By Joshua P. Hill

At the 2022 launch of her book, aptly titled “The Climate Book” the then 19-year-old activist had some words for the entire system we live under today:

 “We are never going back to normal again because ‘normal’ was already a crisis. What we refer to as normal is an extreme system built on the exploitation of people and the planet. It is a system defined by colonialism, imperialism, oppression and genocide by the so-called global North to accumulate wealth that still shapes our current world order. If economic growth is our only priority, then what we are experiencing now should be exactly what we should be expecting.”

That was two years ago, and it’s no surprise she hasn’t been given the spotlight nearly as often since. In fact, in the wake of that book launch she’s been the subject of countless hit pieces, and her Palestine solidairty activism has been denegrated as well. Greta went from a cute kid saying that climate change is bad to a young adult rightly charging global systems with not only fueling the climate crisis but also being oppressive and grossly harmful to life in numerous other ways. And, perhaps most importantly, she sees these systems as interconnected and knows that radical change is necessary for the future of life on this planet.

Maybe the clearest sign, the clearest admission that all of this was part of the conservative push to attack education and build the muscles and power to limit academic institutions came from one of the architects of the plan himself. Chris Rufo is already known for working with Ron DeSantis to attack the New College in Florida, driving away numerous LBGT students, and making the school a far more conservative and repressive institution. On December 19th Rufo publicly tweeted out, “We launched the Claudine Gay plagiarism story from the Right. The next step is to smuggle it into the media apparatus of the Left, legitimizing the narrative to center-left actors who have the power to topple her. Then squeeze.” And his plan worked. He is now openly bragging about it not just on social media, but in the Wall Street Journal.

Just like Ackman, Rufo is no longer even pretending that this is about antisemitism, protecting Jews, plagiarism, or anything else with any merit. Ackman calls it attacking diversity at these institutions, Rufo calls it winning the culture war, and yet numerous major publications immediately went with the framing that these men really care about academic integrity, Jewish students, and seemingly whatever else these cynical and bad-faith actors wanted them to say.