The Shadow Can Only Mock, It Cannot Make

There's a scene in J.R.R. Tolkien's Return of the King in which Frodo and Samwise are reunited after Frodo's capture by the villainous Orcs. Upon freeing Frodo, Sam speculates about the nature of the twisted, malign creatures, and Frodo answers: The Shadow that bred them can only mock, it cannot make: not real new things of its own. So it is with the climate change denial industry, which attempted a rollout of a shiny new product, a young counterpart to teenaged climate activist Greta Thunberg. The Washington Post buried the lede in its initial coverage of the 'Anti-Greta':

Meet the anti-Greta, a young YouTuber campaigning against "climate alarmism" https://t.co/R03zXGx6jr

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) February 24, 2020

Besides the fact that this kid is backed by fossil fuel interests, it also turns out that she is a white nationalist. Anti-immigrant? Antisemitic? Yep, she's the complete package, wrapping up all sorts of loathsome right-wing lunacy in a baby-faced package. The fact that she's German is just the final joke in a bad farce. Meanwhile, oil industry creeps in Alberta have been circulating sexualized cartoons of Greta Thunberg while their young industry spokesmodel crashes and burns almost as soon as she took the stage.

The Shadow can only mock, it cannot make... Greta Thunberg is a genuine activist, inspired by a righteous anger that her generation is being robbed of its birthright by a tiny minority of obscenely wealthy profiteers. The shadowy petrochemical industry groups attempted to come up with a counter to Greta, and they rolled out a twisted simulacrum... it's time to send this little neo-Nazi back to Mordor.