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Greta Thunberg’s activism is all narcissism and drama, with zero concerns for actual victims, be it the cause of environment or Gaza

Sudarshan Vahini


Latch onto a big issue, insert herself as the moral centrepiece, hog the spotlight, and then pivot to the next cause du jour. This, in a nutshell, has been the modus operandi of Greta Thunberg, a climate crusader turned activist-on-demand. Bored with preaching on carbon cuts, the self-styled Swedish climate activist has donned the Kefiyah and reinvented herself as a ‘Free Palestine’ activist.

While the leftist media frames Greta’s ‘activism’ as a selfless crusade for justice, in reality, it is but a meticulously curated spectacle drenched in narcissism and theatrics, where more than the concerned issue, her personal branding takes precedence.

Aid for Gaza or PR stunt: Greta Thunberg and her ‘selfie yacht’ of self-promotion

After hogging the limelight through her hollow climate advocacy rooted not in offering substantive solutions but drama and rhetoric, this activist-on-demand, embarked on a new endeavour in war-hit Palestine’s Gaza to ‘break the siege’.  In her latest gimmick showcasing her flair for drama guised as concern and activism, Thunberg joined the Freedom Flotilla Coalition’s Madleen yacht to deliver aid to Gaza.

Greta Thunberg and crew stand aboard the aid ship Madleen (Image via Reuters)

The boat carrying Greta Thunberg and 11 other activists was intercepted by Israel and diverted from its path to Gaza. The vessel, a British-flagged yacht Madleen, was part of a mission organised by the pro-Palestinian Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC), and was also carrying French Member of the European Parliament (MEP) Rima Hassan. The boat had set sail from Sicily and was allegedly trying to bring aid to Gaza.

Greta Thunberg on the Madleen yacht (Image via EuroNews)

Explaining the reason behind intercepting the ‘selfie flotilla’, a senior Israeli official said, “We are surrounding Gaza from every direction in order to strangle Hamas and not enable [Gaza] to get any aid from any factor that is not overseen by Israel. If we allow one flotilla to enter, masses will follow, and this provocation [by Greta Thunberg’s boat] will create a wave of flotillas that are hostile to Israel. We will not let this happen.”

Israeli soldier offering food to Greta Thunberg and other activists after their flotilla was intercepted (Image via Jerusalem Post)

Thunberg was aware that her voyage to Gaza would offer her enough opportunities to garner global attention and sympathy for herself while there is an actual crisis in Gaza. Following Israel’s interception, Greta Thunberg posted a pre-recorded video on social media saying that she had been ‘kidnapped’ in international waters by Israeli forces. Thunberg has already recorded a video to accuse Israeli forces of ‘kidnapping’ her. You see, she came prepared to extract maximum attention and sympathy.

Greta Thunberg’s ‘kidnapping’ claims shifted the focus on her and handed the leftist media with yet another opportunity to villainise Israel as if the Israeli forces have no other problem to address but ‘kidnap’ a 22-year-old narcissist masquerading as a global champion of the distressed.

The usage of the word ‘kidnapped’ was also shamelessly blatant, because it almost mocked the actual people who were kidnapped. Hundreds of Israeli citizens, and foreign nationals, even babies and children, and senior citizens were kidnapped on gun point by Hamas on October 7. Many of them were killed, many tortured and mutilated. Some are yet to be released despite the 20-month war. Greta was not ‘kidnapped’, she was escorted away and detained to be deported. She wasn’t dragged bleeding, she wasn’t starved and tortured in dark tunnels. Nobody paraded her around like a rag doll while the Hamas terrorists clapped and cheered at the macabre spectacle.

Her theatrics, however, did not end here, Greta Thunberg later urged her followers to pressure the Swedish government for her release. She also claimed that irritant substance were sprayed on the yacht. In Greta’s carefully staged narrative, the focus remained on her ‘detention’, ‘defiance’ and photo ops rather than the crisis in Gaza.

The boat carrying Greta Thunberg and 11 other ‘activists’, was laden with just symbolic items like baby formula and rice but lacked the scale to address the massive humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Thunberg and company’s negligible contribution for her ‘aid mission’ for starving Gazans can be understood from the fact that her flotilla carried less than a truckload of aid, while around 1200 aid trucks entered Gaza from Israel in the last two weeks alone. Thunberg’s geopolitical cosplay was less about aiding Palestinians and more about leveraging the conflict for clout.

The real crisis in Gaza marked by the displacement of over 90 per cent of Gazan population owing to prolonged Israeli retaliation to Hamas’s horrific October 7 massacre, thousands of deaths, and continued reliance on international aid was essentially overshadowed by Greta’s self-styled ‘heroics’.

Amusingly, Thunberg often expresses concerns over rising carbon emissions and environmental devastations, however, she does not condemn Hamas whose missiles have unleashed countless tons of carbon into the atmosphere nor did her heart bleed over the environmental devastation caused by Hamas’s October 7 onslaught, let alone condemn the killing of innocent Israelis.

Thunberg’s selective though performative display of humanity is unsurprising as she other pro-Palestine activists refused to watch the documentary showcasing the brutalities inflicted by Hamas jihadis on Israeli civilians on 7th October 2023. It was naïve of Israeli authorities to expect Greta Thunberg to sympathise with Israeli women, men, children and the elderly who were raped, brutalised, taken hostage and killed.

It, however, is not shocking given shrieking ‘Free Palestine’, humanising Islamic terror group Hamas and villainizing Israel has become the new ‘cool’ in the West. However, Greta would not take a flotilla to Sudan or Yemen where innocent people are being killed. Apparently, Thunberg knows “no Jews no news”.

From climate strikes to her recent Gaza flotilla gimmick, Greta Thunberg has long been doing performative gestures devoid of any depth to bolster her image as a beacon of hope and justice while conveniently sidestepping the complexities of the very causes she claims to champion.

The ‘green energy’ yacht and Greta Thunberg’s transatlantic PR stunt

In another instance of her performative activism, Greta Thunberg sailed across the Atlantic on Malizia II, a racing yacht touted as ‘zero-carbon’. While it was marketed as an ‘eco-friendly’ journey to attend the UN Climate Summit in New York, the yacht’s green credentials were highly overestimated. Thunberg’s yacht relied on fossil fuel-powered support vessels, and crew members flew across the Atlantic to return the yacht, thus negating any carbon savings. Thunberg’s voyage was less about climate impact and awareness and more about crafting her fake image of a lone warrior battling for the planet. The leftist media ecosystem, glorified her as a climate icon even as her adventure did essentially nothing to address actual carbon emissions, aiding her agenda of optics over outcomes.

EVs, Cobalt mining and hypocrisy as dramatic as Greta Thunberg herself

In December 2019, Greta Thunberg arrived in a Seat Mii electric vehicle to attend a climate summit in Madrid, Spain. Thunberg has been travelling in boats to avoid flights due to carbon emissions. However, she has no issues in travelling electric vehicles even as she herself once highlight that a large majority of the world’s cobalt comes from Congo and children are used as nothing less than slave labours for cobalt mining.

Greta’s support to farmers’ protest in India: When the self-styled climate activist supported a protest aimed at perpetuating farming practices that harmed environment

Back in 2021, when Indian farmers, mainly from Punjab, staged a massive protest against the three farm laws introduced by the Modi government, Greta Thunberg was among many foreign public figures who extended support to the Farmers’s Protest. Thunberg had also accidentally revealed the “toolkit” or the document that detailed the manner in which people all over the world could contribute to undermine laws passed by the democratically elected Parliament of India. While claiming to be a climate activist, Thunberg has a tendency to wade into issues without fully understanding their complexities and implications or probably, she does not care about it as long as she gets the clout.

She posted on X (formerly Twitter) in solidarity with farmers protesting against agricultural reforms, deeming their agitation as a fight against ‘oppressive’ policies. However, the protests which eventually took a violent turn with Khalistani elements hijacking it, were largely about seeking to preserve subsidies and practices tied to paddy cultivation, especially benefitting a political lobby that seeks to control the grain Mandis.

OpIndia reported earlier about how this water-intensive crop has degraded soil in Punjab and has depleted groundwater. Paddy consumes around 10 times more water than pulses or oilseeds, which require only 500 to 600 litres of water to produce one kilogram of grain. Besides, stubble burning by farmers also remained a major contributor to air pollution and the Modi government’s farm laws had initially criminalised stubble burning. The farm laws which were eventually repealed aimed to address these issues, however, a clout chaser Thunberg abandoned her climate activism when it was needed the most and decided to act as per the ‘toolkit’ she was provided.

Despite her ‘all theatrics zero solution’ activism, the left liberal media ecosystem has elevated Greta Thunberg to the near-mythical status of a ‘climate goddess’. While the liberal cabal glosses over Thunberg’s hypocrisy to frame her a ‘fearless’ advocate for justice, neither her 2018 school strikes, 2019 ‘How dare you?’ speech that propelled her to overnight global fame, nor her continued pro-climate speeches and protests and now the newfound passion for ‘saving’ Gaza has yielded any substantial policy changes or emission reductions.

The evident pattern of narcissism and theatrics suggests that beyond the veneer of ‘climate goddess’, Greta Thunberg is a self-serving clout chasing figure whose activism is less about meaningful change and more about her own brand building. Her SOP is clear: pick a high-profile issue, outrage, come across as a fighter, hijack headlines and media focus, turn complex issues into platforms for self-promotion before jumping to another crisis to chase the next wave of attention.



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