ist presented the venture in a video, with images cutting from huge pleasure yachts to migrants foundering in water. “Like most people who make it in the art world, I bought a yacht to cruise the Med,” the accompanying captions say. “It’s a French Navy vessel we converted into a lifeboat because the EU authorities deliberately ignore distress calls from ‘non-Europeans’ .” The video ends with the slogan: “All Black Lives Matter.”
Claire Faggianelli, of the collective responsible for transforming the boat, said Banksy had emailed to congratulate them on the rescues.
Giovanni Orsina, professor of contemporary history at LUISS University, Rome, said he thought Banksy’s initiative would push people from Italy’s non-ideological centre towards the anti-immigrant League of Matteo Salvini. “A rich Englishman is using a foreign boat to deposit migrants in Italy. It seems perfectly calculated to deepen the gulf between rich progressives and those who suffer the consequences of their policies.”
A reader of the Giornale di Sicilia said: “It would be much better if he managed to take all the immigrants directly to England, a very civilised country with much better employment prospects.”
It's almost beyond parody: the "“All Black Lives Matter” slogan, the vegan diet and "flat hierarchy", the ship named after an obscure 19th century French anarchist, and the man himself, with a smug proclamation of his status as the uniquely moral artist – "Like most people who make it in the art world, I bought a yacht to cruise the Med".
As a Times commenter says: "Oh no Banksy, looks like you’ve started believing your own hype mate, classic mistake . . You do graffiti not politics remember !"
I wonder why he didn't go for helping migrants crossing the English Channel. Not as dramatic or indeed as sunny as the Med, but the problem's basically the same, if on a smaller scale. And it's closer to home. Perhaps he knew what the reaction would be here….
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