Greta’s a victim and deserves better
HER DAUGHTER, AT ONE POINT, ONLY ATE THREE FOODS. — BRAD POLUMBO
Greta Thunberg is a victim, in almost every way imaginable. She’s a victim of bullying, of mental-health issues, of circumstance, and most notably, a victim of the leftwing climate movement that has exploited her vulnerability for political gain.
In an excerpt of Thunberg’s mother’s new memoir, Our House Is on Fire: Scenes of a Family and a Planet in Crisis, published in the Guardian, we learn more about the extent of the challenges and trauma Thunberg and her family have gone through. The tale is heart-wrenching, and only a monster could feel anything but sympathy for Greta after reading it. However, it also once again calls into question the decision to thrust someone so vulnerable and troubled into the spotlight.
Thunberg’s mother, Malena Ernman, describes how her daughter’s struggles began in 2014:
“Greta was 11, had just started fifth grade, and was not doing well. She cried at night when she should be sleeping. She cried on her way to school. She cried in her classes and during her breaks, and the teachers called home almost every day. Svante had to run off and bring her home to Moses, our golden retriever. She sat with him for hours, petting him and stroking his fur. She was slowly disappearing into some kind of darkness and little by little, bit by bit, she seemed to stop functioning. She stopped playing the piano. She stopped laughing. She stopped talking. And she stopped eating.”
Tragically, this was only the beginning of Thunberg’s troubles. We learn of the intense extent of her struggles with an eating disorder, revealed by Ernman’s chilling description of her desperate attempts to get Greta to eat more than five pieces of gnocchi. Her daughter, at one point, only ate three foods.
“After two months of not eating Greta has lost almost 10kg, which is a lot when you are rather small to begin with,” the memoir recounts. “Her body temperature is low and her pulse and blood pressure clearly indicate signs of starvation. She no longer has the energy to take the stairs and her scores on the depression tests she takes are sky- high. We explain to our daughter that we have to start preparing ourselves for a stay at the hospital, where it’s possible to get nutrition and food without eating, with tubes and drips.”
We learn that Thunberg is diagnosed with autism and obsessive- compulsive disorder. We learn how, after viewing a documentary on environmentalism in school, she becomes obsessively concerned with the environment and climate change. Thunberg starts skipping school, and we learn about her struggles with vicious bullying of unimaginable cruelty:
“It’s like a movie montage featuring every imaginable bullying scenario. Stories about being pushed over in the playground, wrestled to the ground, or lured into strange places, the systematic shunning and the safe space in the girls’ toilets where she sometimes manages to hide and cry before the break monitors force her out into the playground again. For a full year, the stories keep coming. Svante and I inform the school, but the school isn’t sympathetic.”
Thankfully, eventually things started to look up for Thunberg. We learn that her mental-health struggles have improved, a fact for which we should all be grateful.
But despite all of the trauma and troubles revealed in Ernman’s memoirs, left- wing activists have subjected Thunberg to a worldwide media frenzy, exposed her to the nasty cruelty of social media fame, and thrown her into the top levels of political debate.
This is unconscionable. It’s unfair to subject any person her age to the public scrutiny associated with being the leader of a political movement, which comes with having every word dissected, every argument debunked, and every aspect of your life publicized. But it’s even worse to subject someone with clearly documented, severe mental-health issues to this treatment, all for political advantage. That borders on child abuse.
Thunberg has received thousands of hateful messages online, has been mocked cruelly on cable news, and has even been the subject of President Trump’s Twitter feed. Liberal climate activists have surely known this would happen, and they put her through it all anyway.
Now, Thunberg madly obsesses over the climate, stricken with fear over doomsday- level fantasies that the world will end. She rages at the United Nations and celebrities alike, scolding the world with tears in her eyes for having “stolen (her) dreams and (her) childhood.”
Climate activists delight, exploiting her trauma to browbeat their political opponents into submission. In turn, they give her awards and even float her for the Nobel Peace Prize. All the while, Thunberg clearly continues to suffer, but evidently, to progressive activists, that’s of little concern.