Greta Thunberg – still making the right enemies | Gaza

Greta Thunberg is making real enemies.

Thunberg probably understood that from the moment the then 15-year-old Swedish schoolgirl began her quiet, solitary protest warning about the impending climate apocalypse, she would invite a swarm of hysterical critics who defended the comfortable status quo conditioned, her motives and sincerity to question.

In fact, as Thunberg's popularity and influence grew around the world, Thunberg's name immediately became known and, more importantly, became synonymous with a noble tradition of resistance – a person armed only with determination and a strong sense of righteousness who proclaimed: Here I stand.

Over time, millions of others around the world volunteered to stand in solidarity – figuratively and literally – with Thunberg and, of course, with her just and urgent mission.

Their apoplectic enemies – politicians, journalists and fossil fuel executives – have relied on their tired, heavy-handed approaches to rein in the stalwart insurgent.

Alarmed by her persistence and persuasiveness, they have insulted and belittled Thunberg in a sustained attempt to intimidate her into taking a step back and withdrawing from the fight. She too has been threatened in the fetid depths of social media.

You have failed. True to her indefatigable nature, Thunberg continues to raise her voice, hurting the fragile feelings of the powerful, entrenched interests that have always wanted her to go away and keep her mouth shut.

Despite the risks and unfounded attacks, Thunberg refuses to walk away or shut up. Instead, these days she wears a keffiyeh, linking the movement for climate sanity and justice she leads with the imperative to end the madness and injustices committed by an apartheid state with deadly cruelty against Palestinians.

“If you, as a climate activist, are not also fighting for a free Palestine and an end to colonialism and oppression around the world, then you shouldn’t be able to call yourself a climate activist,” Thunberg said in Milan, Italy, this month during a rally calling for an end of the genocide in Gaza.

“Silence is complicity,” Thunberg added. “You can’t be neutral in a genocide.”

She's right.

Neutrality and silence in the face of the unfolding genocide in the wasteland of Gaza and the occupied West Bank is indeed complicity.

On a reliable cue, the usual suspects in the usual places have launched the usual sophomoric attacks on Thunberg, with the aim of tarnishing her honorable name and discrediting her honorable intentions.

She was fined, arrested and imprisoned. She was insulted as an “anti-Semite”. Forgotten German politicians called for her to be banned from entering the country.

None of this, not even a hint of the threats, intimidation and malice, deterred Thunberg.

It hasn't worked in the past and it won't work today. It won't work because it's impossible to shout down, imprison, or ban the truth.

The insults won't work either. They have lost their potency. They are the predictable refuge of charlatans who, in the absence of a convincing argument, throw dirt into the air and hope that a grain of it sticks.

Thunberg held his head high and paid little or no attention to the flood of insults and hatred. She always had better and more productive things to do.

The consequences of the campaign to denigrate Thunberg are pleasingly clear: every angry attempt to ban or silence her has made Thunberg more popular, not less; she is in demand more, not less; She is more vocal, not less.

Thunberg is also prima facie evidence of the glaring divide between the governed and the governors. The former are committed to ending the genocide in Gaza and beyond. The latter have made it possible in every respect with respect for Israel's inviolable “right to self-defense,” regardless of the obscene human cost and blatant disregard for international law.

So while governors have used their pulpits and their power to offer full diplomatic and military support to an accused demagogue and his equally rancid regime, Thunberg has used her pulpit and her power to denounce their collusion and draw attention to the suffering the Palestinians.

Thunberg prevails. Their opponents are falling ever deeper into hypocrisy and insignificance.

Perhaps the most arrogant accusation made against Thunberg by her over-the-top critics is that she has “betrayed” the “climate movement” by siding with the Palestinian victims of genocide.

In a long article in the international edition of the German news magazine Der Spiegel at the end of last year, numerous reporters pooled their resources to produce a thinly disguised “hit” article that was intended to once again put Thunberg in his place – and all with a patina of sober Germanicism Seriousness.

I've read it, so you don't have to read it.

The essay brims with the caustic condescension and sloppy accusations of a gallery of English-speaking writers that I addressed in this 2019 column.

The Spiegel authors begin with this patronizing nugget. “(Thunberg) is no longer a girl. … Rather, she looks like a confident, 20-year-old woman.”

Oh, how sweet of her.

The “shy” girl turned “confident” woman has been credited with telling popes, presidents and prime ministers “uncomfortable truths” about the climate crisis.

“But she was right,” wrote Der Spiegel. “And she had science on her side.”

Oh, how sweet of her – part two.

“Now,” wrote Der Spiegel, “Thunberg faces serious and legitimate criticism from a business perspective” for committing the blasphemy of “using the climate movement to win their support for the Palestinians.”

Oh, how terrible of her.

Thunberg's “recurring pattern” of defending the Palestinian cause has sparked “consternation” and sowed division among her disappointed supporters, particularly in Germany and on the “left” she once admired, according to Der Spiegel.

Oh, how terrible of her – part two.

Nevertheless, Der Spiegel admits that “Thunberg certainly feels compassion – for the Palestinians.” And that’s not wrong.”

I suspect that Thunberg doesn't need Spiegel's approval to “feel compassion for the Palestinians.”

Apparently, Thunberg is no longer a youthful upstart sharing “inconvenient truths” but a “propagandist” due to her “cold” and distant “approach to Israel.”

The saint has become a “naive” sinner – even if this time she has history and international law and not science on her side.

The rest of Der Spiegel's largely non-profit “deep dive” into Thunberg's present and past recycles the familiar tropes.

She was an unhappy, stubborn child whose awkwardness angered friends and triggered 40-minute tantrums.

Her advocacy for the besieged Palestinians, Der Spiegel speculates, stems from her longing for “respect from her fellow human beings” and for “recognition.”

It's absurd tripe.

As I wrote more than five years ago: “(Thunberg) despises celebrities. She makes no claim to heroism. She rejects attempts to idolize her. She doesn't calculate and isn't concerned with fame or ego. There is no artificiality about her. She speaks plainly, without affectation or affectation.”

Thunberg's advocacy for the Palestinians is a natural extension of her undeniable instinct to confront the deep human effects of ignorance and complacency and do something about it – alone if necessary.

It is the characteristic impulse that has driven her extraordinary activism from the beginning.

She never insisted that others follow her example in step. But legions have done so because they are driven by the same impulse to confront and do something about the profound human effects of ignorance and complacency.

I am confident that Thunberg will continue to reject Spiegel’s hackneyed admonition to get back “on the right track.”

She was there the whole time.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of Al Jazeera.