In 2019, a chain letter about Greta Thunberg was sent or published on WhatsApp, Facebook, but also occasionally on websites.

This chain letter describes that Greta Thunberg is being deliberately and manipulatively used as an icon and that nothing in the “marketing” was purely accidental. The message of the chain letter briefly summarized: Nothing was a coincidence, but everything was pure PR and influenced by the economic interests of Greta Thunberg's parents. Greta Thunberg herself is a plastic-consuming hypocrite and in the end countless people will fall for her.

However, the chain letter itself is longer than just two sentences. It is a very long chain letter, which we have abbreviated here at the beginning of the article for reasons of space and for identification purposes:

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Greta Thunberg sits…

Greta sits on the floor with a homemade cardboard sign on a house wall in Sweden. PURELY COINCIDENT, on this very day, at this very hour, at this very place, Ingmar Rentzhog, PURELY COINCIDENT PR expert, passes by there. Take photos. PURELY COINCIDENT, Mr. Rentzhog also has excellent contacts with organizations that are well-funded and have dense, global networks and very rich donors.

You can read the entire chain letter here at the end of the article ( click ).

Check!

The chain letter poses a certain problem because it offers no evidence but a lot of theses. These theses from the chain letter need to be checked out. by considering the individual theses in isolation and testing them accordingly. We do this in the order in which they appear in the chain letter.

About the process: The chain letter content is marked as a “thesis”, followed by a short fact check. The source information for the respective checks can be found as a linked [number] in the text, but also as plain text at the end of the article.

thesis

Please read and forward
Greta sits on the floor with a self-made cardboard sign on a house wall in Sweden. PURELY COINCIDENT, on this very day, at this very hour, at this very place, Ingmar Rentzhog, PURELY COINCIDENT PR expert, passes by there. Take photos.

Fact check

Greta Thunberg started her Skolstrejk för klimatet (school strike for the climate) on August 20, 2018. The media wasn't there purely by chance, as a 15-year-old girl and her climate strike in Sweden were already worth reporting at that time. [1].

The investor and PR manager Ingmar Rentzhog says he found out about Greta by chance and then went to see her with a photographer.
He then informed the media. Of course, one should not completely ignore the fact that her parents are not unknown people in Sweden, as her father is an actor and producer and her mother is an opera singer.
Not to be neglected: Greta Thunberg did not sit on any building wall during her strike, but rather in a very public manner at the Swedish parliament [2] .

Nevertheless, the interaction between Rentzhog and Greta Thunberg has rarely been discussed in the media, but a secretly planned action is unlikely [3].

The thesis is therefore FALSE

thesis

PURELY COINCIDENT, Mr. Rentzhog also has excellent contacts with organizations that are well-funded and have dense, global networks and very rich donors.

Fact check

Rentzhog has had a financial market communications office since 2004 and was a member of the Climate Reality organization founded by Al Gore in 2007. In this respect, he of course has contacts with various organizations and has worked on various climate projects in the past.

Renthzog also says that he was able to help Greta Thunberg a lot with his contacts and network, and in return Greta supported him in a campaign  [2].

“We are a platform with great global reach and we helped Greta get her message heard. This shows that we have reach – and people have probably invested in that. This is nothing to be ashamed of.”

The thesis is therefore CORRECT.

thesis

PURELY COINCIDENT, he is also chairman of the think tank “Global Challenge”.

Fact check

No, he is not the chairman of Global Challenge [4].

The thesis is FALSE.

thesis

PURELY COINCIDENT, Greta's mother published a new book about herself and Greta a few days later.

Fact check

In August 2018, Greta Thunberg's mother Malena Ernman was probably the most famous person in the family; she had taken part in the ESC in 2009 [5] and was known to a broad public.

Because of this fame and living with Greta Thunberg, she wrote the book “Scenes from the Heart” long before Greta's school strike began.
The publication of the book in August and the start of Greta Thunberg's strike were actually a coincidence , because Greta Thunberg's first day of strike was on August 20, 2018, the first day of school after the summer holidays [6] .

However, a book publication is not scheduled purely by chance and especially not if the child decides to go on school strike during the summer holidays. What remains unclear, however, is whether Greta Thunberg consciously decided on this date [7].

The thesis is partly conceivable, but not confirmed.

thesis

And of course, PURELY COINCIDENT, Ingmar Rentzhog posted his touching photo of Greta on Instagram and Facebook along with a long, heartwarming article on the very day of the book's launch.

Fact check

Of course, Ingmar Rentzhog knows Greta Thunberg's parents, but he probably jumped on the bandwagon of her fame in the opposite way.

Nevertheless, it should not be forgotten that Rentzhog, of course, also drove the PR campaign [8].

Conversely, this thesis is likely to hold true.

thesis

PURELY COINCIDENT he also became chairman of the think tank mentioned on that very day. Which is PURELY COINCIDENT sponsored by a billionaire and ex-minister from the Social Democratic Workers' Party.

Fact check

However, the claim about Kristina Persson is problematic because she is not a billionaire. This emerges from the Forbes publication “THE RICHEST PEOPLE IN THE WORLD” [9] (filter by either “Persson” or “Sweden”).

This thesis is FALSE.

thesis

The icing on the cake was an appearance on Swedish TV with a fiery plea for saving the climate. What the pro-Merkel media, of course, didn't show and only revealed in a clip the following day: the hall was almost empty...

Fact check

It was journalist Andreas Henriksson's blog that drew attention to it.
In Katowice, Greta Thunberg spoke to almost empty stands. The empty seats were not shown, but several million people were able to see this speech on TV [10] .

Henriksson, on the other hand, now sees his research being misused [11]:

That's the problem. Right-wing activists misused my research for their own purposes. For her smear campaign against Greta, her mother and against left-wing activists who, in her opinion, were manipulated.

Henriksson also says clearly that Thunberg is not a PR product for him. In his eyes, she really believes in what she does:

No, it is not a PR product. She really believes in what she does. She is herself. She is a phenomenon.

This thesis is TRUE, but is used with incorrect intention.

By the way: It is Henriksson, of all people, that Thunberg's critics are referring to, but he exactly denies the PR puppet thesis [12].


thesis

IT'S PURELY COINCIDENT that Greta's dad is not only the managing director of both Ernman Production AB and Northern Grace AB, both listed companies in Sweden with the same address in a posh district of Stockholm, whose shares have basically gone through the roof since Greta first appeared...

Fact check

Svante Thunberg has two production companies. Ernman Production is a production company for films and events. Northern Grace AB has had almost zero power for years [13] . The Correctiv also writes in its fact check [14] :

That's not true: According to business information available online, one of Svante Thunberg's companies, Ernman Production AB , made a similar amount of sales in 2018 as in 2016. It also achieved less sales in 2015 and 2017 than in 2016. The father's second company, Northern Grace AB , has not generated any sales in recent years. The companies' sales did not increase noticeably as Greta Thunberg became more famous.

Even more: Svante Thunberg told Correctiv that there were no shares in the company:

 “There are no shares in our company and you cannot invest in them”

You have to differentiate between the Swedish company forms: The private stock corporation (AB) is the most widespread and is similar to the GmbH. The public stock corporation (i.e. listed on the stock exchange) (AB publ.) can be compared with the AG [15].

This theory is mixed: YES, he has two production companies. NO, Greta Thunberg has not had a significant impact on sales to date. Accordingly, there are no stocks or prices.

thesis

...he (note: this means Svante Thunberg) is also PURELY COINCIDENT the promoter of the company “WeDontHaveTimeAB”, whose founder is PURELY COINCIDENTLY Ingmar Rentzhog and whose business model is based on the connection via the Paris Agreement and the promotion of the big business with climate information and CO2 certificates financed.

Fact check

“We don't have time AB” is the company owned by Rentzhog, who founded it in 2017. Svante Thunberg has nothing to do with it and is not their official partner [16] . What is meant by “promoter” in the chain letter therefore remains open and would have to be specified by the author of the chain letter.

In this sense, a promoter is actually someone who supports (financially) or advertises publicly. But the company was born from crowdfunding with over 550 investors. Svante Thunberg finds no mention in the investor documents [17].

The chain letter is too vague at this point with the term “promoter”. There is no official partner connection between Svante Thunberg and “We don’t have time AB”.

thesis

This “noble” company exclusively does PR for the Paris Agreements and the CO2 agenda to “save the climate”, which PURELY ACCIDENTALLY brought these CO2 certificates into the world.

[…]

It is now known that these CO2 certificates are big business and anything but an effective weapon against environmental pollution and CO2. The idea of ​​trading in pollution licenses, which was intended to encourage the economy to save energy and protect the climate, was simply turned into its opposite by the industry.

Fact check

We don't have time does not trade in CO2 certificates, but rather buys them and removes them from trading [18] . A resale, i.e. a “trade”, is not further defined. Even a fact check by Swiss broadcasting could not verify this theory [19] .

According to media reports, the father works with the climate protection platform “We don’t have time”. However, he is neither listed there as an employee nor as a partner. He obviously seems to share his daughter's opinion and encourages her involvement. However, it seems risky to derive an accusation of manipulation from this.

This thesis is FALSE.

thesis

Behind “WeDontHaveTime” are “activists” from “Extinction Rebellion”, an international left-wing radical environmental protection movement.

Fact check

There is only one overlap with the topic of Extinction Rebellion, an international organization founded in Great Britain on October 31, 2018. You can also find this out from the Correctiv article. Here it is [14]:

We Don't Have Time only wrote an article about the activist network Extinction Rebellion . There are no connections between Exctinction Rebellion and Rentzhog's company.

This thesis is FALSE.

thesis

Greta has probably been very interested in the topic of climate change and has worked her way into it - her parents, who are driven by financial interests, will not be innocent of this.

Fact check

This is a repetition of the supposed interests of the parents, which, however, could not be proven.

This thesis is a duplication of the previous allegations.

thesis

It would be typical for an Asperger's patient to experience climate change as such a danger and threat that she actually believes all the dangers that are presented to her.

Fact check

The mention of Asperger's syndrome always plays a role in the allegations against Greta Thunberg. However, according to Thunberg's own statements, Asperger's syndrome may have encouraged her to be so committed to climate protection and to focus on this goal. She said this in an interview on the Skavlan talk show [20]:

Whether this limits her objectivity is merely an assumption that she is accused of. She sees her views as fact-based [21]:

It doesn't make me more radical, but it makes me more realistic. I look at the statistics of how much emissions have increased and how much they need to be reduced. And then I think to myself, okay this is what it looks like, this is what I have to do. And my conscience won't allow me not to act. I have to do something - otherwise I won't be able to sleep at night.

This thesis is subjective and can be interpreted in two ways.

thesis

And Greta is sitting on the train again and having her photo taken while eating. Between mountains of plastic packaging and her disposable coffee cup.

Fact check

This thesis is based on a well-known picture of Greta Thunberg, which she herself published on January 22, 2019:

In an interview with Spiegel Online she was asked specifically about this accusation [22]:

SPIEGEL ONLINE: You were attacked because you ate toast from a plastic container on the train to Davos...

Thunberg: We took the train for 32 hours. We had to eat something on the way, and these products are packaged in plastic. And I didn’t bring all the food on the table on the train with me.

This thesis uses a hyperbole (“mountains of plastic packaging”) and refers to a popular section that is not generally applicable.

Finally

The chain letter as a whole is a narrative in itself, which uses various elements. An important stylistic device is the dehumanization of Greta Thunberg by portraying her as a puppet in a PR game. By the way, this is a simple psychological trick: with the help of dehumanization, it is easier to build up anger or even hatred towards a person. In this case, Greta Thunberg becomes a projection surface for anger towards the climate movement.

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In addition, the chain letter offers little to no sources that had to be laboriously identified for this fact check. That's not actually how the game works! Due to the complete lack of facts, the chain letter is opinion-based content. In essence, it is also questionable whether the chain letter is actually convincing at all.

Rather, the suspicion arises that the content, with its various stylistic devices, appears to be rather cynical and emotional. The constant repetition of the ironically intended words “PURELY CHANCE” reinforces the statement of a campaign-like plan. This creates a pseudo-chain of reasoning in which one essentially works back from the current situation to the beginning and then claims that there is no coincidence. The strong imagery that is in the foreground here is also striking (example: “left-green indoctrinated, naive young people”).

The chain letter contains some allegations that are based on real facts, but which are (consciously?) misinterpreted in order to then (consciously?) draw false conclusions from them. The chain letter is mixed with sometimes completely false statements and in other places with strong interpretations.

Overall, this chain letter is not enough to verify Greta Thunberg as a pure PR puppet.

The chain letter as a whole:

Greta sits on the floor with a self-made cardboard sign on a house wall in Sweden . PURELY COINCIDENT, on this very day, at this very hour, at this very place, Ingmar Rentzhog, PURELY COINCIDENT PR expert, passes by there. Take photos. PURELY COINCIDENT, Mr. Rentzhog also has excellent contacts with organizations that are well-funded and have dense, global networks and very rich donors. PURELY COINCIDENT, he is also chairman of the think tank “Global Challenge”. PURELY COINCIDENT, Greta's mother published a new book about herself and Greta a few days later. And of course, PURELY COINCIDENT, Ingmar Rentzhog posted his touching photo of Greta on Instagram and Facebook along with a long, heartwarming article on the very day of the book's launch. IT WAS PURELY COINCIDENT that Rentzhog and Greta's mother had met before. On May 4, 2018 at a climate conference. PURELY COINCIDENT he also became chairman of the think tank mentioned on that very day. Which is PURELY COINCIDENT sponsored by billionaire and ex-minister Kristine Person of the Social Democratic Workers' Party.

[mk_ad]

And the PR campaign begins for the left-green indoctrinated, naive young people around the world. A teenager with Asperger's syndrome who is constantly truant from school and is used as a driving force for donations and for spreading left-wing messages, that is moving like crazy and is managed perfectly. The icing on the cake was an appearance on Swedish TV with a fiery plea for saving the climate. What the pro-Merkel media, of course, didn't show and only revealed in a clip the following day: the hall was almost empty...

PURELY COINCIDENT, Greta's dad is not only the managing director of both Ernman Production AB and Northern Grace AB, both listed companies in Sweden with an identical address in a posh district of Stockholm, whose shares have virtually gone through the roof since Greta's first appearance, he also happens to be one of them PURELY COINCIDENT Promoter of the company “WeDontHaveTimeAB”, whose founder PURELY COINCIDENTLY Ingmar Rentzhog and which finances its business model with the connection via the Paris Agreement and the promotion of the big business with climate information and CO2 certificates. This “noble” company exclusively does PR for the Paris Agreements and the CO2 agenda to “save the climate”, which PURELY ACCIDENTALLY brought these CO2 certificates into the world. Behind “WeDontHaveTime” are “activists” from “Extinction Rebellion”, an international left-wing radical environmental protection movement. After Rentzhog promoted the new issue of “WeDontHaveTime” with Greta, around one million euros were collected. Needless to say, this stock has also shot up sharply since the Greta PR. It is now known that these CO2 certificates are big business and anything but an effective weapon against environmental pollution and CO2. The idea of ​​trading in pollution licenses, which was intended to encourage the economy to save energy and protect the climate, was simply turned into its opposite by the industry. Even a highly official study presented in Berlin states that companies do not pay extra through European emissions trading, but rather do business worth millions.

Greta has probably been very interested in the topic of climate change and has worked her way into it - her parents, who are driven by financial interests, will not be innocent of this. It would be typical for an Asperger's patient to experience climate change as such a danger and threat that she actually believes all the dangers that are presented to her. Quote: “I want you to panic, to feel the fear that I feel every day.” Is it really a “good thing” to panic the girl so much that she functions well?

And just look at what the “activists” leave behind at the place where they showed their faces after their demonstration. Discarded cardboard signs, instead of being separated and disposed of according to regulations at home, hamburgers in Styrofoam boxes, tons of drinks cups and tin cans, posters, banners, flags, decorated with super clever climate saver sayings - all simply thrown away on the side of the road. And Greta is sitting on the train again and having her photo taken while eating. Between mountains of plastic packaging and her disposable coffee cup.

You can only feel sorry for Greta. She doesn't understand that she is a puppet for purely financial interests. The fact that a disabled person is being abused for this is even more reprehensible. In contrast, all the left-green face-pointers at the demos are, as is well known, so ideologically consolidated that they consider their intellectual insolvency to be moral superiority and are neither willing nor able to recognize the true connections.

Greetings and have a nice CO2-free? weekend

Sources:

[1] https://www.aftonbladet.se/svenskahjaltar/a/G1AL4q/greta-15-skolkar–for-klimatets-skull
[2] http://www.taz.de/Greta-Thunberg-werbe-ausgenutzt /!5571776/
[3] https://meedia.de/2019/01/29/pr-marionette-oder-klima-galionsfigur-ist-die-greta-thunberg-story-zu-schoen-um-wahr-zu -sein/
[4] https://globalchallenges.org/en/about/board
[5] https://youtu.be/xE9Pl3mqRbo
[6] https://www.spiegel.de/kultur/literatur/greta- thunberg-im-buch-szenen-aus-dem-herzen-ueber-die-klimaaktivistin-a-1265206.html
[7] https://www.dw.com/de/greta-thunberg-szenen-aus-dem- herzen/a-48586023
[8] https://kurier.at/chronik/welt/pr-unternehmen-warb-mit-umweltaktivistin-greta-um-haupt/400404242
[9] https://www.forbes.com/ billionaires/#4d8d5ff1251c
[10] https://henrikalexandersson.blogspot.com/2018/12/klimat-greta-has-left-building.html
[11] https://www.focus.de/politik/ausland/klima -aktivistin-in-berlin-greta-thunberg-nur-eine-pr-marionette-schwedischer-journalist-klaert-ueber-vorwuerfe-auf_id_10523492.html
[12} https://www.spiegel.de/plus/ist-greta -thunberg-eine-pr-marionette-a-83fbe5dd-b300-44a2-89f6-f873e19bae6e
[13] https://www.allabolag.se/5568857485/northern-grace-ab
[14] https://correctiv.org /faktencheck/gesellschaft/2019/06/13/greta-thunberg-nichte-belege-fuer-systematische-pr-aktion-der-eltern-und-eines-unternehmens
[15] https://www.wko.at/service /aussenwirtschaft/ein-unternehmen-in-schweden-gruenden.html
[16] https://www.wedonthavetime.org/about-us
[17] https://www.wedonthavetime.org/about-us#investor-relations
[18] https://www.focus.de/regional/sachsen-anhalt/halle-saale-we-dont-have-time-von-greta-thunberg-mitbewerbes-netzwerk-ist-gestartet_id_10669388.html
[19] https ://www.srf.ch/news/international/kritik-an-greta-thunberg-die-haeufigsten-vorwuerfe-und-was-von-ihnen-zu-halten-ist
[20] https://www.facebook .com/watch/?v=249918005905962
[21] https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/heute/greta-thunberg-interview-auslandsjournal-100.html
[22] https://www.spiegel.de/ science/nature/greta-thunberg-the-16-year-old-climate-activist-in-interview-a-1251288.html
Article image: Shutterstock / Liv Oeian
Fact check team: Anke Meeuw, Ralf Nowotny, Andre Wolf


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Notes:
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