Toot link; transcript:
Greta Thunberg could have, by now, carved out a very comfortable life for herself as a liberal grifter-celebrity offering platitudes about personal responsibility at Davos. Instead she connected the dots between ecocide, capital, and empire, aiming squarely at the heart of the beast. And now fresh out of captivity she downplays her own suffering to recenter the urgency of aid to the Palestinian people. No wonder she’s hated by the fascist+lib coalition that rules this world.
Author: JP (@jpbreton@mastodon.social)
I really really REALLY want to hear ONE sentient answer to this question. I cannot understand it. I can’t even understand the ROUTE your logic would take.
Yes, there are influencers out celebrating their own actions a bit too much for promotional purposes. The worst I’ll ever feel for them is rolling my eyes and not caring about them.
I want to believe I could be convinced otherwise, but I almost feel like regardless of what circumstances you were built up around or how you learned about a person like her, there has to be something fundamentally wrong with you to have hatred for someone showing concern for the world’s path of self destruction, and putting themselves at risk for everyone’s sake to try to resolve it.
It is taught and conditioned behavior, and that conditioning can be deep. The answer may never get any more satisfying than that.
I’m a middle aged white guy raised in 80s and 90s white conservative america. Looking at somebody trying to do something good for themselves or others and thinking “what a dumbass/asshole” feels as natural as breathing when that’s how the role models in your life have always acted.
And the fun part with that conditioning is that some of the knee-jerk reaction feelings still get sent out from those tangled old neurons.
Follow up question if you will: What changed for you?
As you say, the conditioning is there and deep. What triggered you to re-evaluate your stances on beliefs so deeply held?
I’m also a middle aged white guy raised in the 80’s. My parents were democratic, but even I fell for some of right-wing propaganda when I was old enough to vote, but didn’t have world experience. It’s insidious. I can only imagine I’d still be there, if not for my social structure guiding me towards a more progressive understanding of the world.
Not op but I can take a stab. How often do we see empty patronizing platitudes from those privileged enough to make them without consequence… often all it is are just words. So much so that when you see someone taking a public stand, especially someone as young as Greta was when she entered the public spotlight, it’s easy to just be a jaded bitter asshole, rolling your eyes at some foreign tween who thinks that she’s going to fix the world’s problems. How naive she is. There’s no way she’s actually going to make an actual impact other than bringing groans from those who would see her fail.
We often hate those who are closest to us we envy for having the conviction that we lack.
Not OP either, and I’ll take yet another stab. All I was exposed to of her early on are the “HOW DARE YOU” sound bite repeated ad nauseum and the headlines of how people responded to her UN speech in the in conservative-liberal msm news mill. Months or maybe a year later I’ve actually bothered to watch the full speech, and realize that she’s not talking to all of humanity as a whole but indeed the world leaders. They stole not just her childhood and future, but by all accounts my childhood and future as well, solely for their and their friends and their descendants gains. All of ours. If someone feels like “No! Not me! I’m fine!”, they are just deluding themselves.
It’s easy to get blinded by corpo owned media’s agenda. It’s harder to be empathetic and recognize the point of view of someone who has been portrayed as an endearing laughing stock and dismissed for being just a child.
Ah so it’s self hatred.
Ressentiment?
Yes, but you qualified that with “from those privileged enough”. Greta was never politically powerful by herself.
Besides, you also said your response is to roll your eyes; to ignore her, at absolute worst. I have done that too. I’ve gotten mail from dozens of charities about being SO CLOSE to fixing some problem like homelessness or bee colony collapse, and scoffed at their constant efforts for my attention. But I don’t HATE them. I don’t enlist efforts to burn down those charities. I don’t take time out of my day to try to prescribe harm to them.
You HAVE to have some truly despicable damaged core to do such a thing.
Don’t underestimate the power of the slur “westoid” and other similar ones. In much of the world, westerners are automatically coded as naive, idealistic and ultimately stupid. In Greece, we had our fair share of do-gooders who thought they new better than us trying to fix us. The classic cultural example is the film Never on Sunday, which is basically all about the comical journey of an American classicist from naivety to understanding. Even now, in 2025, a prevailing understanding of the 10 years of financial crisis is that austerity was about prudish narrow minded Germans and other westerners ruining our country by enforcing their naive protestant economic superstitions on us. And Greece is an EU & NATO country mind you. So, a swedish schoolgirl going around lecturing people fits the “westoid” stereotype a bit too much.
(I’m explaining, not endorsing. Greta is based as fuck.)
In my case, it was mostly sexism.