Thunberg buries her own movement
The Last Generation was the stab in the back, now it is Greta Thunberg who has dealt Fridays for Future the deathblow. The rift between the former climate icon and her German offshoots will be impossible to mend. Because when it comes to hatred of Jews, that's the end of the line.
A year ago, when the first activists of the Last Generation began to misuse works of art - even epochal ones such as the fresco cycle of the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua - for their protest, there was still something harmless about it. For even if it is generally condemnable to maltreat Monet and Van Gogh with mashed potatoes or the contents of a can of Campbell's Soup or to stick oneself to the not (!) original frame of Raphael's Sistine Madonna, the effort to preserve the art treasures was always recognizable.
In other words, it was not about destruction, but about preservation. The motive: if the world does nothing to combat climate change, we will all lose these art treasures, which were not harmed by the battles between the Thirty Years' War and the Second World War, but which are now - like the whole of humanity - threatened with extinction if global warming is not stopped quickly. The result: with their constant scaremongering and fear-mongering in already uncertain times, the radical activists also got on the nerves of the part of the population that recognizes the problem and demands countermeasures.
Global fashion
For the climate protection movement, above all Fridays for Future, the actions of the Last Generation proved to be a disservice. Since the first attacks in museums and the sticky sit-ins in public spaces, there has been much more discussion about the nature of the "actions" than about how justified or unjustified the apocalyptic predictions are. And because governments, companies and individuals don't immediately do exactly what the street blockaders and cultural property violators want, they become even angrier and more radical, as is currently the global fashion when politicians don't do what angry citizens want.
The result of this spiral was recently demonstrated in London's National Gallery when a woman and a man hit a famous Velázquez with hammers, causing at least damage to the painting, which is fortunately protected by bulletproof glass. The "Just Stop Oil" group is calling on the British government to stop all "new" oil and gas projects immediately. Like the last generation, the group consistently ignores the global situation with all its wars, conflicts, national egotisms and ugly necessities, which currently make decisive action against global warming difficult or even impossible.
But destruction can also be done differently, much more simply and without violence, as climate protection icon Greta Thunberg is currently proving. The Swede is in the process of destroying the masterpiece she created five years ago - the Fridays for Future movement - and abandoning all the young people who followed her, whether glued to the cause or not. If the Last Generation was the stab in the back of FFF, it is now Thunberg who is dealing the death blow to the Fridays demonstrations, which have been moderately popular for months anyway. It has to be said: Fridays for Future as a global phenomenon is at an end, even if tens of thousands still take to the streets here and there.
The fun stops with anti-Semitism
With her understanding of haters of Jews and Israel, Thunberg is driving a rift deep into the movement that can no longer be closed. When the Swede began to praise nuclear power as a "small part of a very big new carbon-free energy solution" and later described it as a "mistake" to "shut down nuclear power and turn to coal", she irritated her closest supporters in Germany, who are influenced by the Greens. Since the end of nuclear energy was a done deal, the dispute between the German FFF branch and Thunberg over whether to say yes or no to nuclear power remained a media flash in the pan.
However, from then on, the Swede was suspect and no longer just the unassailable saintly figure. "For once, Greta is mistaken here," wrote an editor of the left-wing taz newspaper, who revealed his bewilderment at the "shock" that a campaigner for the good cause with close ties to the Greens could even take the wrong path and suddenly say things that the FDP, CDU/CSU and AfD cheered. Since the demonstration in Amsterdam last weekend at the latest, it has become clear that the living monument is crumbling and that Thunberg has lost her untouchable status. Because when it comes to anti-Semitism, the fun and pleasure of demonstrating together stops, especially in Germany and especially among people from the educated middle classes who form the core of FFF.
The a-historical drivel in the international Fridays section about an "apartheid system" in Israel, i.e. a spatial separation of people according to ethnic (!) criteria enforced by state repression, and an alleged "genocide" of Palestinians by Jews, testifies to the greatest possible ignorance. Such absurdities can only meet with sharp rejection. For more than two years, FFF Germany has credibly and repeatedly distanced itself from such gossip. But it is tragic that Thunberg does not renounce the radical left-wing form of anti-Semitism and supports it.
Greta Thunberg is to blame
The extent of the rift is reflected in the recent reactions of the German branch of the Friday demonstrators. "We have suspended the processes with the international network," they asserted in the taz newspaper after the rally in Amsterdam, where a climate activist who no longer wanted to hear about Israel snatched the microphone from Thunberg. FFF Germany acts independently and has "long outgrown Greta as a person".
But no one is interested in this, only the dispute is noticed and discussed, as can be seen from this commentary. This is the fault of the eternally narrow-minded and unteachable Thunberg, who has never had anything like a sense of proportion, as her angry speech "How dare you" to the United Nations revealed, which could at least still be understood in terms of content. On the other hand, her attempt to link the conflict in the Arab world with the fight against global warming is downright ridiculous. "There is no climate justice on occupied land", she bleats out into the sinking world in order to conceal the misuse of her movement for crude political goals.
It is safe to assume that the people in the Gaza Strip or in the territories annexed by Russia in Ukraine don't give a damn about "climate justice", which in turn is of zero interest to Thunberg. She shares this ignorance with the Last Generation, who don't want to come out of their bubble or even look out of it so that they don't have to realize that climate change is not the only threat to humanity at the moment. But before the end of the world, something else will disappear first anyway: Fridays for Future will disappear into insignificance - thanks to Greta Thunberg.
Source: www.ntv.de
