Why do we have to throw soup on beloved impressionist paintings when we have a desk used for human rights violations at home?

Climate change is bad. We’re all very aware it’s roasting us all like rotisserie chicken, and (hopefully) we’re all taking whatever steps we can to stop it on the individual front. Like, we know it sucks. Apparently, it sucks so much people are now throwing soup everywhere in protest, including Monet’s Grainstacks in Potsdam and Van Gogh’s Sunflowers in the British National Gallery.

However, is throwing soup at a famous painting the #GirlBossSlay we need right now? Like, do you think Vincent Van Gogh knew what ExxonMobil was and handpicked his tubed oil paints to paint his beautiful masterpieces because he just really loved Big Oil?

Without getting too into this debate—I’d rather not give the Omnipotent Overlords that moderate the comments section too much work to do—I just think that “attacking” the paintings people generally love a lot is working against what you’re trying to say. Like, sure, get people angry about climate change, but wouldn’t destroying paintings in accessible art galleries meant for the public to appreciate make the people angry at you instead? Also, why not go all the way with it? If you glued your hand directly onto the canvas then you would have actually destroyed it like you wanted… Then again, if you glued your hand to the painting, you’d have actually felt the glass protecting the image and become self-aware enough to know your tomato chunks are not going on those damn sunflowers.

All I’m saying is that if you’re going to be a climate activist group funded almost entirely from the heiress to one of the biggest companies involved in Big Oil, then at least don’t throw soup on paintings everyone likes. People are going to start thinking you may just act disruptive to deter people from supporting climate change activism!

That’s why I have a proposition. A modest proposal, of sorts.

You know what else sucks just as much as the impending doom caused by climate change? Fascism. Benito Mussolini, to be more exact. He was short, loud, one of the worst political leaders ever to hold power, and he killed a lot of people all over the world. Mussolini also had his own hand in destroying the environment. Remember the war on malaria? The bonifica integrale plan that involved destroying large swaths of Italian swampland to build new, 100% fascist villages? The manipulation of wheat DNA to make it able to grow in any soil, thus “proving” Italian national strength? Unethical malaria vaccine experiments on the people of the Pontine Marshes? Yeah, turned out he was not the most duce man after all.

Next, we have a whole building on our campus that may or may not have been funded by the Mussolini administration (it was), just filled with artifacts of one of the darkest periods in modern history. The Casa Italiana building—you know, the pretty Renaissance-style building next to the brutalist eyesore that is the IAB—was constructed in New York City in 1929, right around the same time Mussolini was draining the swamps. Columbia’s relationship with the building is also very weird: the president at the time, Nicholas Murray Butler, ordered the construction after a small group of Italian students wanted a space to “promote Italian culture and values” at the university…in the late 1920s. The Italian students then used the Casa to publicly support the 1935 Italian invasion of Ethiopia, causing a huge protest by other students. Nicholas Butler also really admired Mussolini and was a public supporter of fascism—so he was more than excited for this architectural venture. Also, Casa Italiana is technically owned by the Italian government, so it’s definitely made of Mussolini money and Mussolini marble.

Anyway, there’s a desk previously owned and sat on by Il Duce himself, and every day it’s just sitting there, in Casa Italiana, looking more and more like a target for some Campbell’s Italian wedding soup. On that desk, Mussolini caused human atrocities beyond scale and ecological atrocities beyond scale…and yet it’s still not forced to be the bowl for a hot, hot cup of minestrone?

Think about it: wouldn’t it be killing two birds with one stone if we said “fuck you” to both climate change being accelerated at the hands of politicians and fascism? People won’t listen to a Van Gogh covered in zuppa Toscana, but they might enjoy it splattered all over the hardwood desk of an evil Italian dictator that has been perpetually linked to Columbia’s history because some guy who happened to get a library named after him got red-pilled by Nazi ambassadors.

If a Big-Oil funded climate activist group really wanted to divert attention from their own mega-corporation’s actions to individual responsibility, they could do it better by going on record and saying, “The fascists are doing this to us!” Like, people still might not like you because you’re still responsible for most of the pollution, but they’ll remember that you’re at least not a fascist. Even better, you could probably spin this whole soupy stunt as a rejection of your own legacy as a contributor to the acceleration of the end of the world by showing that you are not your (eco)fascist grandpa. Slay!

Plus, people won’t think you’re throwing soup on Mussolini’s desk to purposefully be counterintuitive since, you know, you’re working alongside already-established public favor. Also, some Lysol and dry rags could easily wipe it all off, so it’s not like the fascist desk is getting totally wrecked anyway. That means you don’t really have to face the consequences for your actions, you don’t have to lose any of your fortune, and no one gets hurt. That’s a PR win in my book.

Ora, vai a gettare un po’ di zuppa su quella scrivania fascista! Lunga vita Big Oil!

Building Soup via Bwog Illustration