BRENDAN O’NEILL: The disgusting defacement of Lord Balfour’s painting.
There’s a new movement in town: Philistines for Palestine. Not content with traipsing through the streets every other weekend to holler their hatred for Israel, now ‘pro-Palestine’ activists are taking aim at art. Witness yesterday’s fevered attack on the painting of Lord Balfour at Cambridge university – an act of petulant, self-satisfied philistinism that will do precisely nothing to help people in Gaza.
The slashing of the painting was carried out by a member of a group called Palestine Action. She walked up to the 1914 portrait and sprayed it with red paint before wielding her knife to cut it to shreds. Why target Balfour? Because he played a key role in creating the modern state of Israel. And to the manically Israelophobic left, there are few sins as grave as that.
There was something deeply unsettling about this Taliban-style assault on a piece of art. It had a medieval feel. A clearly riled individual, under the spell of some kind of fear or animus, using violence to try to cleanse the world of a sinful image. It feels like Year Zero fanaticism, a Red Guard-style effort to scrub ‘the problematic’ from public view.
Such wanton cultural vandalism is not ‘progressive’ activism. It’s the rage of the entitled. It’s the nihilism of bored bourgeois youths who crave something to hate in order that they might feel more alive. We’ve already seen the sons and daughters of eye-watering privilege glue themselves to art in the name of ‘saving the planet’. Now they’re upping the ante and destroying art in the name of ‘saving Palestine’. That their antics will do nothing to ‘save’ either Gaia or Gaza matters little to these people. All that matters is that they get to make a public spectacle of their personal angst.’
There’s no doubt that England’s pro-Palestinian vandals are taking their cue from a more modern fundamentalist religion. But to be fair, the bar has been razed significantly in recent weeks though:
Self-immolation is the new standard. This is weak shit. https://t.co/7mkbHe5Z8F
— Vanessa (@Nessakins_) March 8, 2024