Once-beloved climate teen Greta Thunberg seems like aging child star in Gaza activism turn, critics

Greta Thunberg, the leftist media’s climate saint, appears to be gradually falling from grace. No longer the innocent pigtailed, precocious teenager saving the world from climate doom, Thunberg has become a 21-year-old keffiyeh-wearing anti-Israel activist. 

Some supporters are distancing themselves from the Swedish activist, and others are lamenting the loss of a poster child for the climate cause.

Supporters of Israel are calling her an antisemite. Stop Antisemitism on Monday voted Thunberg the “Antisemite of the Week.” 

Jeff Reynolds, climate researcher at Restoration of America, told Just the News that the climate celebrity is changing strategies as her popularity wanes. 

“I think that as she struggles to find relevance, as she advances in her adulthood, she's going to meet with – and I'm not rooting for this – but I think it's not going to be pretty when she realizes she no longer has any influence,” Reynolds said. 

Joan of Sweden 

Thunberg entered the celebrity spotlight in 2019 by shaming leaders at the United Nations – “How dare you?” – for not doing enough to stop consumers from using fossil fuels while, she claimed, “people are dying” as a result of global warming. 

Even though deaths from climate-related natural disasters are at historic lows, a fawning press portrayed her as the climate messiah of a new environmental religion. Time voted her the 2019 Person of the Year, with the online article headed with a video of the teen gazing determinedly into the distance. 

Following the Oct. 7, 2023, terror attacks on Israel, which killed nearly 1,200 people including almost 800 civilians, Thunberg began expressing her support for Gaza, a territory adjacent to Israel that in home to Palestinians and the militant group Hamas that governs them. 

 A couple weeks after the attacks, launched from Gaza, she posted a photo on Instagram showing herself holding a “Stand with Gaza” sign, with a toy octopus behind her. The octopus was used by Nazi propagandists during World War II as a symbol of the Jewish global control, and Thunberg was blasted for the photo. She deleted the photo and claimed the toy is used by people with autism to communicate their feelings. 

Israeli environmentalists slammed Thunberg in a letter, saying they are “deeply hurt, shocked and disappointed” in the Swedish activist’s pro-Gaza social media posts. 

The blowback didn’t deter Thunberg from her support of Gaza. In November 2023, Thunberg reportedly chanted “crush Zionism” at a pro-Palestinian rally in Sweden. In December 2023, Thunberg published an op-ed in the Guardian defending her support for Gaza, arguing that there’s “no climate justice without human rights.” 

“Advocating for climate justice fundamentally comes from a place of caring about people and their human rights. That means speaking up when people suffer, are forced to flee their homes or are killed – regardless of the cause,” Thunberg wrote. 

Thunberg has continued her protests of Israel unabated. Earlier this month, she was arrested for participating in a protest by Students Against the Occupation that blocked the entrance of Copenhagen University, in Denmark. The protesters were demanding the university cut ties with Israel, including student-exchange programs. One of those programs, according to Stop Antisemitism, was dedicated to fighting climate change. 

It’s not the first time Thunberg had seemed to undermine her own climate cause. Thunberg advocated for Germany to shut down its remaining nuclear power plants in 2022, which ironically forced the nation to use more coal. In October, she joined a protest in Norway over a wind farm that indigenous herders claim hurts their traditional hunting practices.

While many environmentalists can get behind protests of even green projects, support for Palestinians is much more divisive. Reynolds said, as she stops generating revenues, she’s going to find herself more and more isolated. 

“She’s no longer useful to them. They’ve cast her aside now that she can’t make money for them anymore,” Reynolds said. 

Road to fame

Thunberg’s father and grandparents were well known actors in Sweden. Her mother is an internationally recognized opera singer, who represented Sweden in the Eurovision Song Contest, the largest music competition in the world. 

Energy analyst and political commentator David Blackmon, who publishes his work on his “Energy Absurdities” Substack, told Just the News that he believes Thunberg’s parents pushed her into activism as a means to fame and fortune.  

“I think what we're seeing is just the natural evolution of a young lady who was abused by craven parents for profit when she was a minor. Obviously, they willingly let her become the propaganda tool, the poster child for a left wing political movement,” Blackmon said. 

In an article sympathetic to Thunberg in the National Review, Swedish writer John Gustavsson argues that Thunberg wouldn’t have likely risen to international status were it not for her parent’s notoriety. Her parents originally pushed her to be successful in dance, theater and singing. That failed when she became depressed and withdrawn, and she was ultimately diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome. 

People with autism can develop strong, frequent eccentric fixations. 

When Thunberg became obsessed with the climate, Gustavsson argues, rather than encourage her to pursue her passion in a healthy way such as pursuing a degree in climate science, her parents instead let her drop out of school and pursue an activist career. 

Gustavsson suggests Thunberg is like Hollywood child stars who grow old and see their fame waning. As the support structure around them crumbles, they begin to act out in destructive ways. Blackmon said he too believes this is what’s happening with Thunberg’s descent into the darker sides of leftist politics. 

“So many of those childhood film stars have gone on to live very sad, drug addicted lives. Nobody wishes that on Greta Thunberg, but it sure seems to be where she is going,” Blackmon said. 

Her problems are exacerbated, Blackmon said, by the fact she has no real guidance in her life that would direct her into more constructive pursuits than highly performative political causes. 

“I’m afraid she’s just going to keep latching on to whatever cause she can latch on to, to get attention, just like her parents have always done. It's probably going to be just a steady downward spiral from here,” he said.