Brown University’s campus was not its peaceful and picturesque self on this spring day. The cobblestone pathways and brick and ivy halls were not humming with the typical flow of students from class to class. Instead, a group of 1,500 students gathered like a clot around Meehan auditorium, demanding an end to the war. For some – it was seen as exercising the right of protest. Others viewed it as the young liberals throwing punches at whatever they could find – this new generation was just too radical.
“This generation” being Baby Boomers.
This was the Brown Student Strike of 1970. Generation Z is far from the first generation to be criticized for their campus protests.
The view of young people as being too “radical” is almost universal between older and younger generations. Before the Baby Boomers, it was the Silent Generation. Older folks were enraged at those “Beatniks” who loved to cause trouble just to cause trouble. The term “beatnik” was coined by San Francisco Chronicle journalist Herbert Caen in 1958 and it played on the recently launched Russian satellite Sputnik. This was both to imply that the Beat Generation was communist and that the “Bbeatniks” were just too out there – not grounded in reality. The goth movement (comprised of some lingering Boomers but mainly Gen-X) has long been criticized for embracing ugliness and unhappiness.
Younger generations have always been criticized for being more radical than their predecessors. It is dangerous to lump massive generalizations onto an entire generation without recognition of the countless facets of an issue. While young people generally are trending more left-wing, young men are trending toward conservatism at a relatively high rate. In the UK, there seems to be a swing of young people toward conservative parties as opposed to liberal ones. The issue is more complicated than a solely generationalist view allows.
In our saying “young people are just more radical” without any nuance, we essentially imply that young people are more liberal because they are immature. We fail to acknowledge deeper reality. Each generation’s form of liberalism sheds light on the distinct issues of the world they inherited.
First, we must begin to use our words more carefully. Liberal and Radical tend to be used interchangeably by critics of younger liberal groups, or at the very least Radicalism is an idea preserved for left-leaning thinkers. Radicalism is an issue present no matter what point of the political spectrum one sits on. The second thing we must clarify is what we mean by “young people.” Do we mean Gen-Z by itself? Do we mean teenagers? A study by the Pew Research Center shows us that Millennials and Gen-Z tend to be very similar politically, so this framework may be helpful in the conversation. Especially as Gen-Alpha is only now approaching the age of political consciousness.
When we ask the question about young people being more liberal than older people, we are quickly confronted with the pattern of people tending to lean further to the right as they age. This has been the case for most generations Gen-X and above, but as of now, Millennials are breaking this pattern. They tend to remain consistent in their politics as they age, and some trends show that they have even become more liberal. Many claim that this break in the pattern is due to the ever-radicalizing world and the general increase in emancipatory values around the world.
Writers like Arwa Mahdawi of The Guardian have a simpler reason in mind: owning property makes you more conservative, and because of the economy, Millennials are less likely to own homes. Therefore, they remain liberal. Jacobin Columnist Luke Savage expresses a similar idea in his article “Young People Today Are Uniquely Radical Because Capitalism Has Failed Them.” Savage claims that younger generations have seen that the promise of the American Dream has not come true for most Americans, leaving them distrustful and more likely to side with ideologies that make capital more accessible.
There is also the issue of the internet and social media. It is well established that the internet is a place of reactionary ideas, and social media in particular with its minimal vetting and lack of nuance, is a breeding ground for extremist ideology. As Gen-Z is most engulfed by the internet as a force, they are the natural scapegoat for political extremism. Millennials receive this secondhand. The issue is the fact that the internet is showing a radicalizing effect for conservativism as well, not just liberalism. The New York Times’ podcast “The Rabbit Hole” does a deep dive into the way that the internet can pull young people, men in particular, toward radical right-wing ideology. More than that, the internet has been shown to have a radicalizing force on older generations as well. As Gen-X spends more time on Facebook, this radicalization has spread up the generational ladder. So the issue might not necessarily be youth itself.
The attempts to explain and dismiss young liberalism are not new. There may even be valid reasons and critiques to be found against some of these social movements. However, we often neglect these valid critiques by using the idea of age and immaturity as a blanket over any movement of young liberals. If we take time to engage with the ideas being expressed we can see the way that young people are directly responding to aspects of the world that they have inherited. The Hippies stemmed from a world where they were being sent to die in a war that had nothing to do with their own country. The Goth movement embraced oddity as a rejection of capitalist beauty standards that monetized off of young people’s insecurities. Millennials are not just lazy – they’ve inherited an economic system where the cost of living is nowhere near the average salary, making purchasing a home nearly impossible. Gen-Z has inherited a world where in order to be heard – you yell. So, they’ve learned to yell loud. They’ve inherited a world of disconnect and dehumanization (largely due to the internet), so it is easy for them to think in black- and- white terms.
Clearly, the young radicals aren’t going away. And clearly youth is not a sufficient reason behind their ideologies. So, are young people more radical? Quite possibly. We might just need to reconsider whether that is the question we should be asking.
Are young people actually more radical?
Brown University’s campus was not its peaceful and picturesque self on this spring day. The cobblestone pathways and brick and ivy halls were not humming with the typical flow of students from class to class. Instead, a group of 1,500 students gathered like a clot around Meehan auditorium, demanding an end to the war. For some – it was seen as exercising the right of protest. Others viewed it as the young liberals throwing punches at whatever they could find – this new generation was just too radical.
“This generation” being Baby Boomers.
This was the Brown Student Strike of 1970. Generation Z is far from the first generation to be criticized for their campus protests.
The view of young people as being too “radical” is almost universal between older and younger generations. Before the Baby Boomers, it was the Silent Generation. Older folks were enraged at those “Beatniks” who loved to cause trouble just to cause trouble. The term “beatnik” was coined by San Francisco Chronicle journalist Herbert Caen in 1958 and it played on the recently launched Russian satellite Sputnik. This was both to imply that the Beat Generation was communist and that the “Bbeatniks” were just too out there – not grounded in reality. The goth movement (comprised of some lingering Boomers but mainly Gen-X) has long been criticized for embracing ugliness and unhappiness.
Younger generations have always been criticized for being more radical than their predecessors. It is dangerous to lump massive generalizations onto an entire generation without recognition of the countless facets of an issue. While young people generally are trending more left-wing, young men are trending toward conservatism at a relatively high rate. In the UK, there seems to be a swing of young people toward conservative parties as opposed to liberal ones. The issue is more complicated than a solely generationalist view allows.
In our saying “young people are just more radical” without any nuance, we essentially imply that young people are more liberal because they are immature. We fail to acknowledge deeper reality. Each generation’s form of liberalism sheds light on the distinct issues of the world they inherited.
First, we must begin to use our words more carefully. Liberal and Radical tend to be used interchangeably by critics of younger liberal groups, or at the very least Radicalism is an idea preserved for left-leaning thinkers. Radicalism is an issue present no matter what point of the political spectrum one sits on. The second thing we must clarify is what we mean by “young people.” Do we mean Gen-Z by itself? Do we mean teenagers? A study by the Pew Research Center shows us that Millennials and Gen-Z tend to be very similar politically, so this framework may be helpful in the conversation. Especially as Gen-Alpha is only now approaching the age of political consciousness.
When we ask the question about young people being more liberal than older people, we are quickly confronted with the pattern of people tending to lean further to the right as they age. This has been the case for most generations Gen-X and above, but as of now, Millennials are breaking this pattern. They tend to remain consistent in their politics as they age, and some trends show that they have even become more liberal. Many claim that this break in the pattern is due to the ever-radicalizing world and the general increase in emancipatory values around the world.
Writers like Arwa Mahdawi of The Guardian have a simpler reason in mind: owning property makes you more conservative, and because of the economy, Millennials are less likely to own homes. Therefore, they remain liberal. Jacobin Columnist Luke Savage expresses a similar idea in his article “Young People Today Are Uniquely Radical Because Capitalism Has Failed Them.” Savage claims that younger generations have seen that the promise of the American Dream has not come true for most Americans, leaving them distrustful and more likely to side with ideologies that make capital more accessible.
There is also the issue of the internet and social media. It is well established that the internet is a place of reactionary ideas, and social media in particular with its minimal vetting and lack of nuance, is a breeding ground for extremist ideology. As Gen-Z is most engulfed by the internet as a force, they are the natural scapegoat for political extremism. Millennials receive this secondhand. The issue is the fact that the internet is showing a radicalizing effect for conservativism as well, not just liberalism. The New York Times’ podcast “The Rabbit Hole” does a deep dive into the way that the internet can pull young people, men in particular, toward radical right-wing ideology. More than that, the internet has been shown to have a radicalizing force on older generations as well. As Gen-X spends more time on Facebook, this radicalization has spread up the generational ladder. So the issue might not necessarily be youth itself.
The attempts to explain and dismiss young liberalism are not new. There may even be valid reasons and critiques to be found against some of these social movements. However, we often neglect these valid critiques by using the idea of age and immaturity as a blanket over any movement of young liberals. If we take time to engage with the ideas being expressed we can see the way that young people are directly responding to aspects of the world that they have inherited. The Hippies stemmed from a world where they were being sent to die in a war that had nothing to do with their own country. The Goth movement embraced oddity as a rejection of capitalist beauty standards that monetized off of young people’s insecurities. Millennials are not just lazy – they’ve inherited an economic system where the cost of living is nowhere near the average salary, making purchasing a home nearly impossible. Gen-Z has inherited a world where in order to be heard – you yell. So, they’ve learned to yell loud. They’ve inherited a world of disconnect and dehumanization (largely due to the internet), so it is easy for them to think in black- and- white terms.
Clearly, the young radicals aren’t going away. And clearly youth is not a sufficient reason behind their ideologies. So, are young people more radical? Quite possibly. We might just need to reconsider whether that is the question we should be asking.