GRETA Thunberg arrived in a self-absorbed UK with a crystal-clear message on the immediacy of climate change and the need for action not words. Bravo.

Remarkable for any 16-year-old to be able to capture the attention of the febrile and Brexit-obsessed political classes. All the more impressive because she is on the autism spectrum and has Asperger’s Syndrome.

This, she told the BBC’s Nick Robinson, was a good thing: “It makes me different and being different is a gift, I would say … I don’t easily fall for lies, I can see through things.”

Politics struggles with long-term issues and reform. It can take big interventions to make them urgent and addressable now. Thunberg is trying, and all strength to her and her cause.

READ MORE: Thousands of Scottish school kids on climate change strike

But what struck me was the sheer vulgarity of much of the response. It lifted the scab of our society and exposed a gaping puss-filled wound of bigotry that is surely one of the last frontiers for us to civilise.

Because many people, who should know better, mocked not her message but the way she communicated it. The way she communicates is because of her autism. They were mocking her condition, her gift, her disability, her difference, call it whatever you choose.

Can you imagine if they did that because she sounded gay, or Jewish or BAME?

Spiked magazine’s editor Brendan O’Neill described her “monotone voice” as “chilling”. Leaving aside that English is not her first language, this was either a monumentally ignorant or a colossally offensive thing to say.

The UK-based Australian writer and lawyer Helen Dale went one further, though. She called for the child to be exposed to an Andrew Neil interview on the BBC. This was because she assumed the incisive technique of Neil would diminish her. “She may even have a meltdown on national telly into the bargain,” she honked hilariously.

If you didn’t know, autistic meltdowns are a key characteristic of the condition. The brain cannot cope with certain forms of overstimulation or challenge and can get tied in knots that lead to tantrums as it might for any of us, but are magnified through the beautiful lens of the autistic mind.

What a laugh, eh, Helen? That would shut her up wouldn’t it? Hilarious.

READ MORE: Andrew Wilson: Nicola Sturgeon’s speech is a landmark in our journey

As the dad of a 13-year-old boy who has been working ever so hard at coping through life with his own Asperger’s for seven years, I find Greta inspiring and the abuse deeply upsetting and enraging. Few things make my blood boil; this has.

We haven’t always seen Harry’s condition as a “gift”. For him it has been anything but at times as he struggles to make sense of a world that can’t always make sense of him and the clever and different ways he sees things.

But as he matures and settles into his own skin I can begin to hope more. He is emerging and discovering his own grooves and talents and building his confidence, pride and sense of self as all of us must as we grow.

But the great fear all parents feel is what happens when your child faces the big, bad world on their own. For parents of kids with extra challenges or “gifts”, that anxiety can be exponentially increased. And as I watch the discourse of supposedly educated and clever people, I fret.

What world awaits for my son if it is open season on remarkable young adults like Greta?

The answer lies in the facts that tell us autistic kids are many times more likely to wind up in prison and far less likely to find work than the average person. The behaviour of people like Dale and O’Neill only ingrains this problem more deeply – throw-away quips that create the space for prejudice and bigotry to flourish.

It is thick, uncivilised and embarrassing for the individuals themselves and diminishes our society and country as a whole. It should be called out and stopped.