Activists struck financial targets in five European cities over the weekend in a co-ordinated action protesting against major financiers of fossil fuels and arms companies:
Paris: Barclay’s French HQ was covered in red paint by activists from Carnage Total
Vienna: BlackRock’s office graffitied with the message ‘BlackRock finances genocide’ and sprayed with paint by activists from Shut Elbit Down.
Hamburg: ‘Free Sudan, Congo, Gaza’ was graffitied at Barclays’ main office.
Geneva: The act now! group blocked Barclays’ office with coal and a protest telling the bank to ‘Stop financing climate change, invest in our future.’
London and UK: In Norwich, Brighton, Malvern and London, several Barclays’ branches had locks glued or graffiti sprayed, and in the capital, the Shut The System group also claimed to have targeted two senior executives – the bank’s “sustainable finance” head Daniel Hanna, and CEO Vimlesh Maru. Last week, their neighbours received spoof cocktail party invitations to celebrate “highly profitable crimes against humanity”.
This was followed by graffiti and paint actions outside both their homes in the early hours of Monday morning.
The actions are part of a global campaign to force investors towards real change in accordance with IPCC targets and in recognition of the grave climate future we’re heading towards.
Promising greater escalation, a Shut The System spokesperson said: “As civilians, we have no choice but to fight for a fair economy designed for humanity and nature’s flourishing, replacing the lethal illusion of infinite growth for growth’s sake alone.”
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“if the City of London alone was a country, it would be the world’s ninth biggest emitter – larger than Germany, Canada or Australia”
The 2025 Banking On Climate Chaos report, which is endorsed by several respected NGOs, is the inspiration for this underground sabotage group. Shut The System launched last year with a series of actions at Barclays’ branches across the UK, spraying red paint, smashing windows or glueing locks to send a message about the company’s complicity in the Gazan genocide and the climate crisis.
Although the bank claimed it didn’t directly invest in controversial Israeli weapons company Elbit Systems, it admitted holding shares as part of its trading “in response to client instruction or demand”. A May 2024 report estimated total holdings of $2billion in Elbit and other arms companies directly complicit in Israel’s violence against Palestinians.
In October last year the campaign claimed victory alongside now-proscribed direct action group Palestine Action. Researchers point to Barclays’ US Securities and Exchange Commission filings which confirmed the company no longer had shares in Elbit, having apparently dumped around 16,000 shares, worth millions, during the course of the protests.
BlackRock wields unimaginable influence in the world with its 11.6 trillion dollar assets – roughly equivalent to the wealth of the ten richest countries – but it continues to prop up the worst fossil fuel companies to the tune of more than $400billion. Read more on this, and their ties to Israel’s military, in our recent coverage of a protest at their London HQ.
The group have publicised a list of demands. Five are simply based on the Banking On Chaos report, which is authored by a network of fossil fuel finance experts, simply setting out a sensible pathway to align with long-standing calls and expert warnings from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
- Prohibit all finance and insurance for fossil fuel expansion immediately.
- Adopt absolute financed emissions reduction targets for oil, gas, and coal aligned with a rigorous 1.5C scenario.
- Demand robust 1.5C-aligned transition plans for all existing fossil fuel clients.
- Protect Indigenous Peoples’ and human rights.
- Scale up financing for a just and fair transition.
In reaction to obvious barriers to change, Shut The System also call for democratic and systemic change:
- Democratise our economic system with binding citizens’ assemblies to hold the central banks accountable for the way our economy works – operating for the majority, not the wealthy few.
- Adopt alternative indicators other than GDP and investment strategies to prioritise social and environmental well-being, rather than infinite growth for growth’s sake alone.
The interest in and public support for a new political party promising bottom-up politics has never been stronger, partly because citizens see their governments choosing complicity and deceit rather than morality over Israel’s genocide, and because far from tackling the threat of climate collapse, the rich and powerful are doubling down on short-term business investments and even rolling back on emissions targets.
In a functioning democratic society, non-violent protesters wouldn’t have to risk serious prison sentences and go underground to make their point, but with ever more authoritarian and undemocratic legislation, any meaningful protest is being policed out of existence, so that groups such as Shut The System are the inevitable result.
