Teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg has apologized for saying politicians should be put “against the wall” after critics took it to mean that she was advocating violence.
The 16-year-old Swede made the comment in a speech to young activists in the Italian city of Turin on Friday.
Thunberg later said she was making a literal translation from Swedish, in which the expression means to put someone on the spot with tough questions.
“That’s what happens when you improvise speeches in a second language. But of course I apologise if anyone misunderstood this,” Thunberg wrote on Twitter on Saturday.
Thunberg told the crowd in Turin that world leaders were running away from their responsibilities to fight climate change.
“We have to make sure that they cannot do that,” she said. “We will make sure they, that we put them against the wall, and that they will have to do their job and to protect our futures.”
The expression “putting someone against the wall” in Swedish describes a situation when someone is forced to address difficult questions or a difficult situation.
But some right-wing voices on social media interpreted her comment as a call for violence against politicians.
Thunberg tweeted that she and the youth movement she inspired is against all forms of violence.
“It goes without saying but I say it anyway,” she wrote.
(AP)
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4 Responses
All of them are idiots
Thurnberg is obviously one but the idiom makes a lot of sense
Put their backs to the wall (figuratively) to make it like they have no escape
Radical climate activists should leave this mentally ill child alone.
Sorry MosheInGolus but she has made herself a public figure as is “fair game”
lowerourtuition11210, according to her own statements she described herself as mentally ill. She maybe is a “fair game” but my point was that she is a creation of evil radical globalists and anti human environmentalists who take advantage of mentally disabled child.