Aditya Chakrabortty - The hounding of Greta Thunberg is proof that the right has run out of ideas
Over the past few days,
something extraordinary has happened in our politics. A bunch of grown men have
begun bullying a schoolgirl. Perhaps you already know who I mean: Greta Thunberg, she of the pigtails and school strikes, who came
to Westminster last week and slammed adoring MPs for posturing rather than taking action
on climate breakdown, then hoofed it over to St Pancras for the 36-hour train ride back to Stockholm.
More posts on Greta Thunberg
More posts on Greta Thunberg
Which left the
eco-denialists back here with a stonking great headache: how to bash this
16-year-old celeb? Not by dismantling her arguments, not when the scientists
and Sir David of Blue Planet back her up. Nor by sniffing around
her record, since by definition a teenager hasn’t much of a past to rake over.
The standard methods of political warfare off-limits to them, they are trying
something new and unusual. They are sinking their teeth into her.
She was “chilling”, declared Brendan O’Neill, editor of the hard-right
website Spiked, after picking on her “monotone voice” and “look of apocalyptic
dread in her eyes”. Given Thunberg’s openness about her Asperger’s, this was a
dog whistle if he knew about it, but it was at best crass if he didn’t: the
kid’s on the spectrum! Bringing up the rear were the bloggers at Guido Fawkes,
trying to eke a three-course meal out of the morsel that Thunberg’s mum performed in the Eurovision song contest 10
years ago – cast-iron proof of “an incredibly privileged background”. This
finding has been gurningly spread on social media by none other than that
vomiting dustbin of opinions Toby Young. You don’t need to be much sharper than
him to observe that he is the son of a baron who rang
Oxford University to get his boy a place... read more:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/may/01/greta-thunberg-right-environmental-activist-attacks