Greta: only funny on the surface
Moral narcissism on the High Seas
We have all enjoyed a laugh at Greta’s expense this week, but her clownery masks a far more serious phenomenon.
Greta Thunberg is neither brave nor wise. She is not a climate scientist, strategist, or a serious adult voice. What she is above all is a global symbol, a living meme engineered for virality, outrage, and applause. While her earlier performances in scolding politicians, storming summits, and sitting out school were laughable, her latest escapade is more dangerous.
As you no doubt know, Greta boarded a yacht bound for Gaza in an attempt to breach Israeli territorial waters with a team of activists, several of whom are linked to organisations that either excuse or openly support terrorist groups. Predictably, this was hailed by much of the international press as “heroic”. Make no mistake: this was not a humanitarian mission. It was ideological theatre. As ever, too many in the West clapped.
The real danger is not that Greta did this; it is that millions support it. This raises a deeper question: why does this theatre compel so many people? What does it say about us?
Greta is now 22, but she has never had the opportunity to grow up. Her adolescence was not dedicated to forming a grounded identity but to performing one on the global stage. She was lionised before she could legally vote, treated not as a person but as a prophetic mouthpiece. Her image has been commodified by movements far more radical than she comprehends. We cannot expect her to possess wisdom; we can only observe what she has become: a vessel for moralistic performance.
What is striking now is not only her lack of understanding, but also her inability to grasp it. It is her hypocrisy. Greta sailed on a fossil-fuel-built yacht, polluting the oceans in the name of peace. She tosses her phone into the sea, littering the very environment she claims to protect, so that she can film herself doing it, and then shares it as a performative sacrifice. This is not activism but influencer theatre dressed in the aesthetics of sacrifice.
More troubling is her silence and her selectivity. Where was Greta when Palestinians deliberately set fire to over 46,000 acres of Israeli forest and farmland—a literal climate crime? Where is Greta regarding Sudan, where 10 million people are displaced, and entire villages are being wiped out in real time in what many consider the worst humanitarian crisis on Earth?
How does the self-proclaimed voice of her generation find time for a Gaza flotilla stunt but not for Sudan, Syria, Yemen, or the Uyghurs? How can a climate activist overlook the thousands of missiles launched from Gaza into Israeli cities, often from schools and hospitals, whilst expending her political capital blaming the only liberal democracy in the Middle East?
The answer: she is not an activist; she is a brand. Brands do not seek truth; they chase attention.
Why do people still celebrate this? Because our societies lack meaning. We have dismantled the scaffolding that once supported individual and collective identity. Faith has vanished. Family is fractured. National pride is pathologised. What remains? A vacuum. Amongst others, into that vacuum steps Greta, offering emotionally satisfying moral theatre in place of actual solutions.
She instils in people a sense of purpose. She provides the thrill of rebellion at no cost. She speaks in binaries: good and evil, victim and oppressor, planet-saver or planet-destroyer. No complexity, no burden of understanding, just tribal certainty. This is not just a Greta problem; it is a Western crisis.
Young people brought up on social media are taught to perform before they understand, to declare before they inquire, and to moralise before they mature. Greta is not leading a generation; she is mirroring it. This is why she is so valuable to those who want to weaken the West.
Malign actors from Iran to Russia to radical Islamist movements understand our psychology. They know that if they can capture the emotions of Western youth, they can undermine our moral clarity from within. They recognise that performative outrage is more potent than truth in a world addicted to dopamine and display. What better delivery system exists than a sanctified young woman who tosses phones into the sea to support Hamas while disregarding a panoply of far worse humanitarian disasters?
Greta’s Gaza stunt was not courageous; it was cheap theatre and cost her nothing. The West’s response, however, is indeed costly. Every time we reward this spectacle with applause, we erode our ability to think, discern, and respond like serious individuals in a serious world. This is why it matters.
We are no longer a civilisation of citizens. We are a civilisation of consumers of morality, outsourcing our virtue to influencers and calling it justice. This is not activism. It is emotional self-care disguised as solidarity. Greta Thunberg is not the problem; she is a symptom of a civilisation in moral freefall. Her contradictions, her theatrics, and her selective outrage are not failures but instead features of a system that rewards symbolism over substance.
The flotilla to Gaza was not about peace. It was about posturing. It was about validating the worldview of individuals who cannot articulate the conflict they are shouting about, yet feel righteous doing so, regardless.
This is not how serious cultures behave.
If we do not start to defend reality, protecting our young from manipulation and restoring meaning beyond performance, we will lose this civilisational war. Not to Greta, but to the void she fills.
If you enjoyed this piece, you might enjoy my weekly podcast with Shana Meyerson, “A Paratrooper and a Yogi Walk Into A Bar”. This week we discuss Greta! Find it in the podcast section of my Substack page, or:
Andrew, adding to your comment on radical Islamist movements understanding our psychology, I think it's worth reminding people that the Madleen – part of the Freedom Flotilla organization – has a direct line that can be traced back to the Mavi Marmara (2010), which was co-organized by the Turkish Islamist organization known as the “Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief (IHH)”, an organization that has proven links to terrorist activity and groups, including Hamas, and the Mavi Marmara itself had violent Islamists on board. Here we are, 15 years later, and not much of this adolescent, binary view of the world (and especially of Israel) has changed.
Well summed up. The moral vacuum posing as altruism is indeed alarming. Care and empathy often requires exemplars and mentors to lead and demonstrate but the noise around cheap stunts like hers takes over.