Bogus 'Soros' Ploy Being Used To Attack Greta Thunberg & Other Activists

Greta Thunberg Mural ~ photo by Aslihan Altin

Corporate Fake-Out: Broadbrushing Environmentalists As Coopted

There is a corporate/CoIntelPro deceptive attack being used against Greta Thunberg and other activists, to undermine the climate crisis movement, as well as other movements - an attack that the planet literally can't afford our wasting time on.

The latest iteration of this propagandistic nonsense is the claim that Thunberg and the United Nations are somehow only focused on climate, when 'peace' is supposedly more important.

I'll get into the clues that this new attack is a CoIntelPro style psyops maneuver later in this essay, but first let’s just deal with countering the basic claims of this propaganda.

PEACE vs THE CLIMATE CRISIS?

While current wars are killing millions, a runaway climate crisis will kill billions (partly by causing more and worse wars, including a possible World War III).

The climate crisis in fact has the potential even if it doesn't trigger more wars, to kill all 7.8 billion human beings, and over 90% of all other life on Earth.

Almost all of the wars currently happening on Earth are over fossil fuels, and if we end the use of fossil fuels we end those wars. Other current wars have been triggered by water shortages that have been caused by the climate crisis. If we reverse the climate crisis and engage in massive reforestation we will end those climate crisis caused wars.

Claiming that 'peace' needs to come before climate action fails to understand why wars happen, and it also presents the ridiculous false dichotomy that we have to abandon working for peace while we work to reverse the climate crisis. When did that nonsense become true?

The climate crisis is the worst danger that human beings have ever faced in our 300,000 year history. It dwarfs issues of war and peace by orders of magnitude in its importance - issues which again are subsets of the fossil fuel based domination of the planet, by those who fund and execute those wars.

CLIMATE ACTIVISM IS FOR PRIVILEGED WESTERN ELITES?

Claiming that fighting the climate crisis is somehow a western elite endeavor is ridiculous when people of color and economically colonized nations of the global south face the worst consequences of the climate crisis.

Reversing the climate crisis requires the end of the most evil, destructive, and colonizing industry on the planet - the fossil fuel industry - which needs and funds the military industrial complex and the fossil fuel wars. Trillions of dollars will be lost by the oligarchs who run the fossil fuel industry if the movement to reverse the climate crisis succeeds.

So the powers that be who run the global petro-dollar economy are now viciously attacking Thunberg, because the general public, and even the corporate media, are LISTENING to her and MOBILIZING, and that is a dire THREAT to the fossil fuel industry.

CLIMATE ACTION vs ANTI-CAPITALISM?

These attacks have even claimed that Thunberg and the Climate Crisis movement are somehow ignoring capitalism as a key cause of the crisis. Well here is the link to a recent clip of Greta Thunberg clearly addressing the economic underpinnings of the crisis, in which she says:

"People are suffering, people are dying, entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are at the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of endless economic growth. How dare you!"

Every other environmental and climate activist I know likewise puts capitalism high on the list of the causes of the current planetary environmental collapse.

CORPORATE/COINTELPRO MANIPULATION?

The clear signal that this new wave of attacks is CoIntelPro bullshit, is that it inevitably either begins with, or works its way into, the false 'Soros' ploy (referring to neoliberal financier and billionaire George Soros). The 'Soros' trope (which is also anti-semitic dog whistling to the alt-right) laughably paints Soros as a Zionist world-controlling banker pulling the strings of the entire planet. If you examine many of these sudden new Soros oriented attacks on Thunberg and the Climate Strike movement, you will see that many of them also ridiculously raise the traditional whacko conspiracy theory trope of the dreaded 'Rothschilds'.

The Soros ploy was cleverly sold to the far left many years ago by falsely implicating him as the main funder of Color Revolutions (a claim that I have never seen verified by actual credible news sources, and I have actively searched for such reports).

Soros, because of his open and lifelong anti Russia/East bias has funded pro-West nonprofits that have publicly supported and 'educated' the side of color revolution coups when they have happened, but there is no evidence whatsoever that Soros has been some all powerful economic puppeteer who was the instigator or coordinator of the coups.

Ever since many on the far left bought the misrepresentation, CoIntelPro operators have used the Soros ploy to inflame both left and right opposition to legitimate environmental and social justice movements, and to sow confusion and chaos in the ranks of anti-state organizers, so that they lose solidarity.

The Soros/Rothschilds ploy has also been used to attack antifa and other important antifascist organizing.

In all of these cases, many on the left have foolishly fallen for this bogus mind trick convincing them that important activism is a 'false flag' funded by wealthy elites.

Corporate/CoIntelPro manipulators like to draw the alt-right into the middle of all this because it further polarizes the left against the right, creates confusion, and feeds the flames of climate crisis denial. And if you look at the right wing versions of this new set of attacks on Thunberg, you'll see that climate crisis denial is exactly what they are about - with claims that Soros and 'the Rothschilds' are manufacturing the climate crisis in order to maneuver to take control of the world through the United Nations, environmental laws, black helicopters running on biofuels, etc. (The last one is just included as a joke, but it wouldn't be surprising to see such a claim in one of these right wing social media attacks.)

To see a mapping out of the well organized, right wing, climate-denial oriented psyops campaign attacking Thunberg, go to Mat Hope's DeSmogUK article "Attacks on Greta Thunberg Are About More Than Anti-Environmentalism" at: https://www.desmog.co.uk/2019/09/15/attacks-greta-thunberg-right-wing-free-market-network

The bottom line, is that this is all corporate/CoIntelPro manipulation to shut down one of the most important awakenings of the general public in history, because that awakening threatens corporate profits - including the profits of the animal agriculture industry which is notorious for using exactly this type of false narrative framing to claim that the vegan movement is 'elitist', 'racist', etc. Thunberg has put veganism front and center in her climate crisis solutions.

So upon the end of my writing this, I return as a very low income antifascist and environmental organizer to open my mailbox (as I do nearly every day) to look for the check that the social media trolls claim is being delivered to me from George Soros.

That check never seems to show up..😏

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Eric Brooks is a full time grassroots organizer specializing in the interplay of global capitalist economics with energy policy, the climate and extinction crisis, and environmental justice.