August 9, 2019
Greta Thunberg, at age 16, has quickly become one of the most visible climate activists in the world. Her detractors increasingly rely on ad hominem attacks to blunt her influence.Thunberg gained prominence after she began skipping some days of school to protest climate inaction outside Swedish parliament. She spearheaded the school walkouts that saw more than a million children across the globe leaving their classrooms to demand action on global warming.
She has addressed world and U.N. leaders and has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Later this month, she’ll sail across the Atlantic Ocean in a 60-foot yacht powered by solar panels and underwater turbines on her way to participate in the U.N. climate talks in New York (see related story).
But the success of Thunberg — who describes herself on Twitter as a “16 year old climate activist with Asperger” — remains a sore point for those who reject mainstream climate science and some who have helped shape or encourage the Trump’s administration rollback of climate policy.
They frequently point to Thunberg’s autism, claim she is used by her parents and compare her call to young people on climate change to “Hitler Youth.” They have pointed to her “monotone voice” and framed her as a “millenarian weirdo” with the “look of apocalyptic dread in her eyes.”
A recent opinion piece in The New York Times prompted an outcry among climate hawks and Thunberg’s allies, who said the newspaper was validating these types of personal attacks on the teenage activist.
Experts say relying on ad hominem attacks has significant collateral damage in that they dissuade people with intellectual and developmental disabilities from speaking publicly. While the language of describing someone as a “puppet” or abused by adults may appear coded, it’s clearly a dog whistle that signals her words should be discounted because her mind works differently, said Steve Silberman, author of “NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity.”
Climate Deniers Launch Personal Attacks on Teen Activist – Scientific American
August 9, 2019 Greta Thunberg, at age 16, has quickly become one of the most visible climate activists in the world. Her detractors increasingly rely on ad hominem attacks to blunt her influence. Thunberg gained prominence after she began skipping some days of school to protest climate inaction outside Swedish parliament. She spearheaded the school… [Read More]
