Greta At French School Riot: “Our Future Is Being Robbed From Us”

Greta Thunberg joined high-school students outside the Paul Éluard lycée in Saint-Denis, north of Paris, on Tuesday, applauding hundreds of teenagers protesting run-down schools, the Associated Press reported. Staff and students at the school have long complained of dilapidated buildings and rat infestations, AP said.

The Interior Ministry put Tuesday’s turnout at 161,500 nationwide, 41,500 of them in Paris. AP also reported that a 15-year-old lost a hand during the unrest and that the interior minister has suspended one type of police stun grenade. The riots have spread to Belgium, as ZH has reported, and Spiked counts more than 6,800 arrests.

Thunberg told reporters outside the school: “Whether it’s not funding schools enough, or the climate crisis, or the social-injustice crises… Our future is being robbed from us.”

As Spiked‘s Hugo Timms notes further, Thunberg’s self-pity and vanity have been on show in the various prequels to Greta in Paris. Last October, she led the Global Salmud Flotilla from Europe to Palestine, in what she claimed to be an attempt to deliver aid to Gazans. Yet when her woke armada was intercepted by the Israeli navy, the authorities claimed there was no food or medical supplies on any of the ships. And when Thunberg and her fellow activists were detained and swiftly deported, they accused the Israelis of ‘kidnapping’ them. Speaking at a press conference in Athens, Greta told reporters, ‘I could talk for a very, very long time about our mistreatment and abuses, trust me’, although she refused to elaborate on any specifics. It was hard to discern whose alleged suffering she was most perturbed by – that of the Gazans or her own.

Indeed, a sense of her personal suffering has been front and centre of the Thunberg cult from the very beginning. When Greta began skipping school to protest against climate change (remember that?) in late 2018, her own feelings were front and centre: ‘I want to feel safe. How can I feel safe when I know we are in the greatest crisis in human history?’ Then came the apocalyptic deluge she dumped on the UN in 2019: ‘You have stolen my dreams and my childhood… How dare you!’ She didn’t quite stamp her feet, although the then 16-year-old did let the audience know that she was ‘sad and angry’ with them. ‘I shouldn’t be up here. I should be back in school, on the other side of the ocean.’

And yet here Greta is, all grown up, from skipping school over wildfires to fanning the flames of a protest movement that’s burning schools to the ground. The omnicause has truly come full circle.

Hugo Timms is a staff writer at spiked.