Every day provides new evidence for the statement in the title, but none so irrefutable as Olivia Petter’s article in The Times.
Hers is a veritable manifesto of today’s youth, the generation called Yips (‘Young Illiberal Progressives’). Each of the three words in that nomenclature is, according to Olivia, a badge of pride, to be shoved into the wrinkled faces of old fogeys.
Actually, the ‘I’ initial in that acronym should more appropriately stand for ‘Idiotic’. Olivia is a living argument in favour of this small adjustment, for she doesn’t even realise that, contrary to her intended braggadocio, she actually condemns the Yips with every word.
The idea of a generational conflict is nothing new. Back in 1862 Ivan Turgenev published Fathers and Sons, perhaps the most famous novel on that subject. The eponymous sons were the proto-revolutionary nihilists (Turgenev’s coinage), out to destroy the world of their elders.
Considering the nightmare created by the ‘sons’ 55 years later, the novel was nothing short of prophetic. And young Olivia proves that the prophecy transcended not only its time but also its geography.
Her generation, she boasts, is educated by “TikTok, Instagram and Twitter”, which institutions of high learning give a voice to “marginalised communities”. She could have added that such communities have a dominant share of the voice. That’s hardly surprising: research shows that Yips are “more censorious than their elders”.
That, according to Olivia, “is surely a good thing. My 15-year-old sister, Juliet, lives in northern California and recently lectured my British baby boomer father about why it’s offensive to deadname a transgender person (that is when you refer to a trans person by the name they used prior to transitioning).
“She also regularly talks to him about women’s rights, racism and the environment. Whenever I hear Juliet pontificate on an issue, I’m in awe. No, she isn’t tolerant of transphobia, racism, misogyny, homophobia or climate change denial. And thank goodness for that – because it shows my dad that he shouldn’t be either.”
Now, if a 15-year-old tried to lecture me in that manner, I’d tell her to shut up, have a quick Number One, go to bed and forget that hare-brained rubbish by morning — or else. Such a dictatorial response wouldn’t constitute denial of free thought, for the two sisters haven’t had a single thought, free or otherwise, in their whole lives.
They wouldn’t know a thought if it came up behind them and bit them on their shapely rumps (I’m inferring the shapeliness of Olivia’s rump from her photograph. In fact, her rump may actually be her face, hard to tell.)
These people aren’t sapient human beings. They are jukeboxes with a full complement of buttons, each corresponding to a subversive fad. Push one, and out comes transphobia, and how it’s simply wonderful and progressive to castrate prepubescent children. Push another, and you’ll hear a monotonous drone about ‘our planet’ being destroyed by aerosol sprays.
One can argue with people, but not with jukeboxes. For there are no other tunes linked to the same button. No matter how many times you push it, you’ll get the same set of disembodied slogans and shibboleths.
If you pretended, for old times’ sake, that you are actually talking to a person and tried to argue against a slogan by pretending it’s actually a thought, you’d be howled down. For, though Olivia and her ilk don’t really know what a thought is, they instinctively hate it when they hear it.
So next time you tried to push that same button you’d be zapped with an electric charge. Just like the nihilists in Fathers and Sons and the eponymous Possessed in Dostoevsky’s novel, this lot aren’t just brainless but fascistic – and proud of it.
“I’m not interested in tolerating the views of others,” declares Olivia, superfluously. “Nor do I think I should be. Rather, I believe it’s the older generation that needs to become more tolerant of us.
“We are the ones growing up in the modern world, don’t we have a greater sense of the issues that define it? It’s not about obstructing freedom of speech, it’s about becoming a more progressive society. Anyone more concerned by the former than the latter is the one that needs to become more tolerant.”
Remember Cabaret with its mighty chorus of “Tomorrow belongs to me”? This is another reference to the history of evil raising its young head above the parapet of civilisation. Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany and similar regimes show what happens when youngsters, with hormones flooding what passes for their brains, get the power to impose their gonadic urges on society.
Does Olivia realise she marches in step with other young people who didn’t tolerate the views of others either, all those Red Guards, Black Shirts, stormtroopers, hongweibings, Barbudos, Khmer Rouge? No, she probably doesn’t. She’s too dumb.
Paedocracy is an unfailing sign of incipient fascism (I’m using the term broadly). That’s why it’s actively promoted by evil grown-ups seeking power.
“Youth is the barometer of a nation,” explained Trotsky, who knew a thing or two about destroying civilisations. Alas, these days it’s more than just that. It’s also the spokesman of a nation, perhaps even its helmsman.
And the worst thing is that grown-ups play along. They listen to the impetuous youngsters, nod sympathetically and even publish their gibberish in formerly respectable papers like The Times.
On second thoughts, perhaps they aren’t really grown-ups in any other than the chronological sense. For history shows that the dominant group can impose its ethos on the whole society.
This explains the growing infantilisation of Britain (and the West in general), with childish babble passing for speech, hysterics for feelings, sloganeering for thought – and Olivia Petter for a journalist.
I enjoy your writing, but hate the subject matter. Such idiocy! Can’t you ever bring us any good news?
I first heard about the “silent majority” when I was just a boy. While they are not as silent as they were in the 1970s, their voices seem limited to the fringes of the media, while the vocal imbeciles still have sway over the mainstream. With more and more of this brainwashing going on every minute of every day, I fear that “silent majority” is now an ever decreasing minority.
My wife is taking some college courses and had to answer questions on whether her ideology is liberal or conservative. I tried to explain ideology to her and that ideologues shout out their feelings, not arguments based on judgments (and explained opinion, judgement, and argument). We (she and I) make each decision based on rational thought and analysis, not some knee-jerk reaction. She just sat for a while, then said, there is obviously a lot they are not teaching in these classes. No kidding.
Mrs C sounds like a sensible woman. You are a lucky man.
I’m becoming increasingly sceptical about these seemingly apocalyptic rumblings. Are things really that bad?
I look outside my window and see happy toddlers ambling down the street with their doting mothers. I close my eyes and notice the singing of birds. I fall asleep with the absolute certainty that (contra Bertrand Russell) the sun will rise on the morrow.
Could it not be that the things that bother us, are the things that have always bothered us: disease, ageing, death, the sometimes overwhelming sense that it might all be for nothing? In comparison to such calamity, the skirmishes (that happen largely online) between the various factions of the culture wars would seem to be trifling.
Like the jukebox analogy – so apt. As a teen in the 70’s I don’t think anyone I knew ever used the terms that today’s youth are programmed to spout in Pavlovian monotony. A more humourless generation never existed, and this bodes poorly for the future.
“Now, if a 15-year-old tried to lecture me in that manner, I’d tell her to shut up, have a quick Number One, go to bed and forget that hare-brained rubbish by morning — or else. ”
Don’t forget a good spanking. That is what that Greta needs.
You are right: one gets forgetful in one’s dotage. Spanking is indeed essential. In Greta’s case, flogging would be even better.