Greta Thunberg knows what she’s doing

The world’s best-known campaigner has never hidden who she is or what she believes in.

There’s something about Greta Thunberg that provokes hot-blooded fury among a certain demographic. The rage the 22-year-old activist from Stockholm regularly incurs is on a similar level to that often incited by the Montecito-based Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle. The latest act which the founder of Skolstrejk för Klimatet (“Fridays for Future”) has undertaken was boarding a vessel chartered by the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, which attempted to transport humanitarian aid to Gaza through the current partial Israeli blockade. On Monday, the boat carrying Thunberg and other activists was intercepted by Israeli forces who boarded the vessel before accompanying it back to shore. The Israeli government has since deported Thunberg.

Various predictable charges have been hurled at Thunberg (who guest-edited this magazine in 2022). Enraged critics have said that her participation was just a publicity stunt or that she put herself in needless danger just to make a point. The Israeli foreign ministry nicknamed the British-flagged Madleen Yacht, which carried Thunberg and 12 others across the sea from Sicily, the “selfie-yacht” when announcing that it had been seized. One article in the New York Post accused Thunberg of pretending to be in handcuffs after arriving in France following her deportation. Countless posts on X have mocked Thunberg, or have called her “self-righteous”, with one post going so far as to call her a “useful idiot”. Google searches for “Greta Thunberg” peaked at 6am on 9 June, reaching the top of Google Trends maximum searches.

What all of the vitriol fails to acknowledge is that this attention is the result Thunberg’s actions were intended to attract. She is, after all, an activist. One wonders how those spitting with fury over what they deem to be Thunberg’s “irresponsible” publicity stunt would have said about the resistance – armed and otherwise – used by anti-apartheid campaigners in South Africa under the leadership of the now-beloved Nelson Mandela.

One imagines many of the same people who are probably furiously rage-posting about Thunberg on X are doing so from a home bedecked with kitschy posters bearing slogans such as “It Always Seems Impossible Until It Is Done” (a phrase made popular by Mandela) or “Be the Change you Want to See in the World”, often attributed to Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi certainly didn’t make his name by keeping quiet – he devoted his life to peaceful civil disobedience in order to secure India’s independence. In other words, he spent much of his life pissing people off. That is what activism is.

And what to make of the charge against Thunberg that by boarding the flotilla, she was irresponsibly and needlessly putting her life in danger? Has everyone forgotten the Suffragettes? Emily Davidson stepped out in front of the King’s horse at the 1913 Epsom Derby, killing herself and seriously injuring a jockey, with the aim of securing universal suffrage (Votes for Women!). This scene is now celebrated and Davidson is honoured; children are taught about it in school. Davidson’s activism was dangerous and daring (and could have caused more injuries besides) but it achieved its desired result.

Thunberg’s journey on the Madleen, though perhaps personally reckless, has succeeded in keeping the desperate need for aid in Gaza at the top of the news agenda. An eleven-week blockade in the region, which was partially lifted by the Israeli government at the end of May, has left vulnerable Palestinian children and families starving. As of 4 June, 57,000 people have died in this war. That more outrage has been expressed online over a 22-year-old Swedish woman attempting to help those who are suffering is a damning indictment of where we are.

The world’s best-known campaigner has never hidden who she is or what she believes in. Yet she will always be a clueless teenager in the eyes of her detractors; someone to be seen, not heard. But Greta Thunberg has other ideas, and she won’t go quietly. She is, after all, an activist.