Widely read columnist goes after Thunburg’s autism

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The teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg has hit back at the Australian News Corp columnist Andrew Bolt for writing a deeply offensive column that mocked her autism diagnosis.

The Swedish schoolgirl posted a tweet overnight calling out the “hate and conspiracy campaigns” run by climate deniers like Bolt, adopting his insult that she was “deeply disturbed” and turning it back on him.

The widely read Herald Sun columnist and Sky News commentator used his significant platform to take aim at the 16-year-old campaigner, dismissing her followers as members of a cult and disparaging her decision to sail across the Atlantic in a high-speed racing yacht to attend UN climate summits in the US and Chile.

he highly personal character assassination published in Rupert Murdoch’s tabloids repeatedly referred to Greta’s mental health, saying she was “deeply disturbed”, “freakishly influential” and “strange”.

“I have never seen a girl so young and with so many mental disorders treated by so many adults as a guru,” Bolt wrote.

“Far more interesting is why so many adults – including elected politicians, top business leaders, the Pope and journalists – treat a young and strange girl with such awe and even rapture.

“Her intense fear of the climate is not surprising from someone with disorders which intensify fears.”

Bolt even described Greta’s younger sister as having “a spectacular range of mental issues”.

But the campaigner sees her condition not as a disability but as a gift which has helped open her eyes to the climate crisis.

The teenager, whose solo protest last year sparked the Fridays for Future global school climate strike movement, is taking a year off school to attend the summits, on 23 September in New York and 2-13 December in Santiago.

The editor of the Herald Sun, Damon Johnston, did not respond to a request for comment.

Attacks on the teenager are commonplace in the rightwing media. On the same day Bolt’s column appeared an anonymous column in the News Corp broadsheet the Australian referred to Greta as “the pig-tailed soothsayer”.

I have never heard anyone say Greta Thunburg has autism

As a person who has and continues to put herself in the public eye as an activist for a cause she is fair game for criticism. It is fair game to ask why the media is making a teenager the face of climate change activism. That is FAIR game. Attacking her in such a personal way is not a fair game. Newspapers allowing autism to be described as a hideous mental disorder is a step backwords 10 years back to Autism Speaks at its worst period.

“I have been a disabled person from birth and have experienced first-hand the special education system. In the 1960s it was all about segregation and a system that worked against disabled young people being able to achieve anything.”



So says Sue Bott, who is the deputy chief executive of Disability Rights UK.

Bott was fortunate in that she had parents who fought so she could attend the only special school for visually impaired kids where pupils could take exams and aim at university.

Even then, she says, it was assumed they would take longer to achieve than able-bodied children and they had little interaction with the able-bodied world or with disabled adults.

When she made it to university, she met a student who had gone to the able-bodied school next door. He confessed that he and his mates “used to move as far away as they could if they saw us going into town on the bus”.

It’s a horrible story, but probably not an unusual one from a time when people openly talked of “cripples”, called people “spaz” without admonishment and were able to victimise disabled kids without any real consequences.

But things are better today right? Today we have special educational need & disability co-ordinators (Sendcos) and schools love to bandy about the word “inclusion”. Even a regressive, backward-looking government occasionally uses it.

Trouble is, it’s just a word.

Disability Rights UK and LKMco, an education and youth think tank, conducted a series of focus groups with young people, both with and without special educational needs and disabilities (Send) with the aim of shining a light on young people’s attitudes.

What it found was that despite the regular use of that word (and other cuddly sounding terms), and policies touting schools’ commitment to diversity, negative attitudes towards disability and special needs still predominate.

Most pupils viewed themselves as different from disabled people, and defined disability with reference to the use of aids, particularly wheelchairs. Send pupils generally spoke of experiencing bullying and isolation from social groups.

Should this come as any surprise given the way adults behave.

Bolt might be a right-wing troll, but such trolling has an impact. It is seen and it is heard and in the process it informs attitudes and reinforces prejudices.

Thurnberg has faced similar ugliness from columnists in Britain. There is a connection between the casual ableism they deploy in their hatchet jobs, the suggestion that disabled people are “freakish” or “strange”, and the attitudes of the pupils spoken to in the process of compiling the report.

I’ve been into my children’s primary school armed with my sports wheelchair. The results were positive. The children were much more open to giving it a spin than their teachers were.

But it also requires action by government. Its continuing obsession with league tables and data-led inspections serves only to set inclusion back.

Consider the well-known phenomenon of “off rolling”, where schools “persuade” parents to remove Send children by suggesting that if they were to, say, home school them then the school wouldn’t need to mar their permanent records with exclusions.

The practice is inimical to children’s interests, but it is very much in schools interests because it improves their results, which is what Ofsted inspectors look at when they call.

Greta Thunberg, a 16-year-old autistic climate change activist and Nobel Peace Prize nominee, is once again being bullied online by adults, with many insults targeting her autistic characteristics. The autism community, however, rallied around her this week to highlight there’s nothing “disturbed” about Thunberg’s behaviors or facial reactions.

When she arrived in New York on Wednesday, Thunberg addressed the large and noisy crowd assembled with a message about why her climate advocacy is important. Critics online, however, quickly began negatively commenting on Thunberg’s facial reactions and autistic traits she does not hide. Once again, her critics described her as “disturbed.”

The autism community immediately pointed out there is nothing unusual or “disturbed” about Thunberg’s behavior. The teenager’s reactions to a large crowd, noisy venue in a foreign country while tired are completely normal.

"Nicki Blair
@BlairNicki

To the people having a go at Greta Thunberg for her speech in New York yesterday, she is an autistic teenage girl who has just spent weeks sailing and is now giving a speech in a foreign language knowing millions of people will be watching so with all due respect f**k off!"

Advocates on social media said those who harass Thunberg by using words to describe her like “disturbed” are bullying a child for her autistic traits, which she does not mask. Masking, or trying to hide or cover up autistic traits, is common when people on the spectrum feel forced to hide their neurodiversity to make neurotypical people feel more comfortable. This takes a toll on autistic people, which can lead to depression, increased risk for suicide and other mental health challenges.

Others focused on Thunberg’s “obsession” with climate change. One of the more well-known characteristics of autism (though not every autistic person experiences this) is a deep passion for specific topics, which many autistic people prove is a strength. Lucy Pedrick pointed this out on Twitter:

"One of the most common comments about Greta is that she looks uncomfortable (to non-Autistic eyes) when she speaks, that she moves around a lot, and that she’s almost obsessively focussed on her mission to spur the world into action on the climate. But consider this. One of the relatively well known traits of being Autistic – which is generally repressed early – is that some of us have obsessive interests that we like to talk about. A LOT"

A Fox News spokesperson told The Hollywood Reporter on Monday night that the network has "no plans" to book conservative podcast host Michael Knowles as a guest again after he referred to 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg as a "mentally ill Swedish child."

Knowles, who hosts The Michael Knowles Show for The Daily Wire, made the remark during a Monday night news program on Fox News. After pushback from progressive guest Chris Hahn, Knowles said that Thunberg has "many mental illnesses," including depression and obsessive compulsive disorder.

Thunberg, who sailed to New York to speak at the United Nations General Assembly about the urgency of climate change, talks openly about having Asperger syndrome, which she calls her "super power."

"The comment made by Michael Knowles who was a guest on The Story tonight was disgraceful — we apologize to Greta Thunberg and to our viewers," the network said in a statement, adding that Knowles won't be back as a guest.

Several groups that advocate for those living with Autism spoke out against Knowles' comments in statements to THR.

"To intentionally demean any person, regardless of neuro-diversity, is both cruel and wrong," The Autism Society said in a statement. "Certainly some might disagree with Ms. Thunberg on policy issues, but it is shameful to issue a derogatory statement to a youth advocate."

"It's absolutely unconscionable to attack someone for their disability, especially when that person is a child," said Julia Bascom, executive director of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network. "History is full of autistic people and people with other cognitive disabilities who were and are compelling, credible activists and leaders. Greta is a part of that tradition, and our community is lucky to have her. Period."

Fox News Won't Book Guest Again After "Disgraceful" Comments About Greta Thunberg

Somebody powerful at Fox News must be autistic or have a family member on the spectrum.

Article on Greta and her dad crashing at a house for the night.

This young girl really is something els.e