Thunberg justifies laughing video and attests Germany has “racist behavior patterns”

In a documentary, Greta Thunberg reacted with a laugh and an incredulous inquiry to the fact that there are still protests by the climate movement in Germany. For this, the world-famous Swedish activist is met with criticism and incomprehension, and fellow campaigners and former companions also react with irritation.

The 23-year-old is currently in Antalya. Just on Thursday, in front of the world press at the UN Climate Change Conference, she called for resistance and protest against the fact that too little was being done to combat global warming and its fatal consequences. But apparently the criticism of her reaction also reached Thunberg in Turkey, which is why she is now speaking out with a statement on Instagram in order to “classify” her reaction. She doesn't say anything good about Germany and its Israel policy.

Thunberg explains that on the same day she conducted the interview, she blocked a weapons manufacturer in Germany. At the same time, she learned that there was “a climate demonstration approved by the police – in a notoriously white, middle-class neighborhood.”

The former climate activist is apparently alluding to the Fridays for Future movement around Luisa Neubauer. “It was organized by the very same German climate movement that had previously ended its collaboration with me and publicly ‘distanced’ itself from me because I had said that Palestinians are also people and that they must be expressly included in our demands for justice,” criticized Thunberg, who has now joined the fight for Palestine.

“Let’s not kid ourselves: the world is making fun of Germany because the country has lost touch with reality and is stuck in deeply racist patterns of thought and action, while it is shamelessly complicit in genocide, ecocide and the climate crisis.” “People of color” in Germany have always pointed out this connection.

Thunberg has increasingly turned to pro-Palestinian protests in recent years and has therefore alienated himself from the German Fridays for Future movement in particular. The best-known activist from Fridays for Future in Germany, Luisa Neubauer, reacted calmly to the video with Thunberg. She stays focused on the matter and doesn't want to be distracted.

The protests also continued, including this Friday in around 70 places in Germany. “There are so many of us who say: No, we’ll stay on the ball and we’ll look at everything we have to fight for and defend – come what may,” Neubauer told WELT TV. You don't have to agree on everything when it comes to forms of protest and narratives. But Thunberg is also at the COP31 climate summit, together with 10,000 other people who say: “No, we are not giving up.”

saha, with dpa