Column “Cleansed and Enlightened” about Greta Thunberg: From Saint to Sinner

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She was loved. Adored. Idolized.

She made a pilgrimage to Rome, and one would think that the Pope was paying tribute to her, and not she to him. Leonardo DiCaprio, always ready to take the right side, said: “She is one of the leaders of our time.” Terminator Schwarzenegger, a showman but usually one of character and character, enthused as cameras clicked: “Stay inspiring!” The great intellectual Noam Chomsky praised her as a “wonderful person.” Slavoj Žižek, an otherwise awkward man, praised them in his own way: “Today we need a certain dogmatic approach.” Time magazine, the voice of the international journalistic spirit, named her Person of the Year for 2019. Only Donald Trump dared to complain: “Chill, Greta, cool!”

Greta Thunberg, the world-famous Swedish school dropout, has gone from celebrity to quasi-divine eco-style icon. The media, which has an aversion to all things religious, has turned an autistic teenager into the bearer of new good news: “Wake up, you sinners, save the earth!” In an interview, Greta Thunberg explained the secret of her success better than any devoted adult: “I am a child. And when a child says something like, ‘You’re stealing my future,’ people feel guilty.” That’s exactly what happened: whoever confessed to Greta was freed from guilt.

However, hardly anyone paid close attention to what Greta Thunberg actually said. Their messages were always something between the otherworldly and the inhuman: they always concerned the future of nature and the planet, and not the lives of us humans. Anyone who listened more closely soon realized that this was not about improving the situation, but about radically changing the system in a revolutionary style – from a market economy and democracy to a new one.
Statism and ecosocialism. And recently, her political side finally became apparent: she posed with a “Support Gaza” sign and uttered phrases such as “There is no climate justice in an occupied land.”

Greta is an adult now and should know what she’s doing. On the other hand, the adults who gave her credit behave like children. Until yesterday they hung on the lips of a school truant who is definitely anti-capitalist, perhaps even anti-Semitic. We must seriously ask ourselves: What came over her – not Greta, but the adults? They were disgraced to the core.

René Scheu is a philosopher and managing director of the Institute for Swiss Economic Policy.
(IWP) in Lucerne.

Source: Blick