<nettime> Wash Post: Greta Thunberg weaponized shame in an era of shamelessness

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/greta-thunberg-weaponized-shame-in-an-era-of-shamelessness/2019/09/25/66e3ec78-deea-11e9-8dc8-498eabc129a0_story.html>
Greta Thunberg weaponized shame in an era of shamelessness

By Monica Hesse
Columnist
September 25 at 11:24 AM

A vocal cohort of fully grown human adults seems unable to deal with 
Greta Thunberg.
The 16-year-old Swedish climate activist, as you might have heard, gave 
a scorching speech at the United Nations on Monday. "We are in the 
beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and 
fairy tales of eternal economic growth," she admonished a crowd of world 
leaders. "How dare you."
Oh, but they hadn't even *begun* to dare.

That evening, pundit Michael Knowles went on Fox News and referred to 
Thunberg, who has Asperger's syndrome, as "a mentally ill Swedish child 
who is being exploited by her parents and by the international left."
On the Fox show "The Ingraham Angle," host Laura Ingraham compared 
Thunberg's physical appearance to a character from a horror movie, then 
quipped, "I can't wait for Stephen King's sequel, 'Children of the 
Climate.' "
"I can't tell if Greta needs a spanking or a psychological 
intervention," tweeted Breitbart columnist John Nolte. And, actually, if 
you're in the mood to be unsettled, then I'll wait here while you search 
Twitter for "Thunberg" and "spanking" and see how many middle-aged men 
are eager to corporally punish a teenage girl.
Finally, as Monday evening drew to a close, the president of the United 
States sarcastically rang in: "A very happy young girl looking forward 
to a bright and wonderful future. So nice to see!"
By Tuesday morning, as a cheeky rejoinder, Thunberg had changed her 
Twitter bio to President Trump's description.
Thunberg does not keep to the model of how we expect fresh-faced child 
activists to behave. She is not interested in delivering a message of 
hope or in standing behind a bill-signing politician in a chorus of 
beaming youths. She is not interested in offering incremental solutions 
for individual households, in urging consumers to switch to reusable 
grocery bags or buy stainless-steel drinking straws.
She also does not seem particularly interested in using her activism to 
make you like her. At one point in her U.N. speech, the audience 
interrupted to applaud. Thunberg looked mildly irritated by the 
interruption; she just wanted to get on with it.
What was she getting on with? With ruthlessly explaining just how badly 
older generations have ruined things for her own. With castigating 
politicians for focusing more on keeping power than heeding science. 
With calling out liberals, too, like Sen. Thomas R. Carper (D-Del.), who 
benevolently told her at an event last week that young people would soon 
have the chance to run for office themselves.
"We don't want to become politicians, we don't want to run for office," 
she responded. "We want you to unite behind the science."
At every turn, in every appearance, what she's interested in is making 
her listeners feel shame.
We live in an era that has become impervious to shame. An era defined by 
a president who views it as a weakness. Shame has become an antiquated 
emotion and a useless one. It's advantageous, we've learned, to respond 
to charges of indecency with more indecency: attacks, misdirection, faux 
victimhood.
When Thunberg's noxious treatment began to get attention -- Fox News 
apologized for Knowles's statement, calling it "disgraceful" -- some of 
her defenders suggested that she drew so much scorn because she was 
female. I'm sure that's part of it. The past few years have produced a 
rash of books explaining how women's anger is historically belittled 
while men's is seen as worthy of empathy. We have "effectively severed 
anger from 'good womanhood,'" wrote Soraya Chemaly in "Rage Becomes 
Her."
But I don't think that explains all of the reactions. Thunberg hasn't 
been treated any more appallingly than Parkland student David Hogg, who, 
in the course of lobbying for gun control, was labeled a shill and a 
"crisis actor." He received death threats.
What Thunberg and Hogg have in common, along with others like Hogg's 
classmate Emma González, is their utter lack of regard for our 
feelings. They do not care if they make us feel bad; their entire point 
is to make us feel bad. They don't need our votes; they're not elected 
officials. They don't need our money; many of them live at home with 
their parents.
With every public appearance, they are saying: This is what it would 
look like, to be free to do the right thing. This is what you would say, 
too, if you weren't beholden to donors or viewers, if you didn't have to 
muster the right sound bites for your next reelection campaign, if you 
weren't afraid of sacrificing some of your personal comfort for the 
greater good.
Thunberg is saying: *Aren't you ashamed of yourself?*

And deep down, way deep down, in the place that stores unfamiliar 
emotions, many of her audience members are.
This is the uplifting way to interpret the grotesque response to 
Thunberg.
She is a small, slight child wearing braids and using the best science 
available to beg the adults in the room not to let her die. Not to let 
animals die. Not to let the Earth die. Not to let everyone die. Anyone 
who listens to all of that and immediately wants to punish or attack 
Thunberg -- they're not having that reaction because they think she's 
wrong, but rather because, deep down, they fear she is right.
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