Greta Thunberg has doubled down on her criticism of climate protests after a video emerged showing her appearing to mock campaigners still participating in the movement she founded.

In a newly released documentary entitled On Tanks Into The Climate Crisis – How Activism Is Criminalised, the Swedish activist burst into laughter when she was informed that a Fridays For Future demonstration was taking place in Berlin.

Fridays For Future is a movement launched by Thunberg in 2018, when she was just 15, after she began skipping school on Fridays to demand action on climate change. It quickly became a global phenomenon with students worldwide following suit.

In the clip that went viral, Thunberg is seen guffawing at the idea of demonstrations still taking place, saying: 'Really? They still do that?'

After receiving significant backlash online, the 23-year-old activist took to her Instagram on Friday to double down on her stance, slamming climate protestors for distancing themselves from her increasingly vocal pro-Palestinian activism.

'For context, this was the same days as we were blocking a weapons manufacturer there, and just found out there simultaneously was a police permitted climate demonstration in a famously white middleclass area by the very same German climate movement who cancelled and "distanced themselves" from me for saying that Palestinians are humans too...,' she wrote.

'Make no mistake; the world IS ridiculing Germany for being detached from reality and being stuck in extremely racist mindsets and tactics while being shamelessly complicit in genocide, ecocide and climate crisis...'

Her comments come after the documentarian who filmed Thunberg mocking the protests came out in her defence.

'Greta does a great deal more than just participate in demonstrations - that is, practising civil disobedience, suing states, and so on,' he said.

He added that Thunberg had outgrown her Fridays For Future era, and had determined that organised demonstrations and panel talks proved 'ineffective'.

'And that’s why she laughs - in the sense of, "They’re still doing that",' he said.   

'Greta herself came to the conclusion that... one must operate from the outside, in opposition, and with strong activism.'

Following her comments, Thunberg faced strong criticism online, with one person on X commenting: 'Climate was just the warm-up. Hating Israel is the real job.'

Another added: 'It suddenly isn't a problem anymore. So much for climate "emergency". Just shows the credibility that she has.'

A third said: 'Fridays For Future was a cult-like movement from the start, whose leaders secretly mocked the protesters back then and now openly mock them on camera.'

Thunberg  rose to fame as the face of the youth climate movement. In recent years, however, her activism has increasingly shifted towards vocal support for the pro-Palestinian cause. 

Last winter, she was arrested in central London at a protest supporting jailed Palestine Action protesters on hunger strike.

Footage showed the then 22-year-old activist holding a sign saying 'I support Palestine Action prisoners, I oppose genocide' outside the headquarters of an insurance firm.

A City of London Police officer can be seen taking the placard away before asking Thunberg to stand up.

Around the same time, she spoke out in support of several imprisoned Palestine Action activists who were on hunger strike.

She described them as 'political prisoners' and joined calls for the charges against them to be dropped.

She was also detained last year by Israel after warships intercepted an aid flotilla headed for Gaza that she was on.

Thunberg's detention was the second such incident, after she was also taken by Israeli forces while on a separate ship headed for the Palestinian state last June.

Most recently, she spoke in support of rapper Macklemore after he was dropped from Ed Sheeran's tour for pro-Palestine statements made at one of his concerts.

The 23-year-old publicly backed Sheeran's 'cancellation', criticising him in a statement on Instagram, in which she said: 'We are witnessing one of the biggest artists in the world being cancelled because they tried to "both sides" Israel's genocide against the Palestinian people.

'This is a clear and undeniable sign that the global consciousness has shifted. The normalisation of an apartheid state, and the attempts to sanitise or justify its actions, will no longer be tolerated. Ed, there is only one victim here: the Palestinian people.'

Thunberg arrived at the COP31 UN climate talks on Tuesday in her first appearance since the 2021 talks in Glasgow, where she went viral for dismissing world leaders' promises as 'blah, blah, blah'.

The conference is being held in the Turkish resort city of Antalya following a year of deadly climate-related disasters, including heat waves and floods, and another energy shock caused by the Iran war.

'It's a hypocrisy every year that the host countries are given an opportunity to whitewash themselves, and we know that these negotiations are filled with lobbyists, paid by the very destructive industries which are benefiting from our extremely violent status quo,' Thunberg said as she arrived.

'Our political and economic systems have become incompatible with human nature.'

COP31 co-hosts Turkey and Australia are promoting renewable energy and rooftop solar installations, but both still rely heavily on fossil fuels, especially coal, to generate electricity.

Previous hosts, including Brazil, the United Arab Emirates and Azerbaijan, are major oil producers.

Climate change is 'threatening everything', Thunberg said, warning that 'everything and everyone we love is at stake'.

'We should act to protect and benefit people rather than constantly sacrificing the global majority and the very planet we are all living on for a fortunate few to keep making unimaginable profits and maintaining geopolitical power,' she added.