Just Stop Oil: A Psyop? (No. Please stop.)

About a week or so ago, twxtter was ablaze with fervent discussion about how climate activist group Just Stop Oil interrupted a Tekken 7 tournament match at EGX in the UK.

https://www.eurogamer.net/just-stop-oil-protestors-arrested-after-interrupting-egx-tournament

This particular incident and its surrounding discourse has basically all but dissipated by this point and we’ve all moved on. Except me. Discussion about it among left-wing people was absolutely infuriating, and it’s something that I’ve wanted to argue against ever since I saw it, so this is that argument.

The base level response to the political stunt, which involved the usual paint smatterings and grandstanding and the like, was one of admonishment. Yeah, sure, we all think climate change is bad and that fossil fuel needs to be completely abandoned, but why would you target a fighting game tournament? Tekken players don’t make policy decisions about these sorts of things. Why would you make this your target when it doesn’t make sense to do so on its face?

For what it’s worth, I think a certain amount of apprehension towards the strategy of Just Stop Oil (JSO) isn’t entirely objectionable. The subject matter of an event like EGX seems pretty disconnected from the material considerations of climate politics, and there don’t really seem to be any outward indications of funding from fossil fuel corporations in EGX or the Tekken tournament that would warrant a protest action. I certainly have my criticisms of this particular political strategy, as well - as a Marxist, I think that protest action is at its most effective when it involves the largest number of people possible, and that means your protest action should be as accessible as possible. Anyone can become part of a crowd, marching down the street and yelling chants that make demands of the government and other powerful institutions. Not everyone can throw paint on expensive artworks or gaming monitors, risking arrest in the process.

So the JSO stunt at EGX seems a little silly and misguided. However, instead of coming to the fairly straightforward conclusion that JSO’s stunt was conducted by people who take climate change seriously but lack a coherent political program or even a complete set of politics that can adequately explain the whole mess that is the fossil fuel industry’s relationship to world capitalism, leftie twxtter instead decided that JSO is a conspiracy meant to take outwardly stupid disruptive action in order to make “real” climate activists look bad in the public eye.

People reached this conclusion based on a very surface-level, cursory discovery about JSO as a political outfit - they receive funding via donations from both civilians and non-government organisations (NGOs), one of which is the Climate Emergency Fund (CEF), a climate NGO that was founded by filmmaker Rory Kennedy and, importantly for our purposes, Aileen Getty, who is the daughter of the Getty family that owns, among many other multinational capitals, Getty Oil. The conclusion is a very “follow the money” one - Aileen Getty is the heir to a family with deep and direct connections to the fossil fuel industry, and she is using part of her vast fortune to run the CEF, which in turn donates to JSO in order for it to continue its political action. And since there is a direct through-line from Just Stop Oil to a family of fossil fuel magnates, this whole project must be a psyop – a secretive operation by powerful bad actors to deligitimise climate activism broadly in the public consciousness.

There are… a lot of problems with this conclusion.

For starters, the actual process of “following the money” seems to have consisted almost entirely of clicking three links on Wikipedia. The conclusion assumes that Aileen Getty herself is a representative of Getty Oil, and would only participate in the funding of climate activism if it was in her material interest to do so. But as much as we should have a healthy disdain and skepticism towards the ruling class, it’s important to remember that rich people can also be liberals! By all accounts, Aileen Getty herself has nothing to do with Getty Oil or the fossil fuel industry generally, and is instead focused primarily on philanthropy (which, of course, I can also make political criticisms of, but that’s outside the scope of this discussion), and has a personal history (including that of an HIV diagnosis and involvement in AIDS and homeless activism) that could conceivably lead her to be more liberal than the rest of her family.¹ Either way, the claim is pretty much entirely unsubstantiated by any actual evidence.

Secondly, this “psyop” conclusion is, quite frankly, ridiculous conspiratorial thinking. It doesn’t seem that way because of the use of the word “psyop”. Short for “psychological operation”, it’s a word that left-wing people use to describe a variety of activities by military forces designed to influence public opinion on various political issues which have actually happened in history; the CIA’s list of psyops in various locations and contexts is long and distinguished. It’s got a bit of a left-wing gloss to it. But all this means is that when you use the word “psyop” to describe the actions of JSO, you’re covering yourself from confronting what you’re actually saying - that you think JSO is a conspiracy run by paid actors who take action that delegitimises “real” climate activism at the behest of wealthy elites. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions about how that sounds.

And finally, when you conclude that JSO is a psyop, what political conclusion do you draw from that? Putting aside the fact that you’re buying into the narrative that’s plastered all over the mainstream press, accusing JSO of being a psyop does more to delegitimise climate activism than JSO itself may or may not do, especially since the accusation doesn’t provide any real political alternative. Are you concerned about the delegitimisation of climate activism because it’s going to make your own climate activism harder? Or are you doing it because it seems like the smart thing to say online, and then give you an excuse to not get involved in political action yourself?

If you care about the climate crisis - and if you’re reading this, you probably do - then you’re right to not look at JSO’s actions as something to emulate wholesale. Political stunts like paint on a Tekken setup or soup on a painting generate spectacle and media coverage, but they don’t get a broad section of people involved, so its effectiveness is limited. We can, and should, have reasonable and healthy criticisms of this political strategy, and use those criticisms to point to an alternative - organising protests, talking about the political issues in our schools, universities and workplaces, building a mass movement that can fight back not just against the climate crisis and the fossil fuel industry that causes it, but also against the system of capitalism that allows the fossil fuel industry to profit off the ransacking and destruction of the planet. Accusing JSO of being a psyop is not only needlessly sectarian and just flat out detached from reality, it also doesn’t encourage genuine political engagement with any forms of activism or struggle, and can only lead to total inaction at best, and horrid, conspiratorial, frankly right-wing conclusions about the world at worst. People can be boneheads without being paid shills.