Greta Thunberg has caused me to shatter the laws of mathematics, because my infinite store of compassion just ran out. The 23-year-old Swedish activist decided to make her way to France to join her fellow youthful miscreants, sorry revolutionaries, who have been forced not to attend school due to a shortage of textbooks.
Thunberg arrived in St. Denis, Paris, in a kaffiyeh (naturally) to talk about standing up against adults everywhere. The youth of "France and all over the world are being neglected, and it is about time that they’re standing up and demanding what is rightfully theirs," she said. "Demanding the bare minimum. And from all over the world, we are following students in France, who are leading by example and showing what we should all be doing."
By that, I assume she means skipping school and firing a handmade flame thrower in the face of your teacher, as we saw in one notorious incident last week.
There may well be serious problems facing France’s education system, but an unscheduled fortnight of vacation is a lot more appealing than boring geography and chemistry classes. And that is Thunberg’s biggest credibility problem: her whole life—her whole identity—is that of someone who plays truant for a living.
It’s a strange and slightly uncomfortable situation to criticize a young woman for her beliefs, however vapid they might be. But, then again, that’s equality for you. If she wants to be the world’s greatest grievance tourist, then she has to accept she's probably going to irritate the hell out of everyone. Sure, she’s neurodiverse, but the same principle applies. She should be judged by the content of her character and actions, not by her lack of attention span.
The main reason high-school student protests drag on and on is because they’re fun. You get to hang out with your friends and cosplay rebellion. The French are the New York Yankees of student uprisings, so, obviously, Thunberg is going to get involved—she’s turned up to support similar causes in London and Berlin. This is her jam. She said the French police had exhibited "extreme violence" against the protests, which feels like an irresponsible claim given the footage of the students in full flow on the streets.
But her rocking up in France is actually bad news for the protests. If Greta’s in town, you can be sure the seriousness of the campaign is ebbing away. Having made her name as a child who scolded male, stale and pale politicians around the world for their inaction over climate change, she’s since pivoted to other causes that take her fancy; in particular, Palestinianism and the war in Gaza. And there’s no issue she can’t undermine with her facile involvement.
Whatever you think about the war in Gaza, Thunberg’s persistent attention-seeking reached a nadir of silliness when she took her place on the 2025 Gaza Freedom Flotilla, with its mission to transport a few sandwiches hundreds of miles across the Mediterranean. I’ve not seen something that unseemly floating in the water since my daughter was nappy training.
A byproduct of Thunberg’s activism—what you might call the Thunberg paradox—is that, in acting like the Joan of Arc of Gen Z, she confirms every negative stereotype about them, especially the one about entitlement. If you’ve got a problem with this, take it up with her, not me.
There are reasons to be worried about the neglect and anxieties young people face. "A society that fails to invest in young people is one of the clearest signs of a society that has given up." This, at least, is correct. She’s on to something. What’s missing are any meaningful ideas. What Thunberg represents is emptiness: grand gestures, absurd generalizations and emotionalism. Exactly what you would expect a normal teenager to express. Nothing wrong with that, unless you want to be taken seriously.
Ultimately, activism is her hobby. I don’t know how she can afford to live the life she does, but the irony is that her messianic delusions rest on her self-appointed role as a spokesperson for a generation who say they fear for their jobs, their homes and their finances. But Greta appears to share none of these problems. She is the least Gen Z-adjacent 23-year-old in the world.
The best example she can set is to knuckle down and get a job. Pay some taxes. Make a contribution to society. Even Jesus was a carpenter until he was 30.
George Chesterton is Newsweek's Director, Publishing & Subscription Strategy.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.