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Ciara O'Rourke
By Ciara O'Rourke October 25, 2023

No, Greta Thunberg didn’t urge people to use vegan hand grenades

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  • This video was altered.

A video spreading on social media appears to show Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg promoting a new book called "Vegan Wars" on the BBC. 

"War is always bad, specifically for the planet," Thunberg appears to say in the segment. "If we want to continue fighting battles like environmentally conscious humans we must make the change to sustainable tanks and weaponry. There are so many new concepts for battery-powered fighter jets that can carry many more missiles — biodegradable missiles of course. Something literally everybody can do to stop this nonsense is, for example, block the roads to gardens and farms so the plants don’t get overrun by these heavy, heavy tanks. Hand grenades — very important. If you use hand grenades, please use vegan grenades. No animals should have to give their life for all this mayhem and chaos." 

An Oct. 23 Instagram post sharing the video was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

But this video has been altered. It appears to have originated on the German website Snicklink’s social channels, where the videos are clearly labeled as satire and also feature Snicklink’s logo.

The original BBC footage, from November 2022, shows Thunberg promoting her tome, "The Climate Book", and talking about climate anxiety. 

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We rate claims that the video of Thunberg supposedly talking about vegan war is authentic False.

 

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No, Greta Thunberg didn’t urge people to use vegan hand grenades

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