So we resume our program now with an incredible chat between Paul and Greta Thunberg. I think she doesn't need any introduction, but I think it's important to set this conversation in the context that we have today, right, in a world where technology and activism are deeply intertwined. This conversation will try to explore how intersectional solidarity across tech, environment, and human rights can drive meaningful change for Palestine and beyond. So please, everyone, join me in welcoming Paul and Greta on stage.
Amazing having you here. Thank you so much. So, I reckon let's just pop right straight into this. You came up in the climate movement. We're talking about Palestine. What's the connection?
Well, in what way are they not connected? I would ask. It is the very same values that are driving my activism for the climate that are driving my activism for other issues like Palestine, social justice in general. I personally became an activist when I was maybe 12, and the first protests I went to were for migrant justice, and then I went to some other protests for all kinds of things because these issues are very much connected. We are fighting against the same system. It is the same system that is exploiting people, that is exploiting nature and the climate. It is a logic that doesn't make any sense where a very fortunate few people are allowed to exploit the vast majority of the world's population and sacrifice people and planet just for them to keep making profit and maximize geopolitical power. And that is the same logic that we are fighting against, whether we are climate activists, anti-fascist activists, or gender equality activists. And if you are a climate justice activist, you should not be able to call yourself a climate activist if you are not also fighting for justice for people today. Even if you are so selfish, so incredibly selfish that you are not moved to action to see, for example, Gaza being turned to rubble, to see parents looking for their children's body parts under rubble, even if that doesn't move you to action, how can you expect a world that is allowing this to happen to stand up for you when you need it? And how do you expect that world to take a few steps back and care about ecology? We know we are heading towards a future full of genocides, ecocide, increased inequality, which is what we are seeing. And if we don't make a stand against this, then we are living in a world that has lost all its sense of humanity. And then why should we care about saving the climate? If we are only caring about saving the future for our rich, white, privileged children but ignore the suffering of the vast majority of people today, if that's not racism, I don't know what is. And that cannot be applied to a climate justice movement. It's just unacceptable. Which is why we have to be morally consistent. And then there is also the fact that we know that ecocide and genocide go hand in hand. Environmental destruction is a way of warfare, a way of oppressing people, which the Palestinians know probably better than anyone. So I don't see how they are not connected.
So one of the interesting things you said in there was sort of tucked away. I think the words used were 'a privileged few.' And I perceive that this is part of how you got not exactly canceled or deplatformed, but less platformed, because it's easy for us to say, and everyone loves to say, that these problems are systemic. It's very difficult to do anything about the Middle East conflict, it's what you know, these peoples have been fighting forever, who knows what we can do. And the same way, it's very difficult to do something about rising temperatures and climate change. It's so distributed. We can recycle a bit more. But I perceive that in your activism, you started to name that it's these privileged few. And in our work about Palestine, we start to see there's a very small number of people who have a lot of influence, who are able to make incredible change in the direction that they want to make, but then they hide it behind systemic problems. So I would love to hear more about what you perceive of these privileged few, how they affect the climate movement, the Palestine movement, but also why naming them or pointing at them as being the problem caused your activism to be less platformed.
I think climate activists, and I think most of us in this room in general, are very clear that when it comes to the planet, it is not dying. It is being killed, and it is being killed by people who have names, and we know who these people are. It is the people often running the multinational corporations, it is politicians, people in media. And of course, when we talk about issues like climate, genocide, inequality as too big problems, too big to understand, too big for us to influence, that's their biggest currency because that means that we feel not empowered to do anything. That means that we can't see our role in that, which of course is what they want because then we won't do anything about it. And there are so many things happening at the same time, so many parts of the world where things are just collapsing, rise of fascism, which just makes us feel defeated. And if we instead talk about the problems and the people who are causing them, because we can in most cases name them even though they are hiding behind all kinds of things, that makes it much more tangible for us. And I think it's very important that we do that, that we name the companies, we name the CEOs, we name the systems and the countries who are causing it. I know for example in Sweden, where I come from, we often say that it's too big for us to tackle, we're too small of a country. But when we actually look at Sweden's emissions per capita, we are among the highest in the world when we include all our actual emissions. And we are supplying, we are complicit in the genocide in Palestine financially, politically, materially, and also culturally. So I think that has a lot to do with why people don't see their own role in it, because we aren't talking about it as a concrete thing. But I would also love to ask you, how did you come into this movement?
All right. I wrote a blog post and it went a little viral. But the specific thing that partially made the blog post go viral is that I named people who in my life were manufacturing consent. I was on Twitter and I saw the genocide being live streamed, and in between were these people that I worked with in tech who were manufacturing consent. There was a narrative in November 2023, when the encampments at Columbia started, it was like, 'Oh, there's anti-Semitism at Columbia University.' And immediately a couple of people that I worked with, that I took their investment, I've been to their houses, had dinner, that sort of thing, were immediately tweeting about that. I was like, 'Oh, I can see what's happening here. I can see that they're directly involved in this.' And it's difficult to tell sometimes whether it's networks, right? Are they doing that because they believe it because of the networks that they're in, or are they doing that because the email arrives from the Israel president's office, which is where they coordinate a lot of the hasbara? That was sort of... I feel that there's a lot of people who react very negatively to this. This might be a sort of neurodivergent thing, but people, we like things to be truth, we don't like being manipulated, we don't like being told what the situation is. We like to understand things. And so seeing that come down and seeing that happen, I was like, 'What the f*** is this s***?' This is how the Holocaust happened, for example. This is how wars happen. We heard a little bit about that earlier. So I was angry, I was frustrated. And it just so happened that from the privileged position I had, I was able to do something, to start Tech for Palestine, which is not something I imagined when I was writing the blog post. I imagine when you started all this, there wasn't a whole lot of seeing five, six years into the future to where it would go.
But I think what you're saying, you end up in places you don't expect. When I grew up, honestly, I didn't have a clue of what was happening in Palestine. Of course, I was very shielded from that. To a certain extent, you can hide behind that, but we are at a point now where so clearly you cannot use the excuse 'I did not know' because we know, and we're seeing a genocide being live streamed on our phones as soon as we open our phones. And for me, that was like we have a responsibility, especially since I happen to have a platform which I must use. And during these extremely decisive years that we are living in, whether it is inequalities, fascism, climate crisis, genocides, what we are doing now is going to determine so much of the rest of, to be frank, human history, because everything more or less is at stake. And if you have a platform, especially if you as me happen to belong to one of the demographic groups who are benefiting from today's system, you have a damn responsibility. You are part of these political systems whether you like it or not. You can either choose to take the side of the oppressor, because there's no neutrality in the face of inequality and genocide, or you can actively take a stand. And I have been so incredibly upset with so-called famous people or people who have a platform, also people in the climate movement, who have been too comfortable to say anything. And if you as an activist are being guided by people's perception of you and what is acceptable to say, rather than being morally consistent and applying the values that got you into this activism, then why are you even an activist? Then you're just a political pawn.
So, I like to say, what's the point of having privilege if you're not going to use it? You had this platform, people were platforming you, they're writing articles in the New York Times, they'd bring you to the UN. What is it that made you... I mean, maybe the first question is, you said you didn't know about Palestine. When did you learn about Palestine and how did that reach you?
I think it was only a couple of years ago. I knew more and more, but I never had enough time to actually understand it. And of course, when the genocide escalated, that's when I found out more and that's when I more vocally took a stand, as many people did, way too few but still. And as you're saying, as everyone here knows, talking about Palestine is often very different from talking about other social justice issues. And I'm far from the only one experiencing this, but it was very much like overnight I was canceled. Which was so fascinating because I kept being invited to events every day when people were like, 'Oh yeah, you can come and talk about things, but don't talk about politics.' What? Don't talk about politics? What do you think activists are doing? How can Palestine be political but climate not be political? What kind of cognitive cartwheel is that?
So I love this story. I would love to hear more on the specifics, because we talk in systems and we're shadowbanned and so on, but talk me through an instance where someone was trying to platform you and then it went awry because of Palestine.
All the time. But usually when I got invited to those things, I was like, well, it's either that or nothing. You can't pick and choose which human rights to support. And also, I just kept going to these events where I thought, okay, we need to keep bringing this up. And then when I spoke about it, sometimes I would be dragged off stage.
