Toot link; transcript:
Greta Thunberg could have, by now, carved out a very comfortable life for herself as a liberal grifter-celebrity offering platitudes about personal responsibility at Davos. Instead she connected the dots between ecocide, capital, and empire, aiming squarely at the heart of the beast. And now fresh out of captivity she downplays her own suffering to recenter the urgency of aid to the Palestinian people. No wonder she’s hated by the fascist+lib coalition that rules this world.
Author: JP (@jpbreton@mastodon.social)
In a world of Charlie Kirks, be a Greta Thunberg.
Thankfully, we don’t have a world of a Charlie Kirks.
A world controlled by Charlie Kirks!
when she made that statement about how she could talk about the abuse she faced but the media should instead focus on the real issue which is the ongoing genocide, i was somehow immediately reminded of someone i never even thought about after i first heard about her: that loser swimmer that tied for fucking 5th or whatever with a trans woman and went on a whole media tour crying about it and is probably still doing it right now if anyone is still listening.
god bless greta. we need more people like her.
Greta Thunberg is a good explanation of why someone like Joan of Arc could have been so transformative. Like, there is a war, and a peasant girl comes out of fucking nowhere and changes the whole course of history, how could something like that happen. Also the story of Joan of Arc tells of the hatred of the detractors and the lengths they will go to silence her AND how that completely backfires.
I can’t believe I used to hate this woman. She’s so badass.
why did you hate her?
Nothing wrong with her. I was just sexist, ageist and a coward.
Saw a woman trying her best to make a change and getting praised for it. Decided she was somehow annoying and didn’t deserve all the attention she was getting.
Well, I’m not like I used to be.
It takes genuine courage to confront your own biases and outgrow them, you should be proud
Sick personal growth, dude. Love to see it
Abso-fucking-lutely well said. Kudos to you for having the strength of character to admit your failings and be able to reflect on them. A willingness to say “I was wrong” without throwing a tantrum or doubling down is sorely needed in this world.
Welcome to the Former Bigots Club! Membership perks include randomly cringing at a memory of past convictions, profound sadness when you see other people stuck in that same pit of hatred and occasionally imposter syndrome making you wonder if you’re really a good person.
Thank you for sharng this. I really needed to see an example of being decent and growing today.
good on you for escaping your toxic past self.
Congrats on the growth.
I really really REALLY want to hear ONE sentient answer to this question. I cannot understand it. I can’t even understand the ROUTE your logic would take.
Yes, there are influencers out celebrating their own actions a bit too much for promotional purposes. The worst I’ll ever feel for them is rolling my eyes and not caring about them.
I want to believe I could be convinced otherwise, but I almost feel like regardless of what circumstances you were built up around or how you learned about a person like her, there has to be something fundamentally wrong with you to have hatred for someone showing concern for the world’s path of self destruction, and putting themselves at risk for everyone’s sake to try to resolve it.
It is taught and conditioned behavior, and that conditioning can be deep. The answer may never get any more satisfying than that.
I’m a middle aged white guy raised in 80s and 90s white conservative america. Looking at somebody trying to do something good for themselves or others and thinking “what a dumbass/asshole” feels as natural as breathing when that’s how the role models in your life have always acted.
And the fun part with that conditioning is that some of the knee-jerk reaction feelings still get sent out from those tangled old neurons.
They responded over here, but I’ll contribute my own experience.
I think it’s really hard to understand bigoted thinking if you have never been a bigot yourself. There’s a certain emotional logic behind the need to feel superior that all too easily twists your brain into fabricating or accepting bullshit premises. On those premises, you can then build a logical framework to rationalise your hatred. It’s not that the logic itself is necessarily unsound, but even a formally correct conclusion can be false if its premises are.
Essentially, it’s not the route, but the starting point.
If you can suspend your disbelief for the sake of an example, suppose you didn’t believe that climate change was really that serious. There are numerous ways to come to that conviction, but I’ll pick one for the example and say you’re scared of change and it’s more comfortable for your brain to shut out the worries and tell itself it’s another baseless fad.
Regardless of the specific example, I think we agree that people tend to jump on hype trains even if they’re bullshit. There are also plenty of people riding such trains to prominence and success – for recent examples, look at all the AI or Crypto grifters. They exploit the attention a topic gets to capitalise on gullibility. Isn’t it justified to hate Sam Altman, for example?
You might be able to guess the next step from here, because it’s not actually illogical in itself. If climate change is a hoax, the people believing in it are gullible. Those who capitalise on such gullibility are grifters. Under those premises, people who exploit the attention climate change gets to garner fame and prominence are grifters, and it is right to hate them.
The logic is sound enough. The reason the conclusion is false isn’t that the logic is bent, it’s that the premise is. And that premise is sustained by an emotional factor, which is ultimately very human.
The upside is that bigotry can sometimes be broken out of.
In my case, bitterness at my own situation fueled resentment against “SJWs”, whom I perceived as entitled in their demands for accommodation and respect, because I myself didn’t have much support or respect. Petty jealousy, born of misery. Why should I go out of my way to indulge them? Why should they have a better life at my expense?
You might be able to spot the error already, but I took a long time to even get to the point where I could look for it in the first place. I slowly found a few reasonable people among the progressives, then a few more, then eventually many more until I was faced with two contradictions: For one, these people generally seemed respectful, even towards me in my cautious forays into their spheres, instead of the rabid frothing-at-the-mouth keyboard warriors I expected. Secondly, it didn’t actually cost much effort to respect their wishes.
The root error was that they didn’t want a better life at my expense, but to my benefit as well. A more accepting, inclusive world would be more pleasant for me too. They weren’t my enemy. Where I expected a fist, I found an outstretched hand.
That realisation was the start of a painful journey of reprogramming myself. I don’t think I’ll ever be fully done. The best I can do is try to make fertiliser of the pile of shit my past self was. That’s why I write this, in the hope that it will help someone understand their “enemy” a little better. And just maybe, it will help get someone else out of that miserable pit of hatred.
Not op but I can take a stab. How often do we see empty patronizing platitudes from those privileged enough to make them without consequence… often all it is are just words. So much so that when you see someone taking a public stand, especially someone as young as Greta was when she entered the public spotlight, it’s easy to just be a jaded bitter asshole, rolling your eyes at some foreign tween who thinks that she’s going to fix the world’s problems. How naive she is. There’s no way she’s actually going to make an actual impact other than bringing groans from those who would see her fail.
We often hate those who are closest to us we envy for having the conviction that we lack.
Not OP either, and I’ll take yet another stab. All I was exposed to of her early on are the “HOW DARE YOU” sound bite repeated ad nauseum and the headlines of how people responded to her UN speech in the in conservative-liberal msm news mill. Months or maybe a year later I’ve actually bothered to watch the full speech, and realize that she’s not talking to all of humanity as a whole but indeed the world leaders. They stole not just her childhood and future, but by all accounts my childhood and future as well, solely for their and their friends and their descendants gains. All of ours. If someone feels like “No! Not me! I’m fine!”, they are just deluding themselves.
It’s easy to get blinded by corpo owned media’s agenda. It’s harder to be empathetic and recognize the point of view of someone who has been portrayed as an endearing laughing stock and dismissed for being just a child.
Ah so it’s self hatred.
In my case, it was mostly sexism.
Yes, but you qualified that with “from those privileged enough”. Greta was never politically powerful by herself.
Besides, you also said your response is to roll your eyes; to ignore her, at absolute worst. I have done that too. I’ve gotten mail from dozens of charities about being SO CLOSE to fixing some problem like homelessness or bee colony collapse, and scoffed at their constant efforts for my attention. But I don’t HATE them. I don’t enlist efforts to burn down those charities. I don’t take time out of my day to try to prescribe harm to them.
You HAVE to have some truly despicable damaged core to do such a thing.
Don’t underestimate the power of the slur “westoid” and other similar ones. In much of the world, westerners are automatically coded as naive, idealistic and ultimately stupid. In Greece, we had our fair share of do-gooders who thought they new better than us trying to fix us. The classic cultural example is the film Never on Sunday, which is basically all about the comical journey of an American classicist from naivety to understanding. Even now, in 2025, a prevailing understanding of the 10 years of financial crisis is that austerity was about prudish narrow minded Germans and other westerners ruining our country by enforcing their naive protestant economic superstitions on us. And Greece is an EU & NATO country mind you. So, a swedish schoolgirl going around lecturing people fits the “westoid” stereotype a bit too much.
(I’m explaining, not endorsing. Greta is based as fuck.)
The answer I generally hear as to why people dislike young activists, not just Greta Thunberg, is that they overly simplify problems.
But this is usually an argument put forward by people who over complicate problems as a defense mechanism. If it’s complicated, I don’t have to do anything.
You have to remember that everyone is the hero of their own journey. So when a 90 pound teenage girl says you’re doing a bad job at something, you dismiss her, and when you can’t dismiss her, you villify her so you remain the good guy. You do this because denigrating a teenager takes only slightly more effort than doing nothing, and infinitely less effort than doing the right thing.
The truth of the matter is that nearly every problem is simple. The complicated part is getting everyone on-board with the same solution.
She’s a prophet. Not in the sense of foreseeing the future via totally-not-hallucinated-visions-which-are-messages-from-god but in the sense of standing at the gate and preaching to people why what they are doing is wrong.
People don’t like being preached.
When you are being preached by people of authority and power, you can’t hate them for that. I mean, you can, but you better - for your own good - not show any resentment about the preaching. Not where they can hear you, at least.
But when a random nobody does that? Time to let all that anger loose! Who are they to preach to us?
Yeah, given the amount of actual real insufferable assholes out there that even put work and intent into hurting others, I’m also curious why someone would take the kind of time out of their day to focus their ire on her.
Many people hate her because she is the antithesis of what they think a woman should be. On top of it she has a lot of qualities (courage, persistence, passion etc) that these people wish to have themselves but don’t so they try to compensate by attacking her.
She wouldn’t even have to grift. Her family is somewhat wealthy if I remember correctly.
I used to be rather skeptical about her, but she has more than earned my respect time and time again.
Her family probably has enough that she’d never have to work, but not enough that she’d be super comfortable doing so. Half a million dollar house, mildly famous in the arts with a very solidly upper middle class lifestyle, but no emerald mines to inherit in there.
Her dad, i think, is a pretty famous Swedish actor, and her mum is a politician, i think. I probably got that wrong, but I know her parents are loaded.
edit:
to opera singer Malena Ernman and actor Svante Thunberg.[5][6]
I was close.
yeah we all know how wealthy people never grift
“Don’t have to grift” and “Don’t grift” are two very different things.
well yeah, that was what i was pointing out.
Leveraging her privilege for good. What a gem.
Imagine how much money she could make if she dyed her hair blonde and claimed to now understand that climate change is a hoax. She’d get her own show on Fox.
She’s really won me over with the second attempt at gaza. It can’t be fun being held hostage by Israel and she put the spot light back on gaza everytime.
Gaza is where we see the inevitable outcomes of our current global leadership and forcing the world to pay attention to the problems is the only way we can begin to start addressing the problems.
True G
That interview she just put out was gut wrenching. She has every right to feel indignant at her treatment but she still wants to fight and reframe the discussion around those that are suffering more.
Shes basically The Shit.
not gut wrenching. that shit was straight up inspiring.
She is as bad ass as these right wing grifters wished they were. But if your audience is brain dead, you don’t actually have to do anything, you can just claim things.
the queen of protests, adored by the radical left, a purely protest based organization. life goal? that’s way too long term for you
Hey, look…it’s jimmy90 the zionist, again! How ya doing, jimmy? Still in training to be a cunt?
It doesn’t look like they need any more training tbh
Tougher than you’ll ever be.
Is your life goal being a lowly comment stooge for people that dont give a shit if you die tomorrow?
Loser shit right there.
obvious troll above. For everyone else: Greta and the Flotilla team were illegally raided while providing life-saving food aid to the Palestinian victims of Israel’s starvation campaign. It’s far from “purely protest”
Get a job
EAD
She should win the Nobel Peace Prize.
She doesn’t care about that.
She’s apparently been nominated several times
Not only does she deserve it, but the tantrum Mango Mussolini would throw about it would be so fucking funny.
That would be hilarious! Such an irony, lol!
When are they given out? I notice some Nobel prizes for science/whatever are already being announced.
Tomorrow I believe, they’re all being presented this week.
And he has to hand it to her. Can you imagine?
The Nobel peace prize is reserved for war criminals. It’s a fucking joke.
True. Kissinger and Obama won which proves how much of a farce it is.
How? She probably hasn’t even raped a child.
Also never dropped the United States’ surplus of WWII-era bombs on Asians.
She’s still young, so you never know.
That surplus is gone baby! Nothing but limbless Laotians now.
Greta is the real deal. She is unironically unfathomably based.
She got so much respect from me when they were interviewing her about the flotilla and she basically said “They bombed our boats last time; that’s why we have to try again.”
I was surprised based ended up being used this way outside of 4chan containment.
The woman has impeccable integrity and a worldwide audience. I cannot overstate how dangerous she is. No amount of money or manipulation can turn her sights off pollution and genocide.
Put yourself in the place of the wealthy. You can buy anything you want, nothing is out of bounds. Everyone kisses your ass and does as you say. But this pestiferous little woman can’t be bought, and failing that, she cannot be threatened. Carry her off to jail for the evening, your picture is placed alongside a picture of her smiling as the cops drag her off. Imagine your shock and fear! This is totally outside your experience. I’m rather surprised she hasn’t been quietly assassinated, made to look an accident.
“Because some men aren’t looking for anything logical, like money. They can’t be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.”
Or not burn as the case may be. :)
Nothing short of killing her would work, and even then she would be a martyr
If she would be killed it would 100% make her a martyr. Literally any form of trying to suppress her achieves the same effect. She is too powerful for the elite to ignore her, but also to powerful to really act against her.
Ho Ho…ones opinion of Greta is, to make, a truly accurate barometer of your character. Funny how mainly assholes dislike her.
I originally disliked her whole thing because to me, it looked like she had been groomed and pushed by her parents for fame by proxy. Oh boy how have I been proved wrong, and I admire that brave woman.
She has amazing willpower, connections and fame, she could have a cushy job as a PR mascot or a CEO, But guess what? She still chooses to be on the trenches, fighting for all of us trapped under capitalism’s boot, so we can’t spread our message like her.
I truly admire her, her message and what she stands for.
It really is a simple litmus test. Why would you hate the girl that’s sometimes on the news, standing tall for what she believes in, if you aren’t a complete piece of shit? What reasonable explanation could there be for hating her? None.
I find that really interesting. My sister for example doesn’t particularly like her. She doesn’t really have a reason, other than other people in her life doesn’t like her and the newspaper she’s reading portraits her as the little privileged child who wants to make the world better. (Somehow this is a bad thing btw.) I know she’s not a bad person but every time her name comes up it’s basically her rolling her eyes and me cheering for her when she makes grown ass men look stupid.
There is something so perplexing about people who hate people who want to do the right thing. Like i wasn’t born vegan, but i always respected it. Yeah you can dislike it and call them annoying if that’s your thing, but everyone deep down should realise that they fo the right thing. Even if it’s just: good thing there are more and more vegans so i can eat more meat.
When i did turn vegan, i saw the other side of it and damn does it get old when you have to explain to everyone why you don’t do a thing. I never in my life asked anyone why they think it’s okay to eat meat/drink alcohol/like sports or whatever mainstream thing that i DON’T do.
If you mean the speedo clad waxed ape, he hates everyone smarter than him, which is basically everyone because the man has the IQ of a meat locker.
“Fresh out of captivity”?
What did I miss?
She got arrested and beaten by Israelis when trying to deliver supplies to Gaza via boat .
She got arrested for a second time. She’s probably going to be arrested a third time too.
Under maritime law, she was a victim of kidnapping and piracy, and was never arrested as it happened outside Israel’s territorial waters, where it has no authority to have a blockade.
This response is based on the San Remo Manual of International Law Applicable to Armed Conflicts at Sea.
If Israel is conducting a lawful blockade, then they can intercept neutrals who have expressed intent to run the blockade. It doesn’t matter whether the events happen in Israel’s territorial waters, international waters, or the territorial waters of Israel’s enemy.
A blockade is an act of war, and war doesn’t respect territories, and it’s not always respectful to neutrals.
Now, there is a decent argument that this particular blockade is unlawful for a different reason: it is a collective punishment of Gazan civilians. Collective punishment of civilian populations as a whole was made illegal after WWII.
Secondly, the blockade is unlawful if its only purpose is to starve the enemy population of food (102). Israel must be getting some proportionate military advantage out of this blockade besides the starvation for it to be lawful.
And finally, regardless of whether the blockade is legal, Israel has to let the humanitarian supplies pass through (103-104). And I’m not sure they did that. They will say that they let these things through on the (heavily regulated) land route, but the book here doesn’t say that land route is a substitute. Also, they are not using an impartial Protective Power to distribute the aid. This is why they offered to reroute the flotilla’s supplies on to the land channel.
Note: the rule is they have to let the supplies through, not the people or vessels. If they’re running a legitimate blockade, they can capture neutral vessels that are running it, and they can capture the neutrals on board and subject them to legal process, or maybe even intern them for the duration of conflict
Since hamas lacks a Navy, it’s an easy case
Israel presumably says that the purpose of the blockade is to prevent supplies that can be used in war from reaching hamas and that food is taken in.
We know this is not true but it illustrates the challenge of a legal approach.
The latest aid flotilla to Palestine that she was taking part in was abducted by Israeli forces in international waters. I’ve seen various comments on her treatment by those Israeli forces but none of them were humane, spanning from forcing her and other victims to sleep in pest-infested conditions to actual physical assault.
