UK Newspaper Praised For Naming And Shaming Grown Men Who Comment Threats About Greta Thunberg
"Holy shit, the Bristol Post are not fucking around."
Ever since she first emerged on the international scene in mid-2018, climate activist Greta Thunberg has been the focus of ire and hatred from the right.
Conservative climate deniers just can’t stand to hear the truth explained to them by a teenager. So, rather than attacking the plain, simple science that Thunberg spouts — because they can’t — they decide to instead shoot the messenger.
Any story about the young environmental activist will have a festering comment section attached to it, full of mostly grown men with ‘School of Hard Knocks’ listed as their university and a photo of a car as their profile picture. These people just can’t bear to face the reality of a quickly warming planet, let alone the changes we’ll have to make to stop our total extinction.
It’s an epidemic of conservatives promising violence against a teenager online, and it’s everywhere.
But one Bristol-based newspaper has decided to take on the hate in uncompromising fashion, naming and shaming every single person who commented anti-Greta speech on one of their articles.
Titled “The abuse and threats made to Greta Thunberg by people from Bristol”, the article is an itemised list featuring names and faces of those who commented on a previous Bristol Times article about Thunberg’s trip to the city.
Posting the comment next to the face of the commenter, the article runs down insults ranging from the person who called for the activist to be “Trunchbulled” — i.e. thrown by the pigtails — to those calling for the young activist to be “burnt at the stake.”
Since the article went live, it has received widespread praise online, with many seeing it as a bold way to take on the current digital discourse.
This is a bold and frankly brilliant move by the Bristol Post, naming and shaming the social media abusers who made threats and wrote disgusting things about Greta Thunberg, a 17-year-old climate change activist.
Forget be kind, be accountable. https://t.co/3EfdTMUbii
— Katie French (@journokatie) March 1, 2020
Holy shit the Bristol Post are not fucking around. Name and shame!https://t.co/KMDB3poiFd
— Buster ™️ (@BusterBDSM) March 1, 2020
You know what they say — new problems require bold solutions. And the Bristol Post‘s is bold indeed.