Her critics may sneer, but standing in solidarity is what makes Greta a hero
It tells you a lot about the system we live under that twelve activists on a small yacht called Madleen have done more to try to halt the famine being suffered by 2 million people in Gaza than all the rich and powerful governments of the world. The attempts by Israel’s defenders to attack and discredit Greta Thunberg and her crew mates—Suayb, Sergio, Baptiste, Rima, Yasemin, Thiago, Reva, Marco, Omar, Yanis and Pascal—only speak to the power of their brave protest against the most profound moral crime of this century.
When Greta was abducted by the IDF on Monday, the Israeli foreign ministry was quick to deride as a mere joyride on a “selfie yacht” her and her eleven mates’ heroic attempt at delivering aid to the Gazans the Israeli state is systematically starving. Switched-on observers might wonder how this tallies with Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz’ previous attempts to paint Greta as a menacing antisemite and “Hamas propagandist”. The Israeli government wants to have it both ways: the Madleen crew are dangerous terrorists while they’re trying to deliver baby formula to the infants of Gaza, then foolish Instagram activists whom it’s best not to pay too much attention to once the IDF has forcibly prevented them from doing so.
The contradiction hasn’t bothered the centrist commentariat, who have swiftly latched on to the “selfie yacht” line to dismiss the Madleen crew’s stand against the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Perhaps the most nauseating of these was Suzanne Moore’s article “Activists like Greta Thunberg care more about fame than facts”, initially published by the London Telegraph and subsequently reprinted by the Sydney Morning Herald
As far as Moore is concerned, Greta is a light-minded attention seeker, hopping from cause to cause in search of exposure. Never mind that Greta’s principled stance in support of Palestine has cost her support from the liberal establishment, caused her to be classified as a “danger” and banned from pro-Palestine events by police in Germany, and now moved her to risk life and limb in the name of breaking Gaza’s deadly siege.
Some of the attacks in Moore’s article are rehashes of familiar old arguments any Palestine activist would be familiar with—for instance, sneering that Greta’s progressive politics “would not be tolerated by Hamas”. What would Moore prefer? We all stay silent about the shooting, bombing and starvation of Palestinians? Some are examples of the stock sexist belittlement that Greta is no stranger to, like Moore’s description of her as a “cute eco-warrior in shorts”. (Moore once celebrated Greta for unapologetically rebuking the very same sexist belittlement in a 2019 Guardian article.) And some are facile accusations of hypocrisy of the hackneyed “you criticise capitalism, yet use an iPhone” variety.
But the worst is Moore’s assault on the very concept of solidarity between struggles. The problem with Greta and the left today, Moore argues, is that we campaign around too many “disparate causes”, like “eco stuff, trans rights and Free Palestine”. Ignoring the supposed “contradictions” between them, these different issues become “bundled together as an omnicause ... a moronic vacuum where analysis goes to die”. It’s a view that denigrates the instinct towards solidarity and collective resistance as crude “tribal loyalty”.
Precisely what makes Greta such a hero is that she has embodied the principled politics of solidarity, even when it has meant risking her popularity, her career prospects, or her personal safety.
It’s not true, as Moore claims, that there is no strategy or internal logic to showing solidarity. One of the great strengths of socialist politics is that it allows us to identify the through line between the fights for a liberated Palestine, for climate action, against oppression and for workers’ rights. The common thread is that an advance on any of these fronts strengthens the collective fight of workers and the oppressed against whose who rule over and profit from our sick social order.
It’s the ruling class whose control over trade routes and valuable commodities in the Middle East is being guaranteed through their no-holds-barred support for the genocidal Israeli state. It’s the ruling class who profit from steadily expanding the fossil fuel industry, even as the evidence mounts that the climate crisis is already destroying the lives of thousands of ordinary people. It’s the ruling class whose unjust and unequal social order is propped up by structures of brutal violence and oppression. And it’s our side of the class divide who pay the price as we are collectively dehumanised every time they’re allowed to get away with these crimes.
Greta has never let the bastards get away with it. That is what makes her, as has been remarked previously in Red Flag, cooler than almost all of us. Whether it’s the climate criminals copping a glorious Greta serve at their greenwashing conferences, or the world’s pro-Israel governments copping an excoriating moral reckoning at her hands, her refusal to shut up and let the ruling class get on with business as usual has reliably produced fist-pumping moments of political vindication and inspiration for lefties around the world for years.
Moore isn’t the first to criticise or question her pro-Palestine stance. Why not just keep quiet and stay in the pigeonhole of everyone’s favourite teen eco-warrior? Greta put it best herself: “It’s so weird to me that people are separating caring about the environment with caring about humans. I care about the environment and the climate because I care about human and planetary wellbeing. Those are the same thing in my view”.
Greta also said it best when explaining the vitriolic campaign marshalled against her by Israel and its supporters in politics and the media. Asked why so many governments are ignoring Gaza, fresh off her deportation flight from Israel, her argument was clear: they are “desperately trying to defend a destructive deadly system that puts short-term economic profit and maximis[ing] geopolitical power over the wellbeing of humans and the planet ... right now it’s very, very difficult to morally defend that, it is impossible, but still they are desperately trying”.
Of course, Greta and the Madleen crew were not naive. Of course they knew that one small boat’s worth of supplies could not on its own end Israel’s starvation of Gaza. Of course they knew that they were likely to be attacked by the IDF before they made it to Gaza—like the crew of the Mavi Marmara before them, ten of whom were murdered by the IDF in 2010 while en route to Gaza. As Greta has endlessly reiterated, their action was not just a humanitarian mission, but a protest against the complicity of the world’s governments in the Gaza genocide, and a call to action against it.
And the world’s Palestine supporters, following our own strong commitment to solidarity, answered the call. Tens of thousands of us were once again inspired by Greta Thunberg to hit the streets, demanding freedom for the crew of the Madleen and an end to the horror in Gaza. If we’re serious about the fight for a liberated world, it’s acts of mass solidarity like that—and many more of them—that are going to pave the way.
