Whenever I’m involved in a debate on ‘assisted dying’ (death by doctor), I feel relieved when my opponents fail to come up with a potential clincher: “Greta Thunberg”.
I doubt that would make me abandon my opposition to euthanasia, but it would certainly force me to water it down. Someone ought to put that deranged child out of her misery, even if that would deviate from the strict tenets of Christian morality.
Speaking at a rally in Mannheim last week, Thunberg, now of age although you wouldn’t know it, displayed impeccable manners by addressing the crowd with “F*** Germany!”.
Rather than lynching her on the spot, the predominantly German gathering whooped and clapped. They clearly had no affection for their country, which in this case may not be such a bad thing – excessive German patriotism has been known to lead to all sorts of mischief.
So encouraged, Greta got the giggles which she managed to suppress for long enough to enunciate: “And f*** Israel!”. English is indeed becoming the lingua franca of savagery.
The darling of President Obama, Pope Francis, Michael Gove and Ed Miliband (Britain’s past and present Energy Secretaries – sorry, Secretaries for Energy and Net Zero), António Guterres, the UN Secretary General, along with a bevy of Hollywood A-listers is taking no prisoners.
Neither does she discriminate: Greta will shill for any anti-Western cause, not just that of climate madness, her cause célèbre. She showed that versatility in the run-up to the US elections, when she wrote it didn’t matter who won.
The US would still remain “an imperialist, hyper-capitalist world power that will ultimately continue to lead the world further into a racist, unequal world with an ever increasingly escalating climate and environmental emergency.”
So let’s take the tally of Greta’s pet causes. Destroying Western economies with net zero, yes, that goes without saying. Fusing climate zealotry with support for Muslim terrorism may be a logically difficult trick, but trust Greta to pull it off. Anti-capitalism should be chalked up there as well. Fight against racism and for universal equality, can’t be without it.
To the best of my knowledge, Greta hasn’t yet come out for enforced euthanasia, but then she may be afraid of finding herself on the receiving end. After all, advocates of death by doctor insist that mental disorders should make patients eligible regardless of their age. And no shrink worth his salt would fail to diagnose Greta as certifiably insane.
Even someone without the benefit of psychiatric training would know the girl is deranged after one look at her manic smile instantly giving way to contorted grimaces of hysterical hatred. I don’t know about euthanasia – some of us are still trying to be civilised – but it’s clear Greta ought to be committed, and I don’t mean the kind of commitment she already displays by regularly creating public mayhem in various countries.
Such marginal figures only ever come to prominence if their harangues are consonant with the zeitgeist. When they shill for a typically subversive cause or, in Greta’s case, a whole garland of them, much depends on whether or not the cause has been elevated to orthodoxy.
If it hasn’t, such a shill will be ignored. If it has, fame beckons – and freedom from even the mildest disagreement or, God forbid, criticism. That’s straightforward enough.
What I find baffling is the docility with which those who should know better play along. So fine, Ed Miliband is a monumentally stupid fanatic, but Michael Gove isn’t. Yet there they are together in a 2019 photograph, listening with rapt attention to the rant of a 16-year-old school dropout with learning difficulties.
I doubt Gove’s face could show keener interest had he been listening to Cicero, Demosthenes or, closer to our time, Winston Churchill. Did he realise Greta was uttering hysterical gibberish? Of course, he did. But he didn’t dare show it. It was orthodox zeitgeist ranting through that sick child, and one rebelled against it at one’s peril.
After her 2019 “How dare you” speech at the UN, Greta was nominated for five straight Nobel Peace prizes, and Time magazine put her retarded face on its front cover as its Person of the Year. Few personages have achieved such fame in recent years, especially at her barely post-pubescent age, but I know why Greta was so lucky.
She is the quintessence of our civilisation at this time, the encapsulation of its overpowering death wish. She may be a deranged, illiterate, infantile lout unqualified to broach any halfway serious subject. That’s what makes her the symbol of our time, which is also deranged, illiterate, infantile and loutish.
Children are naturally destructive, and their minds aren’t yet wired to think rationally. They respond to stimuli instinctively and emotionally, like little animals. However, unlike other little animals, human young possess what Aristotle called ‘potentiality’. In some cases, this develops into the actuality of rational adulthood, but in some others it doesn’t – and the number of the latter cases has to be at a record high now.
The Age of Reason has killed reason, if by delayed action. Whole societies now act on impulse, responding with Pavlovian alacrity to electrical signals emitted by semi-literate charismatics. Infantile thoughts, infantile emotions, infantile tastes aren’t just present but dominant, and their possessors have the power to impose their quirks on the masses.
This has been going on for a long time, but with a powerful accelerator built in. Even a generation ago, no one would have taken seriously an obviously disturbed child spouting hysterical diatribes. Today, she has to be taken not just seriously but reverentially.
One thing I can say for Donald Trump: he saw right through Greta. In 2019, having heard Greta excoriate world leaders on their climate irresponsibility dictated by greed, Trump mocked her on Twitter: “She seems like a very happy young girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future. So nice to see!”
But the entire UN General Assembly gave Greta a standing ovation. How many of those chaps punishing their palms despised Thunberg and everything she stood for? I don’t know, but some doubtless did. That’s not the point, however. The point is that even those few sensible people didn’t dare to remain seated with their hands in their laps.
That’s like Soviet Party congresses in the 1930s, when Stalin rose to speak. A standing ovation invariably broke out, and no one dared to stop clapping first. The thunderous applause would go on for five, ten, twenty minutes, with NKVD spies keeping an eye out for the first delegate to stop.
That, however, was history’s worst tyranny, when intelligent grownups had to act as obedient children on pain of severe punishment. But I detect a growing similarity with our own time and place. Don’t you?
Our disobedience isn’t yet punished by quick death in a cellar or a slow one in a uranium mine. But, if these days the punishment is less severe, it’s just as assured – at least for those who have much to lose. So Michael Gove had to suppress his wince and feign unwavering interest as that sinister child was spouting on.
Now back to the subject of some exceptions to our rejection of euthanasia…