In “New Brand of Activist Takes Aim at Ukraine War and Climate Crisis, Together,” New York Times’ international correspondent Jeffrey Gettleman allowed undereducated youth to spout socialist nonsense, while cheering them as they confronted world leaders face to face, acts that would be condemned if performed by, say, anti-vaccine mandate activists.
Emmanuel Macron, the president of France, had just finished a speech at a major conference on Europe.
While he lingered onstage, soaking up adulation and taking pictures with fans, little did he know that two young women in the back of the room were eying him closely.
Reporter Gettleman certainly seemed to be on the spot to document the leftist activism in action:
“There are no metal barriers,” Dominika Lasota whispered. “Now’s our chance.”
She and her activist comrade, Wiktoria Jedroszkowiak, stood up fast. They clicked on a camera. They marched right up to Mr. Macron, who greeted them with a charming smile, apparently thinking all they wanted was a selfie.
But then they blasted him with questions about a controversial new pipeline in Uganda (which the French oil company Total is helping build) and the war in Ukraine.
“My point is …” Mr. Macron tried to say.
“I know what your point is,” Ms. Lasota, 20, said, cutting him off. “But we are living in a climate crisis, and you must stop it.”
Ms. Jedroszkowiak, also 20, then jumped in, saying, “You can stop the war in Ukraine by stopping buying fossil fuels from Russia.”
.... Ms. Lasota and Ms. Jedroszkowiak have emerged as leaders in a dynamic new wing of the antiwar movement….
Gettleman gushed:
….While perhaps not as famous as Greta Thunberg, they are cut from the same hardy cloth and work closely with her Fridays for Future movement.
He played along with the activists’ fantastical demands for a total embargo on Russian oil Gettleman forwarded the girls’ solution “to accelerate the transition to renewables, like wind and solar.” (Evidently nuclear energy is still a bad word on the left.)
….
Born a month apart and from middle-class Polish families, Ms. Lasota and Ms. Jedroszkowiak met two years ago at an activist summer camp in Poland where they learned how to get peacefully arrested and form human blockades.
The two recently put those skills to use, joining a blockade outside Total’s headquarters in Paris….
So much more noble than gainful employment.
The Times can’t get enough of human pests with disruptive tactics, like gluing oneself to an oil company’s headquarters, a tactic favored by the group Extinction Rebellion.
Gettleman humored the activists and their ignorance about the real world. Jobs? Economy? What are those?
Officials in Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, have said they could lose a half-million jobs if they suddenly banned Russian gas, which powers many German industries.
Ms. Jedroszkowiak’s response: “We can create green jobs. That’s the whole point. We have to change the entire system.”
If there were any moral dilemmas afoot regarding the use of laptops and iPhones, which rely on mining to produce, they went unexpressed.
With their iPhones and train tickets, they have built their own fluid community. Though many have stopped their formal educations, they read essays on social justice, research the latest climate science and constantly write letters and papers (for world leaders, not teachers). They also have fun.
Gettleman created an online video package from the Brussels protest three weeks ago, complete with fawning captions, before following up with this story to celebrate the young lefties in a "news" story in print.
