Poland Greta is populists’ public enemy No 1
A Catholic archbishop in Poland considers her the enemy of Christianity. The Czech prime minister says she is hysterical. In Hungary, journalists must seek their bosses’ permission before they mention her name on state TV.
For a 17-year-old Swedish climate activist, Greta Thunberg has put a considerable number of bees in the bonnets of central and eastern Europe.
While the teenager led an estimated 5000 demonstrators on a march through the streets of Brussels yesterday, the real centres of resistance to her movement lie hundreds of kilometres to the east and south.
The governments of Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic have sought to cast Thunberg as a danger to the world.
In Poland, which consumes a third of the European Union’s coal, conservatives often link Thunberg and her Fridays for Future movement to gay rights activists, human rights groups and pro-refugee campaigners.
Last Christmas Eve, Marek Jedraszewski, the archbishop of Cracow, described her as ‘‘an oracle for all political and social forces’’ seeking to shatter his country’s Christian identity. Przemyslaw Czarnek, an MP from the ruling Law and Justice party, accused Thunberg and her environmentalist allies of ‘‘treating humans like animals and treating plants and animals like humans’’.
After one of Thunberg’s recent speeches, Polish state TV published a doctored photograph of Al Gore, the environmentalist and former US vice-president, with his arm draped around her shoulders. Gore’s face had been replaced with that of George Soros, a Jewish liberal billionaire and favourite bogeyman of far-right conspiracy theorists.
‘‘The climate has been turned into a new front in the culture war. Even Greta is portrayed as someone who threatens the traditional way of life,’’ said Katerina Davidova, a research fellow specialising in climate policy at the Europeum Institute for European Policy, a Praguebased think tank.
Andrej Babis, the prime minister of the Czech Republic, which relies on coal for roughly half of its electricity, said after one of Thunberg’s speeches at the United Nations that he disliked her ‘‘tone, aggression and hysteria, because of which many people will stop dealing with climate change and will focus on a Swedish girl that is polarising society’’.
The Politico website disclosed this week that in Hungary, Thunberg is on a list of subjects that cannot be covered by state news outlets without the approval of a senior editor.
In the past few weeks, however, Viktor Orban, the prime minister, has tried to regain the initiative, announcing that 90 per cent of the electricity generated in his country will be carbon neutral by 2030. ‘‘To put it bluntly,’’ he said in his annual state of the nation address last month, ‘‘protecting the climate and nature is truly our Christian and patriotic duty.’’