The illusion of progress.

Blah Blah Gen Z woke something something.

Capitalism. This word has become the garnish for any conversation you have with someone that is too young to have had their mind moulded by the manic fever of Western Cold War propaganda in the same manner that Baby Boomers and Gen X’ers have, but too old to not recognise that life is sharply unforgiving due to a world shaped by an economic system that we didn’t actually have any choice in subscribing to. Especially those of us whose parents immigrated from countries where any attempt at a socialist reimagining of society was sabotaged unsuccessful for reasons that would require several other articles to delve into. I say all this to say though, it would seem, at least on its face, the latest generation of adults and adults-to-be in Gen Z and Gen Alpha respectively are more in tune now with the ills of the world than any generation to precede us. After all, the last 14 years have been marked by a myriad of arbitrarily symbolic gestures put forth by institutions that protesters have put pressure on so we MUST be making progress as a society right?

I don’t think there is a conception of Gen Z more laughable than what I just put forth to you, to be frank. Of course, it would so happen that this is the narrative that most people cling to insofar as what they imagine their generation to be (I hark back to all the iterations of ‘we are not our ancestors’ that have spawned over the past few years online). There is truly a belief that Gen Z have been arbiters of societal change and are undoing the [redacted] that our predecessors have left us in. But I think this change people rave and scream about is, essentially, all in our imagination. Don’t get me wrong here. I think that a lot of things that were permissible to think and utter in say, the 90s, are no longer things that can be said in public without backlash of some sorts. Some would say that this is indicative of a shift in attitude and rhetoric towards progressive thought. But in actuality, this is the exact problem. It’s ONLY in rhetoric.

In the past decade, as part of the uptick in social media content and its political variants (see my last article), there has also been an uptick in content produced by leftists and those expressing their anger and discontent at the material conditions which capitalism has produced (NOT the same thing). With the growth of said content and influencers who have created a following off of thinkpieces, enough slivers of socialist terminology and concepts have escaped containment and entered our lexicon that the context and meaning behind them have been all but stripped away, leaving the words to serve as nothing but hollow expressions of a perceived moral superiority. Yet another iteration in the perpetually repeated story of good versus evil that we so clearly yearn to play out.

Capitalism. Revolution. Proleteriat. Intersectionality. Patriarchy. And so on. And so forth. So many terms have found themselves flattened and misappropriated by self-imagined revolutionaries and messengers of left leaning political ideology, for the express purpose of winning debates online by being proclaimed victor through an overwhelming ratio of likes on a post that ends an online spat over something that isn’t actually productive, educational, nor conducive to actually helping anyone. But it provides the necessary dopamine needed to satisfy both the attention craving and the need to feel like a person making a difference in the world. This is about, 99% of what being left-leaning amounts to in the online domain and consequently for those who are chronically online. Which in the case of my generation? We’re talking about 9 in 10 people honestly speaking.

But the fact that people use leftism to posture isn’t actually that surprising. If anything, the use of progressive thought and ideals for the social status it affords you feels like the postmodern edition of Weber’s conceptualisation of social stratification under capitalism, in that the prestige that comes with being a righteous public figure/niche internet micro-celebrity is a type of power in and of itself. Let those who founded Black Lives Matter as an organisation serve as an example of such, being able to discreetly splurge on a house to the tune of $6 million dollars in cash back in 2020 with money that had been donated to them (Campbell, 2022). I think what’s most damning about the grifting, posturing, cosplay and all adjacent behaviours is the fact that the material conditions that the more emboldened self proclaimed trailblazers that Gen Zers and Millenials have claimed to change, haven’t at all. In fact, they are rapidly deteriorating.

For anyone that suffers from the same combination of chronic online usage and abnormal time spent reading socialist text that I do, you will have seen and recognised that coupled with the absolute abysmal economic conditions that have met The West in the past decade, along with it has been brought a steady rise of fascism. Well, rise is the wrong word to use because it has literally never NOT been there. But moreso, what I mean is that in the public sphere, fascism is being embraced with open arms in a way that perhaps in the peak of Obama-era, Tumblr-situated social justice fever was thought unthinkable by the average liberal (which is pretty ironic considering what Obama’s track record in office was REALLY like).

In the seemingly innocuous but constantly combative discourse around relationships and marriage respectively for example, Gen Z’s embrace of tradwife propaganda and rerocked gender essentialism packaged as embracing your divine femininity stand in direct opposition to the supposed progress our generation has made with regards to conceptualisations of gender and the implications of it being completely socially constructed. Another example, would be how in the midst of economic downturn, record levels of deprivation and food insecurity, wage stagnation and a housing market that is crippled, it would appear as though bootstrap ideology has never been more in chic than now, as you will regularly find the problems that sprout as a result of these conditions being pinned squarely on the fault of the working class. It should not be lost on anybody that these two things are happening while the welfare state is being squeezed in a vice grip by our newly elected Labour government.

Ultimately, the supposed progress made that was being celebrated in the 2010s and all the figureheads from this time that have since been placed on pedestals for their activism or what their very existence supposedly represents in spite of their material impact (your Obamas, your Jay-Z’s, your Beyoncé’s) hasn’t amounted to much outside of symbolism. I think if anything, our generation, like every generation, is easily placated, and in times of extreme struggle and uncertainty, has and will continue to revert instantly to the comfort and predictability of honouring tradition and culture, even if this means upholding the state apparatuses which actively jeopardise all of us. I think to deny this would be a fool’s errand, and what the the second half of the 20s looks like from here will prove anyone on this side of history right relatively quickly. But I’m not really interested in being right. This article isn’t written with smug or snark. Rather, as an emphasis of the fact that because our generation is not THAT much progressive than the ones preceding, this is all the more confirmation of the fact that we need to fight just as hard for each other as those in the past that our generation reveres did, in material terms. Debates, representation through media we consume and vague symbols of excellence are no longer, and more aptly, were never enough. Because like I said, fascism hasn’t gone anywhere.

Reference(s):

Campbell, S. (2022). Black Lives Matter Secretly Bought a $6 Million House. [online] Available at: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/04/black-lives-matter-6-million-dollar-house.html