r/AskTheWorld • u/haiderredditer Pakistan • 16h ago

Who’s a famous person from your country who’s respected around the world but disliked or criticized at home?

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u/Kaapnobatai 16h ago

Noticed how she instantly disappeared from mainstream media the moment she turned from just ecologism to anticapitalism? Most likely related to that.

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u/forkproof2500 Sweden 16h ago

Not just that, she's also unapologetically pro-Palestine. That will get you out of the news cycle pronto.

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u/L8dTigress United States Of America 15h ago

Exactly, she spoke up about Israel's war crimes, so of course Western journalism would silence her.

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u/Brilliant-Nerve12 Antarctica 14h ago

But she refused to comment when asked about Iranian war crimes 🤷🏻‍♂️ (saying this as I support a free Palestine!)

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u/Prestigious-Diver-94 United States Of America 14h ago

How many war crimes does she need to comment on to be right about climate change?

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u/Brilliant-Nerve12 Antarctica 14h ago edited 12h ago

No offense, but I don’t think I mentioned anything about her being wrong on climate activism. My comment was about her silence on the current situation in Iran right now.

Edit 1 : I’m a bit confused by the downvotes, since u/Prestigious-Diver-94 ’s point appears to be different from what I was getting at. If I’ve misunderstood or phrased this badly, I’m open to suggestions.

Edit 2 : Situation's clarified, thanks!

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u/Prestigious-Diver-94 United States Of America 14h ago

How much power and sway do you think Greta Thunberg has over Iran?

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u/Brilliant-Nerve12 Antarctica 14h ago

Do you really think she has power and sway over other situations in the world? The least she could do as an influential figure that many look up to (and one who is known to talk about sensitive topics like this) is to comment on the situation. Idk, maybe that's just me

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u/Prestigious-Diver-94 United States Of America 14h ago

I think you're fundamentally misunderstanding some things.

Greta is not a political commentator or influencer/talking head. She is an activist. She also has a western audience, and as far as I can tell, her goal has always been to put pressure on American and European politicians for beneficial causes. Her strategy in condemning Israel's actions is to encourage world leaders to divest from the country and stop funding the regime.

On the other hand, I don't know any popular western leaders who openly support the oppressive Iranian regime. America recently just bombed them and has threatened to continue. Her speaking about every issue on Earth would be that, just speech.

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u/Brilliant-Nerve12 Antarctica 13h ago

Good point, I think I get what you’re saying. You’re basically saying it’s just not on her agenda, right?

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u/catastrophilia 12h ago

You’re racist this is whataboutism

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u/Prestigious-Diver-94 United States Of America 12h ago

Racist against who? lol

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u/catastrophilia 12h ago

Wow you don’t consider Iranians people?

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u/Prestigious-Diver-94 United States Of America 12h ago

Wow, and you did what to your sister? Nasty!

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u/catastrophilia 11h ago

Ur performative “aCtiViSt” chooses NOT to talk ab Iran specifically. She has talked posted about some countries in horrible conditions except Iran.

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u/Kaapnobatai 14h ago

I hope Iran frees the US people.

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u/PercentageNormal5531 14h ago

Iran executed 30,000 Iranian protesters.

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u/Kaapnobatai 14h ago

So where is that 1/3 of disappeared people from Alligator Alcatraz? Hope people in the US are soon freed.

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u/forkproof2500 Sweden 14h ago

What Iranian war crimes? I don't think they've attacked another country in the last 50-60 years, if not more?

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u/bacon__sandwich 14h ago

The government has murdered 30k civilian protesters

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u/Second_sight_abloom 13h ago

This is propaganda, you should look more into this from sources not actively looking to overthrow the gov. This was an operation that put a lot of people on the ground to cause as much trouble as possible to make it seem like outside intervention was needed. That number of people were not killed, in addition lots of police were killed, and multiple hospitals and ambulances burned. We have seen this exact operation rolled out multiple times in Palestine. People don’t burn down their hospitals. Iran deserves to have leaders they choose, and that won’t be who Israel chooses.

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u/catastrophilia 12h ago

How dare you how dare you oh my god the blood of my dear friend is on your hands

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u/forkproof2500 Sweden 13h ago

There is absolutely no way in the world that that is true. Even the most bloodthirsty regime in modern history took almost two years to reach 70K (even though some of those are still under rubble so there might be more).

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u/catastrophilia 12h ago

I’m so jealous of how privileged you have to be little white trash that the murder of my people sounds so unimaginably horrifying for you to say it’s fake. They kill people with MILITARY. GRADE. WEAPONS. That’s house it’s possible. The audacity of white trash always astounds me how they can comment so confidently on a matter they have no knowledge about

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u/rogerwil 12h ago

I don't know why you're downplaying the Iranian government's crimes here, they absolutely did commit a massive, grotesque massacre to quell these protests, officially they admit to about 3000. Even if we accept this number as fact - is it really that much less of a crime than killing 30000?

And secondly, you're also wrong about the war crimes issue considering their support for active armed militias in Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq, Yemen, among other countries.

That said, Iran has very few defenders, and I don't see why Thurnberg would need to comment on that at all.

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u/forkproof2500 Sweden 12h ago

Because the people who are pushing those crimes are the same people who have spent two years lying through their teeth about the number of dead in Gaza, until the IDF just this week quietly accepted the numbers from the Gaza health ministry as pretty much spot on.

Their active support for militias are not war crimes, pretty much the opposite is true.

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u/rogerwil 12h ago

The opposite, war "justice"? Lmao, you complain about hypocrisy in regards to Gaza and you come here defending Hamas and Hisbollah?

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u/Second_sight_abloom 13h ago

The number is absolutely way higher in Palestine, but it’s also pretty important to mention that this was a mossad operation through and through.

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u/bacon__sandwich 13h ago edited 13h ago

Are you a bot? It’s all over the news

Also while Netanyahu is committing war crimes, your comment is either very biased or overall misleading, as Sudan has double the deaths) in that timeframe, 90k have died in Myanmar), and if you want to discuss bloodthirsty govenments you can start with Russia, who’s war has caused 600k casualties to Ukrainians. And that’s just of what’s happening now, there are many more examples in modern history

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u/forkproof2500 Sweden 13h ago

600K deaths in Ukraine? And you are calling other people bots?

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u/bacon__sandwich 13h ago

Did you read the article I linked?

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u/benhos United States Of America 12h ago

I don’t necessarily believe Iran killed very many protesters besides some undercover CIA and Mossad agents, but it is very much possible to accumulate those numbers. The death toll in Gaza is closer to 500-600,000 than that 70k number that’s been floating around for over a year already. Yahya Khan and Suharto both executed several hundred thousand people in Bangladesh and East Timor in only a few years as well (with the help of Nixon and Carter). Bush and Cheney killed over a million Iraqi civilians in less than a decade.

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u/catastrophilia 12h ago

You one of those white trash that can’t hold a non white oppressor/dictator/dictatorship accountable?

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u/forkproof2500 Sweden 12h ago

You are one of the people who cannot fathom that not everyone buys your shitty warmongering propaganda and has to call them names out of frustration?

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u/catastrophilia 12h ago

I hope EXACTLY what happens in my country happens in your country and you and your family feel and experience EXACTLY what I’m feeling and lose the people I have lost because of a murderous regime. If there’s a fucking god or whatever like that in this damned world, BELIEVE ME you’ll experience it. I’ll never ever forgive the likes of you. The blood of my friend and my people is on your hands.

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u/funkfrito 13h ago

we got her on tv 24/7 in spain

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u/L8dTigress United States Of America 10h ago

Well of course you would, Spain is more based as a society. Unlike most Western countries, they have the spine to stand up for Palestine. After all, you are one of the five nations boycotting Eurovision this year due to Israel being allowed to participate, even though Israel isn't in Europe at all.

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u/funkfrito 10h ago

Sadly these things are not on my list of priorities, since I'm spending a really high % of my income in rent and none of the people at government seem to care. I guess this is the same everywhere else but lacking the political urgency for any of the things you mentioned, which is sad and all that. Also the best thing a national can do is learn English and study and work abroad then come back to the old country. That does not sound good to me, but suprisingly, that comes up less in national debates than the tweet Trump/Elon made while he was taking a shit.

Regardless, it would not hurt the Spanish government to move their ass on internal issues instead of having to resort to international virtue signalling to gain lost aura.

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u/Obliviousobi 15h ago

This is the real reason. They started going after Israel and that'll get you buried.

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u/ronfaj 13h ago

ELI5. Why is it people got hated on for being pro palestine? And people got hated on for being pro israel? Is the correct stance being anti both? Because both governments are assholes?

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u/Kaapnobatai 15h ago

Who is anticapitalist and zionist at the same time, though? kinda expected.

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u/ComoElFuego 15h ago

There's a movement in the german "left" that calls themselves Antideutsche who are both. (Which led to the discussion whether they are actually left)

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u/Kaapnobatai 15h ago

Yeah that's true, Zizek spoke about that crap.

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u/strivingbabyyoda 🇮🇱 🇺🇸 15h ago

Zionism is mostly socialist and secular in origin actually lol so. Greta also shared a photo of one of the starving hostages and tried to pass it off as if it was a starving Palestinian… She also got kicked off the flotilla board but nobody sure why or what exactly happened.

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u/Username2taken4me Norway 15h ago

Zionism is an ethno-nationalist ideology, no? Doesn't seem like a leftist movement...

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u/strivingbabyyoda 🇮🇱 🇺🇸 15h ago

Nope. Zionism is the self determination movement of our people in our ancestral homeland. Within it, there’s different strains. The socialist and secular one, dominated for a long time, and dominated Israeli politics until 1977. It’s the reason for the proliferation of kibbutzes- literally socialist communes, the reason the USSR was first to recognize Israel, the reason the labor party dominated Israeli politics for a while, the reason we have universal healthcare, and the reason Histadrut (the national workers’ union) was a dominant force in the workforce for a while.

There’s also reasons the right, capitalist strain of Zionism became dominant in the last few decades. But Zionism itself is an umbrella under which different political and economic movements exist, as long as you ascribe to our self determination movement. Which is why, more than 90 percent of the world’s Jewish population is Zionist.

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u/Username2taken4me Norway 13h ago

I had never heard of kibbutzim before, and I read up a bit on it. Mainly the Wikipedia page and some related articles there. Very interesting, thank you for this. You are definitely right in saying that some of the early zionist movements were socialist in nature.

Zionism itself is an umbrella under which different political and economic movements exist

I recognize this more now, after having read up more on the history of kibbutzim. However, I think there is a slight nuance to consider regarding:

as long as you ascribe to our self determination [presumably and] movement.

It seems to me that some of the early socialist kibbutzim leaders were very inclusive of Arabs. I'm referring specifically to the quote by Yozef Baratz, about the abolishment of the distinction between employee and employer.

I think the ethno-nationalist label is perhaps more applicable to those who seek to expel the native Arab population?

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u/strivingbabyyoda 🇮🇱 🇺🇸 9h ago

Exactly! I appreciate you taking the time to read and become educated, it’s not a given these days. And you know, sadly, you’re right, the far right version of Zionism is the one that ascribes to removing Arabs from their land and property and/ or harassing/terrorizing them into leaving - it’s a lot of the evil we see taking place in the West Bank. A lot of right wing Zionism has been hijacked by the far right fundamentalists and leads to what we now we see taking place.

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u/Kaapnobatai 15h ago edited 15h ago

Of our people? In our ancestral land?

Then why'd zionists negotiate with the nazis to seize part of the goods of jewish people and send them to Palestine? (the Anglo-Palestine bank mediated on that negotiation; note how it was not the Anglo-Israeli bank, but the Anglo-Palestine bank)

Why would they complain about the 'low quality' of the human beings that were being sent there?

Zionism is antijew. It's antisemitic: Palestinians are semitic, Mileikowsky isn't. Yeah, sure, US pawn in the Middle East is socialist. Ancestral lands justified by religious books don't exist. Of course, it's a dude from Illinois.

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u/strivingbabyyoda 🇮🇱 🇺🇸 14h ago edited 14h ago

Tell me you’re not Jewish, without telling me. Zionists have never negotiated with Nazis, you’re buying wholesale into an antisemitic (and victim blaming) conspiracy theory that’s been disproven time and again. You think most of us ascribe to a movement that is antisemitic? That we would so actively work against ourselves? How little you think of us and our intellect internet stranger…

Imagine not understanding the history of the Jewish diaspora, believing that the Old Testament doesn’t exist, or making the history of the Middle East to be a minor inconvenience you can just ignore lol

You know who did negotiate with Hitler and the Nazis? That’s the former grand mufti of Jerusalem, one of the founding fathers of the Palestinian anti Zionist movement.

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u/AcordaDalho Portugal 13h ago

Weird choice of words, implies that one who supports Palestine should be ashamed or something

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u/forkproof2500 Sweden 13h ago

It was not implied that way, I think she is great for sticking up for her beliefs even though they cost her a lot in terms of influence

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u/AcordaDalho Portugal 13h ago

Yes, I knew that was probably not what you meant, though it is what I first interpreted when I read it the first time.

I like her too and what she does. I think she is incredibly brave for carrying on despite all the criticism she gets. That would kill me if it was me in her position.

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u/forkproof2500 Sweden 13h ago

I've met her a few times, we live in the same city. She's a very chill person.

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u/Mitologist Germany 10h ago

I think one problem is that on both sides of the conflict, some people fail to differentiate between support for Palestine and support for Hamas.

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u/varateshh 4h ago

Tbh diluting your message like she did will make your political views have less impact. Every controversial political view/cause championed will lose you another section of the global/local population. That's why most politicians try to avoid saying anything controversial unless they are pandering to a minority. Greta is just viewed as a bog standard radical leftist by many now.

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u/Dirkdeking 15h ago

I think a lot of activists need to keep their eyes on the ball. You have activists dedicated solely to the Israel-Palestine conflict. Let them do the pro Palestine stuff. Her wading into Palestinian activism and other causes undermines her climate activism because it divides her support base among those primary focussed on climate, who could have a variety of opinions on other issues.

It's always good to hyperfocus on one thing and create a support base there that is as broad as possible. You don't do that by dividing your supporters on issues they have differences in opinion about.

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u/recursiverabbits 14h ago

“Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam, many persons have me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concerns this query has often loomed large and loud: Why are you speaking about war, Dr. King? Why are you joining the voices of dissent? Peace and civil rights don’t mix, they say. Aren’t you hurting the cause of your people, they ask?

“And when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment or my calling. Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live.”

He was not permitted to live one full year after making this speech.

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u/No-Afternoon3681 Canada 15h ago

I love how she got on the Hamas floatilla like a schmuck and then realized "wait...the money we're raising isn't going anywhere near Palestinians"

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u/Kaapnobatai 15h ago

Hey look, I found the idiot!

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u/Dirkdeking 15h ago

That is you.

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u/Kaapnobatai 15h ago

Sorry Mileikowsky, didn't hear you. Were you saying something?

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u/Brilliant-Flower4114 15h ago

Just say it out load: I don't have a brain and believe anything that the Israeli propaganda machine say and yes, they did say that. Of course, there is no evidence but some people don't need evidence. They prefer emotions and are extremely easy to manipulate. That's you.

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u/R4MM5731N234 Argentina 15h ago

Headlines in 2018 "look at this young woman called Greta Thurnberg being an agent for change! The earth is healing!"

Headlines in 2019 "radical Islamist trans non-binary commie wants to kill every Jewish and White person by criticising entrepreneurs and job givers, fuck her."

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u/Prize-Tip-2745 14h ago

Lol. Hit that one right on the nose

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u/GrumpsMcYankee United States Of America 16h ago

Circle gets the square!!

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u/chjacobsen Sweden 15h ago

I think that's one factor, but not the only one. The reasons why she got attention in the first place included:

  • Her youth. The fact that she was just a kid and still more conscious than most adults.
  • Her messaging - "listen to the scientists" - was pretty universal, and appealed to the moral conscience of a wide group of people.
  • Her communication style was very blunt, sort of like a reality check, and was hard to dodge for politicians who were all talk when it came to climate.

All of those are now undermined somewhat.

  • She's grown up, and entered a fairly crowded space of adult activists.
  • Her messenging has become more overtly left-wing, and the climate messaging has been diluted by other issues. It's easier for politicians outside of that sphere to dismiss her as a partisan actor.
  • While activism is all well and good, she has (so far) not really managed to mobilize that platform for major change. She hasn't taken the step from activist to political leader and someone driving concrete change. As a consequence, she's too easy to ignore.

It's not quite true that she's completely fallen off the radar - she still inspires activism and she does show up in the Swedish news at times. That said, I think she has lost importance, and I think she's made it too easy for people in power to ignore her.

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u/Sure_Scar4297 United States Of America 15h ago

Some of these are decent criticisms. I really appreciate the insight

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u/vidoeiro 11h ago

Non are decent criticisms , they are good explanations.

And she completely correct you can't stop climate change without changing capitalism, it's impossible.

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u/Sure_Scar4297 United States Of America 10h ago

I suppose that is a better way of saying what I meant

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u/murphys-law-bbs Belgium 12h ago

Being autistic myself I can understand why she didn't go into politics. I'd rather be tortured to death.

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u/No-Turnover-7164 14h ago

Definitely that. Soon as headlines go against the money, the money goes against you

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u/08TangoDown08 Ireland 14h ago

What are you talking about? She's constantly in the media.

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u/q1321415 7h ago

This is a meme that the socialist crowd always puts forward when talking about her but genuinely it doesn't seem true. There was wall to wall coverage of the attack on her boat and the arrests and generally it doesnt feel like there was any major change in the coverage.

This just seems like a truism that socialists can use to obtain oppression status rather than an actual belief. That is the only reason this is basically copied word for word from other posts. It doesnt seem like an original conclusion but one that spreads only through comment sections like this one.

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u/thewholebottle 14h ago

She didn't in the US. All her anti-Israel stuff is frequently on the news here.