There is little to like about Greta Thunberg: the ghoulish climate doomerism, the omni-cause activism, the fervour she inspires in the worst corners of the liberal media (a cover star of Vogue!), the enviable self-assurance. Through a carefully managed coalition of an exploitative establishment and her parents, Thunberg has been elevated to a position beyond her rhetorical means. And we are left with a messianic adolescent of her elders’ creation who says cheering things such as “the world is getting more grim by the day” and that it is facing “a sixth mass extinction” event.
Not great. But I feel uncharacteristically compelled to resist all of my instincts and defend her anyway. Over the past seven days Thunberg and a cohort of pro-Palestine activists have sailed across the Mediterranean on the Madleen with a small amount of humanitarian aid, attempting to break the blockade of Gaza. On Monday morning the predictable happened: Israeli soldiers boarded the boat, arrested the crew – including Thunberg, took them to Israeli ports from where they are expected to be repatriated*. Thunberg was put on an aircraft to her native Sweden, unharmed.
A small run down of the responses to the operation: it is a “theatre of self-satisfied spectacle”; a “photogenic tableau for western media”; a “pathetic, self-serving stunt” (or more prosaically just a “publicity stunt”); she is sailing into “another photo-opportunity” on a “doomed ship of moral superiority”. I can almost forgive Thunberg for her own histrionics – she is only 22. But from the adult-populated press, I cannot help but think this all has a touch of the swivel-eyed. These are opinions so devotionally bad-faith it is hard to imagine any normal person holding them.
‘Publicity stunt’ is not a value judgment, it’s a neutral description of a tactic
There is a broad, cosmic defence to make for Thunberg: at least she cares; it’s better to want to improve the world, no matter how inelegantly she goes about it; so what if the diagnosis is wrong, she’s trying; it’s cool to disregard a slate of critical observers, especially at that age; and burdened by such crippling existential angst about the direction of the universe, doesn’t it make sense for her to spend her life attempting to reroute it? She is just a turbocharged romantic activist, curiously immune from self-limiting beliefs. Hold on, I wish I was immune from self-limiting beliefs.
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Yes, tick to all of the above, I suppose. But the real case for the defence is narrower and more convincing. On the long list of criticisms leveraged at Thunberg and the Madleen’s attempt to bring aid to Gaza, that it should be dismissed as a mere “publicity stunt” or “vanity project” is an argument so illiterate it is functionally brain-dead. Tell me, please, exactly what is activism other than publicity stunts?
I don’t much like the radical environment pressure group Just Stop Oil’s cause, and even less their tactics. (Chalk this up to some ineffable faith I hold in the sanctity of art, or just a general latent fogeyishness.) But when two young women were sentenced for throwing soup on Vincent Van Gogh’s Sunflowers I understood, shockingly – as I am sure most did, too – that “publicity stunt” was the point. What else do these women believe they were trying to achieve? Attention is the motivating force, and a well-organised group can convert that attention into material progress. “Publicity stunt” is not a value judgment, it’s a neutral description of a tactic. And that goes for Thunberg too.
Whatever for the validity of the cause, criticism is more effective when it is fair. And the most fair rendering of the Madleen “publicity stunt” is this: a group of pro-Palestine humanitarian activists – well aware they would not be granted access to Gaza, probably also assuming that no army would be likely to physically harm them – made a symbolic attempt to deliver food to a currently starving Gaza. Symbolic, attention-grabbing, social-media literate: good protest, actually! Will make a great blueprint for activists of the future. Far less risible than the soup-chuckers, too.
It would be fun, nonetheless, to send some of these particularly cantankerous journalists back through the ages to deploy their “publicity stunt” test: that Rubicon crossing? It’s not even a big river, that’s just Caesar and his attention-seeking legions. Proclaiming the Irish Republic outside the GPO before these rebels have even won the insurrection? Vain, premature, “a theatre of self-satisfied spectacle” perhaps. And what is Martin Luther King doing in Washington anyway?
I suspect – and this will not be a groundbreaking revelation – that the “publicity stunt” allegation is a rhetorical proxy for something else. Now, for those who don’t want to declare themselves for or against a particular cause (too risky, could alienate people, their judgment could be proven wrong in time) there is a handy get-out. Call the activists vain and media-obsessed, ineffective and attention-seekers. Great: criticism leveraged – 1, sides picked – 0. Say what you like about Thunberg, but she would never be such a coward.
*This article was updated on June 12th 2025. An earlier version incorrectly stated that all the activists had already been repatriated
