Do we like Greta Thunberg?
Our score: 8 out of 10. She is on the right side of the planet and of the people we care about, with one contested position on Gaza that critics and supporters read very differently.
Greta Thunberg grew up in Stockholm with an opera singer for a mother and a theatre actor for a father. In the summer of 2018 she began a solo school strike outside the Swedish parliament, and that lone sign snowballed into the Fridays for Future movement. Now 23, she is still turning up at student protests.
Her run-ins with the law have mostly ended well. In February 2024 a London judge dismissed the case over her protest at an oil and gas conference and found her and four co-defendants not guilty. He ruled the police conditions were “so unclear that it is unlawful”, so no offence was committed.
The Gaza stoush is the big one. At an Amsterdam climate rally in November 2023 she wore a Palestinian scarf and called for a ceasefire. Fridays for Future Germany’s leader said she was disappointed Thunberg had nothing concrete to say about the Jewish victims of 7 October. In October 2025 she was deported by Israel after its forces intercepted the flotilla she was on, and at Athens airport she said “There is a genocide going on.” She has denied antisemitism, saying “It is not antisemitic to say that we should not be bombing people.” Where you land depends on whether you read her as speaking up for civilians or as leaving out Israeli victims.
On 23 December 2025 City of London Police said a 22-year-old woman was arrested for displaying a placard supporting a proscribed group, Palestine Action, under the Terrorism Act. The sign read “I support the Palestine Action prisoners. I oppose genocide.” The report we read did not say she was charged, and we couldn’t find how the matter ended.
A month earlier she joined Extinction Rebellion when it dyed Venice’s Grand Canal green at the end of COP30. She was reportedly given a 48-hour ban from the city and a small fine. The group said the dye was harmless. Veneto’s governor called it “a disrespectful act towards our city”. It is a stunt, and some will find it a bit much.
On the harm check, nothing in what we read has her demeaning LGBTQ+ people, women, migrants or the vaccinated. Her campaigning is for climate action, and the company she keeps in the reporting is student strikers and climate groups. We did not find a statement from her on LGBTQ+ issues in a source we could open, so that is a gap rather than a pass.