Greta on tour: How Swedish eco activist has latched on to one hard-left cause after another - as she joins French student protesters

Among the thousands of young people and radical leftwing opposition politicians in France protesting for better investment in crumbling schools, one famous face stood out from the crowds.

Greta Thunberg joined the nationwide demonstrations which, now in their fourth week, have kept schools shuttered and imposed mounting pressure on Emmanuel Macron's debt-ridden government. 

More than 160,000 schoolchildren and trade unionists turned out across the country on Tuesday, with riot police firing teargas at marches in Nantes and near the Montparnasse area of Paris.

The Swedish climate activist joined pupils outside the Paul-Éluard lycée in Saint-Denis, where about 20 lawyers in robes formed a human chain to protect the teenagers from alleged police brutality. 

'Young people are not being included in the conversation,' said the 23-year-old, who became famous as a teenager through school strikes demanding action on climate change.

'Our future is being stolen from us and, as we have seen here, schools are not getting the investment they need,' she said, as similar demonstrations over teacher shortages, overcrowded classes and dilapidated school buildings were held in cities including Lyon, Lille and Marseille.

This is not the first time Thunberg has travelled from Stockholm to rally behind leftwing causes around the world, which seemingly have nothing to do with the environment.

From setting sail on the Gaza flotilla, to protesting in Norway for the rights of the Sami Indigenous people, and sending solidarity to transgender rights campaigners in Scotland, the climate activist has lent her support to a variety of causes over the years.

During the Israel-Hamas conflict, Thunberg made appearances at a number of pro-Palestine protests in opposition to the Israeli government's military campaign in Gaza.

After war broke out on October 7, 2023, she appeared at various demonstrations in Albania, Italy, Belgium, Germany, England and Denmark, often garbed in a keffiyeh scarf as a symbol of Palestinian solidarity.

She was removed by police at a pro-Palestinian demonstration outside the Malmo Arena venue ahead of the final of the 68th Eurovision Song Contest 2024 on May 11.

Thunberg was protesting against Israel's participation in the competition which saw the country's contestant Eden Golan finishing in fifth place overall.

The activist told the BBC that there was a 'moral obligation to act' and to speak out against Israel's military operation in Gaza.

In October 2025, she was detained by Israeli forces after the Global Sumud Flotilla (GSF) carrying aid bound for Gaza was intercepted.

The flotilla had departed from Spain a month prior, with more than 40 ships and around 500 people aboard, including European parliamentarians, lawyers and activists, with the stated intention of taking aid directly into the Palestinian territory.

Israel said its navy told the vessels to change course as they were 'approaching an active combat zone and violating a lawful naval blockade'.

Around 443 people were detained from the ships, with activists alleging that many were assaulted with water cannon. 

Israel said at the time that those detained were 'safe and in good health'. 

The climate campaigner has also brought her anti-Israel activism to London.

She was arrested in December 2025 after taking part in a demonstration holding a sign expressing support for Palestine Action-affiliated hunger strikers. 

Sitting outside a building used by Aspen Insurance, she held a poster saying: 'I support the Palestine Action prisoners. I oppose genocide.'

Two other activists had allegedly earlier used repurposed fire extinguishers to cover the front of the building with red paint before locking themselves to it. 

The campaign group Prisoners for Palestine accused Aspen, a global specialty insurer and reinsurer, of providing services to Elbit Systems UK, a subsidiary of an Israeli weapons maker. 

The activist network also carried out the action in solidarity with prisoners who were on hunger strike while awaiting trial for alleged offences relating to Palestine Action, before the group was proscribed.

Thunberg lent her support to transgender rights campaigners in Edinburgh in December 2022, who attempted to block the screening of a film branded 'transphobic' by an academic union.

An event organised by the Edinburgh Academics for Academic Freedom group (EAAF) was scheduled to show a film called Adult Human Female.

The film was criticised by the university’s Pride society, and students subsequently occupied the lecture hall where it was due to take place in an attempt to prevent the screening.

Dylan Hamilton, an environmental activist, took to X to defend the student protest.

'A screening of a transphobic film was to be held at Edinburgh Uni, we decided that wasn't happening. You don't get to spread hatred and expect to be unchallenged,' he said.

Thunberg, who Hamilton reportedly spent time with at the previous year's COP26 in Glasgow, sent three love heart emojis to the campaigner in response.

In October 2022, she joined hundreds of demonstrators at Medborgarplatsen, the 'citizens' square,' located south of Stockholm, to stand up for 'antifascism, antiracism, and climate justice'.

According to Le Monde, the demonstrators were joined by Black Lives Matter activists and were supporting a transgender person from El Salvador whose request for asylum had been refused three times by the Swedish government.

In 2023, Thunberg and dozens of activists blocked the entrance to Norway’s energy ministry in Oslo to protest a wind farm they said hinders the rights of the Sami Indigenous people to raise reindeer in Arctic Norway.

The activists, mainly teenagers, lay outside the ministry entrance holding Sami flags and a poster reading 'Land Back'.

The protesters from organisations called Young Friends of The Earth Norway and the Norwegian Sami Association’s youth council NSR-Nuorat, said 'the ongoing human rights violations' against Sami reindeer herders 'must come to an end'.

Several of the activists donned the Sami’s traditional bright-colored dress and put up a tent used by the Arctic people.

In October 2021, Norway’s Supreme Court ruled that the construction of the wind turbines violated the rights of the Sami, who have been using the land to raise reindeer for centuries. 

In 2024, Norway finally reached an agreement with the Sami reindeer herders that allowed the country's largest wind farm to stay in operation, ending the years-long dispute.

In Saint-Denis on Tuesday, students outside the French high school said Thunberg had encouraged them to continue with peaceful demonstrations. 

'They should know that all over the world we are following these developments. We are inspired by the young people who are demanding their basic rights,' she told reporters.

'Whether it’s not funding schools enough, or the climate crisis, or social injustice crises... it’s about time that young people are stepping up and reclaiming that future.'

It comes as the French government is caught between demands for immediate public investment and pressure to reduce France’s spiralling deficit and debt. 

The surprise appearance by the 23-year-old climate activist, along with another day of marches in the French capital and elsewhere, suggested that high school students’ push for more resources for run-down schools is far from running out of steam. 

That’s despite mass arrests, mounting injuries and fatigue from more than three weeks of blockading schools and demonstrating. 

Police used clouds of tear gas, water cannons and repeated charges to disperse protesters Tuesday when violence erupted on the fringes of the Paris marches. 

The Interior Ministry estimated that 161,500 people marched in demonstrations across the country, including 41,500 in Paris. 

The students’ grievances have resonated in neighboring Belgium, where some schools closed in Liege. 

Several Italian cities have also seen student protests, though on a smaller scale than in France and focused on broader complaints. 

In Germany, high school students are calling for an international youth strike on November 20, in solidarity with the French protests. 

Thunberg also cited protests in Spain, gripped by demonstrations for affordable housing, and in Latin America.

'These movements are connected in one way or another. We are fighting against the same system,' she said. 'Even though these local issues are different and may vary, we have the same enemy and I definitely think that these movements are inspiring each other.'

The government of outgoing President Emmanuel Macron, whose term ends in May, argues that the movement in France is losing momentum. 

The Education Ministry said fewer schools were closed Tuesday although the number of staff injured since protests began in mid-September has risen to 147. 

The government says hundreds of police officers have also been wounded but has not detailed the severity of their injuries.

Among protesters, particularly gruesome wounds suffered by some teenagers have been blamed on police riot-control weapons.

The interior minister suspended the use of a type of police stun grenade against the young demonstrators after a 15-year-old lost a hand.