20 points

This is the best summary I could come up with:


Two officers lifted Thunberg and dragged her away before putting her down on the ground about 20 metres away from the door she had been obstructing.

Thunberg and dozens of other environmental campaigners started blocking the main entrances to Sweden’s parliament on Monday in a sit-down protest against the effects of the climate crisis and what they said was political inaction.

The activists left on Monday afternoon but returned to protest again on Tuesday morning.

Thunberg, 21, became the face of youth climate activism as her weekly protests, which started in 2018 in front of the Swedish parliament, quickly grew into a global movement with large rallies across continents.

Last year she was detained by police or removed from protests in countries including Sweden, Norway and Germany.

A British court last month acquitted her of charges of a public order offence as a judge ruled that police had no power to arrest her and others at a protest in London last year.


The original article contains 186 words, the summary contains 162 words. Saved 13%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

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-160 points

Greta has become mostly irrelevant since she got caught up in the generic SJW protest movement.

She has even protested new wind powerplants.

Had she stayed an environmental activist she would still be relevant.

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24 points

Don’t remember the context, and don’t want to defend Greta, but windmills can be very bad for the environment if done wrong. Hell, everything can be bad for the environment if done wrong.

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-28 points

I am not complaining about windmills as a concept, I like them, they look cool, I just brought it up as a reason why Greta is hypocritical.

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7 points

Right, so you’re biased and full of it. Got it.

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-23 points
Removed by mod
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6 points

You know nothing about me, apart from me finding Greta mostly irrrelevant, yet you seem to think that you know everything about me, and have started insulting me.

This is dumb, I get that we have a disagreement, but you don’t have to insult me.

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6 points

Are you a mod?

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1 point

Why go around attacking strangers on the Internet?

If you’re having issues see a therapist, don’t take it out on other people.

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84 points

Respecting the rights and land of indigenous people is not protesting wind power.

Just because you don’t agree with her opinions on neo-nazis and Sami people doesn’t mean all of her opinions are suddenly wrong.

This latest protest is especially relevant, because the current government in Sweden doesn’t believe in climate change and is actively trying to violate Sweden’s international climate obligations.

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-50 points

I never claimed that her oppinions were all wrong, she could just have stayed outside the discussion and kept focus on the environmental issues.

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Climate change is an ecological, social and economical issue. You cannot reduce it to either dimension.

And you cannot solve climate change without adressing the social injustices in our societies that are excarberated by climate change, in the same way you cannot keep the economy afloat without adressing climate change.

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8 points

I don’t think it matters. People can voice their opinion on other subjects without discrediting their opinion on climate change. This article isn’t even about Greta Thunberg’s other non-climate protests, so why are you taking focus away from environmental issues?

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8 points

Environmentalism without class struggle is just gardening (Chico Mendes)

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3 points

Wait what is her opinion on neo-nazis?

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21 points

Wikipedia says she counter-protested against NMR, which is a Swedish neo-nazi group. Not sure what other protests she has attended that aren’t climate focused.

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37 points

how DARE she have a nuanced opinion on the matter!!1!

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-7 points

That is a fair take, just as I don’t have to like it

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-13 points

Her dabbling in things like the Near-East conflict absolutely hurt her cause. It’s generally not a good idea to fragment something that you’re fighting for.

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6 points

That’s a pretty German exclusive perspective. German media on the near east is not only extremely one-sided, it is completely isolated in its one-sidedness.

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5 points
Removed by mod
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-3 points

You hate people who disagree with you in a niche subject?

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-11 points

I’m involved in various leftist causes and see this shit so often. Like you feel like you need to be a “thought leader” instead of just staying in your lane. Or organizations just get taken over by people who have completely antithetical agendas.

For instance I was somewhat involved in our local DSA chapter for a few years after Bernie and I’m still on the email list. They just sent out a email about organizing a “queer and transgender prom” but that in order to attend you would have to have proof of up-to-date covid vaccination.

  1. Now don’t get me wrong, queer and transgender proms are great if you’re into proms, but what does it have to do with democratic socialism?

  2. Why on earth is the DSA the organization that is still flying the Moderna flag in 2024? Everybody else has given up on their mostly ineffective vaccines years ago. Also last I checked Big Pharma are the bad guys!

One of the things that excited me about Bernie and groups like DSA originally is that they seemed to serve as a new and revitalized economic left focused on salient issues and rejecting identity politics. I remember one of the rally cries was “racial politics are class politics.” But now they’re basically just yet another moveon.org or something.

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-5 points

That is basically how I feel as well, it is fine to just focus on one thing, you don’t have to do all at once.

I wish you all the best.

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53 points

“SJW”

WHAT YEAR IS IT?!!?

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-17 points

Fair, I tried to find a better word for it, but drew a blank.

Reading this made me realize that I haven’t heard that term for a long time and that I probably missused it.

I am sorry for the misstake

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28 points

I mean my comment was not only making fun of the outdated phraseology, but also the idea that social justice isn’t a legitimate branch of sociological and legal change that persisted ~10-20 years ago has been far blown out of the water

“social justice warriors” - who were considered risible in 2010 have since achieved

  • criminal justice reforms for youth jails
  • minimum pay raises and unionization of global corps (eg Starbucks) as a direct result of Occupy, to which the entire world now talks about Bank bail outs, billionaire taxes/wealth tax, borrow-die schemes, income inequality over the breakfast table
  • legal weed
  • BLM instrumental in making politicians renounce stop and frisk, to the extent Bloomberg had to renounce all his policies in his presidential run
  • #metoo leading to the conviction if Weinstein, and massive revolutions in the use of intimacy and consent coordinators and supervisors in entertainments Productions
  • DREAM act to DACA
  • rent reform in Seattle, Chicago, Denver, Long Beach, Orlando etc
  • no solutions as yet but everyone is mad about gerrymandering and voter suppression every election cycle now
  • New Green Deal
  • Slow but incremental advances in protecting children (and indeed adults) from gun violence and the slip of power from the NRA’s influence over elected politicians
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15 points

I’m out of the loop, what is she doing these days? How does she make a living?

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54 points

Full time political activist is a legit job. But she’s only 21, at this age many people are student and don’t make any money

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30 points

She wrote a book that has a lot of reviews in Amazon. Arguably, that’s probably enough to allow her to continue doing activism for the time being.

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2 points

Good for her, nice to hear

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2 points

That and family. I mean, typical 21yo won’t take a charter flight to another continent for some eco-event.

Frankly anywhere near me in the social fabric she’s a joke, but you never know.

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60 points
*

She’s constantly doing political activism in the name of ensuring environmental policies and getting into a lot of trouble with the law because of it.

She’s not throwing tomato soup at Da Vinci, mind you, but she was present during the environmental protest occupation when Germany decided to start mining brown coal again. You’ll know it; it’s the same protest with the mud wizard meme.

For all the disgruntled people saying she’s a family funded shill she seems rather dedicated to her cause. A shill would’ve stopped ages ago when they’re no longer front page news.

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1 point

She definitely helped push the narrative that actions matter. I don’t really care how she afford her life at all, non of my business really.

I respect her for what she is doing for us.

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72 points

How likely is she to be elected there in the next decade ? Would be quite ironic to have the officer who removed the today to welcome her in a decade

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53 points

It’s a little counter-intuitive, but she probably feels like she’s more helpful in her current role than she would be in politics. A politician has to be a jack-of-all-trades, learning about a lot of different fields, dealing with education, military, civil law, budget, etc etc etc. Where an activist can specialize exclusively in one thing, gaining a lot of clout and helping provide leadership.

Global climate activism has long needed a leader, its own Mahatma Gandhi. Now its getting one, and it leaves her very, very influential. She can’t be thrown out of office either, she could only be assassinated, which would turn her into a martyr like Navalny. So, she’s steadily growing powerful and is virtually unstoppable right now.

She probably wants to keep it that way. Getting elected would derail that a little bit, and having these kinds of non-governmental civil leaders is actually very important.

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19 points

That’s almost what Jon Stewart said about him running for office. He feels he does more useful work outside of politics.

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31 points
*

Yea, everyone thinks politicians need those skills, but do the current bout of politicians even have those skills, either?!

There seems to be an assumed competency that doesn’t match reality.

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-1 points

I think a greater problem is that some of them actually are. In this case, they’ll know more than the average citizen about a given issue, with a certain understanding of the nuance and complexity that the citizen, with mainly just access to major media, lacks. This makes their decisions look strange to us, in the same way someone might wonder “why did the engineer design this this way? makes no sense to me.”

Additionally, since they’re also knowledgeable about a lot of other considerations, they’ll have to balance them against each other, where even a highly-knowledgeable specialist might not fully understand the reasons something cannot be done yet.

Lastly, they have to win re-election, so they have to balance all of that against normal people’s perceptions and ignorant opinions. All this balancing is going to naturally make them seem very out-of-touch with an average citizen.

And that’s just any good ones. You also have plenty of crazy ideologues running around these days, that actually want to undermine democracy and seize greater power, or want some unchecked laissez-faire system or whatever. People whose faith has blinded them to reason and rationality.

All that said, politics has always been messy and ugly, that’s inherent. The only alternatives open the door for unchecked corruption to run things, like Russia deals with. As Churchill said, democracy is terrible. It’s just that everything else is a lot worse.

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23 points

The problem with politics is that it tends to chew up and spit out people with a modicum of honesty, integrity and a moral compass. They either give up, or become corrupted to the point that they can no longer fulfill the purpose that they went into politics for.

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9 points

This is generally true, but there are also many notable exceptions. Here in Germany I could name:

  • Gregor Gysi
    • Of the left Party
    • Always does what he thinks is best for the people
    • Many political opponents tried really hard to stick dirt on him and failed
  • Nico Semsrott
    • Arguably not that long in politics
    • Took a stance against Martin Sonnenborn (who is the very popular leader of a satirical party) in an affair and is now without a party (Yes this makes it likely he will not be in the next parliament)
    • As far as I have seen votes always in favor of the people
  • Patrick Breyer -Pirate Party
    • fights for digital freedom and privacy since decades
    • Always follows the pirate paradigm: transparency. He publishes all his meeting with lobbyists.
    • Helps to educate the public and discovered quite a few hidden legislative attempts to undermine privacy
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2 points

Gregor Gysi

Gysi disappointed me massively when he defended Russia in the Nawalny poisoning and speculated about who might ‘actually profit’ without the slightest shred of evidence.

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2 points

I have great respect for Gysi, and always did since I first listened to a campaign speech from him in the mid-90s. He’s a politician who has stuck to his principles and prevailed through adversities where many other people would have just given up. But, even if you disregard his flaws, blind spots around Russia, and the poor handling of the internal crises which have now led to a split of his party, he has hardly ever been in a position where he could truly make a change in politics. His party may have been part of the government in some German states, but he himself never has been. And this may sound cynical, but it’s relatively easy to be a principled politician when there’s not much at stake. It’s when you actually have some power and influence, that the wheat separates from the chaff - when you actually have to handle all kinds of pressure from all sides and see what your principles are worth to you.

This is not a defense of any other politicians - I wish there were way more who didn’t give up their principles at the first sign of pressure. I’m just saying that Gysi has rarely been in a position where he had to do that.

I am unfamiliar with the other two, but I would say similar concerns may apply there.

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39 points

It’s super bizarre seeing this girl grow up exclusively by photos of her being arrested.

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16 points

Punk AF

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