Crime Veiled in the Raiments of Activism

On 06 June 2023, protesters ostensibly connected to Last Generation—a group of climate-change activists indigenous, primarily, to Germany and Italy — egregiously vandalized a Cessna 525 CitationJet 1+ parked on Germany’s Sylt Airport (GWT). The aircraft is reportedly owned by a German real estate entrepreneur.

A video posted by Last Generation in the wake of the impropriety shows a group of six, back-pack-wearing vandals—five adorned in orange safety-vests and a one in unremarkable street-attire—utilizing bolt-cutters to breach the airport’s perimeter fence for purpose of gaining access to the unguarded aircraft. The five vested hoodlums advanced upon the aircraft whilst the sixth took a position outside the fence and commenced filming the crime’s commission.

From their backpacks, the profligate company within the airport perimeter withdrew fire-extinguishers charged with orange pigment and proceeded to cover the $2-million light-business-jet in a heavy coat of bright-orange effluent. That the vandals’ vests approximated the color of the besmirched aircraft was likely not incidental.

Having wrought extensive damage upon the jet’s engines, paint, wing and engine de-icing surfaces, pitot-static and AOA systems, cabin windows, windscreen, and windscreen pneumatic rain removal system, the wrong-doers clambered atop the CitationJet’s wings and unfurled a pair of German-language banners alternately reading Your Luxury = Our Drought and Your Luxury = Our Crop Failures.

Not content to merely display their hyperbolic standards, the protesters—aged 21 to sixty—used powerful adhesives to glue the banners—and according to some reports, themselves—to the aircraft’s wings and the airport ramp. In 2022, a sounder of Last Generation zealots occasioned travel disruptions by gluing themselves to a runway at Berlin’s Brandenburg Airport (BER).

The CitationJet savaged to the satisfaction of its self-professedly peaceful ravagers, Last Generation spokesman Theodor Schnar, by way of an impromptu speech delivered from the scene of the crime, addressed German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, stating:

Dear Olaf Scholz,

As you will be aware, millionaires and billionaires contribute disproportionately to the degradation of our livelihoods.  A four-hour private flight emits as much CO2 as an average person emits in a year .

The emissions that billionaires are responsible for alone through their own consumption with private jets, super yachts and luxury villas are a thousand times the global per capita emissions.

And while two-thirds of Germans have already reduced their CO2 emissions in recent decades, the super-rich have increased their emissions.

And you, Mr. Scholz, allow that. That is surprising. You are the chancellor of the SPD. You campaigned with justice. It is the central value of social democracy. However, if a few are unduly destroying the planet, and all others suffer, where is the justice?

One thing is clear: the owners of private jets, limousines and superyachts will not voluntarily abandon them. In order to lower these emissions, regulations and laws will be needed. Laws of the kind that have made our social market economy strong.

It is also clear that the super-rich not only have a lot of money, but also a lot of power through their contacts and lobbyists. For decades they have managed to expand their influence in order to secure their wealth.

Perhaps you fear, Mr. Scholz, the confrontation with the billionaires. In this case, we would like you to convene a board of directors. A loose assembly of citizens that advises on climate protection measures. The legitimacy of this council is so great that even the most difficult decisions become possible.

In this way we can protect our livelihoods, socially fair.

If you managed to implement this, avoid unnecessary emissions and secure our future, you would go down in the history books as climate chancellor.

If we don't succeed, our civilization will collapse, and perhaps there will soon be no one left to write stories.

You have the choice.

Long after their presence might have mitigated the damage done to the aircraft, Sylt Airport emergency personnel arrived on-scene in an airport crash-tender. Remarkably, responders all but ignored the reprobates perched proudly atop the CitationJet’s wings—after the fashion of gloating pigeons admiring a tableau of their own feces—and got straight-away about the business of mending the airport fence.

In time, police officers arrived in a blusterous show of blue-lights, wailing sirens, and little actual action.

According to German news outlets, local authorities have undertaken an investigation of the incident. Remarkably, police are reportedly endeavoring to determine if the vandals were coerced, and if any property damage was incurred.

FMI: https://www.flughafen-sylt.de/