{"id":999,"date":"2025-05-18T08:23:00","date_gmt":"2025-05-18T08:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bethanhemus.art\/?p=999"},"modified":"2025-09-24T12:42:59","modified_gmt":"2025-09-24T12:42:59","slug":"led-by-donkeys-exposing-thermonuclear-hypocrisy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bethanhemus.art\/?p=999","title":{"rendered":"Led By Donkeys: Exposing thermonuclear hypocrisy"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I have supported and followed Led By Donkeys work since
\ntheir inception, The group is comprised of four men, all of whom have activist
\npasts and met through their work at Greenpeace: Ben Stewart, James Sadri,
\nWilliam Rose and Oliver Knowles. Ben, Greenpeace\u2019s deputy programme director, said
\n\u201cWe come from a political culture that is comfortable with civil disobedience
\nand thinks that civil disobedience has got us a lot of the freedoms we\u2019ve got,
\nand, speaking personally, isn\u2019t that bothered by getting a conviction.\u201d<\/p>\n

They came up with a name for their group, a riff on \u201clions
\nled by the donkeys\u201d, the phrase used in the first world war to describe the
\ntragedy of the British foot soldiers led to slaughter by incompetent or stupid
\ngenerals. <\/p>\n

I feel a deep harmony with their political stance and am in
\nadmiration of their efforts to expose our leader\u2019s corruption, incompetence and
\nthe harm it causes. <\/p>\n

Their efforts begun digitally, as they captured and
\nre-quoted the gross incompetence’s, contradictions and indifferences of UK
\npoliticians, particularly around Brexit, across various social media platforms,
\nThe public reaction to this activity motivated them to go bigger with their
\npolitical messaging and they started to plant their artwork in public spaces
\nillegally, intentionally, anonymously. They were approached by Crowdfunder and
\nwithin a day of launching their campaign they had raised more than 50K.
\nListening to and reading interviews about their process and these activist
\nstunts is heartening, because it speaks of the voice of the people, being
\nhonoured. <\/p>\n

What’s fascinating to me is that they are not artists,
\neither by discipline or claim. Yet their work is undeniably visual activism.
\nIt’s an intersection of activism and art. And it’s loud to me that “not
\nartists” are holding that space. They watched media not hold politicians
\nto account, and they responded boldly, visually. Led By Donkeys are clear that
\nthey don\u2019t believe they can single-handedly bring down the government. They
\nstarted the project for catharsis, stating that they could either laugh or cry
\n\u2013 and they would rather laugh. It was something they could do. Something that
\nwould help them feel less hopeless and frustrated. I am paying attention to
\nthis.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Their trajectory is a shining example of how social media
\ntech can enable activists to create and have impact through art stunt.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/politics\/2019\/oct\/19\/led-by-donkeys-interview-there-is-as-political-power-in-laughing<\/a><\/div>\n
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https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/books\/2019\/oct\/19\/led-by-donkeys-book-extract-brexit-protest<\/a><\/p>\n

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https:\/\/www.ledbydonkeys.org\/<\/a><\/p>\n

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I have supported and followed Led By Donkeys work since their inception, The group is comprised of four men, all of whom have activist pasts and met through their work at Greenpeace: Ben Stewart, James Sadri, William Rose and Oliver Knowles. Ben, Greenpeace\u2019s deputy programme director, said \u201cWe come from a political culture that is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1000,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-999","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bethanhemus.art\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/999","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bethanhemus.art\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bethanhemus.art\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bethanhemus.art\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bethanhemus.art\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=999"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bethanhemus.art\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/999\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1001,"href":"https:\/\/bethanhemus.art\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/999\/revisions\/1001"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bethanhemus.art\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bethanhemus.art\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bethanhemus.art\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bethanhemus.art\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}