Can Greta Lead the Coming Revolution?

The death of liberal-conservatism, and the rising potential for revolution. Greta Thunberg’s path toward radicalization and her potential as a revolutionary leader.

News articles right now are full of ‘Greta’s betrayal of the environmental cause,’ her ‘radicalization,’ and her supposed naïveté in supporting the Palestinian struggle. There is also that curious man who stormed the stage and tore the microphone from Greta’s hands to ridicule her ‘for bringing politics into climate protests.’

It’s all just as ludicrous as it sounds. The liberal-conservative, black-and-white, single-issue, status-quo, change-is-scary mind has come full circle now.

Greta Thunberg, meanwhile, was seen marching with anarcho-communists, shouting anti-capitalist slogans. This is obviously ultra-based.

So, can comrade Thunberg save us?

Single-issue activism is dead (it never lived)

That man… fuck.

How is it possible that an elderly adult, one who has lived in this world for far longer than most climate protestors, fails to recognize the sheer scale of his own ignorance? How can the climate crisis and the protests against the willful destruction of the planet’s ecosystems be anything but political? How can one fail to see the systemic issues underlying it all? A changing climate, the rise of fascism, the genocide in Palestine, plastic pollution, cancer rates, racism, wars, depression and apathy, etc. — it’s all produced and maintained by the same set of related root causes.

Philosopher Mark Fisher was correct when he asserted that single-issue, feel-good activism that does not honestly attempt to change is an expression, a symptom of capitalist realism rather than an effort to overcome it. It provides moral absolution to the protestor as well as the onlooker in the streets and at home — “Hey, there are people actually doing something against it. I can relax.” The highly curated, police-sanctioned, we-really-don’t-want-to-inconvenience-you, violence-is-evil Fridays for Future ‘protests’ are the highest expression of this mindset. A thinking that is not revolutionary but strives to reform what cannot be reformed. It aims to negotiate with the cancer and placate it with reason. But why should a cancer listen?

Why should the cancer listen to your reasoning?

There are no single issues. The world is not as simple as that. I wish we could protest carbon emissions and solve the looming climate catastrophe by switching to electric cars and heat pumps. Alas, we cannot — growth-obsessed capitalism, a ruling sociopathic oligarchy, and the Jevons paradox will destroy any attempt at doing so. Greed, in short.

The liberal-conservative ideology

A couple of years ago, Greta Thunberg had been the very incarnation of the liberal-conservative mindset. It is defined by the following convictions:

• Single-issuism — An ignorance of underlying systemic mechanisms and failure to recognize that issues such as climate change are mere symptoms of a capitalist-imperialist order. Large-scale social issues cannot stand on their own. They cannot be solved by superficial reforms.

• In defense of the status quo — The liberal-conservative does not want things to perceptibly change. He does not want to give up actual comforts. He wants to reform while leaving the basic framework, i.e. capitalism, unchanged. Another way this expresses itself is the conviction that technology and development can save us (techno-hopium).

• Conformity to existing order — Liberal-conservative protests and demonstrations are highly curated affairs that happen in cooperation with local law enforcement and can be dissolved by those at any point, particularly when ‘offending’ acts are observed (e.g. a Palestine flag at a climate protest). The fact that police and military are de facto defenders of existing ideology and order, and as such protect the very system that annihilates the living planet must be cognitively suppressed by the liberal-conservative.

• Monopoly on reason — All that does not conform to existing ideology and artificial top-down bourgeois morality is easily dismissed and ridiculed. This goes hand in hand with the state’s monopoly on violence.

• Self-aggrandizement — The liberal-conservative dismisses supposedly contrary views as intellectually inferior (e.g. the liberal thinks the conservative unintelligent, and the other way around, both failing to grasp that they fundamentally follow the same status-quo-ideology). In this way, the self can be aggrandized while truly conflicting convictions, i.e. anarchism and communism, can be dismissed as naïve delusions.

Why ‘liberal-conservative’? Aren’t those conflicting ideologies?

When it comes down to it: no. Both are capitalist through and through.

They differ only in their outlook on civil liberties. While the liberal superficially defends minority rights, sexual freedoms, and other civil concessions (except when he is told not to do so because it hinders imperialism — see Palestine), the conservative faults those for his miserable, unfulfilled life. The liberal thinks the world fundamentally good if he could only get rid of those ignorant conservatives, failing to recognize that all social-democratic concessions are breadcrumbs that can be revoked at will, and all comforts and luxuries he enjoys are the product of centuries of violent slavery, colonialism, and neoliberalism. The conservative, on the other hand, feels alienated and depressed and seeks culprits. Yet both are servants to capital and the ruling imperialist oligarchy, rejecting any and all attempts at lasting change. Liberals live in a constant state of cognitive dissonance; conservatives in fear and hate.

Lenin put it best when he said: “Fascism is just capitalism in decline.” And capitalism is just liberal-conservatism. In short: The dichotomy does not exist in any meaningful way. It only manifests in artificial culture wars, fueled to keep the working class eternally divided. To be sure, I would much rather work with a delusional liberal than a hateful, racist conservative, but, in the final analysis, I would prefer not to work with either.

The radical-left pipeline

I started out as a delusional liberal, I admit it. I bought fully into the artificial culture wars, never recognizing that all established parties merely serve capital, for if they didn’t they would be outlawed.

After a couple of years, I came to realize that, well, nothing ever changed. No matter which party is in power, things are becoming worse and worse, the future bleak and dystopian. Temporary concessions, taken away after the next election cycle, are the height of progress while ecosystems increasingly fail, species go extinct, genocides and wars continue, and more people suffer from hunger than ever before. Not to speak of this boring, apathetic, depressing dystopia we live right now.

At one point, one begins to read. Not superficial social media posts, but real analysis. Theory. No matter if it’s just anti-capitalist, or truly anarchist or communist, or even philosophical and existential. At one point the bullshit becomes so obvious, so sinister, that one seeks other solutions. This is what you might call radicalization (a deeply relative term — what is radical to a liberal-conservative is common sense for me, and the other way around).

It seems that Greta, a fellow neuro-divergent (there is most definitely a connection between that and refusing to accept the status quo), has taken the same path. The road, obviously, features a fork along the way: radical left (anarchism, communism) and radical right (fascism). One is based on mutual aid, harmony, and a vision for a better life, the other on sheer hate.

There were many signs and statements in recent years that Greta has made the long overdue transition from liberal to leftist. The recent support of the Palestinian struggle for freedom, paired with videos of her marching to anarcho-communist tunes and chants, cements the fact.

She is one of us now.

Greta’s potential as a revolutionary leader

Greta Thunberg has what most of us leftists don’t: influence. There is an army of liberals that have been devotedly following her for many years, many of whom are now undergoing the transition together with her. They are discovering their revolutionary potential. Not to speak of the hundreds of millions of GenZ kids, who have all been growing up with Greta as, at the very least, person of importance.

She can be a catalyst. Videos of police arresting her for merely protesting for what most younger people will agree is right, can serve as a reminder that those in power are not, and never have been, on our side. That man who tried to interrupt Greta’s speech in support of Palestine is a dying breed: the blind generation.

While, as an anarchist, I reject any and all glorification of single persons, the fact remains that we need inspirational figures and organization to free ourselves from the cold shackles of capitalism. Greta is brave, she has charisma, she is not rich and overly privileged (though we in the West all are, of course), she has her own struggles, she has established relationships and structures, and she has the young people. The working class still opposes her, to be sure, but they might come around in the face of rising inequality and the loss of even material comforts. When they are offered a realistic chance at change (instead of suffering in traffic jams caused by single-issue protestors), they will make the leap — or they will join the fascists.

There are many problems with all that, of course. We don’t know what she thinks, we don’t know what she wants, and we don’t know if she even can. No matter, she can inspire others to take the leap. She can inspire a whole host of revolutionaries, a global critical mass that will produce and then necessarily deconstruct its local, decentralized guerilla leaders and organizers. There is precedent for this.

Things will get worse. They are getting worse by the day. Boomers — the generation that accepted dystopia — are disappearing, their influence dwindling. What is left is a disillusioned, often passionate legion that hasn’t much to lose and is ready for actual change. They will be up against it all — established powers, corporations, global leaders, any and all institutions, their own parents, perhaps, a rising fascist swastika — but they always have been, anyway. It might be too late for us millennials, but as collapse is inevitable, so is a better post-collapse world.

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Read more about the tragedy that is industrial humanity here:

Perhaps the Collapse of Society Would Not Be Such a Bad Thing

And the devastating consequences to all that lives:

Slaughterhouse Humanity