Young Swedish climate activist Greta Tonberg, who has become a global phenomenon, used Twitter on Twitter earlier this week to encourage people to be different.
In a tweet that recorded more than 400,000 likes as of yesterday morning, 16-year-old Tonberg, who has Asperger syndrome and who is frequently abused and hate comments, wrote that "difference is a superpower."
Tonberg arrived on Wednesday in New York, the United States, at the end of a 15-day yacht trip across the Atlantic Ocean as part of its campaign to raise interest in the climate issue. The yacht set off on August 14 from a berth in Plymouth, England, where Tonberg refuses to board the aircraft because of its carbon dioxide emissions. Her work has inspired young people from across Europe and beyond to demand action on climate change, under the slogan 'Fridays for the Future'.
In Germany, for example, Andreas Calpides, a candidate from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AFD) party, described the activist as a "girl with braids and a moon face," while Andrew Bolt, an Australian columnist, called her " Deeply dysfunctional ».
However, Tonberg is now responding to her attackers. “I have Asperger syndrome, which means I sometimes differ from normal,” she says. "In good conditions, difference is a superpower." Asperger syndrome is a developmental disorder, manifested, among other symptoms, by difficulties in social interaction and development in intense special interests.
Tonberg herself recently said that without this turmoil she could never have started her "school strike for the climate" and probably would not have been concerned with climate change as a whole.