MASCOT OF THE ANOINTED REACHES EXPIRATION DATE: The tyrannical cult of Greta Thunberg.
This week Greta Thunberg turned 21. Yes, the diminutive doom-monger is a full-on grown-up now. The pint-sized predictor of End Times has passed the final threshold of adulthood. Once the world’s best-known petulant teen, never knowingly appearing in public without wearing the scowl of the self-righteous youth, Ms Thunberg has reached the full age of majority. She’s so old she could legally get pissed in America if she wants. Though that seems unlikely, given she once said she ‘would never go out drinking’: ‘I would never do anything… stupid.’ Her birthday party must have been a riot.
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What they loved about Greta is that she was so black and white. All teens are. It’s in their nature to be blind to shades of grey. To love their parents one minute, hate them the next. To flit between thinking everything is fine to fretting that MY LIFE IS OVER. Who can forget when the gold-collared superclass of Davos lapped up Greta’s stern rebuke of the old-fashioned adult belief that life is complicated. ‘You say nothing is black or white. But that is a lie. A very dangerous lie’, she said. Climate change is ‘as black or white as it gets’, she continued. ‘There are no grey areas when it comes to survival.’
No grey areas. This wasn’t just your typical climate-change hysteria, where we’re meant to believe our only choice is between a violent reduction in fossil-fuel use and the literal heat death of the planet. It was also a teenage reprimand to the entire premise of adult life, to the foundations of public life itself. Which is the understanding that things are complex. That competing interests exist. That binary moralism benefits no one. That democratic contest is preferable to autocratic, religious or, indeed, teenage diktat. I, for one, am delighted that in the years since Greta thrilled the anti-democrats of Davos with her childish moralism we have seen farmers, truckers and other workers in Europe drive a juggernaut of grey through these fantasies of black and white. These people are furious at the impact the cult of emissions cuts will have on their ability to earn a living, make food, deliver stuff. They represent the complexity that Greta and her powerful cheerleaders wish to chase from public life. A revolt of the adults, if you like, against the juvenile hectoring of the elites.
Last year, as she approached the ripe old age of 21, saw Greta exchange one apocalyptic religion for another:
Shot: Greta Thunberg deletes 2018 tweet saying world will end in 2023 after world does not end.
—The Post Millennial, March 11th.
Chaser: Greta Thunberg, milkshake duck.
It seems in Greta’s zeal to show her support for Palestinians, she accidentally included an antisemitic stuffed animal. Don’t you hate it when that happens to you? Cockburn is always embarrassed when he inadvertently includes antisemitic imagery laying around his house and it somehow finds its way into tweets supporting groups dedicated to wiping out a Jewish state. Happens to the best of us!
—Spectator World, October 20th.
(Classical reference in headline.)