Why are Climate Change Deniers Bullying a 16-Year-Old Girl?
Teenage activists are still teenagers. If you’re punching, you’re punching down.
Cookie-cutter, conservative climate change deniers seemingly became bored of attacking the first Muslim congresswomen and instead decided to focus their wrath on 16-year-old environmentalist Greta Thunberg.
After making a two-week voyage across the Atlantic on a sailboat, Thunberg arrived at New York last Wednesday and made a speech to the crowd of supporters awaiting her arrival.
For many, highlights of the speech included Thunberg calling on President Trump to “listen to the science” of climate change, but for others with a less sincere interest in the young activist, the central focus of the speech was a series of unusual facial expressions she made.
Twitter user @NotWokieLeaks, an anonymous libertarian with a large following known for making negative memes about Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, wrote Thunberg “has early-onset Joe Biden disease,” alluding to theories that claim Biden is becoming senile and mocking the teenage climate activist.
Avi Yemini, an Australian anti-Islam commentator and spokesman for Tommy Robinson who pleaded guilty to assaulting his ex-wife while she was cooking, used the video to claim Thunberg is “deeply disturbed.”
Canadian member of parliament Maxime Bernier remarked that Thunberg “is clearly mentally unstable.”
“Not only autistic, but obsessive-compulsive, eating disorder, depression and lethargy, and she lives in a constant state of fear,” he proclaimed, while American conservative commentator Tiana Lowe claimed Thunberg has “many mental struggles prompted by a fear of climate change.”
Despite other users pointing out that the Swedish-born Thunberg has been diagnosed with Aspergers Syndrome, selective mutism, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and anxiety disorder, not to mention that she was delivering an entire speech in a second language, her critics refused to apologize for the comments. Disagreeing with her arguments is one thing — she is, after all, in the political arena — but mean-spirited mockery of her mannerisms and appearance is quite another.
It’s ironic that the same people who frequently push the “leftist bully” narrative have opted to pick on a 16-year-old girl with Aspergers for a facial twitch, but with the majority of these offenders, it’s hardly surprising.
If the narrative is that man-made climate change is mainly a kooky idea cooked up by power-hungry socialists, what better person to target than a modest teenager who’s simply expressed concern about her and the world’s future? Bernier et. al. are clearly the adults in the room.
Thunberg has faced a steady barrage of criticism and snide dismissal from the center and the right, who have consistently portrayed her as a puppet and a vacuous, feel-good prop who is being cynically used by adults to advance their hokey alarmist climate agenda. She has been in the media spotlight since leading a school climate strike in her native Sweden and rallying youth to take action against climate change around the world.
The Thunberg family’s 2018 book Scenes from the Heart (Scener från Hjärtat) tells of the challenges their family has faced including Greta’s eating disorder and the lead-up to her activism which started in the summer of 2018. While some may credibly separate out Thunberg’s personal struggles from her concern over the ravages of pollution and climate change, to sideline Thunberg as merely some silly teenager would be a mistake.
Man-made climate change skeptics have even said Thunberg leads a “cult” and is reminiscent of early Puritans scolding the world for its wrongdoing and sin. Critics routinely mock her awkward, severe expression, monotone voice and manner — all probable effects of her personal challenges and the fact that she’s… well, a teenager.
Brendan O’Neill, writing at Spiked, claimed that Thunberg typifies the backwards climate activist attitude against “industrialization and progress” and wrote that “one can imagine her in a sparse wooden church in the Plymouth Colony in the 1600s warning parishioners of the hellfire that will rain upon them if they fail to give up their witches.”
I don’t know about you, but warning the world about fast-approaching ecological disaster based on science doesn’t sound very similar to the Plymouth witch hunts.
Even for apolitical individuals and others across the political spectrum who may be concerned about climate change, an attitude of apathy persists and “what can we do about it” is a common refrain. If anything, Thunberg’s campaign and no-nonsense analytical speaking style — which has motivated kids in over 100 countries to go on school strikes — has “uncanny power.” There are a number of things individuals and governments can do to address climate change, starting with acknowledging the obvious reality that we have a serious problem.
For all the mockery of entitled stars like Leo DiCaprio and the global climate jet-set crowd who meet at bigwig conferences over caviar to talk global warming, Thunberg, who stopped flying at age 12, is largely immune to any valid criticism on such measures. She walks her talk and her campaign appears to have started out of genuine personal concern over the future, not some astroturfed show as her detractors would like to imply. Perhaps that’s why critics have decided to mock her on a personal level instead of the usual claims of hypocrisy that are often leveled at other environmentalists.
Thunberg is trying to rally youth who still have a can-do spirit of idealism and courage; too bad so many adults are cowards and bullies who care more about scoring cheap personal insults on a teenager than helping us all create a better future.
Paul Brian is a freelance journalist in Eastern Europe and a contributor to the BBC, Al Jazeera, and Foreign Policy.
Charlie Nash is a journalist, author, and commentator from the United Kingdom. He has written for The Spectator and CounterPunch.
