Anniversary: Two years since climate vandals attacked Mona Lisa

Two years ago today, French vandals from the climate alarmist group Riposte Alimentaire threw pumpkin soup at the “Mona Lisa” hanging in the Louvre museum in Paris. Leonardo da Vinci’s famous painting was undamaged because of armored glass protecting it.

This was the second attack on the artwork within two years. In May 2022 a man feigning a disability approached the painting in a wheelchair, smeared a pastry on it, and yelled: “Think of planet Earth, there are people destroying it.” The glass partition protected the work from damage in this instance as well. The vandal was taken to a psychiatric hospital for evaluation.

But (coincidentally or not) his attack immediately preceded numerous coordinated attacks against famous artwork in 2022 by climate vandals. Demonstrators from Just Stop Oil were behind multiple attacks on paintings in the United Kingdom, including one against DaVinci’s “The Last Supper” in July 2022 and another on Vincent Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” in October 2022.

Recently and more concerning, the climate radicals have been attacking energy infrastructure.

Earlier this month, members of Vulkangruppe (German for “Volcano Group”) launched an arson attack on a power station near an affluent suburb of Berlin, Germany. CNN reported 100,000 people were left without power for several very cold days in a blackout “believed to be the longest in Berlin’s postwar history.”  The Berlin mayor appropriately called this an act of terrorism.

Less than six months ago in September 2025 a smaller multi-day outage in the Berlin area was inflicted by an earlier Vulkangruppe attack on a power station. And in March 2024 the climate terrorists knocked out the power supply to a Tesla gigafactory in the same region. German intelligence and law enforcement credit Vulkangruppe with similar assaults against transportation, energy and communications infrastructure dating back to at least 2011.

Anti-energy vandals have been active in the United States as well and tracked by InfluenceWatch and the Capital Research Center. Recent reports include the following:

• Greenpeace, nonprofits, and illegal protests: Greenpeace is facing a $667 million civil damage award for torts committed during a violent pipeline protest. So, what are we to make of the scores of other nonprofits that signed on to support Greenpeace’s behavior?
• Bailing Out Greenpeace: Lefty Donors Who Could Pay Up for Dakota Access Damages: An analysis of Greenpeace’s big funders before, during and even after the violent attacks on the Dakota Access pipeline.
• VIDEO: From activism to illegality: nonprofits and illegal protests
• On its anniversary, is Greenpeace sailing on its final voyage?: Sunday is the anniversary of Greenpeace’s founding. But the anti-energy NGO has lately been sailing on some rough waters.
• InfluenceWatch Podcast #361: Justice for Greenpeace: It can seem infuriating: Leftist demonstrators wantonly violate the law, only to face no or negligible consequences because the powers that be either support or refuse to oppose their disruptive tactics. But as a famous progressive politician was fond of saying, “The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice.” Last month, a North Dakota jury awarded Energy Transfer, the company building the Dakota Access Pipeline, $667 million in justice, holding that Greenpeace USA had defamed the company during demonstrations against the pipeline. Joining us to discuss the protests, the verdict, and what it might mean for leftist activism going forward is James Meigs, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
• Unabombers without bombs: Another environmentalist group is hard at work, disturbing the peace and proselytizing a new world order destined to save the environment. All that’s needed to solve the problem is to abandon economic systems that lift nations out of poverty and to accept a dramatic decrease in the global standard of living. Meet Extinction Rebellion.
• Thirty years of the Unabomber and his influence: The Unabomber manifesto was published 30 years ago this week. But Ted Kaczynski’s hostility to industrial civilization has outlived his capture and his death.
• Extinction Rebellion Member and Initiator of ESG Wars Wants a Truce
• InfluenceWatch profiles:
  • Extinction Rebellion
  • Just Stop Oil
  • Greenpeace