For those on both sides of the political spectrum who would push children to further their own agendas, Greta’s iconic question rings clear: How dare you?
For those on both sides of the political spectrum who would push children to further their own agendas, Greta’s iconic question rings clear: How dare you?
R ecently, Greta Thunberg was arrested at a protest outside the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. This was not Thunberg’s first run-in with the law; the first time she was detained was during a protest against the expansion of a coal mine in Germany. Ironically, Germany would hardly need to expand the use of coal were it not for the country’s rejection of nuclear power, something Greta herself belatedly admitted.
Yet her latest arrest was very different: Greta was arrested not for protesting environmental destruction but for blocking the entry to a university that had refused to cut ties with Israel. The cooperation between the University of Copenhagen and an Israeli university was, in part, to develop green tech. Yet, according to the world’s most famous environmentalist, even this noble goal apparently does not justify collaborating with “Zionists.”
You may think that this column is meant to rail against Thunberg’s hypocrisy, but that is not the case. As a Swede, I have followed Thunberg for far longer than most Americans have. I see Thunberg as the most prominent member of what may be the first generation of political child stars, and her current journey of self-destruction is eerily like those of child stars in Hollywood.
Greta Thunberg rose to notoriety when she, as a 15-year-old girl, went on strike from school. Instead of attending her mandatory education, she sat outside the Swedish parliament with a handmade sign that announced that she was on a school strike for the climate. What few people outside of Sweden know is that Greta was not just a random teenager from a random family: Her father and his parents are all well-known actors, and her mom is an opera singer with an international career in music that spans decades and includes representing Sweden in the Eurovision Song Contest, the largest music competition in the world.
When Greta was a young child, her parents appear to have been set on having her follow in their footsteps. She practiced dance and theater and even sang in the backup choir on one of her mom’s albums. In fifth grade, she took part in a children’s game show on TV. That same year, three years before her school strike, her mom revealed in an interview that her daughter Greta had fallen severely ill. They did not know what was wrong, but she was severely depressed and had refused to go to school and even to eat, and her parents felt the need to stay home with her around the clock to provide care. Ultimately, she was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism. Her mom said she believed her daughter’s symptoms may have stemmed from her being ostracized and feeling alienated in school.
Training any child to become a celebrity could be stressful for the child. To have treated a child on the autism spectrum in this way, only belatedly realizing that it was hurting her to do so, seems particularly unwise. Greta’s mother seemed to be describing “autistic burnout,” a long-term exhaustion and loss of function stemming from “chronic life stress and a mismatch of expectations and abilities without adequate supports,” in her daughter.
Another feature of autism can be the development of very strong, frequently eccentric interests and fixations, often called “special interests.” In Greta’s case, the environment, particularly climate change, became her special interest.
Normal parents may have encouraged her to pursue this obsession in a healthy way. There is nothing wrong with caring for the environment, after all. A therapist would likely have suggested that her parents use her interest as a motivation to get her to go to school (something that she, as noted earlier, had refused in the past), get good grades, and then major in climate science or engineering in college. Many brilliant scientists and entrepreneurs (including Elon Musk) have been on the autism spectrum.
Instead, her obsession, likely with direct or indirect pressure from her parents (or merely their role models as celebrities), led her to commit to an irresponsible protest, an activist form of truancy, that also not so incidentally gave her all the fame her parents had, and more. I remain convinced that Greta’s protest would have been ignored, or she may have been escorted away by Parliament security staff after a day or two, had she not had her family connections.
Having myself been a precocious child who got involved in politics very early, around the age of ten, and having myself staged a (partial) school strike for political reasons at the same age Greta began hers, I can certainly relate to her on a personal level. I am so grateful that nobody made me a celebrity at that age. Like Greta, while I did have genuine convictions, my actions were also motivated by having not been doing very well mentally for a number of years.
Greta famously gave a speech in front of the United Nations in which she asked the assembled leaders, “How dare you?” In that same speech, she also said, “You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words.” Listening to that speech, I found myself wondering: Is she really talking about the environment? The leaders, abetted by the media and Greta’s own parents, had in fact stolen her childhood, not by wrecking the planet but by turning her into a political child star.
Once Hollywood child stars “age out,” they often find themselves with few support systems. Having not been told the word “No” very often growing up, they become insufferable through no fault of their own, and once the former stars no longer bring in the big cash, those around them are not so prone to put up with them and instead leave them to their own devices. Making matters worse, they no longer get the dopamine hits that come from being recognized and idolized. Seeking to keep their waning fame alive, many turn to increasingly destructive behaviors to attract attention and frequently find a niche of people who will still affirm them even when the rest of the world has begun to forget about them.
Since Greta can’t be the plucky, quirky, and passionate teenager forever, she seems to (whether consciously or not) have found another role to play, another niche where she can be admired.
Her spiral into the dark corners of the activist Left began less than two weeks after the October 7 attack, when she was pictured holding up a Palestine solidarity sign next to a climate-justice poster. What was notable was that the picture also featured a stuffed octopus toy right behind Greta. The octopus, of course, is a typical antisemitic symbol, used to symbolize how Jews supposedly control the world. That time, Greta apologized and took down the post, but just the month after, she was attending protests screaming about Zionism. Within the narrow space of the radical pro-Palestine movement, this gave her the attention and approval she increasingly struggled to get elsewhere.
It is impossible to square the radical environmentalism of Thunberg with her fervent anti-Israel stance. While “intersectional” theorists like to pretend that every left-wing cause is connected, these are demonstrably not.
First, there’s the mere absurdity of fighting over land that, if Greta and her followers are correct, is soon going to be uninhabitable anyway. In the movie Don’t Look Up, in a not-so-subtle allegory for climate change, world leaders continue playing politics and attempting to enrich themselves even as an extinction-level asteroid is approaching the planet. If climate change is indeed such an asteroid, how does it make sense to squabble over who controls Gaza and the West Bank?
Second, Israel is a world leader in important environmental technology such as desalination. If the radical environmentalists are right, drinkable fresh water is about to become scarcer than it already is. Unless we perfect technology to desalinate salt water, we could soon face serious problems. Israel, where 85 percent of fresh water is already desalinated, is an important partner in solving this problem. For universities such as the one in Copenhagen where Greta was arrested to cease cooperation with Israeli institutions developing green tech makes absolutely no sense if the issue of climate change is anywhere close to as dire as she claims it is.
Some may think this is proof that Greta is a grifter who never held the beliefs she claimed. Maybe I am too charitable, but knowing what I know about her, I believe it is more likely that she’s not a grifter but rather someone who, despite appearances, has never been driven solely by convictions.
That is not to minimize the harm that Greta Thunberg’s movement has done. To begin with, her doomsday projections have caused unnecessary depression and anxiety among children. More research is needed, but there are indications that “climate anxiety” is negatively affecting the daily life and school performance of children and young adults. There is little doubt that Greta Thunberg was miserable in her early teens through no fault of her own, but thanks to her activism and the validation and attention provided by the media to that activism, millions more children are now suffering, too. Misery does love company. Furthermore, her movement has legitimized truancy as a form of activism, the ramifications of which we are still seeing. That is not to mention the impact on the economy that radical climate policies have had, including policies with little to no effect on emissions.
The story of Greta Thunberg should be a cautionary tale and a reminder that the tragic path taken by so many child stars is not limited to those child stars whose fame comes from Hollywood. While Greta is the most prominent example of a political child star, recent years have seen cases on the right as well, in particular Kyle Rittenhouse, who is the same age as Greta. For those on both sides of the political spectrum who would push children into the spotlight to further their agendas, Greta’s iconic question rings clear: How dare you?