Greenhouse Gases and Gaza
Among my friends there are one or two who subscribe to various forms of conspiracy theory. I often end up in debates with them on Facebook. It’s not that I disagree with them entirely, it’s just that the notion of one all-embracing conspiracy that can explain everything that’s wrong in the world is a little far-fetched to me. Also I think that the very notion of conspiracy theory tends to be divisive. In my experience it almost always originates from far-right websites.
Here’s an example: Greta Thunberg. Amongst a significant number of conspiracy theorists she’s seen as a front-woman working in cahoots with the “shadow government” in order to push the idea of climate change. She’s working to a script. Climate change isn’t real, they say. It’s a hoax, used by the global elites to push their secret agendas.
I first heard this idea in 2019. A friend, who’s very conspiratorially-minded, described her as a crisis actress and told me that climate change was a smokescreen for some other hidden agenda. I quickly dismissed the idea as absurd. I think it arose from the fact that after she first came to public attention, with her school strike in 2018, she was invited to a number of major climate change conferences and became the temporary poster-girl for the movement. No doubt the global capitalists hoped to profit from what was happening. Capitalism is opportunistic. If there’s money to be made, then people will jump upon it. They’ll attempt to co-opt any figure to further their cause, but that doesn’t mean that climate change isn’t real, or that Thunberg is one of their agents.
In 2023 Thunberg came out strongly on the side of the Palestinian cause. In October of that year, just after the Hamas attacks in Israel, she turned up at one of her regular Friday climate protests with three colleagues holding posters expressing support for the Palestinians. They were calling for a ceasefire. She was immediately attacked by the Israeli government, who criticized her for not condemning Hamas’ actions at the same time. The Israeli Ministry of Education responded to her statements by removing "various references in the educational curriculum that present Thunberg as a role model and a source of inspiration for youth."
Since then she’s made several high-profile interventions on behalf of the Palestinians, including taking part in a protest outside the arena hosting the Eurovision Song Contest in 2024, opposing Israel’s participation. Later, in December 2024, at a pro-Palestinian rally in Mannheim, Germany, she’s reported to have said, “Fuck Germany and fuck Israel,” giving rise to the accusation of anti-Semitism. She’s been arrested a number of times.
I’m a pro-Palestinian activist. I’ve written about the subject many times, both on Splice Today and other platforms, and have taken a certain amount of flack for it, so I was heartened by her statements. I put a couple of posts up on Facebook celebrating her words. One of them was a picture of Thunberg with a quote superimposed upon it. “The one thing we need more than hope is action,” it said. “Once we start to act, hope is everywhere.” That’s an optimistic statement to me, and one I subscribe to. Another post said: “Greta Thunberg used to say her goal was to protect the planet from climate change, but now admits it’s to overthrow ‘the whole capitalist system,’ which she says is responsible for ‘imperialism, oppression, genocide… racist oppressive extractionalism’.”
I also put up this interview with Marc Lamont Hill on Al Jazeera. I recommend it. She talks about “greenwashing,” the use of climate change debate as a diversion from other issues. “We’re in the year 2024,” she says. “Last year the world experienced an all-time high of greenhouse gas emissions and we are about to see the hottest year ever recorded and the first year to beat the 1.5 degree target. We are obviously doing something wrong if all these climate conferences are leading to are increased emissions and marginal things on paper. I think, as it is right now, these climate conferences have proven time and time again to be a place for people in power and those most responsible for the climate crisis to come together and greenwash themselves. This year at COP, there were 1,773 fossil fuel lobbyists present, which is more than the top ten most vulnerable countries and their delegations combined.”
Greta Thunberg is fully aware how she’s been used as a front and is exposing that fact right here, right now, in front of the cameras, before the whole world. She also talks about the link between climate action and social justice, with specific reference to Gaza. She says: “The reason why I am a climate justice activist is not just because I want to protect the trees and frogs and ecosystems—of course that’s really, really important—but what it boils down to, at least for me, is that because I care about humans and their well-being, and no matter what the cause of human suffering is, whether it is climate crisis, whether it is war, oppression, genocide, I will fight against those causes.”
The first thing that’s obvious about this video is that she’s not speaking from a script. This is an intelligent, compassionate, committed young person talking about the issues that concern her. She’s nothing like a “crisis actor” brought on to play a part. These are genuinely the things that she believes in and, whether you agree with her or not, it’s wrong to demean her by suggesting that these sentiments have been planted in her mouth by scriptwriters with a third-party agenda. She’s her own woman.
I was surprised by some of the responses to these posts. One friend described her as “a loathsome creature,” which I thought was over the top. Another said that she was a “state actor,” although she gave no evidence. I suggested that she watch the video. She did, and this was her reply: “She is appealing to like-minded people, so that they think they have a voice through her, is my opinion.” In other words Thunberg is only taking on the pro-Palestinian cause in order to mislead people like me.
I think this is a common response to challenging material. People see what they want to see. They interpret the world according to preordained principles. If you have a strongly-held belief, you’ll continue to hold that belief, regardless of evidence to the contrary. In fact, you’ll interpret any evidence in line with your belief, to mean the opposite of what it actually means.
I don’t absolve myself from this way of thinking. It’s an almost universal human trait. People create fictions in their heads, story-lines, which then become the medium through which we understand the world. If you’re a conspiracy theorist, then everything you see will be understood in terms of your overriding belief system. If you think that climate change is a hoax, then anyone who argues that climate change is real, and that we ought to be doing something about it, is bound to look like the enemy: a stooge, a front, a state-actor doing the shadow government’s secret bidding. In this sense, conspiracy theory has a lot in common with religion. It’s a matter of faith not fact. It can’t be proved or disproved. You’re either a believer, or an unbeliever. If you’re an unbeliever, then you need to be saved from your corrupted thinking.
The question we have to ask is what purpose does any of this serve? If climate change is real, and there’s a concerted effort to make it look like it’s unreal—if so much energy is spent undermining climate change activists like Greta Thunberg—who profits? The fossil fuel industry. Conspiracy theorists like to characterize themselves as free thinkers, but what if their information is funneled to them by the very global corporations they claim to oppose? What if they’re the unwitting agents of a secret agenda being thrust upon us by the global conspiracy of billionaires?
One of the conspiracy theory slogans is “question everything.” It’s a good slogan, and I agree with it. But what you hardly ever see is conspiracy theorists questioning their own sources.
As I say, conspiracy theory is divisive. I remember back in the early-2000s, after 9/11, when conventional anti-war activists like Noam Chomsky were described as “shills” and “gatekeepers.” The reason? He didn’t go along with the widely-promulgated theory that 9/11 was an inside job. This isn’t to come down on either side. I’m not here to rehearse those arguments again. What I’m saying is that by putting so much emphasis on this one aspect of what was taking place, and by insisting that everyone else had to believe the same things as you, and then insulting and attacking those that disagreed with you, you were causing division within the anti-war movement, and serving the interests of those whose only interest was in profiting from war.
Was 9/11 an inside job? Maybe. Maybe not. But by insisting on the overriding centrality of this one issue—like a catechism, like a dogma, like a profession of faith—conspiracy theorists were diverting attention from the real and observable violations that were taking place at the same time: the Crime of Aggression, going to war without a UN resolution, attacking a country that wasn’t posing a threat, while publicly shredding international law; and after that extraordinary rendition, torture, false imprisonment, and a host of other human rights abuses, all of which were upfront and in the public domain. Who cares if 9/11 was an inside job or not? What matters is that what followed was an affront to every value we hold as civilized people and proof that, whatever else we might claim of ourselves, we’ve never really left the Dark Ages. Attacking Chomsky—a lifelong activist, a veteran of the anti-war movement, and the most erudite and perspicacious commentator on the issue of American imperialism we’ve got—isn’t going to help.
—Follow Chris Stone on Twitter: @ChrisJamesStone