isn’t theirs to grub up and damage.
Their claim that they didn’t damage the artwork with their stupid glue stunt leaves one with arched eyebrows, given that all kinds of crazed protestors claim they never damaged things.
Way back in 2014, Greenpeace environmental wackos attended a conference in Peru and decided to take their protest to the ancient Nazca lines in the Peruvian desert, the ancient mysterious drawings on the desert floor that were magnificently created by ancient peoples, and which were extremely fragile, as well as irreplaceable, stomping all over the delicatedly preserved area in their filthy tennis shoes. According to Gizmodo:
The environmental activists wanted to send a message to government officials from around with world who are attending a climate change conference in Lima this week. So they headed to the Nazca Desert, one of the most famous and archaeologically significant sites in Peru, to lay down a bunch of yellow banners that spelled out: “TIME FOR CHANGE! THE FUTURE IS RENEWABLE! GREENPEACE.”
The message is practically on top of the hummingbird geoglyph, which is now surrounded by their footprints. And the irony is thick. The future may be renewable, but these fragile, ancient drawings are not.
“This has been done without any respect for our laws,” Peru’s deputy minister for culture Luis Jaime Castillo told the press, calling Greenpeace’s actions “thoughtless, insensitive, illegal, irresponsible and absolutely pre-meditated.” He explained further: “It was done in the middle of the night. They went ahead and stepped on our hummingbird, and looking at the pictures we can see there’s very severe damage. Nobody can go on these lines without permission—not even the president of Peru!”
Like the statue wackos in Rome, they first claimed they did no environmental damage. Afterwards, when the photos came out showing their crummy footprints all over the ancient preserved and otherwise pristine desert floor, they “apologized,” which was a lot of crap, because the damage was done.
The Washington Post has an amazing laundry list of other environmental groups who’ve performed similar stunts, often with glue:
Many similar recent protests have also involved paintings and sculptures in Europe. In July, activists from the same group glued themselves to a glass frame protecting Sandro Botticelli’s ‘Primavera’ painting in Florence before security guards ripped their hands free. A video of the incident garnered Last Generation nearly 35,000 views on Instagram, making it one of their more popular posts.
Earlier that month, activists covered John Constable’s painting “The Hay Wain” at London’s National Gallery with a reimagined, apocalyptic vision of the English countryside. The activists, who also glued themselves to the frame, called for an end to new oil and gas licenses and urged art institutions to join them in the resistance.
Also in July, climate protesters glued themselves to the frame of a 500-year-old painting of the Last Supper at London’s Royal Academy of Arts. They spray-painted “No new oil” on the wall underneath the artwork.
They all claim they did no damage, but that’s something the curators should be saying, not them.
What we have here is the ancient artistic heritage of the world now becoming a backdrop and glue target for any and every ill-considered environmental cause out there, as if the attention should no longer be on the artwork itself, but on these clowns.
It’s disgusting in the extreme, and the NCR notes that in the Florence case, the clowns were barely punished:
Last month, protesters glued their hands to the glass window protecting Sandro Botticelli’s painting “Spring” in the Uffizi Galleries in Florence. In that case, they were detained and ordered to stay out of Florence for three years, Italian media said.
Art is a fragile and non-renewable thing, quite unlike these proliferating activists, and for that matter, the earth itself. What we have here is hostage-taking by scum who wouldn’t know art if it was right there glued to their grubby hands. That they keep targeting priceless masterpieces that can’t be replaced is a sure sign that their aims are for ill. Conserve the earth? They can’t even conserve irreplaceable art. In reality, these glue acts demonstrate their hatred of humanity at work here, in the name of “saving the earth.” We have long known that environmental wackos have had a problem with the mere existence of people.
One day one of them is going to destroy something big, and the world will be the poorer for it.