Swedish teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg has been criticised for wearing a T-shirt that could imply support for the far-left extremist Antifa group.
The picture, now deleted, showed Thunberg promoting a musical collaboration with the band The 1975 as part of her climate change activism. A day after the tweet, Thunberg deleted the picture and issued a statement on the social media platform.
“Yesterday I posted a photo wearing a borrowed T-shirt that says I’m against fascism. That T-shirt can apparently to some be linked to a violent movement. I don’t support any form of violence and to avoid misunderstandings I’ve deleted the post. And of course I am against fascism,” she said.
According to the online publication Samhallsnytt, which is linked to the populist Sweden Democrats (SD), money from the song featuring Greta will go to the far-left Extinction Rebellion movement, which was confirmed by the movement which thanked Greta for giving the revenue to them.
Samhallsnytt claims that one of the heads of Extinction Rebellion in Sweden is a man named Jonathan Pye who has had a history in far-left movements and was sentenced to four years in connection with riots in Gothenburg in 2001.
Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet also links Pye to Antifascist Action (AFA), more commonly known as Antifa, claiming him to be a “leading activist”.
During the 2006 interview with the paper, Pye explained: “It is important for us, not for moral reasons, for practical reasons not to kill anyone — because it would not be worth it at this time.”
The incident is just the latest for Thunberg who was met with a hostile reception from some lawmakers in Paris earlier this month.
French philosopher Michel Onfray went even further, viciously attacking Thunberg as a “Swedish cyborg”.
“This girl has a cyborg face that ignores emotion — no smile, no laugh, no astonishment, no amazement, no pain, no joy. It makes think of these silicone dolls that announce the end of the human and the advent of the posthuman,” he said.
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