GRETA THUNBERG AND SWEDEN'S LOST CHILDREN

 

I am a Swede. Historically, my country has been best known for cheap flat-pack furniture from IKEA, the occasional tennis player and, of course, ABBA. Today, our most famous export is Greta Thunberg, teenage climate activist turned 22-year-old anti-Israel activist.

This week, Thunberg was deported from Israel alongside about 170 other pro-Palestinian activists after—for the second time—boarding a flotilla headed toward Gaza. She was explicitly intending to violate the naval blockade on Gaza, one that Israel imposed in 2009 to prevent Hamas from smuggling weapons into the region. As with everything Thunberg does, her journey to Gaza was broadcast across the world, as she hurtled toward the inevitable and obviously desired clash with the Israeli military.

But as most of us know, she didn’t begin as an anti-Israel activist. Thunberg first became a household name in 2018 at the age of 15, when she began a “school strike for climate.” For three weeks leading up to the Swedish elections, she sat outside the parliament building in Stockholm, protesting for “urgent action on the climate crisis.” Her movement went viral, inspiring similar actions around the world, and in 2019, she was named Time magazine’s Person of the Year. A somewhat awkward young girl, Thunberg was accepted by many as some sort of world conscience—a young girl speaking truth to power. She rose to global fame by telling her adoring followers the many ways in which they had failed her.   

Thunberg is a phenomenon. But more importantly, she is a case study of what has gone wrong in Sweden and the rest of Europe over the past several decades. She is a lost child on a lost continent, both desperately seeking purpose. MORE FROM Greta Thunberg and Sweden’s Lost Children