Hang Banksy

The world-renowned criminal and street artist known only as Banksy has been active painting the streets of London and elsewhere with his nauseating brand of stencil-craft for more than two decades now. One would be hard-pressed to determine the precise monetary toll that this charlatan’s vandalism has inflicted upon London’s graffiti removal budget as of present. For those unacquainted with Banksy, some commonly-flaunted examples of his work include the painting of the protestor throwing a bouquet of flowers (depicted below), the image showing a young girl frisking down a soldier, and a large nude man hanging onto a windowsill. His work exemplifies the kind of post-modernist pseudo-art that would have William Bouguereau convulsing in his tomb. Banksy’s paintings can barely be considered art, but merely a sad agglomeration of provocative symbolism and vaguely correlated political and corporate imagery. His civil-disobedience has earned him the admiration of many leftist goons and liberal arts students. Fortunately, there are some who still regard Banksy as the criminal he is. Political inclinations aside, there is no ethical justification for what he does. The deliberate destruction or defacement of someone’s stuff is a crime and his actions convey no regard whatsoever for the institution of private property. His craft is an eyesore upon the city. His message provokes neither thought, nor consideration—just vomit. When this miscreant is finally unmasked (and he will be), he shall be subject to the most swift and unmerciful of judicial procedures.

From his defacement of the West Bank wall, to his desecration of a sexual health clinic in Bristol, the most glaring injustice perpetrated by this individual is his disregard and vandalism of private and government property. The institution of private property is not merely some kind of capitalist plot to undermine human innocence. Its purpose is to ensure that one’s material assets are not at the mercy of the first thug who wishes to destroy them or take them away. Every human being has an obligation to respect the physical property of others and no circumstance or condition may override this obligation. A burglar who breaks into your house and smashes you crystal chandelier is not justified in doing so as an act of free expression. Likewise, it could hardly be argued that a bigot who paints a swastika in blood on one’s front door is just exercising his right to free speech. Then why is a common vandal with a few stencils and some spray paint so revered for defacing the property of business owners and governments? Why is this nonsense allowed to persist? One could not conceivably propose an ethical justification for Banksy’s graffiti without disregarding the universal right to personal property.

The overwhelming support for the actions of this criminal come from Banksy’s fellow miscreants and angsty revolutionaries who identify with his ambiguous, yet anti-capitalist inclinations. It is evident from observing his graffiti, that Banksy is a fervent adherent to the  leftist agenda. The man has a stick up his ass when it comes to issues such as globalization, profit motive, rich people, industrialization, factory farming, and fast food, among other things. Not only is Banksy a hypocrite for demonstrating against such things as industrialization and capitalism, but he is disregarding some fundamental facts about reality and the world in which man inhabits. Take his two paintings depicted below for example. Both contain strong implications that industrialization is undesirable as it has replaced a landscape of trees, meadows, and parks with highways, parking lots, and factories. However, this is just impractical idealism, as urbanity is merely the most convenient and efficient means for large densely populated communities to survive. The paint Banksy uses, the clothes he presumably wears, and the affluent dwelling in which he inhabits were all created by a process made possible by industrialization.

Fast food may be disgusting, but many people would be unwilling to give up the convenience of cheap/fast service at the expense of some loosely defined moral ideologies such as those that Banksy’s paintings allude to. Likewise, most people (likely including Banksy himself) would also be unwilling to forfeit all the luxuries and amenities that globalization has brought them at the expense of an environmental or subjective moral initiative. Thus, Banksy is not merely an undesirable for his destruction of property, but also for his dissemination of irrational views of existence.

Considering the immense public support for his lowly incursions, Banksy’s actions will most likely encourage copycats if he is not made an example of. It ought to be communicated to his ilk that defacement of private property and distasteful displays of art are not to be tolerated by a society that already allows free speech and an open marketplace of ideas. It goes without saying that Banksy’s art would not be as popular, nor would it have sold for thousands of dollars if it was not presented in such a dishonest, shameless fashion. In order that we rid society of its lowest contingents—so-called graffiti-artists, Banksy ought to be hung by his neck in Trafalgar Square. This method of deterrent has already proven successful throughout the course of history by reducing the conviction rate of witchcraft and piracy. Perhaps Banksy’s bloated and rotting corpse will send a duly-needed message to any further aspiring vandals.