[TacticalCoder]

He's also king of the "I'll criticize the west but I'll turn a blind-eye to non-democratic countries' wrongdoings". A trait shared with virtually all intellectuals and artists in the west.

There are fights worth fighting: for example there are 300 million women alive who have undergone forced genital mutilation. 300 million ain't cheap change. There are also hundreds of millions of people who applauded the killing of 1200 young civilians who were enjoying life at a music festival "because it's resistance".

Applauding the killing of young unarmed civilians, genitally mutilating women and turning a blind-eye to a regime slaughtering 30 000+ of its own unarmed civilians is where I personally draw the line and consider there are maybe more important things to complain about than, say, "the patriarchal western society built by heterosexual white men" or some other woke non-sense like that.

Now to be honest Banksy did art criticizing war overall, not just war started by the west. So a generous reading could consider that he also criticizes things like the 800 000 deaths during the Hutu vs Tutsi war.

But still overall: lots of balls from western artists when it's about criticizing the west, but tiny tiny nuts when it's about, say, attacking the ideology that is responsible for 300 people enjoying music at the Bataclan and then getting slaughtered.

But these people can live with their own conscience: I speak up and I've got mine.

[constantius]

That's a lot of imaginary flaws in imaginary people, with imaginary numbers as scaffolding.

The moral posture you're criticising is not actually a thing, I personally don't know of any Western intellectual who criticises the West but is fine with FGM for example. But it seems that the fault you find in them is that when they criticise the West, for example, they don't also add a list of grievances against all the other countries (but surely they'd have to speak for 10 hours every time they open their mouths?).

It's also funny how you take the 30,000 Iranian civilians killed at face value, but don't talk about the wrongs of the British empire. And you didn't even mention North Korea once. You see the issue with your reqs?

[bravoetch]

Are you making art to fill that perceived gap, or just lodging your objection to people doing their own thing? No artist owes you a curriculum of your design.

[pjc50]

The Iran problem is a good example: it was wrong of them to massacre civilians, but you cannot fix this by .. bombing more civilians.

[21asdffdsa12]

So how do you fix a situation, where one party relentlessly attacks all the time? Israel, does what ukraine does- a strip of death around the country- getting wider as the technology to attack it matures.

[delusional]

What do you want the artists to do about it? Part of art's power is shining a light on something we don't notice day to day. Most westeners are against mutilation, what would the art say?

Art will always be about speaking truth to power, and that power will usually be the one closest felt. There's not much value in a swede speaking truth to Nigerian warlords.

[notahacker]

> But these people can live with their own conscience: I speak up and I've got mine.

Not sure there's much conscience in Banksy making anti-national chauvinist memes whilst not identifying as any sort of nationalist, but there's even less in dismissing all criticisms of one's own society's treatment of, say, women because some other societies treat them worse.

For all that I don't think posturing graffiti artists are the saviours of humanity, it's difficult not to notice that the groups that actually are tackling FGM are practising Muslims and super-liberal NGOs (in that order) and that the people who raise it to deflect from criticisms of their own society are not represented at all in those efforts. Or are actively campaigning to get women's escape routes from those countries shut down.

Can't really lecture others on losing their sense of perspective about the magnitude of injustices either when a week ago you were expressing outrage at checks post history creatives depicting certain characters in LOTR as non-white!?!

[zuminator]

There's a lot wrong with the world, but it seems not unreasonable for people to more strongly critique things 1) they feel they have some responsibility for or 2) that directly impact them or 3) where their criticisms are more likely to result in positive change.

[tim333]

He's a Brit mostly putting art in Britain and so it's naturally that way focused. I've no info what his views would be on forced genital mutilation - probably against but not his area of art like most people.

[UnwrapComment]

Oh yes the classic problem of 'the west' always bettering themselves. If they would actually start focusing on the rest of the world, maybe the world would be a wonderful place. Right?

Or maybe, we should look at the problems in our society and try to make it better, instead of just shouting into the void about things we, as nations, can't and wouldn't be and perhaps, shouldn't able to change?