The lineup of those attacking Greta Thunberg will only make you like her more Why is climate change of no concern to these people? Because narcissists live in the continuous present

Families, huh? Can’t live with ‘em. Can’t live without ‘em. Though I reckon that we could all live without Jeremy Corbyn’s brother Piers quite happily.

‘They describe themselves as “classic liberals”, which is a classy way of saying “capital worshippers”’

The elder Corbyn is a climate change denier. He had already been critical of the 16-year-old environmental activist Greta Thunberg. Yet seeing the leader of the opposition meeting with Thunberg did not induce a brotherly piping down. On the contrary. The curmudgeon put out an astounding tweet instead.

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“Listening to an ignorant brainwashed child is deranged,” Corbyn declared. “I am an actual scientist of physics Meteorology, astrophysics and climate and say @GretaThunberg is wrong and suffers mental abuse by manipulative adults.” I don’t quite know which telling detail snags with me more: the pompous, non-scientific, narcissistically insecure use of “actual” or the fact that he felt that he should tag the kid into his tweet, to make sure she would see it.

Listening to an ignorant brainwashed child is deranged.

I am an actual scientist of physics Meteorology, astrophysics and climate and say @GretaThunberg is wrong and suffers mental abuse by manipulative adults.

Facts:#Scientists4truthhttps://t.co/zUmOeShYAS@ClimateRealists

RT https://t.co/9rlodCJbIW — Piers Corbyn (@Piers_Corbyn) April 23, 2019

Corbyn is projecting, of course. He is – and I’m minded to believe that he would consider this fair comment – an ignorant, brainwashed adult. And what else could possibly describe the decision of a grown man publicly to attack a 16-year-old kid with Asperger’s syndrome except the word “deranged”?

Though there seems to be a fair bit of it about. Erstwhile marxist Brendan O’Neill, now funded pumping out primary-age “iconoclasm” on a website called Spiked, has already devoted a thousand or so of his rancid words to “The cult of Greta Thunberg”, suggesting she was a “millenarian weirdo”, then bulking out his thesis with the following: “The monotone voice. The look of apocalyptic dread in her eyes … There is something chilling and positively pre-modern about Ms Thunberg.”

‘Their own cult is billionairian anarchism, in which the stratospherically wealthy get to do whatever makes them feel good about themselves for five minutes’

Here’s the thing. Being a 56-year-old woman who has been following the climate change debate for several decades now, it didn’t actually occur to me to check out her rhetorical delivery or indeed Thunberg’s content. The only people who don’t know that the kid is on the right track are people who refuse to know; people whose “classic liberalism” got us all into this particular mess in the first place, a mess which since the Reagan/Thatcher era has been bent on making the need for politics to be obsolete, because nothing but untrammeled and unregulated free markets can be allowed to rule the world.

Their own cult is billionairian anarchism, in which the stratospherically wealthy get to do whatever makes them feel good about themselves for five minutes.

Among those who describe themselves as “classic liberals”, which is a classy way of saying “capital worshippers” are Toby Young, who in typical style asked when someone was going to “call out” Thunberg some time after O’Neill and Corbyn already had, and Helen Dale, an Australian right-winger who has suggested this: “Can the Beeb arrange for Andrew Neil to interview this Greta Thunberg character? Because afterwards I guarantee we’ll never hear from her again. She may even have a meltdown on national telly into the bargain.”

This is particularly crass because people on the autistic spectrum, when they are overwhelmed by their emotions are commonly described as having a “meltdown”. Dale is suggesting that a neurological condition should be triggered on camera, in a child, in order for her to suffer global humiliation. I daresay O’Neill is aware that people with autism are often described as having affectless speech patterns too, especially when they are delivering speeches in a non-native language.

The trouble with these people is that a Britain and a Europe hobbled by Brexit and a US in thrall to Trump are, for them, so close to victory that they can taste it. Anyone, even a 16-year-old, who threatens to rouse depleted, exhausted social democrats could galvanise people, like the second world war did, into believing that an ordered, regulated, responsible and cooperative world is still something worth hoping for. That’s what young people hope that the EU could be, in a world in which climate change has been recognised as the wealthy, narcissistic anarchists’ friend.

Why is climate change of no concern to these people? Because narcissists live in the continuous present, fulfilling their capricious desires moment by moment. Thinking about the future, for anyone but yourself and your own flattering tableau of a family? That’s for losers. Losers need to be flattered with language like “the will of the people”, told that immigrants – not awful leaders – are ruining their lives, and warned to be frightened of children who might prod at their deluded complacencies. And then they need to be ignored until they need warning once again.

Twitter: @DeborahJaneOrr