JONAH GOLDBERG: Addicted to Protest – On Greta Thunberg and the omnicause.
In 2019, The Washington Post ran an irate op-ed titled, “Politicians and pundits used to refrain from publicly attacking kids. Not anymore.” Another columnist for The Guardian began a tirade with: “A bunch of grown men have begun bullying a schoolgirl.” That “bullying,” the author explained, was “proof the right has run out of ideas.” I am happy to condemn some of the attacks on the kids, but I am also happy to condemn the tactic of putting kids in rhetorical harm’s way.
We should catch up on what Thunberg, now 23, is doing these days. This week she was in France lending her eminently assailable moral authority to the protesters in France setting fire to cars, purportedly in anger over substandard spending on schools. “The whole world is watching with awe,” she said approvingly of the protests, which included one teen taking a makeshift blow torch to a woman’s face. “This generation is one that has been growing up with a sense of hopelessness for the future, when we can see our future and our rights taken from us,” she said. “Of course people are going to fight back.”
One might wonder what school funding has to do with climate change. Also, back in 2019, Thunberg insisted that she didn’t want “hope,” she wanted “panic” over climate change, “the only thing that matters.” Now she thinks a lack of hope justifies pretty much everything she approves of. Pick a lane.
Old and Busted: Greta Thunberg calls for LA and the planet to abandon fossil fuels.
—UPI headline, November 1st, 2019.
The New Hotness? Throw fossil fuels!
— Susan (@SusanHW) October 17, 2026
