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)
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.
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.
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.
Leveraging her privilege for good. What a gem.
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.
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.
I’m always happy to see Greta Thunberg posts that aren’t take-downs.
She is who I wanted to be before I gave up on my dreams.
Ouch, that hurt
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.
People really try to reach when hating her, they don’t realize how pathetic they look when making such attempt
It’s especially stupid as well because they’re all: “oh she thinks she’s special because she’s a blonde white girl”. Which is easily contradicted if you spent any amount of time reading or listening to anything she’s done.
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.
In a world of Charlie Kirks, be a Greta Thunberg.
Thankfully, we don’t have a world of a Charlie Kirks.
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.
Wow, what a nice self-reflection, congrats sir
It takes genuine courage to confront your own biases and outgrow them, you should be proud
Sick personal growth, dude. Love to see it
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.
Abso-fucking-lutely well said. Codos 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.
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.
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.
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.
Follow up question if you will: What changed for you?
As you say, the conditioning is there and deep. What triggered you to re-evaluate your stances on beliefs so deeply held?
I’m also a middle aged white guy raised in the 80’s. My parents were democratic, but even I fell for some of right-wing propaganda when I was old enough to vote, but didn’t have world experience. It’s insidious. I can only imagine I’d still be there, if not for my social structure guiding me towards a more progressive understanding of the world.
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.
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.)
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.
I find her to be annoying, TBH. She still is, but that doesn’t mean I cannot give her credit where credit is due.
How is she annoying tho? She’s doing what most of us are afraid of doing. It’s not even like she’s bragging too much. Yeah, she’s getting a lot of attention, but since she’s using that in the right direction, it’s really ok.
One question; why is She getting the majority of the praise ? Where are the others ?
because she’s well known? are you saying she’s annoying because of how media works?
No, let’s say that she’s too theatrical & honestly lacks fire (even in her theatrics)
she has autism
Idk. But I think all of them, including Greta, deserve as much praise as Greta is getting.
I think annoying is exactly what we need. A pain in the ass is an effective way to get people to stand up. Many of the most memorable ads are irritating, but at least GT isn’t trying to make me download some app or buy overpriced crap.
Well-behaved women, etc.
The fifties are trying
The conversations I’ve had about her when she first made waves were all the same.
Them: I can’t stand her, who does that little pipsqueeck think she is telling adults what to do?
Me: What does her age have to do with what she is saying? Does it make the message any less true?
Them: well… erm… I mean
The OBVIOUS takeaway didn’t have the “obvious takeaway” sticker all over it I guess ffs.
It always bothered me how back then people were all “well, I don’t see her coming up with any solutions!”
She’s a kid my friend, she’s a kid using her free speech in a democratic manner to call for the powers that be to make change. She doesn’t need to have the answers, that’s not her job. Why are you expecting a child to do the work of adults? Fucking expect more from the adults that are doing fuck all to accomplish anything but fatten their pockets and hollow out our public properties.
Edit: I’m talking about then, not now. I know that she’s not a kid anymore.
This really makes my past thoughts about her make sense. I was kind of weirded out by always seeing her just crying and whining about things but without providing any real solutions. But 1. She was a kid as you said and 2. I wasn’t seeing her solutions because the media always showed me her whining, not her solutions… Guess I was just easily misdirected. I’m glad she’s a freedom fighter woman now.
Honestly, props to you. We’re all victims of propaganda, seeing as it’s pumped our way 24/7.
It’s the embodiment of ad hominem. She can’t be right because she’s (was) a kid.
In a way i really hate these “fuck greta” stickers. On the other hand it says so much about the person who would put them on their cars or motorcycles, that it’s hard to be mad about.
I was at my mechanic one day and some guy brought in his car, while a friend of his then picked him up with his bike. Both of them proudly sported a fuck greta sticker. It was very confusing and back then the first time i have ever seen them. That was when she was still under age, i think.
I asked him what the deal was with it. And he said: i hate that little green cunt, and she’s trying to tell me what to do? Hell nah. I didn’t want to engage in the conversation any more, but in hindsight i wish i asked him what talking points he hated the most. Because i don’t think she cares that you drive a 1.6l VW and probably doesn’t care about your friends motorcycle.
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.
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.
Unsure if it’s the one you’re referring to, but she did an interview in Swedish and the frustration you hear from her is just as gut wrenching.
I could speak of all of the children who are no longer able to go to school, of all the children who required amputation, of all the children now orphaned. Of all of the houses and quarters that have been obliterated by bombs. I could also speak of the extreme physical abuse and the torture we were subjected to in prison. I could speak of the many bombings that our boats were attacked with on the way to Gaza. But nothing sticks! I could list all the international laws and UN conventions that Israel is breaking every day, of which we have seen a tiny, tiny piece. But this has already been said thousands of times. And like I said, it doesn’t stick.
She technically says “it doesn’t bite” rather than stick, but I don’t think that kind of phrasing works in English. In essence, it means to have an effect. She expresses that nothing she can say will have any sort of effect, so why bother talking about it? That it’s not like we’re unaware of what’s going on, but that we’re choosing to ignore it. How no matter what atrocities we’re exposed to, nothing has the effect of making those in power do something about it.
We’re pouring money to Ukraine in this proxy war against Russia, which obvs. isn’t a bad thing, Ukraine deserves the support. Yet our politicians are expressing none of that staunch humanitarian fervour for the Palestinians.
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.
not gut wrenching. that shit was straight up inspiring.
the queen of protests, adored by the radical left, a purely protest based organization. life goal? that’s way too long term for you
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”
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.
Get a job
Is your life goal being a lowly comment stooge for people that dont give a shit if you die tomorrow?
EAD
Loser shit right there.
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.
She should win the Nobel Peace Prize.
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.
She doesn’t care about that.
She’s apparently been nominated several times
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.
And that is why Israhell didn’t kill her.
“If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.”
She legit deserves to be canonized as a saint, yet republicunts want to rape her.
Those two go hand-in-hand.
