When we consider child stars through the ages, the girls generally age better than the boys; Judy Garland, Elizabeth Taylor, Billie Piper all made the seamless switch from winsome cuties to gifted entertainers. The same cannot be said of Greta Thunberg, though she’s certainly remained consistently irritating. Neither a singer nor a thespian, she is a professional tantrum-thrower, more comparable to the fictional horrors Violet Elizabeth Bott and Veruca Salt than the trio of troupers listed above.
Was there ever such a show-boating crusading numpty as Greta? For some reason she reminds me of him from East 17 who somehow managed to run himself over with his own car
And now she has set sail to Gaza with ten other clowns comprising something calling itself the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, aiming to ‘break Israel’s siege.’ At the press conference, Thunberg declared (she’s a big declarer; her statements always sound over-rehearsed and somewhat self-adoring), ‘We are doing this because, no matter what odds we are against, we have to keep trying. Because the moment we stop trying is when we lose our humanity. And, no matter how dangerous this mission is, it’s not even near as dangerous as the silence of the entire world in the face of the live-streamed genocide’ before bursting into tears. Not a word about the hostages. Not a word about the October 7 pogrom which started this whole tragic mess. Just Greta as a seaborne Jeanne d’Arc, travelling bravely on with nothing but her keffiyeh, a few protein bars and a press contingent for comfort.
Was there ever such a show-boating crusading numpty as this one? For some reason she reminds me of him from East 17 who somehow managed to run himself over with his own car. The minute I see that cod-eyed little face attached to a cause I’m antipathetic to, I can’t help feeling a flare of glee, as I know that many similarly-minded souls are going to think cheerily ‘Well, that’s that hobby-horse knackered!’ Long before entitled brats started chucking paint over works of art and thoroughly discrediting their cause, the pig-tailed pedagogue was a byword for fetishising emotion over logic.
Arriving on the world stage – and I use those words advisedly – at the age of 15 as an ecology doomsayer, Thunberg made an unforeseen leap in 2023 into the epicentre of Middle Eastern politics, a topic about which I’d wager she’s as much an expert on as climate science. But maybe we should have seen it coming. It’s no accident that the Greens – who present themselves as the most gentle, wouldn’t-hurt-a-fly guys going – have fallen big-time for Islamism. In Israel – can-do, go-getting Israel, the ‘start-up nation’ literally built on a patch of barren sand – they see western civilisation in a nutshell. Yes, it brought democracy, opportunity and culture – but it took away a big old bit of sand! The Green idea of mankind as a ruinous blot on the landscape is epitomised by Israel as by no other country.
This dumb desire to return to primitivism, living under systems where one unelected man at the top (a sheik or King Charles or George Monbiot) tells everyone else what to do, will appeal to Thunberg, who like all thick people believes that people are thick. (‘Wake up, Sheeple!’ Is the universal cry of the thicko.) She won’t have been able to admit this to herself; she’ll think her actions are about being a humanitarian, about caring for people. But in Greenism and Islamism, the same disregard, antipathy even, to humanity, exists.
Her origins are interesting. Thunberg was born into a showbiz family – actor father, singer mother who represented Sweden in the 2009 Eurovision Song Contest, finishing 21st. With the eye-catching middle name of ‘Tintin’ – she apparently stopped talking at the age of 11 on hearing about climate change, a condition known as ‘selective mutism.’ Thunberg has declared that this condition means that she ‘only speaks when necessary’ – if only that were true! After being diagnosed with Aspergers and autism – with a soupçon of OCD sprinkled on top – she suffered with depression for four years until the idea of playing truant – or ‘school strike’ as she chose to call it – occurred to her.
It’s striking how her activism seems inseparable from her own personal fulfilment, something which is not always the case; indeed, many activists throughout history have seen their personal lives worsen due to their political commitment. But whether it was her father saying ‘She can either sit at home and be really unhappy, or protest and be happy’ or her own declaration that the best things to have come out of her activism have been friendships and happiness, there does seem to be an unusual amount of ego invested in her eye-catching antics.
Attention is a very pleasant thing for a certain sort of person – I’m one of them. Attention-seeker, scenery-eater, show-off – it’s good to ‘own it’, as the kids say. But it’s a rather odd look to wallow so unapologetically in the plaudits of the fashion world, an industry responsible for an unimaginable level of pollution and pointless air travel. Should she really have appeared on the cover of British Vogue in 2019 or on the cover of the inaugural edition of Vogue Scandinavia in 2021 or accepted the Glamour Woman of the Year Award? Shouldn’t she have used the opportunity to denounce the fashion industry for its huge contribution to global warming and criminal waste of resources? But logic has never been Thunberg’s strong suit, as her current boat trip to Gaza proves. The stated aim of the trip is to ‘raise awareness’ of what’s happening in Gaza – but can it really be possible that anyone on earth isn’t aware already?
It’s telling that while Thunberg has remained in a sulking adolescent bubble – at 22 rather resembling the character Rik from The Young Ones – her country is finally changing. After so long being a byword for liberalism, Sweden is now experiencing the populism which has swept so many other countries, including our own, overhauling its previously over-generous immigration policy to a radical degree. As she sails into another photo-opportunity, it’s not difficult to see Thunberg as the captain of a ship of fools, and the sailing boat Madleen as a Marie Celeste where the substance of protest has been spirited away, with only the scraps of idealism left on the sides of the plates, to show that anyone was ever there.
Comments