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“Someone must have slandered Josef K., because without having done anything wrong, he was arrested one morning.”

–The Trial, Franz Kafka

The incident and the context

On Monday, September 8, London woke up to a vision created with the decisive contribution of the artist Banksy, the oppressive superpower of judicial authority – with the presence of a political work on the wall of the Royal Courts of Justice, the historic complex that houses the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court. The work depicts a judge in a traditional wig and black robe raising his oversized gavel, not to deliver a verdict, but to strike a protester lying on the ground holding a white sign stained with red reminiscent of blood. The authenticity of the work was immediately confirmed by the artist himself via Instagram, a common practice for him. Security guards were then mobilized to stand in front of the work and prevent it from being photographed, before crews arrived to cover it up.

The image of a judge punishing a citizen was literally covered up by the state authority itself, in a kind of symbolic confirmation that reinforced the message of the work. The work comes at a particularly bad time for the UK, with the reactions that this symbol would provoke intensifying criticism against the backdrop of the mass arrests of nearly 900 people in London a few days earlier during a demonstration in support of Palestine Action.

The court administration justified the removal order by citing the building’s status as a listed monument, 143 years old, required to maintain its “authentic appearance.” At the same time, the Metropolitan Police is investigating the case as possible damage to public property. The act of removal itself functions as an extension of the mural, like a second layer of “image,” this time tangible, through the act of censorship. Both the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom have already considered Palestine Action’s appeal against the government’s decision to include the organization on the list of terrorist organizations under the Terrorism Act 2000. Although the Court of Appeal initially rejected the request for a temporary suspension of the ban, a Supreme Court judge gave the green light for the full hearing of the case, paving the way for a judicial review of the legality of the government’s decision. The government, for its part, is seeking to overturn this development in order to maintain the ban, arguing that the organization’s actions – such as the destruction of military equipment and invasions of facilities – constitute a threat to national security. The timing of the mural’s appearance serves as a commentary not only on the situation in Gaza but also on the functioning of justice itself, the limits of state power, and the criminalization of activist action.

The shadows of censorship

Who is Banksy?

Banksy is anonymous, his identity remains officially unknown, which has fueled his legend and made him a symbol of artistic rebellion. He started out in the 1990s in Bristol, influenced by the city’s music and art scene, creating his first stencil works such as Mild Mild West. Since then, he has transformed public space into a canvas for political and social commentary: he has placed works on the West Bank wall in Gaza, in museums such as the Louvre and MoMA, but also on random streets and parking lots around the world.

His work combines technical skill – mainly with stencils that allow for rapid execution and mass reproduction – with caustic irony and sharp messages. His themes range from war and police violence to consumer culture, the climate crisis, and refugee rights. At the same time, his anonymity protects him from criminal consequences and keeps the focus on the message rather than the person, which has reinforced his reputation as an “anti-establishment” artist. 

A significant part of his work is charitable in nature, with Banksy himself donating works to fund organizations such as Greenpeace and Choose Love, supporting youth centers in Bristol, and even funded the rescue ship Louise Michel to save refugees in the Mediterranean. Banksy’s career shows that he uses art as a vehicle to become a political commentator, engaging in social and moral intervention.

Who is to be judged?

In principle, street art disrupts the “normality” of the city by making it more public; it is a form of art that negotiates urban citizenship and opposition to the mainstream. Art forms such as this fall into the realm of the illegal and are required to operate under very specific conditions – the issue, of course, is that these issues do not end there. the act of creation becomes a point of conflict in public space, a point of friction and cultural production. In the same spirit, Banksy here does not “decorate” a wall; he activates it as a stage for political conflict. 

Democracy has a need for such visibility, for open debates where street art can spark such a confrontation. The contextual work on the wall of the High Court does nothing else but this; it does not request permission, but it does request accountability – with Banksy’s emblematic stencil promoting a visual language of low cost/high impact, where speed, recognition, and ease of reproduction on social media act as catalysts for the power and dissemination of the message, which are, after all, intertwined. The artist could not have failed to consider the possibility of censorship of his work, so the elements of transience, decay, and “erasure” are organic components of the medium. Consequently, through the act of removal, the work itself becomes the scene of a final act of a self-actualization of the artwork, speaking even more loudly about censorship and power, essentially reinforcing the message. Be that as it may, the censorship of this art is nothing more than a classic symptom of the neoliberal city, with heritage protection mechanisms acting as tools of “zero tolerance” towards performative criticism. 

Even in a legal context, the originality of a work generates copyright, regardless of whether the work was created “illegally.” However, the difficulty that courts may face in applying such issues is the possible promotion of corresponding illegal acts – a rather conservative approach since, qualitatively and phenomenologically, such acts do not set a precedent. However, today, the work resides elsewhere, living as a digital entity, becoming one with the new media while being disseminated by news agencies, allowing for the rapid circulation of its condensed message. Of course, even this may come with a cost, as the radicalism of the message is transformed into a gentrified performance, where digital fetishization and repeated reposts will inflate its value, turning it into a commodity and weakening the original message. The positive? The Banalité of authority and its drastic removal probably interrupted this process, turning the act of elimination into hard news. 

The depicted judge, a vigilante kind of figure, acts as a commentary on society’s perception that the law does not stand alone, but as a weapon of executive power. Politically, the timing of the wave of arrests for Palestine Action transforms the wall into a representation of a trial, where the witness is the public sphere itself and the defendants are those who oppose an ideological, communicative monopoly.

The banning of Palestine Action as a “terrorist organization” is a legal precedent with great symbolic weight, as it is the first time that a direct-action protest group has been characterized as such in the United Kingdom, despite the fact that many of the movement’s actions are peaceful or symbolic, or cause material damage without violence to persons. Such practices are not ultimately aimed at security but serve as tools to silence dissent and establish fear as a means of managing protest. The broad use of the legal concept of terrorism is expanding to cover symbolic expressions, even those that pose no threat to physical integrity, producing “chilling effects” that discourage public expression.

The speed with which the mural disappeared is not about preserving a newer monument – as we noted – but is a political reflex, reflecting the authorities’ embarrassment in the face of public art that criticizes and exposes their arbitrariness. Banksy’s intervention is a core commentary on the contradictions of a liberal democracy which, while invoking freedom of expression, enlists the law and the police to control its own image. At the same time, there is a harsh orientalist interpretation of things or strong relation with its principle values, not in relation to the work itself necessary, but in relation to the historical context, what it demonstrates and with what is connected. The performance of orientalism here has to do with a timeless cultural and political strategy, with the systematic presentation of the “Other” as dangerous, unpredictable, and ultimately inferior – this way of looking at things legitimizes the actions of institutions in controlling and silencing the “Other”. When a group such as Palestine Action is labeled as terrorist, the message conveyed concerns not only its actions, but also its cultural identity. Voices calling for decolonization and criticizing military occupation are symbolically placed in the realm of the “dangerous,” “suspicious,” and “extreme” – especially on issues related to Israeli settlements, where the method draws parallels with the actions of imperial Britain in the past. 

Hence, the removal of Banksy’s work itself functions as an act of orientalist management, taking an image that could spark dialogue and removing it from the public sphere, turning it into evidence of control rather than a catalyst for public memory and political consciousness, making the quick covering up of the work a tangible manifestation of the very violence it depicted, where London’s legal tradition reacts with its old, imperial muscle memory, erasing the image in case it provokes the inevitable challenge.

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