Greta Thunberg - why would she be regarded badly?

[StrawberryDream24]

I've just met someone who was extremely scathing of a woman dressing as Greta Thunberg for an "inspirational women" dress up type thing.

She didn't elaborate, other than that it was ridiculous for someone to have done that and she had to hold her tongue in telling them so (and the circumstances allowed for no further discussion for me to find out why she felt that way).

I don't know a great deal about GT but what is this lady on about? Has anyone any idea? Is there something I'm missing?

Also GT is visibly Autistic.

She doesn't conform to expected ideas of female behaviour by smiling 'prettily'.

I have a young person who looks VERY similar to GT (many comments made)

The 'blank expression' is taken for 'superiority' & provokes hostility (esp by men)

Hardly school refusing (actively electing to do something she considered worthwhile and of great importance instead), attending 80% (Monday to Thursday) and taking her studies successfully to the same level as pretty much every other Swedish young person while also campaigning globally on an important issue.

And as for FAS -really? That's a weird conclusion to come to.

I find that people who call her a puppet, or a 'mouthpiece' or suggest she's been manipulated by 'others', or indeed that her parents have been somehow negligent or instrumental in orchestrating her, do so from a place of having little insight into just how much independence and agency is built-in to the raising of young people in Sweden. Greta's level of early engagement isn't surprising in the context, nor is her parents' supportive position.

She's anti-semitic

Can you provide evidence of that?

She is an irritating little know all full of her own importance. Why should she be listened to. I read she had very pushy parents. That does partly explain it. That is my perception of her anyway.

The goblin of doom!

She is very definitely pro-hamas. I saw a very real video of her leading a chant of “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”. That’s not just calling for relief for the citizens of Palestine, that’s calling for the destruction of Israel.

I am 100% a believer in climate change and the need to do something about it. But she is in no way an inspiring figure. Personally I consider her to have been abused and I pity her. She was allowed by very rich parents to drop out of life and become a professional activist. All very cute as a teenager, but now she’s an adult who still has no experience of the real world and just stands on stage to spout unworkable nonsense.

Im with your friend. I don't like her and take zero interest in what she says. Not entirely her fault but I don't like how she became a poster girl for one thing and people idolised everything she said without any critical analysis. On balance if she makes a few people wake up and think about climate change it's not a bad thing. However I fail to see how she is inspirational. Many people hold the same views as her, she just got lots of publicity and thrived on it. From what I know she was a mentally ill teen who spent too much time online and became fixated on this, then decided to commit her life to preaching to the rest of us. Good for her for finding a focus in life but I'm not going to take advice from someone who never worked a day in her life. Her initial protest involved not going to school, rather convenient really for a teenager who didn't like school. Her parents indulged her childish ideas. As for the famous 'you've stolen my childhood' well F off miss, you've had a lovely privileged childhood and you haven't a clue what stolen childhood means.

Greta Thunberg is the very type of person who would have been swept along on the Children's Crusade. She also reminds me of one of those 16th century mystic nuns who would claim to be struck dumb or break out in stigmata and then go around denouncing people to be burned at heretics.

If she is against oil that is fair enough but how is she squaring that with throwing her support behind regimes who get all their money and leverage from oil? I guess the environment is a bit old hat now.

And, yes, she has the kind of parents who were determined their child was going to be famous. Unfortunately for them Greta was no Hayley Mills or Judy Garland so they had to go down the celebrity activist route instead.

I'm not keen on kids which skip school every Friday either.

@AirborneElephant

She is very definitely pro-hamas.

It's illegal to support terrorist groups.

Even my 10 year old neighbour finds her annoying.
I do have time and respect for Sir David Frederick Attenborough.

Didn't a recent study show Antartica is now gaining 108 gigatons of new ice per year?

The earth has been warming up, and cooling down in cycles long before man arrived (and will do so long after we are gone I imagine).

I also imagine the negative reaction to climate change and it's advocates like Greta is because of the obvious hypocrisy, tedious yet completely ineffective moralising, and the inherent priviliedge seen in most 'solutions' floated about.

Everything else everyone has probably said (haven't RTFT), but also she's just annoying, and the way she was pushed on the world and promoted as some sort of amazing heroine in years past has made her even more annoying.

We weren't wiped out in 5 years, so her climate bullshit didn't work, now she's breaking the siege of Gaza with another 11 warriors in a walnut shell. If they ever get to Gaza, it'll be because they are allowed to. Their theatrics are laughable.

Interesting that when she was being lauded for being a teenage prophetess, and we should all kneel at her feet, Shamina Begun was a poor duped innocent led astray due to her youth......

Just googled what she's up to now. On a boat bringing aid to Gaza. It seems she noticed they needed food and supplies. Good idea Greta, now why didn't anyone else think of that? She is taking full credit for her masterplan too and is self appointed ambassador of the world “On behalf of the international community, the so-called western world, I am so sorry that we have betrayed you by not supporting you enough,”

aaaahhhh she annoys me so much.

It's literally nothing to do with this at all.

It's largely because people think she's a fraud. Would always have a well rehearsed speech prepared for the media... but when asked impromptu questions during a conference panel discussion, for example, she couldn't answer. Not being able to handle anything 'off script' casts doubt on her integrity.

When English isn't a person's first language (speaking from experience) this isn't that strange. We rehearse what we can anticipate and may stumble when caught on the hop. How's your conversational Swedish?

Again, nothing to do with that at all. She's given entire stand-up presentations in word-perfect English.
Press conferences, however, it's a completely different Greta. I remember her literally being asked: 'What's the message you would like to send to world leaders by doing what you're doing?'
Her answer: 'I can't speak for everyone' before she immediately passed the mic to someone else on the panel.

So much for being on a one-woman mission to combat climate change...

She is a huge hypocrite who has been "sailing" on a sailboat that hasn't been under sail. The video I saw had them motoring. And before you claim "weather," I'm an experienced sailor and there was no reason not to actually sail the boat. Unless it was all a photo op for attention like everything else she does.

I think it’s great that GT is holding feet to the fire.

However, I strongly disagree with the below:

‘There's nothing remotely "hypocritical" about Attenborough et al doing their best to bring climate change reality into every household via documentaries, which obviously can't be made without the carbon footprint that entails (miniscule compared with the main offenders).’

I have watched and enjoyed many an Attenborough documentary but yes he’s a hypocrite. He’s spent the majority of his life travelling the world with a film crew. Many stories on the plight of animals didn’t need such huge production. That was for entertainment. They could have hired people within those countries to film and post the footage and DA could have just done the voiceover for all of them.

I also take issue with the fact that now climate change is a recognised issue, he has decided to blame people in the developing world for having babies. These people are nowhere near as wasteful as us in the G7 and a family of 8 in a rural African village will have a smaller carbon footprint than a family of 3 in the UK.

The carbon print for his own family is multiple times that of an entire ritual African village. He’s also got Prince William parroting this bollocks as apparently having multiple mansions, several extremely privileged children, private planes and multiple holidays to Mustique a year don’t count.

Absolute hypocritical bollocks.

I really don't think that's fair. It's impossible to be perfect in this world. Greta Thunberg is a vegan, buys second-hand clothes and refuses to fly. Clearly doing her utmost best.

When was she anti semitic, I haven't seen this? She is certainly critical of Israel as we all should be.

I do not agree that quote means you are pro Hamas