SARAH VINE: How 'Saint Greta' has led a spiral of endless grievance
The revellers at the Supernova music festival in the western Negev desert attacked by Hamas terrorists at dawn on October 7 were typical of the beautiful young things you always see at these sorts of gatherings.
Idealistic kids, the kind who hope for a better, fairer world, who support worthy causes such as decolonisation, trans rights and environmentalism and who scold their parents for being insufficiently woke.
The type you find in any sixth-form college or university campus, who go on marches and sit around debating the merits of socialism, who idolise the likes of Greta Thunberg as they lecture world leaders on the extent of their wickedness.
That was what broke my heart this week. That one of the icons these peace- seekers probably worshipped failed to even acknowledge their terrible plight.
Hundreds of hopeful young souls, butchered by terrorists, and what does this supposed messiah for Gen Z, ‘Saint Greta of Thunberg’ herself do? Profess her support for the other side.
In a now-deleted social media post, she is pictured holding a ‘Stand with Gaza’ placard.
In a now-deleted social media post, Greta Thunberg is pictured holding a ‘Stand with Gaza’ placard
The caption reads ‘Today we are striking in solidarity with Palestine and Gaza. The world needs to speak up and call for an immediate ceasefire, justice and freedom for Palestinians.’
Only Palestinians, mind, not Israelis. No mention of the abductions, rapes, torture and beheadings of young girls like herself.
No acknowledgement of any of it – apart from, beside her, well placed for all to see, a blue stuffed octopus. Talk about adding insult to injury.
Based on a Nazi image of the world in the grip of a giant blue cephalopod with a star of David on its head, the octopus is often used as an anti-Semitic trope, a reference to a ‘sinister’ Jewish cabal that apparently rules all our lives. Thunberg later claimed that she had no inkling of its association, that the toy merely helped her autism.
Many will no doubt take her at her word. I find that difficult.
Thunberg is a seasoned, well-managed campaigner.
It’s inconceivable that she and her team would have been unaware of the sensitivities surrounding such imagery.
Like the singer Alicia Keys, who last week captioned an Instagram post, ‘What would you do if you weren’t afraid of anything? I’ve had my eyes on paragliding’, followed by two ‘eyes’ emojis. Maybe Thunberg just thought no one would pick up on it.
In this moment – Hamas beheading Israeli babies, gang-raping girls and throwing one female hostage, a tattoo artist, naked and unconscious in the back of a pick-up truck, spitting on her and yanking her by the hair while literally setting other women and Jews on fire – Alicia Keys, feminist singer of shero-anthems, posts this...
Why? Because for some reason Jewish lives don’t seem to matter, or seem to matter less, than those of Palestinians.
Like Keys, like the group of luvvies – including actors Tilda Swinton, Miriam Margolyes and Steve Coogan – who put their names to an open letter demanding ‘an end to military and political support for Israel’s actions’, with only minimal mention of the atrocities, Thunberg is typical of so many whose intellectual arrogance, sense of entitlement and apparently selective moral conscience allow them to entertain a bizarre world view.
To quote the master of all things dystopian, George Orwell, this calls to mind the phrase that ‘all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others’.
Taken to extreme, it’s a view that legitimises antipathy and aggression by not only diminishing the object of their ire, but also victim-shaming them. It’s a well-worn tactic, deployed successfully throughout history by extremists to justify the mistreatment of individuals or groups of people, from slavery to the French Revolution. It allows people to do, or say, appalling things about other human beings – or simply to turn a blind eye to injustice – while deluding themselves that they are somehow on the side of the angels.
Hundreds of hopeful young souls, butchered by terrorists, and what does this supposed messiah for Gen Z, ‘Saint Greta of Thunberg’ herself do? Profess her support for the other side
It is the same principle that allowed the Islamic State to justify the rape and slaughter of Yazidi women and children; that sees Russia bomb maternity hospitals in Ukraine; that leads to people tearing down posters of kidnapped children; that demands Israel provides ‘proof’ of the atrocities committed against itself.
But what’s new is how universal this approach now seems. How embedded in our day-to-day lives it has become. This, I think, is what King Charles very wisely referenced last week when he talked about the natural instinct of the British people to ‘pull together and co-operate’ being drowned out by the ‘shouting’ of the ‘digital sphere where civilised debate too often gives way to rancour and acrimony’.
He’s right.
None of this is specific to Israel, but Israel is the most acute example, and it has brought the issue sharply to the fore.
But make no mistake: this selective morality, this deeply ingrained prejudice that so often poses as wokeness extends to all aspects of debate – political, cultural, social and ideological.
And it only ensures one thing: ever deeper divisions in a world that seems trapped in a terrible, depressing, never-ending spiral of hate.
Thunberg
