askchapo

Nah the “conservative trending Gen Z” is a story told by MSNBC to help libs sleep at night with out having to reckon with the larger, systemic issues. No different than “latino and black men voted for trump, those poor fools.”

I work at an university and I'm involved with student activism. There's plenty of kids who are cool and radical, even if a bit hopeless/nihilistic. They don't complain that their cohort are reactionary though, they mostly complain that their classmates/friends are largely apathetic or cynical, materialistic and a bit callous.

American politics is reactionary, the great majority of Americans of any age are reactionaries.

In my experience, the early 20s are less reactionary than older people

Polls for the last two years consistently show POC Gen Zers and Alphas are slightly more progressive than their millennial counterparts

While white Gen Zers and Alphas are slightly more conservative than their millennial counterparts

tbh I don't think millennials or even gen x were as a whole meaningfully less reactionary than previous generations, I think there just happened to be some social pressure to appear progressive in the last few decades, probably due to "muh end of history" in the 90s, and that pressure is going away because history is starting up again

Reactionary in terms of conservative? No. Reactionary in terms that they almost entirely get their politics as a reaction to whatever personally irritates them? Absolutely. Most zoomer politics are not class based, they are based on how many of a particular annoying personality they encounter, and who tends to be on that annoying side more often. It's basically an end point of own or be owned media culture. But that can create space for you to make points if you are media savvy or personally savvy enough. Just don't expect it to stick.

There was a large drop in Gen Z turnout which seems to have correlated with a swing to the right in Young men for Trump as more left leaning people abstaned.

the ones who watch andrew tate are, the ones who read teen vogue are probably fine

Not in my experience. I’m in my mid 20s with lots of friends still in university and they’re all cool, progressive people. Ofc I wouldn’t keep them around if they weren’t but my experience is that most young people I meet are fed up of the system as it exists, the bigotry and exploitation inherent to it. There are reactionary shitheads in this age bracket but I do not think they’re a majority

They're not. What has actually happened is a hollowing out of liberalism and conservatism. Some Zoomers are right wing but mostly the sorts that would have liked Newt Gingrich in the 1990s. They have more socialists than any group.

What does painting such broad strokes accomplish? Does it feed a sense of political nihilism for you, make you feel like there's no point? Or does it make you want to change it for the better?

My experience is that the youth are not reactionary. Or they're incredibly reactionary. As always, relations to economic class and imperialism are what tend to set people's opinions on these things (in addition to culture etc) and these systems are breaking down more and more for regular people, especially us young folks.

Student movements have been a huge part of the resistance against the US Empire in it's war on Gaza, because it's really many fronts of the same war now. Students by and large, both in the news and from my experience, care a lot and are radicalized a lot. Anyone younger than that, who knows, we don't have a crystal ball to see how they'll develop, but they'll probably follow the same trend because everything is getting worse and there's people and movements explaining why.

So I try to be hopeful and say the kids are alright

I don't think it is really worth trying to cast political stances on a group of Americans who likely have voted maybe ONCE in their lives. The average American 20 year old is probably neither outright progressive or conservative unless they decided to major in Poli Sci straight out of HS or are one of those people who grows up in a political family and has the same politics/a reversal of them.

I cannot call myself 'early 20s' anymore, but I am still in my 20s for what it is worth and I do not think any of the people ~5 years younger than me that I've encountered in my day-to-day have been more conservative. Most people under 30 believe in climate change, can usually be convinced that billionaires (if not capitalism as a whole) are ruining the planet & need to be shot, and that free healthcare is a human right.

• 61% of those aged 18-34 say climate change is mostly caused by human activity, compared with 63% of those 35-54
• More than half (54%) of Americans aged 18 to 34 agree that “large corporations and government policy can reduce climate change, but individual action makes no difference.” (15% of them strongly agree).
  • they're right too
  • 41% of those aged 35-54, and just 19% of those over 55, feel the same. 39% of those aged 18-34 agree that it is “too late to stop climate change at this point,” compared with 24% of those 55+.
• 69% of Americans between the ages of 15 and 34 favor a national health plan as of 2018 when AP-NORC did their polling. Those 15 year olds would be the early 20s Americans we're talking about today.

various sources for above numbers:

• https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/generational-gap-climate-change-isnt-what-you-think
• https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/09/29/increasing-share-of-americans-favor-a-single-government-program-to-provide-health-care-coverage/
• https://apnorc.org/projects/younger-generations-stand-out-on-identity-acceptance-and-progressive-policies/

As always, polling is virtually meaningless when you're trying to generalize a group of ~60 million (18-29yo Americans) but I think a lot of the 'gen z is so reactionary' is because we (leftists) are primed to focus more on that kind of stuff. Things like a video or tiktok of some fascist 18yo doing a racially motivated shooting or a drunk 21yo cracker frat boy shouting 'fuck Palestine' at a protest are more likely to be posted/shared in leftist circles on the internet (even if only to dunk on them) compared to like - various content about on-going protests/social movements/etc. And I get it - seeing something like one of the various 'Stop Trump!!' protests that is just a bunch of white boomers walking around with signs can get demoralizing, hence why a lot of that content is never posted/shared here but...

We're 3 days from the year anniversary of the Stop Cop City protests at Emory University, for example. We're not even a year out from various university protests/walkouts/etc across the country for Gaza/Palestine.

I personally do think that the kids (i.e. the 18-29 group; but I'll even include 18-35) are the most progressive generation alive in this country and likely will probably get more progressive (don't quote me on this) as we age into the planet burning down around us & climate refugees are being created every other month by freak 'once in a century' storms & we have a blue ocean & the AMOC stops cycling and...

anyways, tl;dr - no they're not.

Hot take here: Yes, but not due to generational affiliation but because Americans are generally reactionary.

Boomers were mostly reactionary, Gen X were mostly reactionary, Millenials were mostly reactionary, and Gen Z are mostly reactionary. It doesn't have to do with generations as such though so we shouldn't get into this generational warfare stuff. There were and are pockets in every generation of radicalism but not enough to claim the entire generation. Maybe younger people, and women in particular, care enough about certain issues to be considered progressive on those social problems, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're ML communists and are following a revolutionary line. More than likely most could still be recuperated by reactionary forces, which includes libs, under the right conditions. This is just a fact of life living in the imperial core. It won't last forever but they still grew up and developed under it. It would take generations of intentional political education to have a generation that wouldn't be reactionary, according to Lenin himself.

I’m very early gen z so a long time out of school so I can’t say, but I sort of can’t see how they aren’t. Increasing corporate control over the internet where people increasingly spend their time and get their info from, all pushing a right wing agenda, the meteoric rise of a whole ecosystem of right wing grifters with easier ways to reach the youth, 4chan lingo entering not only political discourse but everyday language, including on this site, which is based on a right wing understanding of society. Obviously the youth are diverse and I’m not suggesting they’re all in the hitler youth, but with the rising tide of fascism across the globe I don’t see how the youth is going to be insulated from that and not move right. The political gender gap is ime real, literally every male leftist friend I had has become right wing to some degree over the past few years. Can’t say the same of the women.

I do think these people forget though how right wing the youth was in their day. Things were just less extreme back then. The right wingers today are quite shocking when I remember the “fiscally conservative socially liberal” folks who sucked, but they were atheists who would smoke weed with me. Now we got sedevacantist Catholics eating raw organ meat talking about repealing the nineteenth amendment. Obviously the youth isn’t really full on like that, but you get my drift. The stories I hear from teachers about some kids are horrifying.

I've been teaching high school and/or college for close to 15 years now, and anecdotally I haven't really seen the needle move one way or the other (at least in that dimension). The one trend that I've maybe noticed is that the students who are more politically engaged tend to be somewhat more radical in either direction--either very right wing or full-on commies. Even that doesn't seem like an especially pronounced effect to me, though.

I think it's more common to see a disengagement from politics, at least for issues that don't affect them directly. That's reactionary in effect since the status quo is reactionary, but the motivation (generally) isn't reactionary. What I see more than anything else is a pervasive kind of despair, whether that manifests as gallows humor, cynicism, ironic detachment, or nihilism. Some kids manage to forge that despair into righteous anger, and some of those manage to point that anger at the right target. Most of them, though, are just pretty checked out. That ends up reproducing the behavioral politics (if not the motivation) of libs.

Polls can say whatever you want, and a poll of the younger generation specifically I'd be highly dubious of the methodology and accuracy of: people that age don't use landlines, and if their alternative is something online/computer based then people tend not to focus and just give the quickest answer, it are intentionally trolly 'yep uh huh I'm suuuuuuper racist' (when their just regular racist /s)

It'll be used to justify further shit 'See the older generation are happy with their insurance, and the younger generation don't even want healthcare!'

At some point, “revolutionary optimism” has to take a backseat to reality which is that yes, younger Americans are more reactionary, particularly young American men. We can thank the manosphere and algorithms designed for the most misogynistic and hateful shit imaginable to drive engagement

Are Americans ~~in their late teens and early 20s actually~~ super reactionary?

Yes

Anecdotally there does seem to be a rise in "fiscally left, socially right" young people. I know teens who want to nationalize all major corporations AND ALSO want to ban "wokeness in video games" whatever the fuck that means.

I've commented on being suspicious of sweeping generalizations of both GenZ and Millennials before, but we should beware of the media presentation of these generations.

There's no visible leftism anywhere in the western world, so as young peoples lives become increasingly precarious and less and less liveable they'll logically tend towards the only alternative to capitalism that capitalism allows them to know of, which is facism. There's no big mystery here, if capitalism sole message to the people is that all of existence is a constant competition which only one can win, then you'll want to go for the ideology that promises you that you'll end up on top.

It's about 65/15/20 lib/nazi/communist-curious in my experience.

No more than any other. If anything they do seem slightly better on a lot of fronts than the kids I went to school with. Yeah there are the outliers but they aren’t really the norm either.

One of them at my work wears a trump hat and brought the art of the deal in to read on his break. A few other people at work are super ablest. Women seem pretty cool about lgbt people though. I don't know enough people in that age/their politics to really make a judgement though. I also live in a pretty reactionary place in general though so they might not be worse then their parents.

Should there be a distinction between being "politically reactionary" and being "a contrarian or edgelord"?

I think, yes. Even though I know that it might not matter in some regards as the outcomes are going to be the same but I really want to believe that its possible to get be shown that its pretty shitty to be a perpetual contrarian/edgelord troll.

US politics is basically a pendulum. Voters in general just swing back and forth over time as parties trade power back and forth.

If I remember right, if you go by sheer numbers, Trump didn't actually gain more support among any group? It's just percentage-wise, it looks higher, because a lot more people didn't vote for Harris?

Sounds like the kind of thing someone would push if they also thought being pro Palestine was antisemitic, communism is just red fascism, and other such nonsense