By Joanna Williams
Excerpt: Greta is at it again. The pint-sized Swedish activist, best known for chastising world leaders for failing to act on her environmental wish list, has now popped up in France. Net Zero is très passé; on Tuesday, it’s all about revolting French pupils. And so our heroine has been spotted at the centre of the action, joining protesters at a school in the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis.
She may be seven years older, and the issue may have changed, but Thunberg’s message is remarkably familiar. Back in 2019, she summoned righteous anger to tell participants in a United Nations Climate Action Summit: “You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words.” On Tuesday, outside the Lycée Paul Éluard, she told waiting journalists: “Young people are not being included in the conversation. Our future is being robbed away from us.”
Stolen, robbed, empty words, not included… A cynic might accuse Greta of recycling more than plastic bottles and tin cans. It’s almost as if a variation on the same speech can serve her purpose, whatever the cause. Greta’s repeated ideas, delivered seven years apart, expose the hollowness of her activism.
Greta may be physically present in Paris on Tuesday, standing shoulder to shoulder with pupils outside the lycée gates, but it is not at all clear why. What does she know about the French education system? Does she really think setting fire to a recently built school (as pupils did in Nantes), seriously injuring teachers and assaulting police officers, is an appropriate response to overcrowded classrooms and too much homework? Or are the French protests just the latest fashionable place for celebrity activists to hang out?
It’s not just Greta’s words that betray her willingness to jump on any activist bandwagon, details be damned. Draped around the 23-year-old’s neck is, of course, a keffiyeh scarf. This symbol of Palestinian solidarity is de rigueur among today’s young protesters, whether they’re in New York, London or Paris.
Indeed, before taking on board the concerns of French schoolchildren, Greta was spotted last year on a flotilla apparently attempting to breach an Israeli blockade and transport aid to people in Gaza. As it turns out, only Greta and her crew received food aid. The Israeli navy helpfully steered the activists out of a dangerous, militarised stretch of water and provided sandwiches for the 12-strong team.
