JSO is now an official nominee for the most cringe and WTAF email of 2024. Why? Just WHY?
Just Stop Oil is a divisive organisation. They’re cool with that. Some lean into it, for good and baddish reasons.
Glueing yourself to things, blocking oil refineries, blocking roads and – most notoriously of all – throwing soup at THE THICK PROTECTIVE GLASS covering works of arts is not always going to make you friends, but it may influence people. And that’s their point. They’re trying to influence policy, specifically around new oil licenses in the North Sea. The clue is in the name.
I guess there are four general positions about JSO, with overlap. I suspect many people oscillate between three of the four, depending on what’s happening in their worlds and what if anything they’ve eaten lately.
The outlier, least oscillating from position, to which I do not subscribe and I suspect you don’t either, is this
- JSO is a bunch of paid actors/narcissists, funded by WEF/BillGates/Putin to destabilise the West. String ‘em up it’s the only language they understand. Climate change is a hoax, chemtrails are real, COVID is… [continues in this throbbing vein for hours]
The other three are these.
- JSO means well but their stunts put people off and harm the “climate movement” while also making it harder for the Good People within The System to influence that System.
- JSO has made a splash, with a mix of activities. They’re an offshoot of XR, which didn’t ever quite get round to filling the prisons and bringing down the State the way they said was going to be easy. Some of what they do is good, some meh. It’s not building a movement, and it feels exhausting (grammatical ambiguity intended)
- JSO are ordinary people made irreproachable saints and heroes by their willingness to put their bodies and their liberty on the line for the Greater Good (of humans and other species, future generations all) and I wish I had a tiny ounce of their integrity.
Stop right there.
That word. Integrity.
Aside the first positioners, who will never accept it applies, the other three groups, with few or zero cavilling, would use the word integrity freely to describe JSO.
Integrity is priceless. As the old Marxist line (Groucho Marx, since you ask) goes – “authenticity is everything: once you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”
You cannot buy integrity, not with Mastercard, not with anything except your own sacrifice and determination. But you can (all too easily; so easily, destroy the perception of your integrity.
And JSO is doing it. They have sent out the following email, yesterday. The subject header is
“Become a monthly donor to hear our new plan first“
Here’s a screengrab of the relevant bit. Read it and weep.
High pressure sales techniques and a social movement organisation saying it is the way and the light and the salvation? Doesn’t mix. (1)
JSO. WTAF? Are you that desperate for pennies?
Someone, I forget who, and probably nobody else has ever heard of this, asked “what profiteth it a man to gain the whole pennies if he loseth his reputation for having a soul.”
Well? It’s a good question.
Do you have a good answer?
Footnote
(1) Okay, so enough with my performative naivete: JSO has form with high-pressure sales techniques. See this report by a total asshole, based on his attending two different recruitment meetings in 2022 –
Just Stop Oil: anthropologically fascinating, politically terrifying.
Update October 11 2024
Saw this – “Inauthentic recommendations may erode the relationship between an influencer and their followers.” Ya think?
marchudson.net 
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