Activists like Greta Thunberg care more about fame than facts

As yet, Greta Thunberg has not had her money shot. In terms of Insta-activism, her seafaring jaunt to deliver aid to Gaza has been farcical. It was always going to be.

First, let me say two things clearly. I totally support more aid going into Gaza: food and medicine are needed. I want us to stop selling arms to Israel. While I support the right of Israel to exist, I do not support its right to keep on killing the people of Gaza. It’s unbearable.

Climate activist Greta Thunberg talks to the media ahead of setting sail for Gaza.Credit: AP

But the last thing the Israel-Gaza conflict needs is more martyrs, especially cute eco-warriors in shorts. It also doesn’t need hypocrites – particularly ones who also claim to champion women’s rights. The great irony is that Greta, with her exposed legs, dissenting views and freedom to express them, would not be tolerated by Hamas. But clearly that’s by the by.

When it comes to the moral high road, the likes of Thunberg seek to occupy ALL of it, no matter how muddled the thinking. This is precisely the problem.

Pretending you can sail into a war zone and “help” is a grandiose delusion. But, of course, Greta and her “aid boat” were largely a symbolic protest. What matters above all are the images of the selfie-yacht and the attention they can garner. Being boarded and detained (or, as she puts it, “kidnapped”) by Israeli forces gave her exactly what she had hoped for to kick against. But unfortunately for Thunberg, who had handily pre-recorded a video for just such an event, the actual image of the “kidnap” is her smiling as she is being handed a pastrami sandwich by an Israeli soldier.

This image will forever be compared with the horror show of the actual kidnapping of hostages by Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups. There are girls younger than Greta, with bloodied pants, their Achilles tendons cut; a mother clutching her two red-haired children whom we now know are dead; a terrified old lady being abducted. It is said that the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) will force Thunberg and her crew to watch the brutal footage recorded on October 7. I doubt this will make much difference. In 2023, the IDF showed Hamas body-cam footage collected after the Nova festival attack to the press in London. Most of the viewers were in tears but certain activist “journalists” came out saying there was no proof of women being raped as they had not been shown that.

Thunberg, like so many of her generation wrapped up in their made-in-China keffiyehs, are not interested in the specifics of this conflict.

This is what happens when a young girl with a penchant for protest becomes too feted. She addressed national parliaments and Davos as a climate activist and was interviewed everywhere, so she must have grasped the fact that her youth and passion energised many. Unsurprisingly, then, her symbolic power was soon commodified as she appeared at protest after protest, morphing effortlessly from climate-change activism to Palestinian solidarity.

Political activism is now algorithmic. Hey, if you liked that cause, then try this one.

The “left” these days often seems little more than a collection of disparate causes: eco stuff, trans rights and Free Palestine. The contradictions between these beliefs are underplayed as they become bundled together as an omnicause. I first heard that word used in 2023. The omnicause can incorporate everything from animal rights to emptying the jails. Forget the single issues that require specific, often boring campaigning: the omnicause is a moronic vacuum where analysis goes to die.

Those protesting what is happening in Gaza are not all uninformed, but many are.

There may well be links between climate change and war. Many argue that drought was a factor in the unrest that led to the Syrian civil war.

The omnicause, though, does not do specifics. It favours symbolic demonstrations that can go viral. These simplistic spectacles of righteousness often backfire.

What did Fossil Free Books achieve, for instance? It decided to campaign against companies that had any connection to Israel. The result was that investment firms such as Baillie Gifford stopped funding book festivals. How this helped either the environment or indeed the Palestinian cause is something of a mystery.

Thunberg’s stunt has been similarly self-aggrandising and vacuous. Watching footage of this climate activist and her mates all chucking their expensive phones into the sea as they were about to be taken by the Israelis showed that, of course, when the chips were down, environmental concerns went out of the window. The omnicause does not require logic, consistency or even coherence. It is closer to acting than activism. It depends on melodrama and a narrative of provocative images.

Thunberg may be brave and have been prepared to sacrifice herself – though for what, exactly, I am not sure. But now we have seen the pictures, I am afraid that what she has sacrificed has been her integrity.

The omnicause burns itself out in the end because it has no actual strategy. It simply signifies tribal loyalty. It gobbles everything up and spits out its participants, who simply move on to the next “wrong” thing.

You might think that, for Thunberg, her ship has sailed. But that does not mean she won’t clamber aboard the next one that hoves into view.

This piece first appeared in the London Telegraph.

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