Greta Thunberg has recently been making headlines on all the important international publications - print or broadcast forms alike, and has indeed invited criticism from both sides of the obscure demarcation line that now calls for repetitive evaluation of what might be called the left and right factions in politics. The conservatives critiqued Greta into being a neurotic, brainwashed teenager who had been chanting mantras that apparently had been planted inside her brain by elders who wanted to control her. On the other hand, when Greta chose to slam Hong Kong and Russia for not allowing enough political space for protesting and resisting climate change, there was hush and murmur about if she had been brainwashed into believing that the left had a major crisis with authoritarian state machinery. Now, the second kind of critique is in itself a huge problem that deepens the crisis of understanding modern social movements that vehemently oppose the fascist forms of governments operating under the facade of free market capitalism*1 in the largest developed economies of the world and nobody at this point has to put the effort to become a social scientist or an analyst or a business expert to understand the problem with extreme and intense aggravation of wealth in the hands of very few people. Most of the popular, mainstream American series or shows are depictive of an American middle class that is vanishing faster than a toddler learns to spell 'America'.
Now, the ecological crisis is collateral damage to the uncontrolled and proliferating desires of this very small faction of the whole population. Unfortunately, the sufferers are usually the ones who constitute the bottom layers of the pyramid and especially in the developing or third world economies. But if we are able to unspool the roots of this massive, snowballing problem that will cause humungus destruction and loss of lives, capital and spirit in the long run, we should be able to understand that the only sufferers to these crises are not just human beings. And since entire ecosystems are, as a matter of fact, collapsing, action becomes the call of the hour. Slavoj Zizek, in an interview to JOE magazine emphasised on how we have chosen to constrain ourselves by allowing us to succumb to something called 'fetishist disavowal'. Thunberg, who has Down Syndrome, does not have the pretension of knowing what she doesn't know, she is simply trying to embolden the warning messages that science has been showing us for quite a while now. In fact, the very idea of an activist being only a ground level worker who is supposed to shout radical slogans has been rejected at least two and a half decades before the Cold War even began. Greta is making an important point, and that point in itself is critical of conservative institutionalism and the not so glorious sides of bureaucratic control which are often overpowering the positive part of it, altogether.
People like Donald Trump or Ryan Tubridy made very intriguing statements about Greta.*2 According to him, Greta's face was contorted in pain, agony and anxiety and it had been a bad decision to allow a teenager with Asperger's syndrome on stage to talk about challenges associated with climate change. Sounds vile enough? Not enough. Leave EU campaigner Arron Banks hinted how he wanted Thunberg to be the victim of an yachting accident*3. And the President of the United States mocked her suggesting that she indeed is a very happy, young girl with a bright and wonderful future. Sophie Wilkinson, in her article for The Independent has talked about how the Western media has an active validation system for sixteen year olds. For ages now, pop stars, models and actresses have been serving as a go-to source of obtaining sexual pleasure for a vast audience, not to mention many of whom are cis-gendered and economically, socially privileged men. However, Trump's comments on Thunberg was not unanticipated, either. The far-right has been going absolutely uncensored all across the media for quite a while now and all the protest marches and gatherings that have been organised against Trump in the US or Boris Johnson in the UK have had protesters critising the bigoted sexism hidden in the content of most of the speeches that these eminent politicians have been delivering while being in a position of a lot of power. However, Tubridy represents the entire lot of "critiques" who like to denounce the very ideation of femininity as some sort of a deformity, a malignancy that needs to be subordinated.*4 The whole spectrum is portrayed in a way such that women who are trying to make some very serious points politically or academically - or in a profession that is not associated with providing immediate entertainment and cerebral sexual pleasure is not even meant for women. Since Greta is somebody who comes absolutely under-concerned about her appearance or her sense of fashion and makeup and doesn't write pop songs and doesn't model for Gucci or Victoria's Secrets, doesn't wear the tightest, peppiest clothes and doesn't sport stilettos, and doesn't have a very racist, derogatory, misogynist or fundamentally religious take on things, doesn't dance and doesn't perform, is not into gymnastics or swimming, and yet has the power to make her voice heard to millions of people - she must be dis-empowered. It actually is a wonderful thing that severely hurt, angry women with faces contorted in anxiety, agony and pain are taking over the political spectrum. This includes Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Taleb and Elizabeth Warren among others. This includes Gauri Lankesh, Rachel Corrie, Serena Shim, Hervin Khalef, Daphne Caruana Galizia and Zuzana Caputova. This includes Medha Patkar, Marielle Franco, Nasrin Sotoudeh, Vandana Shiva and Elizabeth Warren.
While Ocasio-Cortez has been "critisised" for being a waitress in a restaurant before taking the chair as the representative for New York's 14th congressional district, she has revealed the truth about her struggle and the chain of incidents that led her to build faith in activism at the first place while fiercely criticising the motives behind the unimaginable drug crisis that the big pharma has been creating in the United States of late. AOC has also been vocal about issues associated with but not limited to racism, misogyny, sexism engrained in the nature and method of American Politics in particular and modern day democracies in a broader sense. Omar and Taleb have both been critiqued by the conservatives for being Muslim women taking positions of power in politics. Lankesh had been murdered in 2017 by Hindu fundamentalists associated with Sanatan Samste, an organisation aided by the Rashtriya Swayang Sevak (RSS) in India. Rachel Corrie was run over by a bulldozer run by the Israel Bulldozer Forces (IDF) in 2003 while attempting to barr them from demolishing Palestinian refugee camps as a part of three British and four American activists. Serena Shim was allegedly murdered in a car crash while on a mission in Turkey to cover the ISIL conflict. Harvin Quartz reported that Harvin Khalef, who was murdered on 12th October, 2019 was a 35-year-old human rights activist and the secretary-general of the Future Syria Party, a political group formed last year in territory liberated from ISIS in northern Syria. The party was an attempt to unify Arab and Kurdish groups in a pluralistic vision for the war-torn country’s future, hoping to replace dictator Bashar al-Assad with a multi-ethnic democracy. Daphne Caruana Galizia was murdered by a car bomb attack and authored a blog that had as much audience as all the mainstream publications in the country combined. Galizia was also associated with leaking the Panama papers and has been posthumously honoured internationally.*5 While Caputova has been known to endorse progressive measures to help protect the environment and aims at achieving a more equal society with less income and wealth disparity in Slovakia, Medha Patkar is an Indian activist is one of the founding members of National Alliance of People's Movements (NAPM), an alliance of hundreds of progressive people's organisations and has been fighting for ssues raised by tribals, dalits, farmers, labourers and women facing injustice in India. Brazilian politician Marielle Franco was assassinated by four out of the nine bullets that were fired at her - three in the head and one at the neck. Franco had been endorsing anti-racist, feminist values and had been a human rights activist dedicated to the development of The Socialism and Liberty Party (PSOL). Women rights defender Nasrin Sotoudeh faced 33 years in prison and 148 lashes in Iran in March this year.*6 Elizabeth Warren has recently spoken out during her support campaign for Bernie Sanders the importance of the degree of immediacy with which we must act right now against the one tenth of the one percent of the richest population who are controlling lives and the chances of survival of the rest of the population which speaks deeply of social injustice in itself.
There are thousands of indigenous women who risked their lives to take part in the protest
marches in response to the fire that went on for days burning the Amazon at an unprecedented rate last month. Vandana Shiva, in many of her speeches had addressed the concept of 'Ecofeminism' wherein women could and have been defending sustainability for centuries now. Whether it is from an in-built instinctive apparatus that drives them to ensure endurance or if it is logical reasoning that makes a better impression in their neurological framework and hence means greater reception is a debatable issue but what is immediately visible is that there are angry, demanding women taking over defying all forms of discrimination, the very essence of misogyny everyday and women with faces contorted with pain, agony and anxiety are somewhat paving the way in times when 'otherwise' comes with the risk of wiping out human population in lesser time than is probably conceivable to the brain when subject to reality that can barely be distinguished from simulational holograms and "programmed dystopia".
Now, the ecological crisis is collateral damage to the uncontrolled and proliferating desires of this very small faction of the whole population. Unfortunately, the sufferers are usually the ones who constitute the bottom layers of the pyramid and especially in the developing or third world economies. But if we are able to unspool the roots of this massive, snowballing problem that will cause humungus destruction and loss of lives, capital and spirit in the long run, we should be able to understand that the only sufferers to these crises are not just human beings. And since entire ecosystems are, as a matter of fact, collapsing, action becomes the call of the hour. Slavoj Zizek, in an interview to JOE magazine emphasised on how we have chosen to constrain ourselves by allowing us to succumb to something called 'fetishist disavowal'. Thunberg, who has Down Syndrome, does not have the pretension of knowing what she doesn't know, she is simply trying to embolden the warning messages that science has been showing us for quite a while now. In fact, the very idea of an activist being only a ground level worker who is supposed to shout radical slogans has been rejected at least two and a half decades before the Cold War even began. Greta is making an important point, and that point in itself is critical of conservative institutionalism and the not so glorious sides of bureaucratic control which are often overpowering the positive part of it, altogether.
People like Donald Trump or Ryan Tubridy made very intriguing statements about Greta.*2 According to him, Greta's face was contorted in pain, agony and anxiety and it had been a bad decision to allow a teenager with Asperger's syndrome on stage to talk about challenges associated with climate change. Sounds vile enough? Not enough. Leave EU campaigner Arron Banks hinted how he wanted Thunberg to be the victim of an yachting accident*3. And the President of the United States mocked her suggesting that she indeed is a very happy, young girl with a bright and wonderful future. Sophie Wilkinson, in her article for The Independent has talked about how the Western media has an active validation system for sixteen year olds. For ages now, pop stars, models and actresses have been serving as a go-to source of obtaining sexual pleasure for a vast audience, not to mention many of whom are cis-gendered and economically, socially privileged men. However, Trump's comments on Thunberg was not unanticipated, either. The far-right has been going absolutely uncensored all across the media for quite a while now and all the protest marches and gatherings that have been organised against Trump in the US or Boris Johnson in the UK have had protesters critising the bigoted sexism hidden in the content of most of the speeches that these eminent politicians have been delivering while being in a position of a lot of power. However, Tubridy represents the entire lot of "critiques" who like to denounce the very ideation of femininity as some sort of a deformity, a malignancy that needs to be subordinated.*4 The whole spectrum is portrayed in a way such that women who are trying to make some very serious points politically or academically - or in a profession that is not associated with providing immediate entertainment and cerebral sexual pleasure is not even meant for women. Since Greta is somebody who comes absolutely under-concerned about her appearance or her sense of fashion and makeup and doesn't write pop songs and doesn't model for Gucci or Victoria's Secrets, doesn't wear the tightest, peppiest clothes and doesn't sport stilettos, and doesn't have a very racist, derogatory, misogynist or fundamentally religious take on things, doesn't dance and doesn't perform, is not into gymnastics or swimming, and yet has the power to make her voice heard to millions of people - she must be dis-empowered. It actually is a wonderful thing that severely hurt, angry women with faces contorted in anxiety, agony and pain are taking over the political spectrum. This includes Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Taleb and Elizabeth Warren among others. This includes Gauri Lankesh, Rachel Corrie, Serena Shim, Hervin Khalef, Daphne Caruana Galizia and Zuzana Caputova. This includes Medha Patkar, Marielle Franco, Nasrin Sotoudeh, Vandana Shiva and Elizabeth Warren.
(Photograph Source: The Atlantic)
While Ocasio-Cortez has been "critisised" for being a waitress in a restaurant before taking the chair as the representative for New York's 14th congressional district, she has revealed the truth about her struggle and the chain of incidents that led her to build faith in activism at the first place while fiercely criticising the motives behind the unimaginable drug crisis that the big pharma has been creating in the United States of late. AOC has also been vocal about issues associated with but not limited to racism, misogyny, sexism engrained in the nature and method of American Politics in particular and modern day democracies in a broader sense. Omar and Taleb have both been critiqued by the conservatives for being Muslim women taking positions of power in politics. Lankesh had been murdered in 2017 by Hindu fundamentalists associated with Sanatan Samste, an organisation aided by the Rashtriya Swayang Sevak (RSS) in India. Rachel Corrie was run over by a bulldozer run by the Israel Bulldozer Forces (IDF) in 2003 while attempting to barr them from demolishing Palestinian refugee camps as a part of three British and four American activists. Serena Shim was allegedly murdered in a car crash while on a mission in Turkey to cover the ISIL conflict. Harvin Quartz reported that Harvin Khalef, who was murdered on 12th October, 2019 was a 35-year-old human rights activist and the secretary-general of the Future Syria Party, a political group formed last year in territory liberated from ISIS in northern Syria. The party was an attempt to unify Arab and Kurdish groups in a pluralistic vision for the war-torn country’s future, hoping to replace dictator Bashar al-Assad with a multi-ethnic democracy. Daphne Caruana Galizia was murdered by a car bomb attack and authored a blog that had as much audience as all the mainstream publications in the country combined. Galizia was also associated with leaking the Panama papers and has been posthumously honoured internationally.*5 While Caputova has been known to endorse progressive measures to help protect the environment and aims at achieving a more equal society with less income and wealth disparity in Slovakia, Medha Patkar is an Indian activist is one of the founding members of National Alliance of People's Movements (NAPM), an alliance of hundreds of progressive people's organisations and has been fighting for ssues raised by tribals, dalits, farmers, labourers and women facing injustice in India. Brazilian politician Marielle Franco was assassinated by four out of the nine bullets that were fired at her - three in the head and one at the neck. Franco had been endorsing anti-racist, feminist values and had been a human rights activist dedicated to the development of The Socialism and Liberty Party (PSOL). Women rights defender Nasrin Sotoudeh faced 33 years in prison and 148 lashes in Iran in March this year.*6 Elizabeth Warren has recently spoken out during her support campaign for Bernie Sanders the importance of the degree of immediacy with which we must act right now against the one tenth of the one percent of the richest population who are controlling lives and the chances of survival of the rest of the population which speaks deeply of social injustice in itself.
(Photograph Source: Inc)
There are thousands of indigenous women who risked their lives to take part in the protest
marches in response to the fire that went on for days burning the Amazon at an unprecedented rate last month. Vandana Shiva, in many of her speeches had addressed the concept of 'Ecofeminism' wherein women could and have been defending sustainability for centuries now. Whether it is from an in-built instinctive apparatus that drives them to ensure endurance or if it is logical reasoning that makes a better impression in their neurological framework and hence means greater reception is a debatable issue but what is immediately visible is that there are angry, demanding women taking over defying all forms of discrimination, the very essence of misogyny everyday and women with faces contorted with pain, agony and anxiety are somewhat paving the way in times when 'otherwise' comes with the risk of wiping out human population in lesser time than is probably conceivable to the brain when subject to reality that can barely be distinguished from simulational holograms and "programmed dystopia".
References
1. Teach-In: Evening (P: 70-103) Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky (2002)
2. https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/greta-thunberg-climate-change-trump-malala-yousafzai-sexism-girls-men-a9121336.html
3. https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/9/24/20881837/greta-thunberg-michael-knowles-laura-ingraham-trump
5. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/21/daphne-caruana-galizia-family-of-murdered-maltese-journalist-raise-concerns-over-public-inquiry
6. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2019/03/iran-shocking-33-year-prison-term-and-148-lashes-for-womens-rights-defender-nasrin-sotoudeh/
1 Comments
There is just one issue that I have with Gretas approach: The lack of solutions, of alternatives. Protest is only viable if you have a different solution for the problem. And she hasn't. It is simply impossible to lift the entire 7 billion people of the world to an acceptable level of prosperity with only renewable energy sources. It would be far more useful if she would propagate the only two real solutions I came up with: using nuclear energy, at least as an interim solution, and in the long run shrinking the number of humans on the planet as innovation will free us of most of the need for manual labor.
ReplyDeleteWhat are your perspectives?