The Dortmund Police this week withdrew permission for a pro-Palestinian demonstration that it had previously authorized. The alleged reason was that, on social networks, the presence of Greta Thunberg, considered by the German security forces as “potentially violent”, had been announced at said demonstration. The 21-year-old had participated on October 7 in the aggressive anti-Semitic demonstrations in Berlin and “the latest events lead to the conclusion that she is willing to use violence,” according to the Police, “so, after an examination intensive and in the context of risk assessment, a ban has been ordered and consequent dissolution of concentration.
The statement referred to a protest camp against Israel’s violence against Gaza, which has been peacefully set up in front of the University of Dortmund for several months with the permission of the Police and which has now been dismantled without resistance from the seven camped activists. . This peaceful attitude was in serious danger, according to law enforcement, if the young Swedish woman made her appearance.
Just a few years ago, Greta Thunberg would have been received, both in Dortmund and in any other German city, as a heroine followed by masses of young people moved by her demands for climate protection. Now, however, no one has protested. Thunberg has gone from being the climate prodigy and model of a generation to a persona non grata for whom a ban on entry into Germany is requested. The path from one character to another is much shorter than it might seem.
school strike
European parents first heard about Greta Thunberg back in 2018, when their teenage children announced at home, in a festive tone, that they would stop attending school on Fridays, with the noble goal of protecting the climate. The idea had come from a 15-year-old girl from Stockholm with Asperger’s syndrome. One of his father’s ancestors, Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry Svante Arrhenius, predicted in 1896 that increasing CO2 emissions would cause global warming. With this inheritance and after having seen many documentaries on the Internet, I had decided to stop going to school to protest in front of the Swedish Parliament with the poster ‘School strike for the Climate‘ (School strike for the climate).
Greta Thunberg, wearing a Palestinian keffiyeh, gestures during a Fridays for Future climate strike march
EP
It wasn’t the girl’s attitude that was most surprising, nor the fact that so many other European children thought it was a good idea. After all, who hasn’t been 15 years old? What is truly surprising is that parents from all over Europe, school managements of all faiths and even apparently solvent governments supported their initiative. She was received by Obama and Merkel, nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and designated ‘person of the year’ by ‘Time’ magazine. The ‘Fridays for Future’ (FFF) movement spread with great speed to 180 countries, also thanks to the widespread complacency of the media, and on Friday, March 29, 2019, it brought together 1.8 million protesters in Berlin.
The leader of FFF in Germany, who accompanied Greta on stage that day, was Luisa Neubauer, from Hamburg, who was then 23 years old and had lost her father at the age of 20. Luisa handled an apparently very technical argument with the which accurately hit even the then German Economy Minister, Peter Altmaier, whom he shut up in a televised debate with the accusation that the total German budget for CO2 emissions, still allowed to achieve the 1.5 degree objective, was would run out before 2030.
The then managing director of the IMF, Christine Lagarde (r), greets Swedish student Greta Thunberg in 2019
EFE
Altmaier tried to convince her that “rushing” the reduction would lead to massive job losses and the disappearance of small and medium-sized businesses, as well as increases in energy prices, which would affect competitiveness, but she could argue nothing against the argument. total of Thunberg and company, their conviction about the imminent planetary collapse, in comparison with which the destruction of the economy was irrelevant. Greta and her followers knew themselves to be the last generation on Earth and that is how they named their movement: ‘Last Generation’.
Thunberg was named Amnesty International’s ‘ambassador of conscience’ that same year and barely managed to control her anger in her speech to world leaders at the Climate Action Summit in New York. That was the turning point: his image began to lose popularity, but no one still dared to correct his behavior, even though he never hid the antisocial and even violent nature of his vision of activism. “We must confront the system that is stealing our future,” he repeated from his first interventions. “We can’t win if we don’t break the rules.”
He spoke openly of “any type of measures” and showed clear contempt for the authorities and the forces of order. None of this had consequences until he came of age. Then judicial sentences began to arrive for raids, property damage and resistance to authority. She was briefly jailed in London for refusing to break up a rally, as ordered by the police, although most of the lawsuits have resulted in fines.
Embrace a new cause
Greta found herself in an adverse scenario for the first time in 2021, during a visit to Canada. The fiery young men who used to surround her had been replaced by others who berated her in public (“Why don’t you go to China or Saudi Arabia instead of criticizing our environmentally friendly oil here?”), and also her father ( “Do you think it’s okay to force a young woman with a mental illness to drive across the country?” Only the Canadian journalist Naomi Klein, an activist in favor of the boycott of Israel, defended her on Twitter. He began to follow her on social media and found a new cause to embrace to return to the headlines.
Apparently under its influence, he began to publish messages against Israel, but it was after October 7, 2023 when he definitively put the climate apocalypse aside to make way for a “solidarity strike with the Palestinians” and accusations against the “Western media.” . This new occupation has taken her out of her rented apartment in Stockholm over the last year, to which she has moved from her parents’ house with her two dogs, a golden retriever and a Labrador. Now he receives invitations from Copenhagen, to march with the Palestinian scarf around his neck or occupy university facilities in Malmö, or to take photos in front of the International Criminal Court in The Hague with the comment: “We cannot remain silent during a genocide. Palestine will be free. Lately he has linked on his social networks, with millions of followers, writings that urge the annihilation of Israel. His recent presence in the violent pro-Palestinian riots in Leipzig and Berlin has finished drawing an anti-Semitic profile.
Criticism from Israel
In Israel, more than 200 climate activists have condemned his statements as “terrifyingly one-sided and ill-informed.” “Our total solidarity with Jews around the world, and we strongly condemn the terror of Hamas,” Luisa Neubauer reacted in Germany. “We emphatically distance ourselves from anti-Semitic posts on our international channels, we are alarmed to see how our networks have been abused to share disinformation, anti-Semitism and hate.” “The point is that Israel is using hunger as a weapon and is committing genocide,” Greta responded in an interview on German television, forever sealing the breakdown of the relationship. “What does a climate justice movement represent that cannot distance itself when genocide is committed and tens of thousands of people die?”
Even in her own home, Thunberg is no longer as welcome as she once was. The Swedish press has revealed that the person whispering in his ears and writing his speeches is the British activist Kevin Anderson, promoter of companies in the climate sector. A new right-wing Swedish government won the 2022 election with promises of cheaper gasoline, a halt to wind projects and the massive expansion of nuclear power. In reaction, Thunberg has filed a lawsuit against the Swedish State, unprecedented and pending admissibility.
In Germany, the CDU parliamentary group has urged a ban on her entry into the country and the Federal Government’s Anti-Semitism Commissioner, Felix Klein, believes that Thunberg “is losing credibility and dismantling herself.” The still president of the Green Party, Omid Nouripour, believes that “it has been discredited a long time ago.”
