They say she is using ‘the climate movement to throw her
support behind the Palestinians’. Well, good on her.

Greta Thunberg – Climate Activist Is
Still Making All the Right Enemies
Andrew Mitrovica / Al Jazeera

(October 22, 2024) — Greta Thunberg makes all the right enemies.

Thunberg likely understood that from the moment the then-15- year-old Swedish schoolgirl embarked on her silent, solitary protest warning of the impending climate apocalypse that she would invite a swarm of hysterical detractors who, in defense of the agreeable status quo, were conditioned to question her motives and sincerity.

Sure enough, as Thunberg’s popularity and influence grew, her name became instantly recognizable throughout the world and, much more importantly, synonymous with a noble tradition of resistance – one person, armed only with determination and a keen sense of righteousness declaring: Here I stand.

In time, millions of others across the globe volunteered to stand in solidarity – figuratively and literally – with Thunberg and, of course, her just and urgent mission.

Her apoplectic enemies – politicians, journalists and fossil fuel executives – have relied on their tired, crude modus operandi to put the immovable insurgent in her place.

Alarmed by her persistence and persuasiveness, they have insulted and belittled Thunberg in a sustained effort to frighten her into taking a step back, to retreat from the fight. In the fetid recesses of social media, she has been threatened too.

They have failed. True to her indefatigable nature, Thunberg keeps raising her voice and offending the fragile sensibilities of the powerful, entrenched interests who have always wanted her to go away and shut up.

Despite the risks and unhinged assaults, Thunberg refuses to go away or shut up. Instead, these days, she has taken to wearing a keffiyeh and, in doing so, merged the movement for climate sanity and justice that she leads with the imperative to end the insanity and injustices being perpetrated against Palestinians with lethal ferocity by an apartheid state.

“If you, as a climate activist, don’t also fight for a free Palestine and an end to colonialism and oppression all over the world, then you should not be able to call yourself a climate activist,” Thunberg said in Milan, Italy, this month during a rally demanding an end to the genocide in Gaza.

“Silence is complicity,” Thunberg added. “You cannot be neutral in a genocide.”