A painting of Lord Balfour housed at the University of Cambridge’s Trinity College was slashed by protest group Palestine Action.
The painting of Lord Balfour was made in 1914 by Philip Alexius de László inside Trinity College. The Palestine Action group specifically targeted the Lord Balfour painting, describing his declaration as the beginning of “ethnic cleansing of Palestine by promising the land away—which the British never had the right to do.”
Agreed, except that I would call this peaceful protest. Vandalism isn’t violence. Violence is against a person. As long as no person was relying on this painting for their meals or shelter or whatever - and they definitely weren’t - then no person was harmed.
No no no, you don’t understand. Violence is everything that disturbs those in power!
Mediocre art being damaged in one of the centers of power is violence.
Tens of thousands of people somewhere else dying is just a minor inconvenience.
so vandalism is in fact violence if you rely on the object? Like your car, your house, your bike…
Depends really, it’s all deeply contextual. A landlord kicking a family out because they can’t make rent is violence. Cops destroying an encampment of the unhoused is violence. Those people are hurt by those actions, even if not immediately.
It’s not about reliance exactly, but about harm to people. Any action that can reasonably be assumed to harm a person is violent. Pulling a lever isn’t violent, unless it’s the trigger of a gun aimed at someone. Then a series of predictable physical processes unfold that lead to serious harm.
Breaking a plank of wood isn’t violence, even if it belongs to someone else. That’s just property destruction. But if someone was standing on that plank of wood and they fall to their death, you killed them.