Lifted from the comments, an item you may have missed.

In our discussion about The Activist-Wanker Caste and its signature disdain for reciprocation, I wrote:

Well, sometimes an example of what you’re talking about comes along that seems almost too on-the-nose. Specifically,

No, really.

It turns out that Ms Lydia Gribbin, one of the five protestors, had assumed that only other people’s lifestyles should be curtailed, that only other people’s plans can be thwarted with impunity.

Update, via the comments:

I was reminded of this post from deep in the archives, in which former Guardian columnist Mr Sunny Hundal boasted of his support for Plane Stupid, an activist group whose members vandalised airports and obstructed runways, disrupting the journeys of thousands of would-be passengers. A group whose pronouncements included “Aviation is mostly unnecessary.”

Mr Hundal wanted us to know that,

Though not, I suspect, quite as much pleasure as his own extensive air travel adventures – flying halfway around the planet, twice, to India then California – adventures that were excitedly announced shortly before his declaration of support for Plane Stupid: “Honestly, I love these guys.”

FredTheFourth adds,

Well, it helps to bear in mind that such ostentatious pieties are very often a kind of camouflage for quite vain and obnoxious people. People whose own hypocrisies and dishonesties, however glaring, do not appear to embarrass them, or alter their behaviour. Consequently, yes, they’re difficult to shame.

They’re the kind of unspanked little tossers who gleefully vandalise petrol stations, rendering them unusable, while applauding themselves, and who conflate “not being heard” with not being obeyed. The kind of preening dolts who film themselves pouring oil onto busy roads, an act morally analogous to sabotaging the brakes of random cars and motorbikes.

This is who they are.

These are people for whom vandalising art galleries, with hammers, and physically obstructing thousands of people, including emergency vehicles, for hours, and doing it over and over again – is somehow “peaceful,” benign, and terribly high-minded.

From here, it looks more like a narcissist’s power game, a kind of recreational sociopathy. I mean, if someone gets their jollies from screwing over random people and watching their victims’ exasperation and pleading – if that’s what makes our mighty warriors feel powerful and important – then the term recreational sociopathy does not seem inapt.

Lifted from the comments, which you’re reading of course – Just Stop Oil loons encounter rival group Just Stop Pissing Everyone Off:

🚨 | BREAKING: Just Stop Oil protestors have been surrounded by “Just Stop Pissing Everyone Off” protestors – preventing them from marching in the road pic.twitter.com/nyZy7qqbFv

— Politics UK (@PolitlcsUK) July 20, 2023

Update, via the comments:

Note the conceit, aired via bullhorn, that their ‘protests’ – physically obstructing thousands of people, including emergency vehicles, for hours, and doing it over and over again – are “peaceful,” benign, and terribly high-minded.

From here, it looks more like a narcissist’s power game, a kind of recreational sociopathy. I mean, if someone gets their jollies from screwing over random people and watching their victims’ exasperation and pleading – if that’s what makes our mighty warriors feel powerful and important – then the term recreational sociopathy doesn’t seem inapt.

And if someone’s idea of being caring and morally superior is to vandalise an art gallery, or to gleefully pour large quantities of oil across a road – an act morally analogous to sabotaging the brakes on random cars and motorbikes – then some questioning of their motives, and of the kinds of people they are, does seem in order.

The Observer reports on London’s struggling artists:

We’ll get to that creative critical faculty in a second.

We’ll get to that too.

The cost of renting a studio in which to be abuzz with creativity is, we’re told, a major issue:

Ah yes, the engine room. Powering the city of London with their ceaseless shovelling.

The indignity.

Indeed, of those surveyed, only 12% “can support themselves solely through art.” Given such difficulties, the words supply and demand spring to mind, and readers may wonder whether a different, more viable line of work may be in order. Or at least some relocation – say, to a place where studio rents and general living expenses are much more affordable. However, Ms Kwan, our successful artist, is having none of that:

At which point, readers may suspect that the imperative is not so much being creative, but being creative in London, a notoriously expensive city, but in which one can draw attention to the fact that one lives and works in London, a notoriously expensive city. Thereby glowing with a kind of location status.

That bottom of the pile business must really chafe.

Readers may also note the article’s, shall we say, coyness regarding the art on offer – all that cruelly underfunded creativity. None of which is displayed to sway readers of the Observer. The nearest we get is a photo of Ms Kwan standing next to a creation that we cannot actually see, and a photo of Grayson Perry in a hideous frock.

Poking about elsewhere reveals that Ms Kwan’s area of expertise is “political and ecological positioning through fine art practice,” as seen so boldly here:

It’s a “sensory banquet,” the creation of which “had a profound emotional and conceptual effect on my sense of the relationships between objects, personhood, and ancestral and collective meaning.”

As you can imagine.

Other dizzying creations can be seen – nay, beheld – here and here.

Given the aesthetic uplift conjured into being via piles of plastic milk cartons, it is of course astounding that Ms Kwan and her equally high-minded peers, all doubtless schooled in political “positioning,” aren’t feeling sufficiently rewarded.

“It is like a hostile environment now,” says Ms Kwan. A sentiment that may conceivably be shared by those members of the general public who venture to art venues in search of aesthetics and objects of wonderment, but who find only unattractive tat, ponderous press releases, and piles of plastic milk cartons.

If the basic thrust of the Observer article sounds familiar – the need to be seen being creative in a suitably happening city, while living above one’s means – you may be thinking of this Guardian article. In which, a self-exalting novelist named Brigid Delaney tells us that creative people, people much like herself, must live in locales befitting their potential and importance, not their budget. And hence the imperative for public subsidy.

You, taxpayer, come hither. And bring your wallet.

Time for some thoughts on crime. From the pages of the Guardian:

Being a Guardian contributor, the author, Ms Anna Spargo-Ryan, a resident of Melbourne, is of course conflicted. Her feelings, it turns out, are something of a tangle. We’re told of the uncontrollable shaking, the shattered sense of safety, the fear for a missing cat, and the experience of subsequently finding items of stolen clothing discarded in the street. “I am so frightened,” says our columnist:

All understandable, and far too commonplace. And yet, simultaneously, the experience is dismissed by the author as one of being merely “inconvenienced for a few days.” “The relative impact of this one night on the whole of my life is nothing compared to setting up a child to reoffend,” says she.

Messages, I think, that are ever so slightly mixed.

Before we go any further, I should point out that the words child and children, used throughout the piece, may be a tad misleading, as the identities of the burglars – who stole, among other items, knives, keys, jewellery, a wallet, and a car – have, at the time of writing, not been shared, or, one assumes, determined. The culprits, who presumably still roam free, are assumed to be teenagers, out for an invigorating spree of robbery and joyriding.

And the word child is so much fluffier. Ah, bless those rosy cheeks.

As the activist delight in vandalism and traffic obstruction has cropped up in the comments, along with their bizarre rationalisations, I thought it might be worth revisiting some earlier rumblings on the subject.

For instance,

It’s interesting just how often “social justice” posturing entails something that looks an awful lot like spite or petty malice, or an attempt to harass and dominate, or some other obnoxious behaviour. Behaviour that, without a “social justice” pretext, might get you called a wanker or a bitch. A coincidence, I’m sure.

It is, I think, worth pondering why it is that these supposed displays of righteousness routinely take the form of obnoxious or bullying or sociopathic behaviour, whereby random people are screwed over and dominated, and often reduced to pleading. Pleading just to get home, to children, or to work, or to get to the doctor’s surgery. Even ambulances and fire engines can be obstructed, indefinitely, with both impunity and moral indifference. Among our self-imagined betters, it seems to be the go-to approach for practically any purported cause. Which is terribly convenient. Almost as if the supposed activism were more of a pretext, an excuse, a license to indulge pre-existing urges.

And what kind of person would have urges like that?

Update, via the comments:

The little people will mop up afterwards:

Fearless, selfless, an inspiration to us all. No wait. The other thing.

Imagine the thought process.

“Comrades, I have an idea. It’s brilliantly radical and a jolly lark. Let’s walk into Waitrose and then needlessly steal and destroy dozens of pints of milk, by tipping the contents across the floor while telling people what to do, so that someone else – someone less radical and less well-off – will have to do hours of extra work to clear up the mess before someone slips and the whole thing starts to stink. The customers and staff will be too bewildered and too polite to give us the kicking we deserve. The most they’ll do is walk us out of the store…! How heroic we will be!”

As a way to win hearts and minds, or to sway government policy, it’s not exactly promising. Indeed, the reaction of the general public tends to be overwhelmingly negative, often vehemently so, and hostility to the professed cause is, if anything, likely to increase. But as a way to indulge in some practised self-involvement, and to feel important and powerful at others’ expense, it does have potential. Expressing contempt for those deemed unsophisticated – and generally fucking people over – can be its own reward, for a certain kind of person. All that’s needed is a pseudo-moral fig-leaf.

It seems we are to be scolded by the inadequate, the confused, and the psychologically marginal. And so, the assorted cranks and monomaniacs invoke their End Times fever dreams and boast of how they “will not be stopped” by such trivia as the law, or norms of reciprocation, or common decency. Apparently, and rather conveniently, they “have every right” to vandalise whatever they choose and to screw over countless other people, recreationally and gleefully, in whatever ways they deem fit, while applauding themselves. Say, by “disrupting traffic, throwing soup, and blocking oil depots.” Verily, they have been touched by The Lord.

I suppose some people are all but destined to join apocalyptic cults. It isn’t too hard to see the appeal of the fervour and license of a new-found religion – conveniently stripped of those annoying restrictions on one’s own behaviour. Only the behaviour of others. And with Just Stop Oil, Animal Rebellion and Insulate Britain all indulging in their antisocial roleplay, the subsets of the activist-wanker caste are vying for our attention. And our deference, obviously.

Update 2:

It’s also worth noting how the activist-wanker demographic is quite defined, socially, in terms of class. We don’t see much of the lumpen proletariat, or people who are busy earning a living. But we have seen quite a few videos of upper-middle-class activists, very often upper-middle-class women, looking faintly confused, or just smug, when frustrated working-class people explain, desperately and in vain, that they’re trying to get to work, or trying to take a child to hospital.

The same, rather pointed, class divide is evident in terms of social media support and excuse-making. People who want us to know that they work for the BBC, the Guardian, and the New York Times, for instance, are much more likely to excuse the vandalising of galleries, supermarkets and petrol pumps, and to downplay the obstruction of tube trains and emergency vehicles, than people whose livings are less glamorous and perhaps more modest.

As is the custom among the activist-wanker caste, much of the behaviour we’ve seen, and will doubtless see again, amounts to a moral non-sequitur. Rather like saying, “I’m troubled by the plight of the Javan rhinoceros, so I’m going to start spitting at the elderly and keying random cars, and then boast about it on Twitter, while waiting for likes.” Hence the need to consider other, less edifying motives.

And were I feeling particularly animated about an issue, I don’t think my first thought would be to vandalise an art gallery or a supermarket, or to gratuitously immobilise thousands of random commuters, or to trap ambulances and fire engines, thereby endangering lives, all while feeling important, and powerful, and immensely self-satisfied. I don’t think that would occur to me as an obvious thing to do. I mean, the thought of people dying needlessly because the ambulance couldn’t get to them, or people consequently burning to death in a fire, would, I suspect, put a downer on any self-righteous buzz.

But hey, maybe that’s just me.