It’s all one thing, and it has little to do with climate change or Palestine and everything to do with being leftwing and “against capitalism.”
Earlier in the week, Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg was arrested in Copenhagen, Denmark, while participating in a protest against the ongoing conflict in the Gaza Strip. The demonstration, organized by the pro-Palestinian group “Students Against Occupation,” took place at the University of Copenhagen, where activists occupied a building demanding that the university end its cooperation with Israeli institutions.
Politico noted that campus protests in support of Palestinians have flared up around the world in the 11 months since militant group Hamas carried out a violent attack against Israel, triggering a deadly, ongoing operation from the Israel Defense Forces in Gaza and the West Bank.
The Copenhagen Police said that about 20 demonstrators had gathered at the university and six of them had been arrested, Danish media Ekstra Bladet reported.
Danish outlet TV2 published a video clip of Thunberg being detained and put in the back of a police van. Police did not confirm the identity of anyone arrested, but a spokesperson for Students Against the Occupation told Reuters that Thunberg had been held by law enforcement.
According to Danish media reports, the group announced via Instagram, “We will not leave the site until the University of Copenhagen terminates cooperation with Israeli universities.” However, local police intervened, forcibly evicting the protesters and arresting three individuals, including Thunberg.
This incident follows Thunberg’s recent arrest in Malmo, Sweden, where she was involved in a similar protest against Israel’s participation in the Eurovision Song Contest. In that demonstration, held just hours before the competition’s final, protesters held signs accusing Israel of committing genocide in Gaza, with slogans such as “Eurovision celebrates genocide.”
Thunberg, known globally for her climate activism, has increasingly become more of a militant leftist over the past few years. One outlet noted that “previously, she’d sold herself as a five-foot human alarm bell, a climate Cassandra. Her role was to warn, not to instruct: her most viral moments involved her scolding political leaders, not trying to supplant them. She strenuously avoided programmatic detail, saying such things were ‘nothing to do with me.’ But now, on stage and in this book, she has found her political feet, specifically the Left-wing ideology of anti-capitalism and de-growth.
Interspersed among the usual directives about the need to pressure political leaders, her message was more radical and more militant than it has been in the past. There is no ‘back to normal,’ she told us. ‘Normal’ was the ‘system’ which gave us the climate crisis, a system of ‘colonialism, imperialism, oppression, genocide,’ of ‘racist, oppressive extractionism.’ Climate justice is part of all justice; you can’t have one without the others. We can’t trust the elites produced by this system to confront its flaws.”
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