Thanks for watching! If you liked this, you might like my latest video on Abolishing Intellectual Property which you can find here: ruclips.net/video/HsNVKetbFDY/видео.html
You are a Socialist? Gross.... Anyone that wants Socialism is announcing to the world their lack of confidence and competence in their abilities in the management of their own lives... but worse, they lack empathy and have malice for humanity to willingly support the suppression of another mans freedom.
christapherwayne Bernie Sanders loosing to fucking Joe Biden is a disgrace. Bernie Sanders would have been the savior of America. Can you imagine 8 years with Bernie Sanders as the US president? Literal utopia! But no. Things have to go to shit. America is only postponing its inevitable Socialist revolution... Sincerely, anime profile picture
@@bingbongjoel6581 It's the Democratic Party, Inc.'s house, and the house always wins. If the left / the working class / anyone who isn't on board with neoliberalism wants to win, we need our own house. The working class needs its own party.
@@dwc1964 I agree and I think what is key is that most of the leaders of the working class party are.... or at least were, working class at some point in their life. People that know what it is like to live from month to month not knowing if they were going to be able to pay all the bills or not, and that are well read, effective speakers. The problem is getting on the ballot. But there are at least a few people in Congress that fit that description within the Democratic party. A quicker and easier fix is to convince people that are or were working class, and have public speaking and leadership skills, to run for congress as a Democrat. I will bet you can think of a few people right off the top of your head that you know that are or were working class and that is known and respected in your community, that would effectively represent working class people. If AOC and a few others like her in congress had some reinforcements the Democratic party will have to take notice. If a working class party had been started 50 years ago it might have enough support by now but we do not have time now to reinvent the wheel but we can fix the one we already have if more working class people get actively involved in politics. And that trend is starting, Cory Bush, a nurse recently got the Democratic nomination for Congressional seat. AOC was a bartender and is a member of congress. Ilahn Omar has a negative net worth with student and car loans, I think she might know about working class problems. That is what we need is working class support for working class candidates.
@@estherc.5559 The problem is that AOC and those like her will not break from the Democratic Party - even though that Party is openly hostile to her. I literally cannot figure out what she gets out of that abusive relationship. The only thing the Democrats have to offer is the threat of things being even worse if we dare to leave them. They don't even bother with "I love you, I'm sorry, and it'll never happen again" anymore, it's just the back of their hand across our face as they demand we get back inside and shut up about it. As for getting on the ballot, I'm in a party that's been on the ballot since 1967 and has a socialist platform and bottom-up organizational structure that is literally purpose-built for DSA to operate within, in stark contrast to the party they choose to operate within instead. AOC et al. think they need to run as Democrats to be "viable". But they've got it backwards. They are the only dynamic element in the Democratic Party, the only force capable of mobilizing "the base" with any degree of enthusiasm. *DSA keeps the Democrats viable* not the other way around. The moment they decide to run with a party that *isn't* hostile to them, that party would become the new *second* party, and the Democrats will be left with nothing but their money and bad ideas.
As a Venezuelan who started speaking english 2 or 3 years ago, I pause the video around every 10 seconds because of an unusual word you said, I'm learning a lot with your videos. Keep it up Tom!
The video should be subtitled if you find reading along helps (and the fact that it's annually subtitled should mean the translations are much better). Thanks for your kind words, glad you're finding them interesting!
@@bikbok435 as a Venezuelan college student, and son of college professors, I've seen the awful development of the so called "21 century socialism" in my country. This is not socialism at all. This is just a bunch of thieves and murderers hiding behind a red flag. Saying that Maduro's regime is socialism is like saying that the FARC is dedicated to save the Colombian people. That said, I'm an advocate of social democracy, I consider that a society that doesn't care for the struggle of the weak is not ethical. I like Tom because he knows what he is talking about. The "leftists" I can't stand are those who argue without knowing the subject. Those pseudo-intellectuals that will defend a regime they know nothing about, based only on what is clearly propaganda.
@@jhonatanhernandez3568 Thanks for taking the time to respond. Yes, exactly, hence I would take great care in electing officials who believe in socialism as such; as the trust in their authority can easily facilitate their penchant for power, thievery and greed, which is how socialism always seems to ends up. Too much power corrupts. However, I'm glad you made a distinction and added democracy, but I do not think this governance can subsist on its own, nor is it sustainable without money flowing. It's a real tragedy your country is undergoing such insanity and I truly hope it can be salvaged one day.
Just saying that the regime are thieves and did it on purpose is stupid. Even if you attack the Chaves/Maduro ragime as an erosion of democracy / rule-of-law, the motives are clearly to hold onto power in the face of civil unrest, not just personal greed. The real problem is a small country that's been made 100% dependent on foreign capitalists (through petro-dollar imports) is going to get fucked up when they attack the only hand that feeds them. That's the dismal reality. Same shit is happened in Nicaragua, but the regime took the opposite route and tried to appease the IMF, only to have to crack down on unrest coming from the other side. With such severe economic problems, there is no way democracy can hold. Not when people are literally fucking starving. The problem is global capitalist imperialism, not internal policy.
On a cultural level, I think the turn towards socialism might have something to do with all the negging millenials have recieved about not growing up. How does one grow up have houses and kids, but if you can't afford to do either where does that really leave you. Especially when you're overworked and getting very few corporate benefits for that work. The anxiety of not being being able to give birth to a following generation might be a push for a more equitable system.
Yeah, I think that's probably played a pretty big role too. It's definitely drawn many people's attention to the inequities of the present system in a way that might not have happened otherwise.
FreyaEinde “Back in my day it didn’t matter if we couldn’t feed our many children and didn’t lay around and think of the consequences, we were too busy having children! If it wasn’t for that you wouldn’t be here!”
@@jblue1622 You're not my real dad! But in a seriousness my dad was a truck delivery person who could afford to support a wife and two kids in the early nineties, I have an office job and can't afford a two bedroom apartment by myself with no family. Same city same state 30 yrs apart that's the difference. And we can't just pretend like the only system that's broken down is my generations work ethic.
@@FreyaEinde My experience is almost identical. I am married and have two kids, but we're only getting by because of my husband and father-in-law's (who should be retired) full time, roughly double minimum wage incomes, and my mother-in-law's social security payments. We all live together, don't go out a whole lot, eat simply, and are in a low to mid cost of living state, not in a city. It's a ridiculous difference from my childhood, and telling me I'm behind my parent's achievements just because I'm lazy or wasteful doesn't cut it because I know I am MORE frugal than they were in many ways. It's just insane how bad things are. I work off and on in fast food when we need extra money for holidays, and my coworkers lives are always miserable. Many live in their vehicles or hotel across the street, just coming to work to get enough for gas, food, or to pay for their hotel room. Literally half a step from homelessness and working full time. This country is broken. Biden and all these people who have been distanced from ordinary life for decades have no idea of how to fix a thing, they don't even know which problems exist.
I like the idea that the ideology of neoliberal capitalism has become irrelevant, but I think it will likely be the great fight of our generation to consign that ideology to history.
Yes, I think there's also some discussion to be had as to whether the skepticism towards global markets on the right in the US and UK at the moment is genuine or whether it might be purely rhetorical-is Trump, for instance, going to stop trading in other countries, probably not I would guess.
dontcare the problem is that the cost of living increase from moving away from the current model where our standard of living is propped up by exploited international labor, would rise faster than it would take to re-establish of our industrial economy. Ideally we just elect a government that is pro-labor aka leftist, and properly disempowers capital to improve the freedom of laborers.
No, centrism is the policy of the well to do. "You're under this boot. Yes it's on my foot, but what could I do to change that? I feel for you; now shut up.'
@@InternetMameluq kinda but not really. What makes someone a centrist is that their policy is balanced between right and left. Elites are inherently attracted to right wing policy because it is intended to bolster the status quo for the preexisting right-wing hierarchy but doesn't typically encourage revolt. Whether the layman in the right-wing realize that or not is another issue.
@@Soleilune1995 I don't know that I agree. The liberal class views everyone with contempt, especially the bulwark of the right, the 'heartland' folk of America.
You left out an important part. "A person who might have been able to buy a house before 2008, definitely can't now... BUT the person that bought a house before 2008 can likely buy a second and third one thanks to inflated rent payments, ensuring housing prices won't go down any time soon."
That's if they managed to keep their homes. Which many did not, on account of being sold a bunch of financial snake-oil during the '80s and '90s that was all designed specifically to fleece millions of retirees and working-class homeowners struggling to pay bills on account of flatlining wages and whose only asset was the roof over their heads. A worker who is privileged enough to pay a mortgage to a bank rather than rent to a landlord has one up on the latter - but it's not a matter of kind or "class", but a matter of degree. One is not "middle class" and the other "lower class" - they are both, if they make their living selling labor-power to Capital, "working class". And that relative one-up on the ladder is subject to revocation at any moment, through a variety of means, at the sole discretion of Capital. It suits the owners of Capital for the former group to look down on the latter, and the latter to resent the former, for all the obvious reasons.
@tyler t a few won; most did not. I, for instance, due to having to cash out twice to hold me over through periods of no job, have ended up with nothing, and no hope of ever retiring at all. The majority of "boomers" do not fit your image of affluent "Leave it to Beaver" families living luxurious retirements.
This isn't a left/right issue really. Just a privilege issue. Look at California for a good example. NIMBY's don't want more houses. As that could devalue their artificially inflated house profits. They definitely don't want apartments or better zoning to allow high destiny housing and commerce. That would kill their profits they did jack shit for. If that was solved then "poors (usually black too. Wonder why they don't want them 🤔 I'm sure they only have good reasons)" will move in, can't have that. Just build more housing. End must zoning. Tax land. End all subsides for buying housing, as people well off enough to buy housing don't need more fucking handouts. Then after all that, give subsides for low income people to pay for rent.
Isn't taking global warming seriously the literal opposite of short term and self-centered? I think a lot of talk about millennials is boomers projecting their own failures and shortcomings.
Well, i guess it could be argued to be self-centered in a way in that the first generation to really care about environmentalism on a wide scale is the one that would feel the consequences of the ecological crisis firsthand to the point where they couldn't be ignored. Environmentalism entered the mainstream narrative as it shifted from an issue of aesthetics and compassion to one of survival.
@@gewreid5946 It certainly could be, and it probably is to at least some degree. But whether or not it is doesnt change that making sure the next generation still has a planet they can actually live on is simply the right thing to do.
From an American perspective, the advert is ironic. Kids here are asking for books. They want tuition-free public universities and are being called socialist for it.
@@CrimsonTheFoxGod I'm not sure that's the point of going to university. I am an avid reader, but mostly YA Fantasy. If I am to get my self to read with no external pressure or direction, I'll be in the teen section with witch and vampire books. If I somehow decided to read a book on philosophy or economics, I wouldn't be able to self select a wide range of topics and become truly knowledgeable on the topics. I mean, even in university I still struggle to get myself to read Kant or Wittgenstein. I rely on professors to get me interested and help me understand the material. The piece of paper that says I got a degree in Philosophy still means nothing to anyone as it isn't viewed as a useful major to most, but it has enabled me to come to a better understanding of the world and my actions. I wouldn't of changed my actions to other people with just reading about moral relativism.
@@El-bv5dl This might be true. I tend to become extremely obsessed with every aspect of things I become interested in, most people can't converse with me when I get like that. I'm not disagreeing with the value of education, I was merely offering a mildly snappy quip reinforcing the desire for schooling. The real point is the cost.
@@afabuloussentientbeing8112 Very true, but not everyone is going to pick up a book on "critical thinking." nor have a group of friends with the same interest to practice with.
@tyler t And the socialist/communist movement is a 'natural' (a very spurious word) consequence of capitalist relations of production/labor. Without capitalism, what could socialism/communism ever be based on and seeking to abolish? Like the worse class societies preceding it, capitalism creates its own enemies and self-destructively sows its own demise by its creation of the proletarian working class (and the generalization of its condition) that is alienated/exploited by it for profit and which needs only to organize/associate itself enough to carry out its world-historic imperative, merely according to its evident class interests. And funnily enough, socialism/communism proper (the opportunists, revisionists, and posers of history notwithstanding) seeks to abolish the state structure entirely, not paradoxically by some decree outlawing it nor by destroying civilization to return to a primitivity, but by making it completely redundant to human social life such that it can't help but wither away to nothingness.
@@rickysmith2184 I said that because the above comment said nothing about people doing nothing other than farming. They referred "returning to primitive" specifically as something socialists/communists do not want.
Tom Nicholas Good to hear Tom. I really like the new direction you're taking with the channel - having established (& no doubt you'll continue to do so) your impressive theoretical/academic credentials, it just feels right to take a more overtly political position at the moment and in so doing realise the exhortation Marx made of philosophers, as memorialised on his tombstone. Let's seize historical subjectivity!
Glad you like it! I think there's a real balance to be struck between making this kind of work but also remaining accessible to those who aren't just out to have their views affirmed. Sometimes I see channels that describe themselves as "Lefty 1905" or something and I think, if I didn't already broadly agree with you on some vague level, would I watch one of your videos if I stumbled across it or would I feel either put-off or like there's a high barrier to entry in terms of preexisting knowledge? So that's the balance I'm going to try and strike in the near future. Whether I'll be successful in doing so is another matter!
@@Tom_Nicholas Your approach to this type of video is something that the world is always in need of: actual thinking applied to important and misunderstood issues.
Covid hasn’t made me a full socialist, but it has sure made me more open to the idea of making things like medicine and higher education “free”, and developing something similar to the “freedom dividend” that Andrew Yang proposed. All of this just makes sense.
@@thatonedudebutwho9919 If that is the label I am ok with it. I have just come to realize that free markets are not the answer for everything. Capitalism is the best economic system yet, it just needs some fine tunning to serve everyone.
As a 59 yr old that never bought into society's idea of success and never believed the words of most of those in charge I found this video and this bright young man to be compelling and somewhat hopeful I'll be sure to check out more of his stuff
damn lmao if the housing crisis wasn't enough to wake people up, they now have an entire year of events which completely dwarf the great recession in their intensities.
Nick Rodie In action that is not what happens. In this world kids are born without the opportunity to get any pie. All people are asking for is the opportunity to get a piece of pie. Opportunity is dying.
@@ProoGameR43 Sure. We all work as hard as say Jerry Seinfeld and we can all have networthbuzz.com/jerry-seinfeld-networth. It's not that opportunity is dying it's that the "opportunity" you speak of can only exist is some people go without. You have to take from one to give to the other because we simply don't have the resources to all live that kind of lifestyle.
coconutNiN Such an opportunity never existed. Capitalism inherently favours those that inherit wealth because they start with a headstart. If someone with less money ends up better off then them, chances are luck was a huge factor in play. Even that billionaires work harder then their employees, which is not true, we cant all become billionaires by working as hard. Its always been like this. This isn’t anything particularly new. Now though, after the 2008 crash and weak recovery, people are starting to see this as unfair. However, while capitalism remains in place, those with wealth will always have a headstart.
Nick Rodie the sad truth is that Seinfeld will be considered one of the best sitcoms of all time no matter how many we try to make now, sitcoms are kind of dying under the new system in terms of a popularity contest, like Seinfeld, although there is more opportunity for people to be on a sitcom than ever before, but you’re not gonna make Seinfeld money that’s for sure
@@jblue1622 Perhaps try not to focus on Seinfeld in this example. This is about resources. How it is impossible to give everyone 2 slices of an evenly divided pie.
The term "mainstream economics" is entirely misleading; it's really neither. We see now, after 40yrs of voodoo economics from Friedman-ites and Reaganomics. Most of the world uses a combo of Keynesianism and ideas from the Frankfurt school.
@@Tom_Nicholas If you are going to do It, at least don't equate mainstream economics to Neoclassical economics. The left does that all the time, but It's completely wrong
Very prescient. My older-gen-x SO would “rather die than change” (his words) on his politics. Everyone in the 80s were hollow shells of manic consumerism. I a Gen Xer as well, but I came from a religious background that harped on the evils of money. I was still a little smitten by the consumer culture, but consciously gave it up when my kids came along to focus on them. Today, to my surprise I’m on board with the socialists. Had the very word not been so universally demonized and lampooned by the economists of the day, I’d have been one sooner.
Glad you feel that way. My Gen X parents recoiled when I told them I was becoming a socialist, my mom even saying "you're being brainwashed." She was dead serious too, like full on red scare "communist are gonna come and brainwash your kids." Luckily she's reasonable enough to not harp on it too much, and I'm old enough to not let her if she tried anyways.
There appears to me (and I could be way off here, so feel free to say so if you think so) to be a political divide between the older and younger Gen-Xers created by, if I may speak metaphorically and speak in generalities, the older ones catching a ride on the ladder to success the boomers pulled up behind them and being more able to culturally fit in with and pass as younger boomers. Meanwhile, the younger Gen-Xers, while not as hard hit as millenials, tended to be hit by boomers attacks on things like education, unions, etc and subject to the condescending ageism pervasive through the boomer generation, and so, while not that culturally seperated from older Gen-Xers, tended to be significantly seperated from boomers.
@@dynamicworlds1 I think it depends mostly on the conditions of their youth. Many were kids in the 70s and 80s so were subject to a lot of anti-communist propaganda which permeated all media.
DynamicWorlds That’s an interesting thought. Maybe. I’m also more open to new ideas and change, while he is nearer to rain man’s need for continuity. 🤣
Honestly those Economists who've lampooned Socialism, shouldn't call themselves experts. Especially that there likely Paid Think Tanks by the Wealthy Privilege Elite. It's like History. Revisionist didn't like that History had a liberal bias, so they sought to paint, and lie about it, then point, and say it's the Liberals or Leftists that are Revisioning History.
As a gen Xer, you nailed my contemporaries. We grew up in the "this is the only way" era, and combined it with our aloof "ya know, whatever" attitude. Leaders from our generation, including our Australian prime minister and state premiers (who come from both the main right and so-called left parties), exemplify that awful combination as they condescendingly talk about "climate change" while then saying "but our economy relies on fossil fuel exports so we have to keep on digging up more coal and gas". Bring on the millennial revolution I say...
Thanks for a smart video. As a left-wing Gen-Xer it's interesting to align more with your generation than my own. I find a lot of my friends of my age are indeed more moderate. One correction: Joe Biden isn't a boomer. As someone born in 1942, he's actually of the generation *before* the baby boom (typically 1945 to 1964). This is known as the "Traditionalist" or "Silent Generation."
No problems, hope you liked it. And deeefinatly was keen to avoid any absolutism with regard to generations, I know plenty of Gen Xers and boomers who are far more aware of the problems the world faces than I.
I agree with your comment. As someone who is at the tail end of the baby boomer generation, I find it much easier sharing socialist ideals with the younger generation. I find most people of my generation don't question msm corporate propaganda.
@Tube Surfer To give a crump of thought here: The idea of considering something without coming from a place of ideology might itself be overly idealistic. Every social discourse is permeated by certain ideas seen as truth, whether consciously or subconsiously. It's permeated by a mode of thinking, that stems from the society you live in and your circumstances.The word centrist itself suggests mediation between two poles, which it often practically boils down to. It's therefore partly negatively defined by "not being part of an ideology", which still means it's affected by the ideologies around them as it has to be in their centre. Being part of a certain ideology is often confused with the kind of co-ordination, which happened in fascist and authoritarian regimes of the 20th century (Nazi Germany or USSR) and has thereby become a propaganda term. First and foremost ideology is about a value statement, an idea(!) on how the world should be. How can you properly make decisions without having a goal in mind? So how can you make political decisions without having an idea on how the world should be? What does centrism even mean in this context? What does it want to accomplish? And if it has an idea on how the world should be, is it really outside of any ideology or rather an ideology itself?
@Tube Surfer Thanks for the clarifications. I do understand better now what you mean with centrism. Since I am from Germany a two party system is a bit difficult to comprehend. One question for me remains, though. You speak about finding pragmatic solutions to modern challenges. Are there any value judgements on what is a challenge/problem? When do decisions need to be made? Also: When your modus operandi is listening to as many people opinions as possible and acting upon that, are all opinions equally valid or do you make quality judgements based on some set of values? Does it make a difference in how you view a policy, when it's suggested by an ideology? And last: Does it make a difference in how you view a policy, when it would alter the status quo in society? It's hard for me to believe there aren't at least any values in centrism you go by. "Something that can better serve the community and be less divisive." at least implies that there are some values, who are seen as important. Or does centrism only seek a mediation between all opinions in a given community, no matter how weird they may be? Especially the idea of making things less divisive is something I personally am not a big fan of. It puts people's emotions and biases as more important than the real effects of a policy and is prone to ideological manipulation. Either you listen to everyone, which makes it rather easy for people to make something sound divisive by being outraged by it or you don't listen and thereby risk not having a clue on how divisive something really is. And one last question. I'd like to hear your opinion on a certain model of making democratic decisions. There is an idea on randomly selecting a group of people for certain but not all political issues and let them research and decide possible political solutions in a group effort. Lastly elected officials would only be able to decide between the different offered solutions, but would not be able to alter them. I personally really like the idea of having more political power put into the hands of the populace itself. From what I have understood about centrism, this idea may even be more able to reach the standard you laid out than any elected official may ever be.
I thought bringing up Generation X was a good idea. Those members of my generation (i'm born in 1966) who had grown up during the Cold War Era in the political West grew up in a political climate where the Marxist-leaning Left had been heavily marginalized by the McCarthy-style political repression of the 1950s and early 60s, and had also been disconcerted by the highly centralized and brutally authoritarian developments in the political East. The political changes of the 1990s came at a time when members of my generation were young adults. Many of us were in a position to quite literally "capitalize on" the new possibilities that economic deregulation, privatization of public infrastructure, and the ostensibly wide-open spaces of the newly "liberated" East offered. So as you suggest, it is in deed no great surprise if some members of my generation feel somewhat incredulous and quite frankly a bit uneasy when the question is asked whether there could be other ways of coming at a situation we have come to feel is without alternative, and has provided some of us with wealth, prestige and privilege.
Of course, GenXers had childhood poverty rates and young adult unemployment rates similar to the Great Depression, not to mention high rates of childhood violence. Then during the 1990s, GenXers experienced a recession that affected their generation only. And this was combined with being the first generation targeted by war on drugs, militarized police, and mass incarceration. Plenty of GenXers aren't even slightly incredulous or uneasy about alternatives.
I wanna add my voice to the masses and ask for more of this :) Great work as always, comrade (seeing as you've explicitly identified yourself as a socialist in this video ;) )
Don't worry I'm on it! I had a couple of things I wanted to work on so glad the response has been so positive. (Haha, I don't think I was particularly hiding it before. Or, if I was, I wasn't doing very well at it...)
@@Tom_Nicholas I had my suspicions when you started talking about cultural materialism and your preference for that analytical lens over that of new historicism, but it's always nice to hear it expressed explicitly :) Not exactly what I had expected when I first found your channel by looking for PhD proposal writing tips on RUclips haha Speaking of explicitly socialist things, a few of us have started a weekly stream, the "Socialist Sunday Stream" where we get a few different left-wing youtubers together and talk about subjects that interest us. It would be great to have you on some time :) If you'd like to know more about it, add me on Twitter (@pdmorrinyoutube) and we can DM. You can also have a look at the first stream on my channel (yesterday was our first proper one - but we've got Kevin Logan coming on next week, and Leslie from Mad Blender coming on the following week). Join us sometime :D
Haha, I do always find it really interesting what videos it was that someone first watched of mine. I've made such a bunch of different stuff over the past couple of years as I've slowly worked out what I want to make and what others want to see and to find a happy medium between the two that I'm sure differentiations people have an entirely different idea of what my channel is about... I'll have a little watch of one of the recent ones and have a think about it if that's cool? Sounds like the kind of thing I'd be up for though. Am on holiday for a couple of weeks now but will drop you a line when I get back! (This probably also means I'd have to try and work out how to plug my camera into my computer doesn't it...)
More of this, please. You're an incredibly talented individual, whose ability to discourse is immediately recognizable. I was first introduced to your channel by way of your Society of the Spectacle videos and I've been pleasantly surprised to see this video (the third of which I've seen) be such a wonderfully inquisitive and insightful commentary on our present-day society through the lens that Debord gives us through his book, The Society of the Spectacle. You've helped introduce me to these new ideas and I've been both enlightened and inspired. I'm very much looking forward to watching your other videos and hopefully promoting you through your Patreon in the near future. Cheers to you! PS. thanks for the reading as well!
Thanks, really appreciate your kind words! Very glad you’ve enjoyed each of the videos of mine you’ve seen. More like this certainly on the way (as well as that third Society of the Spectacle Video in the near future too!!).
“Used them as a sleeping aid” Oh god, that was me, wasn’t it? I promise I watch the videos first while wide awake, and then go back to them to fall asleep to. It’s because I find your voice soothing. I do the same with Shaun and Three Arrows, so you’re in good company. Also- uh, socialism by definition, can’t be an answer to capitalism’s problems. It wants to replace capitalism, not fix it.
Haha, veeeeeeeery possibly... Don't worry, I appreciate your honesty and, as you say, not bad company to be among! Yeah, I almost picked them up on that point but I have to be really strict on myself about going off on tangents or else each video would be four hours long and would consist only of tangents...
As for the generations and the material conditions that may have had a hand on our new ways of thinking (or old ways, as the case may be)- I do see some very definite basis for that. Millennials are the generation that came of age in the new millennium. Which means we came of age into an economy that crashed hard! That’s the point at which we were trying to start careers. That’s going to affect how we see things. As far as we are concerned, that particular state of economics ruined our future. We couldn’t get good jobs after uni, we put off getting married because we couldn’t afford it, we are renting forever instead of buying houses, and many are also putting off having children (I can confirm, they’re rather expensive little beasts). I do see this as a generational issue. Because while it’s absolutely true that many GenXers and Boomers were badly affected (the latter particularly so with regard to their retirement funding), they weren’t trying to become responsible adults among this crisis. They were already adults. It really did shape the way many millennials thought- of the economy, of politics and of ourselves. So while I do generally agree that seeing everything through the lens of generations isn’t always helpful, I do think it’s important to consider the material conditions and epistemes that shape a generation. We can’t forget 9/11- which came about either during the childhood or teenage years of millennials. That’s a big one. I’m old enough to remember the world before it, and how the world did change immediately after it. I was old enough to protest the Iraq war (walked out of school to go protest when I was in yr 12). We grew up into a world of perpetual war for obviously corrupt reasons, into an economy that crashed and ruined our chances of having the same lives as our parents, and into a world where we were no longer reliant on mainstream media for information. That last is a big one- we were the first internet generation, and many of us were the last pre-internet children. Those sorts of material conditions will shape a generation, just as the civil rights movement and Vietnam shaped boomers. My parents are Gen X (68&69), and while they’re not exactly centrist, they are closer to the centre than I am, that’s for sure. I’m 32, and I’m interested to see how material conditions will shape the viewpoints of my daughter’s generation- she’s 12, so Gen Z (my family is rather unusual in that we hit all the generations without missing one- my nana was a boomer). So far, it seems that GenZ and the millennials are teaming up, for the most part. It’s nice to see- I don’t think we Gould give great credence to the idea that generations must always war with another. They’re only very loose groupings, after all. All it tells us is what happened while a particular generation was growing up. Useful, but not the be all and end all. (I’m totally a millennial socialist).
And one reason why we can’t simply say “millennials are the socialist generation!” is because- have you seen the makeup of the alt right these days? It’s younger GenX and a LOT of millennials. It seems that during times of political upheaval (which is common to our generation), people will look to older ideas to see if they can be rewritten for a new age. Fascism is an old idea, as is socialism. It’d be nice to think we all went left, but that’s just not the case. We just abandoned the centre for older ideas. Fascism is capitalism in a state of decay- and I do think it is in decay. And I think this political fight will be the defining fight of our times. Which way will win? I’m hopeful it’s us, but I’ve seen how much support the right and far right has, and it’s a lot more than we have.
Yes to a lot of this! I think there's a balance to be struck between taking what are essentially rough approximations based on age (and thus both always in some sense false in where the divisions are placed whilst also being ignorant to distinctions of class, race, gender, sexual orientation etc etc) as too "real" but also recognising that politics is historically contingent and, thus, that the best platforms and strategies are going to change with time. I suppose it all comes back to that famous "man makes history but in circumstances not of his choosing" [or something like that, also people who are men exist Karl...]. The circumstances change and we have to be cognisant of that.
Thank you, I do try to make the effort to go above and beyond with references etc. While I think it's usually well-intentioned, I see a fair bit of slightly lazy referencing on here which sometimes irks my inner academic! Great to be able to point people to where they might be able to read some more!
5 лет назад+73
the straw man arguments of the mainstream media (MSM) are omnipresent, they love to dismiss anything that contradicts what the corporations want as being childish... always has been that way, and similar things were said about the boomers during the 60s. You are right to point out a lot of this, but you should not be surprised that corporate media would do such things and that this would influence alternative media created by people who watch the MSM. TV and newspapers represent capitalist propaganda, not education, they full out lie rather often, they lie by omission constantly, or pass on lies verbatim from "sources" ... usually government or corporate sources. What we are seeing is the desperate attempts of corporations and governments to harness all their marketing and psychological knowledge, all their data mining and even military psychological warfare techniques in order to divide and conquer and thereby prevent someone honest from taking office. The fact that Bernie is considered radical is only because people, and especially American people, believe right wing politics is normal and "common sense." It truly is common nonsense, because before the internet people had to really go out of their way to be exposed to anything other than TV and newspapers or the "common sense" books regarding politics that serve the status quo who created all the world ending problems we are currently facing. If millenials are different its because we rely more on the internet than traditional media, therefore we are not so brainwashed. Being mature to the MSM means enslaving third world people and using all resources willy nilly until total environmental collapse, in short capitalism is a death cult and liberals are just death cult light.
That generalization of a generation is EXACTLY the views that EVERY generation has of those after them. Older generations generally see the younger as lazy and unmotivated, and younger generations generally see older generations as detached and unaware.
As a Gen Z member: No. Please don't call us Zoomers. It sounds cool but it sounds like Boomer and we'd rather not be associated with the average Yuppie Boomer.
@@GeneralNuisance00 I don't have a problem being called a Zoomer, since it accurately describes the speed our generation is getting to climate hell. Edited, because I like the word 'speed' too much.
Thank you, really appreciate you saying so! I think there's definitely something interesting in the fact that contemporary centrism (whether of the "resistance" variety in the US or the "stopping Brexit is the only thing that matters" variety in the UK is ambivalent towards the horrors that were committed in the name of the "War on Terror". In the UK, there is a certain demographic to whom Tony Blair is a kind of model of leadership who they wish would return despite not only the limited impact he had on inequality but also his leading us into the Iraq War. Obviously I'm not as well-informed on US issues but I see a similar thing on the establishment side of the Democratic Party with their wishing for another Clinton or Obama. The footnote to those criticisms kind of being that I do think we have to recognise and (even half-heartedly celebrate) the limited progress made by some of those leaders. Obamacare is better than nothing after all and the same with many of TB's achievements. It's easy to throw the baby out with the bathwater but I think we can appreciate the positives while critiquing their falling short.
Awesome video ! As a zoomer, it is funny is that since I was 8 when the subprime crisis happened, I never even went through the "realisation" that neoliberalism was dangerous. I have neolib parents, but I got politically distanced from them soon enough. So I directly was thrown into the burning world. Reading stuff on climate change, on inequalities, on homophobia, made me directly think that we should have massive changes. I wonder how that inserts into those politico-chronological analyses. Discovered you through my recommendations which advised me to watch your cultural wars video. Glad I did ! Thrilled to see what you will do next
The elder generation in news media picking on the youth generation. So fresh and new. "The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households." - Socrates (469-399 B.C.)
Great vid! I’m 46. Born in ‘75 and although I do consider myself left leaning, could definitely see someone calling me a “center-ist Dad.” I learned a lot in this video… about my own views and why younger generations may feel the way they do. Thank you.
Could be worse- I was the commenter who said I put his videos on to fall asleep to. It was a compliment! I watch them first while wide awake, and then go back to them when I go to bed. I just find his voice soothing. I do the same with Shaun and Three Arrows.
As an "X'er" I can tell you, I identify with the millennials more than the boomers because the economics have been against me my entire life. Nearly everywhere I went it was, " you should have bought, applied, joined, last year kid. There's no more or the prices have gone up."
Thank you, and always useful to know what people are keen to see more of so I’ll definitely have a think about putting more similar things together in the future!
Very good video. I love your style. The fact that you mention John Delaney more than once probably makes John very happy as this is likely the most coverage he’s gotten... ever x3
On the idea of history repeating itself, this current situation is very similar to the response to every other significant financial crash since the predominance of capitalism. When the market crashes, people want change, and the response from the establishment is essentially to resist that change in any way possible, starting with doubling down on the centrism, dismissing concerns, and then eventually they start compromising by going to various forms of right-wing populism, albeit with hesitation. This is the stage that the most recent class conflict is currently in, with the rise of Trump-like people (not quite fascists but not quite liberals either) rising to power in many different parts of the world. The next stage, if things keep going the way they are, will probably be the establishment finally being forced to compromise with the social democrats who will bring some change which may or may not be short-lived. Unlike some previous similar situations (for example, post-Great Depression), the left in this situation are essentially themselves just a form of compromise with the establishment. It's not like when the prominent left wanted actually socialism. These people are social democrats and want to keep the basic power structure in place. So, I think the time will come soon when the establishment realizes that it's in their best interest to compromise with the modern mainstream left, and then the system will probably collapse on its own pretty soon and then we'll have socialism. The current situation is also fairly similar to the series of events that led to the Russian Revolution, but I won't go into that. Wow, If anyone actually read this whole comment, I commend you, and you have my sympathy for the eye strain.
I hope you're trolling but if you're not, first of all consider the way that the French revolution and the American revolution ended. How many millions of people have liberal revolutions ended up killing? When one class is overthrowing another class, it's violent, that's not communism that's just revolution. Secondly, you should probably look into the claim of communism "killing millions" because the claims are basically propaganda and are largely unjustified, and mostly come from Nazi sources and blatant enemies of the Soviets, so don't just accept every claim at face value.
@@smonk4198 *laughs in Yankee* yeehaw, 'muricas mere existence is totally not based off of the deaths of millions of natives, not to mention destroying the rest of the world for its wealth. We also totally don't have gulags ourselves yhuck yhuck yhuck
Apologies to Ash who should have got a shoutout at the end of this video for his very generous support on Patreon! Of course, if you'd like to join him in supporting my channel then you can do so at patreon.com/tomnicholas
Hi, did you mean that Boris Johnson and Donald Trump are more-or-less white supremacists? That's what it seems like you meant at 9:00 but you look like a pretty moderate guy (I haven't watched much of your videos). I was just wondering, why do you say that they're white supremacists?
@@inclinevids he says in the video that he's some kind of socialist, so not a moderate. I don't know much about Boris Johnson, but it's almost a silly question to ask why someone would think Donald trump is racist. Just look are the language that he uses when talking about immigration. An invasion. An infestation from shit hole countries. The assumption that congresswomen of color are from other countries. Go back historically and look at him taking a full page ad out demanding the death of the central park 5, innocent young black men. Dude is an obvious racist.
I think the cyclical nature here is more about how hierarchies, specifically capitalistic ones affect societies. The constant boom/bust cycle of monetary economies are especially at fault here. The 2008 meltdown has us at about the same place as the post-depression era of FDR and his "New Deal." It's not an exact parallel, but it's close enough IMO to demonstrate how this plays out.
@@inclinevids My friend, Boris wrote an article in the past using the words ' watermelon smiles' when referring to black people...The dude said that women who wear hijab look like letterboxes. I dunno how you can say he is not a white supremacist. Pretty obvious. I mean it is pretty obvious with Trump too. Listening to his speeches is such cringe .
Thank you, really appreciate your kinds words! Anything in particular that was “different” that you thought was good about it? Always good to know exactly what it is that I’m doing right (or wrong), haha!
The concept of generations in terms of politics really interests me!! I myself am a zoomer, and a good portion of the people I regularly talk to are, too. Gen Z politics are radically different from even millennial politics, in more ways than one. First and foremost, Gen Z is defined as starting between 1995-2000. 1995 is usually what people say because that's when the internet first exploded (keep that fact in your back pocket for now). This means that the oldest Gen Z were still only 13 when the 2008 Financial Crisis happened. We mostly developed our political opinions after the fact, so this sort of doubt in capitalism permeates most zoomers. In addition to that, we're also growing up in the time of climate change and regular school shootings (here in America, at least), and we're seeing first hand how politicians seem not to care about what, to us, are literal life and death issues. Our general faith in both capitalism and our current government system is low at best. Which brings us to the next point: extremism. Politics for Gen Z are literally all or nothing. For the most part, you are either completely apolitical or you are radical (right or left, it doesn't matter). A lot of the apolitical zoomers I talk to all say the same thing: they feel powerless and the world is largely doomed. They can't do anything to stop it. The rise in doomer music is certainly related lmao. This has a lot to do with the internet. We get a constant overload of information. We aren't limited to what million dollar news anchors tell us. Zoomers see all of the bad shit happening in the world all the time, but not only do we see this constant barrage of shittiness; we also see that it doesn't have to be shit. It's hard to have faith in the current systems when you can literally see other systems where people don't have to work 50-60 hours to make ends meet, for example. This leads a lot of zoomers to go to either fascism or communism, given that those are the most taught about replacements to our current systems. (I could write a whole book on how the internet is directly changing politics) One thing to note here about the radicalism of Zoomers. This is mostly going to be about leftist zoomers, simply because I have more experience with them (and also am one). A lot of zoomers actually criticize millennial socialists for not being radical enough, viewing them to be more so socialist-align capitalists. I've talked to some zoomers who even dislike DSA because it doesn't push for more change. A lot of Gen Z are more open to revolution rather than reforms, and a lot are extremely well read in leftist theory compared to the general population of millennials. There's also a larger rejection of what some people call respectability politics (debate the right, don't be violent, etc), that millennials push for. This goes back to the whole life and death thing. It's hard not to panic when you're house is on fire. Direct action is heavily prioritized. The biggest generational difference I see is violence. Zoomers on both sides of the political spectrum are a LOT more open to political violence, rather that be increased militarization of police for the right or increased militant antifascism for the left. Think of icons like our 17 year old dear egg boy (the Aussie kid who egged a politician). Zoomers are accelerationists, for better or for worse. Not quite sure where to put this in, but humor is paramount for Gen Z. Jokes about communism, even among those who are right wing or apolitical, are commonplace. There's a general disregard of the law in humor, such as the whole Invade Area 51 meme. Gen Z humor usually disregards the law because jokes about suicide and the inevitability of death (largely due to climate change) leads a lot of Gen Z with the completely honest viewpoint of "what are they going to do? Kill me? So it's a win-win!" It's incredibly morbid lmao but what can you expect from a whole generation who are told that billionaires getting more money is more important than the literal entirety of the human species? Also fun fact about generations compared to astrology: 13 years is about the amount of time it takes the planet of Pluto to move into a new sign. 1995-2008 (what's largely considered to be the time frame for Gen Z) is actually the same time that Pluto was in Sagittarius, so all Gen Z share this placement.
fae of the internet Are Gen Z really more radical? In my experience (limited by time and geography) I find them generally more apathetic and apolitical. Can you point me to where they are engaging in direct action or radical political organizing? My experience has been like pulling teeth to get people from GenZ to consistently engage in political action, and I was actually surprised that most activists I encounter are much older than me, Gen X & Boomers.
I'm so deep in the left corners of social media that I almost entirely forgot that mainstream opinion of millennials is as entitled children. Which is so far from reality I can barely fathom it. Thanks for reminding me, I guess.
I was born in 1981 so I'm kind of Gen X with a bit of millennial mixed in. Your analysis of this complex is by far one best I've seen. Nicely nuanced and really nice depth. Please do more! Oh, I'm also German-American and have lived and worked in both countries. I've also studied international relations in college so your approach here really speaks to me
It was my first semester at university. I woke up one day, and picked up the Times in the lobby to look at the front page. I saw the graph, with the ubiquitous quantitative symbol that is a graph falling below its X-axis. I knew then the world had changed. But, I learned soon after that people have a much harder time realizing and adjusting to the change.
@@Tom_NicholasMaybe the Dow Jones industrial average, but it could have been another meter to check "growth" of the financial sector / stock market in the U.S. It was the LA Times front page from a day in September of 2008.
Recent subscriber here appreciating the sleep aid viewer solidarity! ❤️ I haven't used your videos for that (yet), but to my distractobrain, the clear narrative structure of a classroom style lecture is a really good focal point for falling asleep, especially if I've heard it before. In the meantime I'm currently cleaning to your videos and it's very good content. Cheers!
I really enjoyed this video format. Sometimes I find, in your WTF videos, you get a little detached and "lecturey," but this is really refreshing. For me at least, your unique, straightforward insights ought to go hand in hand with the theoretical side of your channel. Sort of like when you mentioned Foucualt--finding the political, social discussions where theory can offer unique "meta" perspectives has intense educational value.
Thank you! Yes, it can be a bit dry just chatting about the theory so it’s nice to have the chance tour some of that stuff into practice. I’ve done that on and off in the past too but it’s finding a topic that people will also engage with. In the past, I’ve mainly stuck to putting stuff I’ve looked at in WTF into action on critiquing some piece of TV or film. Great to see that there’s an appetite for this kinda thing too though! Gonna try and do more of it in future. With a bit of planning, I can hopefully do an episode of WTF on a certain topic and then a slightly more engaged video following up in which it gets put into practice.
your videos are a pain to understand for non native speakers omg I had to come back 10 seconds a billion time.... but honestly worth it lol such great content !! really appreciate the effort and work put into these
But also millennials grew up 'spoiled' which actually has left them disillusioned with materialism. With wages dropping and demands on the job increasing they are increasingly asking themselves why they should work their butts off for stuff they don't really want anyway.
Damnit, another youtuber I'm subscribing to. I need time for other things youtube. No but really, I'm less than 6 minutes in and I'm subscribing unless the video really goes off the rails.
McWilliams analysis is spot on. The bailouts - in the case of the UK some £100 bn - were dwarfed by the subsequent £ printing or QE- some 5x bigger so far. this £ was actually the printing of bank reserves and continues to this day. As banks are getting free money from the central banks, they no longer require your money as deposits, and therefore interest rates have remained about zero ever since. This is disastrous for those wanting a home but who do not have one. Counter intuitively perhaps, low rates worsens affordability for new buyers. It improves affordability for the privileged who have been bailed out: Those already owning a home have reduced payments. But low rates = higher prices. Renter, You're fucked. Interest rate is defined as "the price pf money". At 0%, money is essentially valueless. You cannot save, because with int rates below inflation, you are guaranteed to lose £ in real terms (it's purchasing power falls). And as money becomes valueless, so inflation rises and home prices rise and rents rise - most f the inflation the past decade has been in housing, and guess what governments removed from calculating inflation!! Yup, housing.. Your pay has little chance of keeping up. In fact, employers have even used the excuse that with low rates, u do not need higher pay as u can borrow cheaply. This is to misunderstand money and interest rates. Low rates means your money is worth less than before. Therefore, low rates demands higher pay. Just check out voting patterns! The young vote Left like never before, the old vote Right like never before (the difference has never been so large). As we have an old population and they vote in higher numbers, this has not created leftwing - socialist - governments. It may yet do so, but probably not for a decade
Great video as usual could you please make a similar video on the rise of right wing kids because I believe the main stream media does a great disservice when it comes to covering them because there are wide variety of political groups with different ideology like FN seems economically socialist , while the Swedish democrats are culturally liberals support gay rights , the Dutch party of freedom also supports gays . Economist follows 1950's style liberalism , they almost always supports the western foreign policy irrespective of the consequences eg Iraq war. Joe biden is a opportunist ,he follows the flavour of the season. If you follow his old policies it's not that dissimilar to what trump's been up to for eg. Immigration , racism , mass incarceration etc. Ultimately I think most of the politicians believe in "cosmetic" changes they don't care about any real substantive long term changes . The epoch creating changes happen once in a lifetime for eg 60's flower power generation. That's why I side with the situationist movement we need to create situation that forces the change to happen rather than relying on politician to do something.
Thank you, really glad you liked it! I'd kind of rather avoid making a "How the Alt-Right Came into Existence" video just because there's been so, so many of them made on RUclips often with an added perspective that I just don't have. I feel like I'd be uselessly piling another video onto a discourse where my voice just isn't needed. I don't know about all of the far-right European parties you list there but I do know that the Sweden Democrats are far from culturally liberal and are, in fact, very anti-LGBTQ+ rights. Indeed, I think they're even anti- unmarried couples raising children. And while there is some variance in the particular policies supported by such parties, I'm not sure what there is to be gained by discussing the intricacies of parties whose foundational beliefs (in those cases, "migrants" are less-human than "non-migrants") is so abhorrent.
I'm an economist and I can't stress this enough. Economics is NOT an actual science! You can't accurately predict what will happen with the implementation of certain policies. The theories of economics are THEORIES, not laws of nature (even though some of them are called laws by the economists, lol). When an economist says that a particular ideology or school of thought is better than others, it's their PERSONAL OPINION, not a factual statement by an expert. You cannot take the politics out of the "science" economics. There's a reason they used to call it political economy and I personally think we should go back to this. Cheers from Denmark and good luck to all of those fighting against corruption and absurd inequalities.
So glad I found your channel! I like the way you built context around your responses. This really reminds me of the "Yer Dad" concept from Philosophy Tube. Essentially Yer Dad thinks he knows better than naive millennials advocating for total social reform, but he can kinda get on board with things like treating LGBTQ+ people with respect.
What I love about the people who call themselves centrist nowadays is how much balance they bring to any political debate. Every act of groveling at the righties' feet is balanced out with hating on the lefties. Truly the ultimate equaliser.
I have to thank you not just for the specific topics and insight you share in these videos but for the way they help me with my master's research. Even when the topics aparently have nothing to do with mine, the ideas you bring up help me to remember an author, a theory, or an idea I was trying to express. In other words, your videos re-active my brian, specially during those days when I'm under the weather due to lost faith in the real use of what I'm researching. Keep up the good work and cheers mate. Best regards.
I'm just about a millennial, and definitely not a socialist. But I understand why such ideas might appeal to particular age cohorts at this time. Capitalism gained popular support (at the ballot box and in the workplace) by making it easier for people without much pre-existing wealth to play the game, and play it successfully. That game was capital accumulation. Examples of this might be the Tory idea of a 'home owning democracy' (first touted in the 1920s) or the sales of shares in the privatised utilities in the 1980s. There were also tactical compromises made by the forces of capital with the forces of labour (e.g. labour laws which enabled trade unions to have more leverage over employers). The net result was that, for much of the 20th century, it was easier than ever for groups from humbler origins to build their own fortunes - or, accumulate capital. Be that property, cash or investment assets. The so-called millennial cohort have the same opportunities to accumulate capital on paper, but in reality they are often left with very little income that can be invested into buying their own homes, or building a meaningful share portfolio or pension plan or whatever. In others words, I can see why millennials might not be thrilled at having to play a game that they seem to have been set up to fail at. And who can blame many of them for seeking an alternative?
The generational gaps are dated because we don't live in the days when a young person would take a low wage job and pay their way through school, today almost everyone is working in a low paying job and college isn't cheap anymore, so concentrating on generational differences too much forgets differences in a countries political system that more than likely is different from others example would be between the United States and the United Kingdom
@@dynamicworlds1 in the 40s, 50s, and sixties in the U.S at least you had an industrial base but as the industry became more technologically advanced those jobs became obsolete which means just as a boomer isn't needed for that job but also their children won't have those jobs at all which means today they both will have to go to school to train or retrain for a job that may or may not be there because of technology which means they will end up in a job that pays less with or without benefits to make matters worse if you are young or old and a victim of 2008 financial crisis, you probably lost your house now you're forced to move in with someone else or rent a ridiculously priced apartment.
@@dynamicworlds1 lmao, data-driven arguments don't take into acct individual financial situations like chronic unemployment, disability, which are complicated even more by state by state county by county jobs and economics, he even points out in this talk that taxes will go up because will have to pay more in welfare like pensions and social security
As an anarchist millennial for almost ten years now. I do agree that for the first time in my life I feel like a kinda big portion of my peers are engaging in socialist ideologies seriously. Idk gives me some kind of hope I guess
You take so long to reach your points, often citing so many quotes and anecdotes from history, that by the time you move on I have already forgotten what your original point was, probably in part because I've partially drifted to sleep. I strongly feel you could present the information in a more concise manner.
Good to hear Mark Fisher namedropped. I've been trying to get my libertarian boyfriend to read "Capitalist Realism" for a while now, and it's becoming more relevant by the day.
I’m a transistorized, transgenederized, transmogrified trans-human A corporatized, commercialized, industrial-strength consumer A goal setting, gym sweating, debt fretting freak A social climbing net-worker that’s always on heat I got my education, majoring in indoctrination Where they taught me to comply, to never question why And so I’m chasing an illusion, of success that’s a delusion That is sending me insane, exploding my brain And as we teeter on the brink, soon to be extinct "The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, and said "this is mine," and found people naïve enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows, “Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.” Jean Jacques Rousseau, The origins of inequality 1754 LAND......LAND.........LAND..............
No and I didn't actually know who that was but I've just googled her and you actually have a point. Usually the "you look like..." comments have me stumped but I can actually see why you'd say that, haha!
Hi Tom my good man, as a Gen Xer I can say that my former classmates and contemporaries having firmly chose neoliberalism and neocon which depresses me deeply. Being an outright Marxist shocks them to their core but baby steps do help in changing their outlook. For clarity I was born in 1979 so a young Gen Xer.
Being a "centrist" was more about pragmatism. The UK is surprisingly dominated by the Conservative Party. By the end of the 2024 Parliament, Labour will only have been in government 16 of the previous 50 years. If you're a British left winger, history trains you that you're not allowed to have nice things, you have to accept a compromise that's moderate enough win over middle England. The best we can hope for is not a government that gives us vast social reform but a government who isn't going to try to privatise the NHS and remove worker protections that already exist. It's rubbish, innit.
As a "centrist dad" (and Gen Xer) myself, I feel like this analysis hits pretty close to the mark. I think the major events of the last few years, the housing crisis and the covid pandemic are convincing both gen Xers and millennials that the current system just makes the rich richer and socioeconomic mobility gets more and more difficult.
Another thing to think about with the divide in generations, besides the “break” that occurred with 2008 and the economic change, we also have the Theory of Medium with Marshall McLuhan and his work such as “The Media is the Massage”. The age divide between the electronic age of media with TV and talk radio, to the digital age with YT and the podcast culture.
That’s true, the medium(s) through which our political discourse is continued has changed hugely. Perhaps that’s allowed certain ideas to hit the mainstream that previously might not have made it through the funnel of editors at print publications. I think that’s becoming less the case however as the Cambridge Analytica Stuff reveals...
I see Cambridge Analytica (and really all corporate-governmental entities whether private like FB or public like the NSA in the US) as a symbol of a conflict reminiscent of the dawn of the print age of media with the Gutenberg Press. Every new media age allows for greatly increased spread of ideas. This is both seen as beneficial and detrimental to the powers at be. At first the new media explodes because it provides a "new economy" of potential. But, then almost natural response that comes as well is the "Censor" and the "Blacklist" and general control which also comes from the authorities because of the spread of subversive ideas. While I do not subscribe to reductionist theories of human change, I do think that McLuhan provides an interesting frame by periodizing history by the mediums of communication. (I guess it's kind of like a different take on the Dialectical theory of history proposed by Hegel.)
But, another frame to consider: Gerontocracy. At least here in the US, their is a big problem with leadership (of the elite society/classes) both public and private... *cough cough Koch Bros.*... which continue to age into older years without having to give up power or pass it to a younger generation.
Hum yet people as they grow hold they become more moderate and conservative, that does seem to be tendency across generations. I know i dont have the same ideas then i had when i was 20. While im still liberal socially, im not as radical, and you could say, im on a totally different spectrum then most of the left this days. In fact the more i age the more, i am a libertarian.
I'm an old Gen X er, my parents are older than boomers, but follow that centrist line of believing all MSM and they think the internet is just crackpots with tinfoil hats spouting conspiracy theories from their basement. I am getting more left leaning as I get older and see hope in the younger generations. First time watching you, I subscribed. Ps I'm rooting for Bernie, Yang or Tulsi over here.
I fall into the centrist dad category, though not a dad. I was in college when the 2008-9 financial crash occurred, and could not find a job in my given field. So, I looked outside the box and became an insurance adjuster (there's always gonna be natural disasters, especially with global warming). Now, I work for myself as an independent adjuster, set my own fees and workload, and do quite well. I still have that idea of you have to look out for yourself and can't rely on government because it is wholly unreliable. I suppose this has shaped my view to support social progress, but in terms of economics, make some policy changes on the edges without ripping the whole thing up. But I was lucky, I suppose. I was able to look outside the box and find something worthwhile.
Tom you are a gem! Just subscribed. Very old Gen Xer here 1966. As I hid under my desk in first grade because we had to practice kissing our little asses goodbye to nuclear devastation, I had a similar understanding when faced now with nuclear plus ecological devastation... Wait a minute people this stuff just does not add up! Thus my RUclips name, toto NOW pull back the curtain the Wizard is back there doing unspeakable things. ( little did I know the meaning of toto in today's lexicon. LOL appropriately) Thank you for adding your effort to help us understand where we are. We can understand it. Some of us did understand it at its most simple base level in first grade. Not to mention other things like my best friend in first, nearly the only black kid in our whole school, understood this scenerio... " They just cast me as the gingerbread boy in the first grade school play. Wonder why?" Knowing look.
Older generations really disempowered and disenfranchised an entire generation of people and their offspring, then really have the gall to sit back and wonder why they're so disdainful of the almighty Capitalism (which isn't even true unfettered Capitalism, though they try to argue otherwise). Like, what'd y'all think was gonna happen?
Thanks for watching! If you liked this, you might like my latest video on Abolishing Intellectual Property which you can find here: ruclips.net/video/HsNVKetbFDY/видео.html
Just found you, really liked it.
Beautiful work, sir! I look forward to watching your entire library of uploads.
I don't care about left or right, I just want to grill
I believe that there is a need for people to have hope. The fact that people have needs won't go away.
You are a Socialist? Gross.... Anyone that wants Socialism is announcing to the world their lack of confidence and competence in their abilities in the management of their own lives... but worse, they lack empathy and have malice for humanity to willingly support the suppression of another mans freedom.
“There’s a good chance that the democratic nominee for president will support Medicare for All.”
God that one hurt.
christapherwayne
Bernie Sanders loosing to fucking Joe Biden is a disgrace. Bernie Sanders would have been the savior of America. Can you imagine 8 years with Bernie Sanders as the US president? Literal utopia! But no. Things have to go to shit. America is only postponing its inevitable Socialist revolution...
Sincerely, anime profile picture
Joeru come now, Bernie isn’t jesus. He just happens to be able to walk on water.
@@bingbongjoel6581 It's the Democratic Party, Inc.'s house, and the house always wins. If the left / the working class / anyone who isn't on board with neoliberalism wants to win, we need our own house.
The working class needs its own party.
@@dwc1964 I agree and I think what is key is that most of the leaders of the working class party are.... or at least were, working class at some point in their life. People that know what it is like to live from month to month not knowing if they were going to be able to pay all the bills or not, and that are well read, effective speakers. The problem is getting on the ballot. But there are at least a few people in Congress that fit that description within the Democratic party. A quicker and easier fix is to convince people that are or were working class, and have public speaking and leadership skills, to run for congress as a Democrat. I will bet you can think of a few people right off the top of your head that you know that are or were working class and that is known and respected in your community, that would effectively represent working class people. If AOC and a few others like her in congress had some reinforcements the Democratic party will have to take notice. If a working class party had been started 50 years ago it might have enough support by now but we do not have time now to reinvent the wheel but we can fix the one we already have if more working class people get actively involved in politics. And that trend is starting, Cory Bush, a nurse recently got the Democratic nomination for Congressional seat. AOC was a bartender and is a member of congress. Ilahn Omar has a negative net worth with student and car loans, I think she might know about working class problems. That is what we need is working class support for working class candidates.
@@estherc.5559 The problem is that AOC and those like her will not break from the Democratic Party - even though that Party is openly hostile to her. I literally cannot figure out what she gets out of that abusive relationship. The only thing the Democrats have to offer is the threat of things being even worse if we dare to leave them. They don't even bother with "I love you, I'm sorry, and it'll never happen again" anymore, it's just the back of their hand across our face as they demand we get back inside and shut up about it.
As for getting on the ballot, I'm in a party that's been on the ballot since 1967 and has a socialist platform and bottom-up organizational structure that is literally purpose-built for DSA to operate within, in stark contrast to the party they choose to operate within instead.
AOC et al. think they need to run as Democrats to be "viable". But they've got it backwards. They are the only dynamic element in the Democratic Party, the only force capable of mobilizing "the base" with any degree of enthusiasm. *DSA keeps the Democrats viable* not the other way around. The moment they decide to run with a party that *isn't* hostile to them, that party would become the new *second* party, and the Democrats will be left with nothing but their money and bad ideas.
As a Venezuelan who started speaking english 2 or 3 years ago, I pause the video around every 10 seconds because of an unusual word you said, I'm learning a lot with your videos. Keep it up Tom!
The video should be subtitled if you find reading along helps (and the fact that it's annually subtitled should mean the translations are much better). Thanks for your kind words, glad you're finding them interesting!
What do you think of him being a little bit socialist?
@@bikbok435 as a Venezuelan college student, and son of college professors, I've seen the awful development of the so called "21 century socialism" in my country.
This is not socialism at all. This is just a bunch of thieves and murderers hiding behind a red flag. Saying that Maduro's regime is socialism is like saying that the FARC is dedicated to save the Colombian people.
That said, I'm an advocate of social democracy, I consider that a society that doesn't care for the struggle of the weak is not ethical.
I like Tom because he knows what he is talking about. The "leftists" I can't stand are those who argue without knowing the subject. Those pseudo-intellectuals that will defend a regime they know nothing about, based only on what is clearly propaganda.
@@jhonatanhernandez3568 Thanks for taking the time to respond. Yes, exactly, hence I would take great care in electing officials who believe in socialism as such; as the trust in their authority can easily facilitate their penchant for power, thievery and greed, which is how socialism always seems to ends up. Too much power corrupts.
However, I'm glad you made a distinction and added democracy, but I do not think this governance can subsist on its own, nor is it sustainable without money flowing.
It's a real tragedy your country is undergoing such insanity and I truly hope it can be salvaged one day.
Just saying that the regime are thieves and did it on purpose is stupid. Even if you attack the Chaves/Maduro ragime as an erosion of democracy / rule-of-law, the motives are clearly to hold onto power in the face of civil unrest, not just personal greed. The real problem is a small country that's been made 100% dependent on foreign capitalists (through petro-dollar imports) is going to get fucked up when they attack the only hand that feeds them. That's the dismal reality. Same shit is happened in Nicaragua, but the regime took the opposite route and tried to appease the IMF, only to have to crack down on unrest coming from the other side. With such severe economic problems, there is no way democracy can hold. Not when people are literally fucking starving. The problem is global capitalist imperialism, not internal policy.
On a cultural level, I think the turn towards socialism might have something to do with all the negging millenials have recieved about not growing up. How does one grow up have houses and kids, but if you can't afford to do either where does that really leave you. Especially when you're overworked and getting very few corporate benefits for that work. The anxiety of not being being able to give birth to a following generation might be a push for a more equitable system.
Yeah, I think that's probably played a pretty big role too. It's definitely drawn many people's attention to the inequities of the present system in a way that might not have happened otherwise.
FreyaEinde “Back in my day it didn’t matter if we couldn’t feed our many children and didn’t lay around and think of the consequences, we were too busy having children! If it wasn’t for that you wouldn’t be here!”
@@jblue1622 You're not my real dad! But in a seriousness my dad was a truck delivery person who could afford to support a wife and two kids in the early nineties, I have an office job and can't afford a two bedroom apartment by myself with no family. Same city same state 30 yrs apart that's the difference. And we can't just pretend like the only system that's broken down is my generations work ethic.
@@FreyaEinde 100% true
@@FreyaEinde My experience is almost identical. I am married and have two kids, but we're only getting by because of my husband and father-in-law's (who should be retired) full time, roughly double minimum wage incomes, and my mother-in-law's social security payments. We all live together, don't go out a whole lot, eat simply, and are in a low to mid cost of living state, not in a city. It's a ridiculous difference from my childhood, and telling me I'm behind my parent's achievements just because I'm lazy or wasteful doesn't cut it because I know I am MORE frugal than they were in many ways. It's just insane how bad things are.
I work off and on in fast food when we need extra money for holidays, and my coworkers lives are always miserable. Many live in their vehicles or hotel across the street, just coming to work to get enough for gas, food, or to pay for their hotel room. Literally half a step from homelessness and working full time. This country is broken. Biden and all these people who have been distanced from ordinary life for decades have no idea of how to fix a thing, they don't even know which problems exist.
I like the idea that the ideology of neoliberal capitalism has become irrelevant, but I think it will likely be the great fight of our generation to consign that ideology to history.
Yes, I think there's also some discussion to be had as to whether the skepticism towards global markets on the right in the US and UK at the moment is genuine or whether it might be purely rhetorical-is Trump, for instance, going to stop trading in other countries, probably not I would guess.
dontcare the problem is that the cost of living increase from moving away from the current model where our standard of living is propped up by exploited international labor, would rise faster than it would take to re-establish of our industrial economy. Ideally we just elect a government that is pro-labor aka leftist, and properly disempowers capital to improve the freedom of laborers.
Ultimately the fight against neoliberalism is partially a fight against fascism. Just look at Turkey to see how Neoliberalism can become fascism
Especially when that ideology still holds political power and must go the way of the monarchs of old.
@@Kaanfight Well we can deny that Neoliberalism in the US is what led us to Trump.
Joe Biden's Slogan: "Careful Now..."
I'm figuratively in tears!
The Plebeian his other slogan: Hey lil girl come here to Uncle Joe, let me get a peck on your cheeks.
Centrism: learned helplessness
"We're all under this boot so let's just make the best of it"
No, centrism is the policy of the well to do.
"You're under this boot. Yes it's on my foot, but what could I do to change that? I feel for you; now shut up.'
One of the few things the right gets correct: liberalism, that is centrist policies is the ideology of the elites.
@@InternetMameluq They get it right, but they don't KNOW that they get it right. They just say it, unsure of whether it is true or not.
@@InternetMameluq kinda but not really. What makes someone a centrist is that their policy is balanced between right and left. Elites are inherently attracted to right wing policy because it is intended to bolster the status quo for the preexisting right-wing hierarchy but doesn't typically encourage revolt. Whether the layman in the right-wing realize that or not is another issue.
@@Soleilune1995 I don't know that I agree. The liberal class views everyone with contempt, especially the bulwark of the right, the 'heartland' folk of America.
You left out an important part.
"A person who might have been able to buy a house before 2008, definitely can't now... BUT the person that bought a house before 2008 can likely buy a second and third one thanks to inflated rent payments, ensuring housing prices won't go down any time soon."
That's if they managed to keep their homes. Which many did not, on account of being sold a bunch of financial snake-oil during the '80s and '90s that was all designed specifically to fleece millions of retirees and working-class homeowners struggling to pay bills on account of flatlining wages and whose only asset was the roof over their heads.
A worker who is privileged enough to pay a mortgage to a bank rather than rent to a landlord has one up on the latter - but it's not a matter of kind or "class", but a matter of degree. One is not "middle class" and the other "lower class" - they are both, if they make their living selling labor-power to Capital, "working class". And that relative one-up on the ladder is subject to revocation at any moment, through a variety of means, at the sole discretion of Capital. It suits the owners of Capital for the former group to look down on the latter, and the latter to resent the former, for all the obvious reasons.
@tyler t a few won; most did not. I, for instance, due to having to cash out twice to hold me over through periods of no job, have ended up with nothing, and no hope of ever retiring at all. The majority of "boomers" do not fit your image of affluent "Leave it to Beaver" families living luxurious retirements.
@@dwc1964 ill refer to the actual numbers as opposed to your individual anecdote, but thanks anyway
@@owenpaullucas6882 and what "actual numbers" would those be, and where would they be found? [citation needed]
This isn't a left/right issue really. Just a privilege issue. Look at California for a good example. NIMBY's don't want more houses. As that could devalue their artificially inflated house profits. They definitely don't want apartments or better zoning to allow high destiny housing and commerce. That would kill their profits they did jack shit for. If that was solved then "poors (usually black too. Wonder why they don't want them 🤔 I'm sure they only have good reasons)" will move in, can't have that.
Just build more housing. End must zoning. Tax land. End all subsides for buying housing, as people well off enough to buy housing don't need more fucking handouts. Then after all that, give subsides for low income people to pay for rent.
Isn't taking global warming seriously the literal opposite of short term and self-centered?
I think a lot of talk about millennials is boomers projecting their own failures and shortcomings.
"What? Those whippersnappers want a planet to live on? In my days we didn't even have an asteroid!"
Well, i guess it could be argued to be self-centered in a way in that the first generation to really care about environmentalism on a wide scale is the one that would feel the consequences of the ecological crisis firsthand to the point where they couldn't be ignored.
Environmentalism entered the mainstream narrative as it shifted from an issue of aesthetics and compassion to one of survival.
Not just a lot. Nearly all of it (and the remainder is complaning about positive change).
@Kilgore:
I really liked your comment.
Well said.
@@gewreid5946 It certainly could be, and it probably is to at least some degree.
But whether or not it is doesnt change that making sure the next generation still has a planet they can actually live on is simply the right thing to do.
From an American perspective, the advert is ironic. Kids here are asking for books. They want tuition-free public universities and are being called socialist for it.
You don't have to go to University to read a book.
@@afabuloussentientbeing8112 True but unless a university gives you a piece of paper, literally nobody cares.
@@CrimsonTheFoxGod I'm not sure that's the point of going to university. I am an avid reader, but mostly YA Fantasy. If I am to get my self to read with no external pressure or direction, I'll be in the teen section with witch and vampire books.
If I somehow decided to read a book on philosophy or economics, I wouldn't be able to self select a wide range of topics and become truly knowledgeable on the topics. I mean, even in university I still struggle to get myself to read Kant or Wittgenstein. I rely on professors to get me interested and help me understand the material. The piece of paper that says I got a degree in Philosophy still means nothing to anyone as it isn't viewed as a useful major to most, but it has enabled me to come to a better understanding of the world and my actions. I wouldn't of changed my actions to other people with just reading about moral relativism.
@@El-bv5dl This might be true. I tend to become extremely obsessed with every aspect of things I become interested in, most people can't converse with me when I get like that. I'm not disagreeing with the value of education, I was merely offering a mildly snappy quip reinforcing the desire for schooling. The real point is the cost.
@@afabuloussentientbeing8112 Very true, but not everyone is going to pick up a book on "critical thinking." nor have a group of friends with the same interest to practice with.
A specter is haunting America --- the specter of healthcare and basic human decency.
@tyler t And the socialist/communist movement is a 'natural' (a very spurious word) consequence of capitalist relations of production/labor. Without capitalism, what could socialism/communism ever be based on and seeking to abolish? Like the worse class societies preceding it, capitalism creates its own enemies and self-destructively sows its own demise by its creation of the proletarian working class (and the generalization of its condition) that is alienated/exploited by it for profit and which needs only to organize/associate itself enough to carry out its world-historic imperative, merely according to its evident class interests.
And funnily enough, socialism/communism proper (the opportunists, revisionists, and posers of history notwithstanding) seeks to abolish the state structure entirely, not paradoxically by some decree outlawing it nor by destroying civilization to return to a primitivity, but by making it completely redundant to human social life such that it can't help but wither away to nothingness.
@@rickysmith2184 have you read the comment you replied to?
@@rickysmith2184 I said that because the above comment said nothing about people doing nothing other than farming. They referred "returning to primitive" specifically as something socialists/communists do not want.
Left-wing Boomer here cheering you on buddy. Shared & liked.
Thanks, I really appreciate it! Big up the left-wing boomers!
Tom Nicholas Good to hear Tom. I really like the new direction you're taking with the channel - having established (& no doubt you'll continue to do so) your impressive theoretical/academic credentials, it just feels right to take a more overtly political position at the moment and in so doing realise the exhortation Marx made of philosophers, as memorialised on his tombstone. Let's seize historical subjectivity!
Glad you like it! I think there's a real balance to be struck between making this kind of work but also remaining accessible to those who aren't just out to have their views affirmed. Sometimes I see channels that describe themselves as "Lefty 1905" or something and I think, if I didn't already broadly agree with you on some vague level, would I watch one of your videos if I stumbled across it or would I feel either put-off or like there's a high barrier to entry in terms of preexisting knowledge?
So that's the balance I'm going to try and strike in the near future. Whether I'll be successful in doing so is another matter!
@@allypoum Love your avatar! I just read all about the POUM in Homage to Catalonia. ¡No pasarán!
@@Tom_Nicholas Your approach to this type of video is something that the world is always in need of: actual thinking applied to important and misunderstood issues.
CENTRISTS: Rage against the Machine? What if we "Rage on behalf of the Machine"?
Well, to be fair, the machine has some pretty good points
@@jakes1566 It's a machine for pigs
My legs aren't as strong as I'd like them to be. So obviously I should saw them off.
@@TheConstitutionFirst
This video lists Chiang-Kai-shek as socialist...
LOL!!!! Good joke, bro. XD
Imagine how many socialists COVID-19 has bred. I'm certainly one of them.
Covid exposed how Capitalism is just a house of cards if you move one card the entire system collapse
Covid hasn’t made me a full socialist, but it has sure made me more open to the idea of making things like medicine and higher education “free”, and developing something similar to the “freedom dividend” that Andrew Yang proposed. All of this just makes sense.
@@diegodelamota1199 nice so your a social democrat?
@@thatonedudebutwho9919 If that is the label I am ok with it. I have just come to realize that free markets are not the answer for everything. Capitalism is the best economic system yet, it just needs some fine tunning to serve everyone.
@@thatonedudebutwho9919 I do not believe capitalism is the problem, the dismanteling and sabotage of social safety nets is.
As a 59 yr old that never bought into society's idea of success and never believed the words of most of those in charge I found this video and this bright young man to be compelling and somewhat hopeful I'll be sure to check out more of his stuff
Cheers Darryl, I really appreciate you saying so!
damn lmao if the housing crisis wasn't enough to wake people up, they now have an entire year of events which completely dwarf the great recession in their intensities.
Gen X person here: left-wing millennial give me hope for the future.
Same.
Yeah ha ha I love government control socialism is totaaaaaally realistic
@@Courier_333 Yeah, ha ha, capitalism didn't literally destroy the planet within a few decades.
@@almoglevin cuz giving up our rights will tooooootally help stop global warming even thooooo
China actually is the biggest polluter...
Gen x too, I identify much more with Millennials than boomers or anyone else
Millennial: lets all have 1 piece of this evenly divided pie
Centrist: you could all have 2 pieces if you would just not be so lazy
Nick Rodie In action that is not what happens. In this world kids are born without the opportunity to get any pie. All people are asking for is the opportunity to get a piece of pie. Opportunity is dying.
@@ProoGameR43 Sure. We all work as hard as say Jerry Seinfeld and we can all have networthbuzz.com/jerry-seinfeld-networth. It's not that opportunity is dying it's that the "opportunity" you speak of can only exist is some people go without. You have to take from one to give to the other because we simply don't have the resources to all live that kind of lifestyle.
coconutNiN Such an opportunity never existed. Capitalism inherently favours those that inherit wealth because they start with a headstart. If someone with less money ends up better off then them, chances are luck was a huge factor in play. Even that billionaires work harder then their employees, which is not true, we cant all become billionaires by working as hard.
Its always been like this. This isn’t anything particularly new. Now though, after the 2008 crash and weak recovery, people are starting to see this as unfair. However, while capitalism remains in place, those with wealth will always have a headstart.
Nick Rodie the sad truth is that Seinfeld will be considered one of the best sitcoms of all time no matter how many we try to make now, sitcoms are kind of dying under the new system in terms of a popularity contest, like Seinfeld, although there is more opportunity for people to be on a sitcom than ever before, but you’re not gonna make Seinfeld money that’s for sure
@@jblue1622 Perhaps try not to focus on Seinfeld in this example. This is about resources. How it is impossible to give everyone 2 slices of an evenly divided pie.
Don’t be so hard on yourselves. Actual economists don’t know what they’re talking about yet it doesn’t stop them
Haha, I kinda want to make a video about mainstream economics' reliance on a fairly constraining set of presumptions at some point...
The term "mainstream economics" is entirely misleading; it's really neither. We see now, after 40yrs of voodoo economics from Friedman-ites and Reaganomics. Most of the world uses a combo of Keynesianism and ideas from the Frankfurt school.
@@Tom_Nicholas pls do!!
@@nathanswann1198 Lmao, no. Frankfurt school is irrelevant in economics. You are just projecting
@@Tom_Nicholas If you are going to do It, at least don't equate mainstream economics to Neoclassical economics. The left does that all the time, but It's completely wrong
Very prescient. My older-gen-x SO would “rather die than change” (his words) on his politics. Everyone in the 80s were hollow shells of manic consumerism. I a Gen Xer as well, but I came from a religious background that harped on the evils of money. I was still a little smitten by the consumer culture, but consciously gave it up when my kids came along to focus on them. Today, to my surprise I’m on board with the socialists. Had the very word not been so universally demonized and lampooned by the economists of the day, I’d have been one sooner.
Glad you feel that way. My Gen X parents recoiled when I told them I was becoming a socialist, my mom even saying "you're being brainwashed." She was dead serious too, like full on red scare "communist are gonna come and brainwash your kids." Luckily she's reasonable enough to not harp on it too much, and I'm old enough to not let her if she tried anyways.
There appears to me (and I could be way off here, so feel free to say so if you think so) to be a political divide between the older and younger Gen-Xers created by, if I may speak metaphorically and speak in generalities, the older ones catching a ride on the ladder to success the boomers pulled up behind them and being more able to culturally fit in with and pass as younger boomers.
Meanwhile, the younger Gen-Xers, while not as hard hit as millenials, tended to be hit by boomers attacks on things like education, unions, etc and subject to the condescending ageism pervasive through the boomer generation, and so, while not that culturally seperated from older Gen-Xers, tended to be significantly seperated from boomers.
@@dynamicworlds1 I think it depends mostly on the conditions of their youth. Many were kids in the 70s and 80s so were subject to a lot of anti-communist propaganda which permeated all media.
DynamicWorlds That’s an interesting thought. Maybe. I’m also more open to new ideas and change, while he is nearer to rain man’s need for continuity. 🤣
Honestly those Economists who've lampooned Socialism, shouldn't call themselves experts. Especially that there likely Paid Think Tanks by the Wealthy Privilege Elite. It's like History. Revisionist didn't like that History had a liberal bias, so they sought to paint, and lie about it, then point, and say it's the Liberals or Leftists that are Revisioning History.
As a gen Xer, you nailed my contemporaries. We grew up in the "this is the only way" era, and combined it with our aloof "ya know, whatever" attitude. Leaders from our generation, including our Australian prime minister and state premiers (who come from both the main right and so-called left parties), exemplify that awful combination as they condescendingly talk about "climate change" while then saying "but our economy relies on fossil fuel exports so we have to keep on digging up more coal and gas". Bring on the millennial revolution I say...
Thanks for a smart video. As a left-wing Gen-Xer it's interesting to align more with your generation than my own. I find a lot of my friends of my age are indeed more moderate. One correction: Joe Biden isn't a boomer. As someone born in 1942, he's actually of the generation *before* the baby boom (typically 1945 to 1964). This is known as the "Traditionalist" or "Silent Generation."
No problems, hope you liked it. And deeefinatly was keen to avoid any absolutism with regard to generations, I know plenty of Gen Xers and boomers who are far more aware of the problems the world faces than I.
I agree with your comment. As someone who is at the tail end of the baby boomer generation, I find it much easier sharing socialist ideals with the younger generation. I find most people of my generation don't question msm corporate propaganda.
@s1 I don't know what you mean. There seem to be some words missing from your comment.
@Tube Surfer To give a crump of thought here: The idea of considering something without coming from a place of ideology might itself be overly idealistic. Every social discourse is permeated by certain ideas seen as truth, whether consciously or subconsiously. It's permeated by a mode of thinking, that stems from the society you live in and your circumstances.The word centrist itself suggests mediation between two poles, which it often practically boils down to. It's therefore partly negatively defined by "not being part of an ideology", which still means it's affected by the ideologies around them as it has to be in their centre.
Being part of a certain ideology is often confused with the kind of co-ordination, which happened in fascist and authoritarian regimes of the 20th century (Nazi Germany or USSR) and has thereby become a propaganda term. First and foremost ideology is about a value statement, an idea(!) on how the world should be. How can you properly make decisions without having a goal in mind? So how can you make political decisions without having an idea on how the world should be? What does centrism even mean in this context? What does it want to accomplish? And if it has an idea on how the world should be, is it really outside of any ideology or rather an ideology itself?
@Tube Surfer Thanks for the clarifications. I do understand better now what you mean with centrism. Since I am from Germany a two party system is a bit difficult to comprehend. One question for me remains, though. You speak about finding pragmatic solutions to modern challenges. Are there any value judgements on what is a challenge/problem? When do decisions need to be made? Also: When your modus operandi is listening to as many people opinions as possible and acting upon that, are all opinions equally valid or do you make quality judgements based on some set of values? Does it make a difference in how you view a policy, when it's suggested by an ideology? And last: Does it make a difference in how you view a policy, when it would alter the status quo in society? It's hard for me to believe there aren't at least any values in centrism you go by. "Something that can better serve the community and be less divisive." at least implies that there are some values, who are seen as important. Or does centrism only seek a mediation between all opinions in a given community, no matter how weird they may be? Especially the idea of making things less divisive is something I personally am not a big fan of. It puts people's emotions and biases as more important than the real effects of a policy and is prone to ideological manipulation. Either you listen to everyone, which makes it rather easy for people to make something sound divisive by being outraged by it or you don't listen and thereby risk not having a clue on how divisive something really is.
And one last question. I'd like to hear your opinion on a certain model of making democratic decisions. There is an idea on randomly selecting a group of people for certain but not all political issues and let them research and decide possible political solutions in a group effort. Lastly elected officials would only be able to decide between the different offered solutions, but would not be able to alter them. I personally really like the idea of having more political power put into the hands of the populace itself. From what I have understood about centrism, this idea may even be more able to reach the standard you laid out than any elected official may ever be.
I thought bringing up Generation X was a good idea. Those members of my generation (i'm born in 1966) who had grown up during the Cold War Era in the political West grew up in a political climate where the Marxist-leaning Left had been heavily marginalized by the McCarthy-style political repression of the 1950s and early 60s, and had also been disconcerted by the highly centralized and brutally authoritarian developments in the political East. The political changes of the 1990s came at a time when members of my generation were young adults. Many of us were in a position to quite literally "capitalize on" the new possibilities that economic deregulation, privatization of public infrastructure, and the ostensibly wide-open spaces of the newly "liberated" East offered. So as you suggest, it is in deed no great surprise if some members of my generation feel somewhat incredulous and quite frankly a bit uneasy when the question is asked whether there could be other ways of coming at a situation we have come to feel is without alternative, and has provided some of us with wealth, prestige and privilege.
Of course, GenXers had childhood poverty rates and young adult unemployment rates similar to the Great Depression, not to mention high rates of childhood violence. Then during the 1990s, GenXers experienced a recession that affected their generation only. And this was combined with being the first generation targeted by war on drugs, militarized police, and mass incarceration. Plenty of GenXers aren't even slightly incredulous or uneasy about alternatives.
I wanna add my voice to the masses and ask for more of this :)
Great work as always, comrade (seeing as you've explicitly identified yourself as a socialist in this video ;) )
Don't worry I'm on it! I had a couple of things I wanted to work on so glad the response has been so positive. (Haha, I don't think I was particularly hiding it before. Or, if I was, I wasn't doing very well at it...)
@@Tom_Nicholas I had my suspicions when you started talking about cultural materialism and your preference for that analytical lens over that of new historicism, but it's always nice to hear it expressed explicitly :) Not exactly what I had expected when I first found your channel by looking for PhD proposal writing tips on RUclips haha
Speaking of explicitly socialist things, a few of us have started a weekly stream, the "Socialist Sunday Stream" where we get a few different left-wing youtubers together and talk about subjects that interest us. It would be great to have you on some time :)
If you'd like to know more about it, add me on Twitter (@pdmorrinyoutube) and we can DM. You can also have a look at the first stream on my channel (yesterday was our first proper one - but we've got Kevin Logan coming on next week, and Leslie from Mad Blender coming on the following week).
Join us sometime :D
Haha, I do always find it really interesting what videos it was that someone first watched of mine. I've made such a bunch of different stuff over the past couple of years as I've slowly worked out what I want to make and what others want to see and to find a happy medium between the two that I'm sure differentiations people have an entirely different idea of what my channel is about...
I'll have a little watch of one of the recent ones and have a think about it if that's cool? Sounds like the kind of thing I'd be up for though. Am on holiday for a couple of weeks now but will drop you a line when I get back! (This probably also means I'd have to try and work out how to plug my camera into my computer doesn't it...)
I'm going to have to rewatch this later on when I'm less inebriated. Or more... ebriated.
extraebriated
superebriated
postebrianism
anarcho ebriist accelarationists rise up
More of this, please. You're an incredibly talented individual, whose ability to discourse is immediately recognizable. I was first introduced to your channel by way of your Society of the Spectacle videos and I've been pleasantly surprised to see this video (the third of which I've seen) be such a wonderfully inquisitive and insightful commentary on our present-day society through the lens that Debord gives us through his book, The Society of the Spectacle. You've helped introduce me to these new ideas and I've been both enlightened and inspired. I'm very much looking forward to watching your other videos and hopefully promoting you through your Patreon in the near future. Cheers to you!
PS. thanks for the reading as well!
Thanks, really appreciate your kind words! Very glad you’ve enjoyed each of the videos of mine you’ve seen. More like this certainly on the way (as well as that third Society of the Spectacle Video in the near future too!!).
“Used them as a sleeping aid”
Oh god, that was me, wasn’t it? I promise I watch the videos first while wide awake, and then go back to them to fall asleep to. It’s because I find your voice soothing. I do the same with Shaun and Three Arrows, so you’re in good company.
Also- uh, socialism by definition, can’t be an answer to capitalism’s problems. It wants to replace capitalism, not fix it.
Haha, veeeeeeeery possibly... Don't worry, I appreciate your honesty and, as you say, not bad company to be among!
Yeah, I almost picked them up on that point but I have to be really strict on myself about going off on tangents or else each video would be four hours long and would consist only of tangents...
As for the generations and the material conditions that may have had a hand on our new ways of thinking (or old ways, as the case may be)- I do see some very definite basis for that.
Millennials are the generation that came of age in the new millennium. Which means we came of age into an economy that crashed hard! That’s the point at which we were trying to start careers. That’s going to affect how we see things. As far as we are concerned, that particular state of economics ruined our future.
We couldn’t get good jobs after uni, we put off getting married because we couldn’t afford it, we are renting forever instead of buying houses, and many are also putting off having children (I can confirm, they’re rather expensive little beasts). I do see this as a generational issue. Because while it’s absolutely true that many GenXers and Boomers were badly affected (the latter particularly so with regard to their retirement funding), they weren’t trying to become responsible adults among this crisis. They were already adults. It really did shape the way many millennials thought- of the economy, of politics and of ourselves.
So while I do generally agree that seeing everything through the lens of generations isn’t always helpful, I do think it’s important to consider the material conditions and epistemes that shape a generation.
We can’t forget 9/11- which came about either during the childhood or teenage years of millennials. That’s a big one. I’m old enough to remember the world before it, and how the world did change immediately after it. I was old enough to protest the Iraq war (walked out of school to go protest when I was in yr 12). We grew up into a world of perpetual war for obviously corrupt reasons, into an economy that crashed and ruined our chances of having the same lives as our parents, and into a world where we were no longer reliant on mainstream media for information. That last is a big one- we were the first internet generation, and many of us were the last pre-internet children.
Those sorts of material conditions will shape a generation, just as the civil rights movement and Vietnam shaped boomers. My parents are Gen X (68&69), and while they’re not exactly centrist, they are closer to the centre than I am, that’s for sure. I’m 32, and I’m interested to see how material conditions will shape the viewpoints of my daughter’s generation- she’s 12, so Gen Z (my family is rather unusual in that we hit all the generations without missing one- my nana was a boomer).
So far, it seems that GenZ and the millennials are teaming up, for the most part. It’s nice to see- I don’t think we Gould give great credence to the idea that generations must always war with another. They’re only very loose groupings, after all. All it tells us is what happened while a particular generation was growing up. Useful, but not the be all and end all.
(I’m totally a millennial socialist).
And one reason why we can’t simply say “millennials are the socialist generation!” is because- have you seen the makeup of the alt right these days? It’s younger GenX and a LOT of millennials.
It seems that during times of political upheaval (which is common to our generation), people will look to older ideas to see if they can be rewritten for a new age.
Fascism is an old idea, as is socialism. It’d be nice to think we all went left, but that’s just not the case. We just abandoned the centre for older ideas. Fascism is capitalism in a state of decay- and I do think it is in decay. And I think this political fight will be the defining fight of our times. Which way will win? I’m hopeful it’s us, but I’ve seen how much support the right and far right has, and it’s a lot more than we have.
Yes to a lot of this! I think there's a balance to be struck between taking what are essentially rough approximations based on age (and thus both always in some sense false in where the divisions are placed whilst also being ignorant to distinctions of class, race, gender, sexual orientation etc etc) as too "real" but also recognising that politics is historically contingent and, thus, that the best platforms and strategies are going to change with time.
I suppose it all comes back to that famous "man makes history but in circumstances not of his choosing" [or something like that, also people who are men exist Karl...]. The circumstances change and we have to be cognisant of that.
Katie_pol i glanced past your profile pic and was like "oh no here we go again"
then i looked again and giggled, so thanks :>
Huge props for the sourcing my dude!
Thank you, I do try to make the effort to go above and beyond with references etc. While I think it's usually well-intentioned, I see a fair bit of slightly lazy referencing on here which sometimes irks my inner academic! Great to be able to point people to where they might be able to read some more!
the straw man arguments of the mainstream media (MSM) are omnipresent, they love to dismiss anything that contradicts what the corporations want as being childish... always has been that way, and similar things were said about the boomers during the 60s. You are right to point out a lot of this, but you should not be surprised that corporate media would do such things and that this would influence alternative media created by people who watch the MSM. TV and newspapers represent capitalist propaganda, not education, they full out lie rather often, they lie by omission constantly, or pass on lies verbatim from "sources" ... usually government or corporate sources. What we are seeing is the desperate attempts of corporations and governments to harness all their marketing and psychological knowledge, all their data mining and even military psychological warfare techniques in order to divide and conquer and thereby prevent someone honest from taking office. The fact that Bernie is considered radical is only because people, and especially American people, believe right wing politics is normal and "common sense." It truly is common nonsense, because before the internet people had to really go out of their way to be exposed to anything other than TV and newspapers or the "common sense" books regarding politics that serve the status quo who created all the world ending problems we are currently facing. If millenials are different its because we rely more on the internet than traditional media, therefore we are not so brainwashed. Being mature to the MSM means enslaving third world people and using all resources willy nilly until total environmental collapse, in short capitalism is a death cult and liberals are just death cult light.
That generalization of a generation is EXACTLY the views that EVERY generation has of those after them. Older generations generally see the younger as lazy and unmotivated, and younger generations generally see older generations as detached and unaware.
I've decided that I will call kids from Gen-Z "Zoomers". I'm betting that most of them are acceleratists in the future.
Haha, yes to zoomers (although I just googled and I think others have beat you to coining this term, sorry...)!
"Acceleratism" I love it. Just reading the Wikipedia definition and I love it.
As a Gen Z member: No. Please don't call us Zoomers. It sounds cool but it sounds like Boomer and we'd rather not be associated with the average Yuppie Boomer.
@@GeneralNuisance00 I don't have a problem being called a Zoomer, since it accurately describes the speed our generation is getting to climate hell.
Edited, because I like the word 'speed' too much.
@@fruitygarlic3601 Yeah true, can't wait for the resources wars, I've always wanted a Mad Max death car.
It freaks me out how eloquent, poised, and educated, and just plain brilliant the 12 year old boy who hosts this show is. (Jk, we love ya buddy)
Wondeful video as always.
I always look at the pregelance of cold world media vs the prevalence of terrorism as the dividing line.
Thank you, really appreciate you saying so!
I think there's definitely something interesting in the fact that contemporary centrism (whether of the "resistance" variety in the US or the "stopping Brexit is the only thing that matters" variety in the UK is ambivalent towards the horrors that were committed in the name of the "War on Terror". In the UK, there is a certain demographic to whom Tony Blair is a kind of model of leadership who they wish would return despite not only the limited impact he had on inequality but also his leading us into the Iraq War. Obviously I'm not as well-informed on US issues but I see a similar thing on the establishment side of the Democratic Party with their wishing for another Clinton or Obama.
The footnote to those criticisms kind of being that I do think we have to recognise and (even half-heartedly celebrate) the limited progress made by some of those leaders. Obamacare is better than nothing after all and the same with many of TB's achievements. It's easy to throw the baby out with the bathwater but I think we can appreciate the positives while critiquing their falling short.
woof
Awesome video ! As a zoomer, it is funny is that since I was 8 when the subprime crisis happened, I never even went through the "realisation" that neoliberalism was dangerous. I have neolib parents, but I got politically distanced from them soon enough. So I directly was thrown into the burning world. Reading stuff on climate change, on inequalities, on homophobia, made me directly think that we should have massive changes. I wonder how that inserts into those politico-chronological analyses. Discovered you through my recommendations which advised me to watch your cultural wars video. Glad I did ! Thrilled to see what you will do next
The elder generation in news media picking on the youth generation. So fresh and new.
"The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households."
- Socrates
(469-399 B.C.)
I am sending this to my Dad, this is so articulate and well constructed and think it provides a lense through which a lot of insight can be gleaned!
Thank you, glad to know it helps to articulate something others have recognised too!
Great vid! I’m 46. Born in ‘75 and although I do consider myself left leaning, could definitely see someone calling me a “center-ist Dad.” I learned a lot in this video… about my own views and why younger generations may feel the way they do. Thank you.
“If you put this on in the background while you’re cooking..”
me, making breakfast: 😳
Could be worse- I was the commenter who said I put his videos on to fall asleep to.
It was a compliment! I watch them first while wide awake, and then go back to them when I go to bed. I just find his voice soothing. I do the same with Shaun and Three Arrows.
As an "X'er" I can tell you, I identify with the millennials more than the boomers because the economics have been against me my entire life. Nearly everywhere I went it was, " you should have bought, applied, joined, last year kid. There's no more or the prices have gone up."
This was quite enjoyable. I'd love to see more of these videos if you're willing to make them.
Thank you, and always useful to know what people are keen to see more of so I’ll definitely have a think about putting more similar things together in the future!
Very good video. I love your style. The fact that you mention John Delaney more than once probably makes John very happy as this is likely the most coverage he’s gotten... ever x3
Imagine your Dad being a centrist instead of a Tory 😔😭
On the idea of history repeating itself, this current situation is very similar to the response to every other significant financial crash since the predominance of capitalism. When the market crashes, people want change, and the response from the establishment is essentially to resist that change in any way possible, starting with doubling down on the centrism, dismissing concerns, and then eventually they start compromising by going to various forms of right-wing populism, albeit with hesitation. This is the stage that the most recent class conflict is currently in, with the rise of Trump-like people (not quite fascists but not quite liberals either) rising to power in many different parts of the world. The next stage, if things keep going the way they are, will probably be the establishment finally being forced to compromise with the social democrats who will bring some change which may or may not be short-lived. Unlike some previous similar situations (for example, post-Great Depression), the left in this situation are essentially themselves just a form of compromise with the establishment. It's not like when the prominent left wanted actually socialism. These people are social democrats and want to keep the basic power structure in place. So, I think the time will come soon when the establishment realizes that it's in their best interest to compromise with the modern mainstream left, and then the system will probably collapse on its own pretty soon and then we'll have socialism. The current situation is also fairly similar to the series of events that led to the Russian Revolution, but I won't go into that. Wow, If anyone actually read this whole comment, I commend you, and you have my sympathy for the eye strain.
Remember the Russian revolution ended with the communists beating the centrists and then killing millions of people
I hope you're trolling but if you're not, first of all consider the way that the French revolution and the American revolution ended. How many millions of people have liberal revolutions ended up killing? When one class is overthrowing another class, it's violent, that's not communism that's just revolution. Secondly, you should probably look into the claim of communism "killing millions" because the claims are basically propaganda and are largely unjustified, and mostly come from Nazi sources and blatant enemies of the Soviets, so don't just accept every claim at face value.
*laughs in Gulag* yes yes comrade, nothing bad happened in USSR, do not worry! Is just capitalist propaganda!
@@smonk4198 *laughs in Yankee* yeehaw, 'muricas mere existence is totally not based off of the deaths of millions of natives, not to mention destroying the rest of the world for its wealth. We also totally don't have gulags ourselves yhuck yhuck yhuck
wow its almost like there's no good form of government. reject modernity. return to monke
Apologies to Ash who should have got a shoutout at the end of this video for his very generous support on Patreon! Of course, if you'd like to join him in supporting my channel then you can do so at patreon.com/tomnicholas
Hi, did you mean that Boris Johnson and Donald Trump are more-or-less white supremacists? That's what it seems like you meant at 9:00 but you look like a pretty moderate guy (I haven't watched much of your videos). I was just wondering, why do you say that they're white supremacists?
@@inclinevids he says in the video that he's some kind of socialist, so not a moderate. I don't know much about Boris Johnson, but it's almost a silly question to ask why someone would think Donald trump is racist. Just look are the language that he uses when talking about immigration. An invasion. An infestation from shit hole countries. The assumption that congresswomen of color are from other countries. Go back historically and look at him taking a full page ad out demanding the death of the central park 5, innocent young black men. Dude is an obvious racist.
I think the cyclical nature here is more about how hierarchies, specifically capitalistic ones affect societies. The constant boom/bust cycle of monetary economies are especially at fault here. The 2008 meltdown has us at about the same place as the post-depression era of FDR and his "New Deal." It's not an exact parallel, but it's close enough IMO to demonstrate how this plays out.
@@inclinevids My friend, Boris wrote an article in the past using the words ' watermelon smiles' when referring to black people...The dude said that women who wear hijab look like letterboxes. I dunno how you can say he is not a white supremacist. Pretty obvious. I mean it is pretty obvious with Trump too. Listening to his speeches is such cringe .
AOC is not a socialist you liberal twat
Tom Nichols : "doing a PhD So you don't have to"
Really well done! I’d certainly like to see more like this. It was fascinating and unlike much of the other content on RUclips around similar topics.
Thank you, really appreciate your kinds words! Anything in particular that was “different” that you thought was good about it? Always good to know exactly what it is that I’m doing right (or wrong), haha!
The concept of generations in terms of politics really interests me!! I myself am a zoomer, and a good portion of the people I regularly talk to are, too. Gen Z politics are radically different from even millennial politics, in more ways than one.
First and foremost, Gen Z is defined as starting between 1995-2000. 1995 is usually what people say because that's when the internet first exploded (keep that fact in your back pocket for now). This means that the oldest Gen Z were still only 13 when the 2008 Financial Crisis happened. We mostly developed our political opinions after the fact, so this sort of doubt in capitalism permeates most zoomers. In addition to that, we're also growing up in the time of climate change and regular school shootings (here in America, at least), and we're seeing first hand how politicians seem not to care about what, to us, are literal life and death issues. Our general faith in both capitalism and our current government system is low at best.
Which brings us to the next point: extremism. Politics for Gen Z are literally all or nothing. For the most part, you are either completely apolitical or you are radical (right or left, it doesn't matter). A lot of the apolitical zoomers I talk to all say the same thing: they feel powerless and the world is largely doomed. They can't do anything to stop it. The rise in doomer music is certainly related lmao. This has a lot to do with the internet. We get a constant overload of information. We aren't limited to what million dollar news anchors tell us. Zoomers see all of the bad shit happening in the world all the time, but not only do we see this constant barrage of shittiness; we also see that it doesn't have to be shit. It's hard to have faith in the current systems when you can literally see other systems where people don't have to work 50-60 hours to make ends meet, for example. This leads a lot of zoomers to go to either fascism or communism, given that those are the most taught about replacements to our current systems. (I could write a whole book on how the internet is directly changing politics)
One thing to note here about the radicalism of Zoomers. This is mostly going to be about leftist zoomers, simply because I have more experience with them (and also am one). A lot of zoomers actually criticize millennial socialists for not being radical enough, viewing them to be more so socialist-align capitalists. I've talked to some zoomers who even dislike DSA because it doesn't push for more change. A lot of Gen Z are more open to revolution rather than reforms, and a lot are extremely well read in leftist theory compared to the general population of millennials. There's also a larger rejection of what some people call respectability politics (debate the right, don't be violent, etc), that millennials push for. This goes back to the whole life and death thing. It's hard not to panic when you're house is on fire. Direct action is heavily prioritized. The biggest generational difference I see is violence. Zoomers on both sides of the political spectrum are a LOT more open to political violence, rather that be increased militarization of police for the right or increased militant antifascism for the left. Think of icons like our 17 year old dear egg boy (the Aussie kid who egged a politician). Zoomers are accelerationists, for better or for worse.
Not quite sure where to put this in, but humor is paramount for Gen Z. Jokes about communism, even among those who are right wing or apolitical, are commonplace. There's a general disregard of the law in humor, such as the whole Invade Area 51 meme. Gen Z humor usually disregards the law because jokes about suicide and the inevitability of death (largely due to climate change) leads a lot of Gen Z with the completely honest viewpoint of "what are they going to do? Kill me? So it's a win-win!" It's incredibly morbid lmao but what can you expect from a whole generation who are told that billionaires getting more money is more important than the literal entirety of the human species?
Also fun fact about generations compared to astrology: 13 years is about the amount of time it takes the planet of Pluto to move into a new sign. 1995-2008 (what's largely considered to be the time frame for Gen Z) is actually the same time that Pluto was in Sagittarius, so all Gen Z share this placement.
I wasn't really aware of how long this comment went on while I was typing it lmao sorry
FORGOT TO MENTION this is a really good video lmao whoops. Keep up the good work!!!!
Thanks appreciate you saying so and your taking the time to respond with such a deep and thought out comment.
fae of the internet Are Gen Z really more radical? In my experience (limited by time and geography) I find them generally more apathetic and apolitical. Can you point me to where they are engaging in direct action or radical political organizing? My experience has been like pulling teeth to get people from GenZ to consistently engage in political action, and I was actually surprised that most activists I encounter are much older than me, Gen X & Boomers.
I'm so deep in the left corners of social media that I almost entirely forgot that mainstream opinion of millennials is as entitled children. Which is so far from reality I can barely fathom it. Thanks for reminding me, I guess.
I was born in 1981 so I'm kind of Gen X with a bit of millennial mixed in.
Your analysis of this complex is by far one best I've seen. Nicely nuanced and really nice depth.
Please do more!
Oh, I'm also German-American and have lived and worked in both countries. I've also studied international relations in college so your approach here really speaks to me
Virgin boomers
vs.
Zoomer chads
*Fight!*
It was my first semester at university. I woke up one day, and picked up the Times in the lobby to look at the front page. I saw the graph, with the ubiquitous quantitative symbol that is a graph falling below its X-axis. I knew then the world had changed. But, I learned soon after that people have a much harder time realizing and adjusting to the change.
Which graph was that? Do you mean the Dow Jones in 2008?
@@Tom_NicholasMaybe the Dow Jones industrial average, but it could have been another meter to check "growth" of the financial sector / stock market in the U.S. It was the LA Times front page from a day in September of 2008.
Imagine smoking weed
This post was made by centrist dad gang
Hey they tried it once in highschool!
Recent subscriber here appreciating the sleep aid viewer solidarity! ❤️
I haven't used your videos for that (yet), but to my distractobrain, the clear narrative structure of a classroom style lecture is a really good focal point for falling asleep, especially if I've heard it before.
In the meantime I'm currently cleaning to your videos and it's very good content. Cheers!
I really enjoyed this video format. Sometimes I find, in your WTF videos, you get a little detached and "lecturey," but this is really refreshing. For me at least, your unique, straightforward insights ought to go hand in hand with the theoretical side of your channel. Sort of like when you mentioned Foucualt--finding the political, social discussions where theory can offer unique "meta" perspectives has intense educational value.
Thank you! Yes, it can be a bit dry just chatting about the theory so it’s nice to have the chance tour some of that stuff into practice. I’ve done that on and off in the past too but it’s finding a topic that people will also engage with. In the past, I’ve mainly stuck to putting stuff I’ve looked at in WTF into action on critiquing some piece of TV or film. Great to see that there’s an appetite for this kinda thing too though!
Gonna try and do more of it in future. With a bit of planning, I can hopefully do an episode of WTF on a certain topic and then a slightly more engaged video following up in which it gets put into practice.
As a millennial and a dad, who considers myself both a centrist and a socialist, I can say with 100% certainty.
your videos are a pain to understand for non native speakers omg I had to come back 10 seconds a billion time.... but honestly worth it lol such great content !! really appreciate the effort and work put into these
But also millennials grew up 'spoiled' which actually has left them disillusioned with materialism. With wages dropping and demands on the job increasing they are increasingly asking themselves why they should work their butts off for stuff they don't really want anyway.
Damnit, another youtuber I'm subscribing to. I need time for other things youtube. No but really, I'm less than 6 minutes in and I'm subscribing unless the video really goes off the rails.
Haha, I don't think it goes off the rails but who am I to make that call...
McWilliams analysis is spot on. The bailouts - in the case of the UK some £100 bn - were dwarfed by the subsequent £ printing or QE- some 5x bigger so far. this £ was actually the printing of bank reserves and continues to this day. As banks are getting free money from the central banks, they no longer require your money as deposits, and therefore interest rates have remained about zero ever since.
This is disastrous for those wanting a home but who do not have one. Counter intuitively perhaps, low rates worsens affordability for new buyers. It improves affordability for the privileged who have been bailed out: Those already owning a home have reduced payments. But low rates = higher prices. Renter, You're fucked.
Interest rate is defined as "the price pf money". At 0%, money is essentially valueless. You cannot save, because with int rates below inflation, you are guaranteed to lose £ in real terms (it's purchasing power falls). And as money becomes valueless, so inflation rises and home prices rise and rents rise - most f the inflation the past decade has been in housing, and guess what governments removed from calculating inflation!! Yup, housing.. Your pay has little chance of keeping up. In fact, employers have even used the excuse that with low rates, u do not need higher pay as u can borrow cheaply. This is to misunderstand money and interest rates. Low rates means your money is worth less than before. Therefore, low rates demands higher pay.
Just check out voting patterns! The young vote Left like never before, the old vote Right like never before (the difference has never been so large). As we have an old population and they vote in higher numbers, this has not created leftwing - socialist - governments. It may yet do so, but probably not for a decade
Meanwhile in South America👀🟥⬛
I'm currently knitting a sweater while listening to this video.
50 year old socialist dad here and THANK YOU for this excellent channel !!!
Great video as usual could you please make a similar video on the rise of right wing kids because I believe the main stream media does a great disservice when it comes to covering them because there are wide variety of political groups with different ideology like FN seems economically socialist , while the Swedish democrats are culturally liberals support gay rights , the Dutch party of freedom also supports gays .
Economist follows 1950's style liberalism , they almost always supports the western foreign policy irrespective of the consequences eg Iraq war.
Joe biden is a opportunist ,he follows the flavour of the season. If you follow his old policies it's not that dissimilar to what trump's been up to for eg. Immigration , racism , mass incarceration etc.
Ultimately I think most of the politicians believe in "cosmetic" changes they don't care about any real substantive long term changes . The epoch creating changes happen once in a lifetime for eg 60's flower power generation. That's why I side with the situationist movement we need to create situation that forces the change to happen rather than relying on politician to do something.
Thank you, really glad you liked it! I'd kind of rather avoid making a "How the Alt-Right Came into Existence" video just because there's been so, so many of them made on RUclips often with an added perspective that I just don't have. I feel like I'd be uselessly piling another video onto a discourse where my voice just isn't needed.
I don't know about all of the far-right European parties you list there but I do know that the Sweden Democrats are far from culturally liberal and are, in fact, very anti-LGBTQ+ rights. Indeed, I think they're even anti- unmarried couples raising children. And while there is some variance in the particular policies supported by such parties, I'm not sure what there is to be gained by discussing the intricacies of parties whose foundational beliefs (in those cases, "migrants" are less-human than "non-migrants") is so abhorrent.
You are an excellent video essayist. Thanks for doing what you do!
Boomers: centrists
Millenials: socdems
Gen Z: Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism ♥
POLYTIKS
Gen Z are being raised by Gen-X centrists, Gay Space Communism comes next.
@California Wildfires I too can post stupid videos on youtube.
Much as Gen Z me would love some Gay Space Communism, lets leave space be until we figure out how to not destroy our own planet...
Seems like you're doing a good job. Keep up the good work, brother! Viva la revolución!
Gen X Commie, and proud.
I'm an economist and I can't stress this enough. Economics is NOT an actual science! You can't accurately predict what will happen with the implementation of certain policies. The theories of economics are THEORIES, not laws of nature (even though some of them are called laws by the economists, lol). When an economist says that a particular ideology or school of thought is better than others, it's their PERSONAL OPINION, not a factual statement by an expert. You cannot take the politics out of the "science" economics. There's a reason they used to call it political economy and I personally think we should go back to this.
Cheers from Denmark and good luck to all of those fighting against corruption and absurd inequalities.
He's a smart boy! And a good boy!
So glad I found your channel! I like the way you built context around your responses.
This really reminds me of the "Yer Dad" concept from Philosophy Tube.
Essentially Yer Dad thinks he knows better than naive millennials advocating for total social reform, but he can kinda get on board with things like treating LGBTQ+ people with respect.
Perhaps he does know better, because he was in precisely your position fourty years ago.
Boomer dads be like:
_Anarcho-grillist noises_
What I love about the people who call themselves centrist nowadays is how much balance they bring to any political debate. Every act of groveling at the righties' feet is balanced out with hating on the lefties. Truly the ultimate equaliser.
8:40 oh how i long for the primary race. we didn’t know how happy we were.
I have to thank you not just for the specific topics and insight you share in these videos but for the way they help me with my master's research. Even when the topics aparently have nothing to do with mine, the ideas you bring up help me to remember an author, a theory, or an idea I was trying to express. In other words, your videos re-active my brian, specially during those days when I'm under the weather due to lost faith in the real use of what I'm researching.
Keep up the good work and cheers mate. Best regards.
I'm just about a millennial, and definitely not a socialist. But I understand why such ideas might appeal to particular age cohorts at this time.
Capitalism gained popular support (at the ballot box and in the workplace) by making it easier for people without much pre-existing wealth to play the game, and play it successfully. That game was capital accumulation. Examples of this might be the Tory idea of a 'home owning democracy' (first touted in the 1920s) or the sales of shares in the privatised utilities in the 1980s. There were also tactical compromises made by the forces of capital with the forces of labour (e.g. labour laws which enabled trade unions to have more leverage over employers).
The net result was that, for much of the 20th century, it was easier than ever for groups from humbler origins to build their own fortunes - or, accumulate capital. Be that property, cash or investment assets.
The so-called millennial cohort have the same opportunities to accumulate capital on paper, but in reality they are often left with very little income that can be invested into buying their own homes, or building a meaningful share portfolio or pension plan or whatever.
In others words, I can see why millennials might not be thrilled at having to play a game that they seem to have been set up to fail at. And who can blame many of them for seeking an alternative?
By global standards, Biden is a right centrist and Bernie is a left Centrist.
If you actually listen to them, the “good old days” they refer too is the USA when it had socialist policies(or at least had more socialist policies)
When was this?
The generational gaps are dated because we don't live in the days when a young person would take a low wage job and pay their way through school, today almost everyone is working in a low paying job and college isn't cheap anymore, so concentrating on generational differences too much forgets differences in a countries political system that more than likely is different from others example would be between the United States and the United Kingdom
Let's look at a UK boomer analyzing the generational economic disparity then: ruclips.net/video/ZuXzvjBYW8A/видео.html
@@dynamicworlds1 in the 40s, 50s, and sixties in the U.S at least you had an industrial base but as the industry became more technologically advanced those jobs became obsolete which means just as a boomer isn't needed for that job but also their children won't have those jobs at all which means today they both will have to go to school to train or retrain for a job that may or may not be there because of technology which means they will end up in a job that pays less with or without benefits to make matters worse if you are young or old and a victim of 2008 financial crisis, you probably lost your house now you're forced to move in with someone else or rent a ridiculously priced apartment.
@@haroldlebo2005 nice job proving you're not even willing to listen to data-driven counterarguments
@@dynamicworlds1 lmao, data-driven arguments don't take into acct individual financial situations like chronic unemployment, disability, which are complicated even more by state by state county by county jobs and economics, he even points out in this talk that taxes will go up because will have to pay more in welfare like pensions and social security
You've just helped me understand why me and my step-father can never seem to agree on anything political. Thanks man
As an anarchist millennial for almost ten years now. I do agree that for the first time in my life I feel like a kinda big portion of my peers are engaging in socialist ideologies seriously. Idk gives me some kind of hope I guess
Good job skid! Was waiting on this one!
Glad you liked it!
You take so long to reach your points, often citing so many quotes and anecdotes from history, that by the time you move on I have already forgotten what your original point was, probably in part because I've partially drifted to sleep. I strongly feel you could present the information in a more concise manner.
Good to hear Mark Fisher namedropped. I've been trying to get my libertarian boyfriend to read "Capitalist Realism" for a while now, and it's becoming more relevant by the day.
I see millennial socialism, and I give you gen z communism
Yess I'm a Gen z communist too
@@talahamarneh2809 see you in the gulag comrade!
I’m a transistorized, transgenederized, transmogrified trans-human
A corporatized, commercialized, industrial-strength consumer
A goal setting, gym sweating, debt fretting freak
A social climbing net-worker that’s always on heat
I got my education, majoring in indoctrination
Where they taught me to comply, to never question why
And so I’m chasing an illusion, of success that’s a delusion
That is sending me insane, exploding my brain
And as we teeter on the brink, soon to be extinct
"The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, and said "this is mine," and found people naïve enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows, “Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.”
Jean Jacques Rousseau, The origins of inequality 1754
LAND......LAND.........LAND..............
Has anyone ever told you you could pass off as Emilie de Ravin's brother? 😂 The actress who played Belle in once upon a time
No and I didn't actually know who that was but I've just googled her and you actually have a point. Usually the "you look like..." comments have me stumped but I can actually see why you'd say that, haha!
@@Tom_Nicholas well the more you know 😂
I can see that. Though now I’m trying to imagine Tom with an Aussie accent, and it’s just not working! 😂
Hi Tom my good man, as a Gen Xer I can say that my former classmates and contemporaries having firmly chose neoliberalism and neocon which depresses me deeply. Being an outright Marxist shocks them to their core but baby steps do help in changing their outlook. For clarity I was born in 1979 so a young Gen Xer.
Being a "centrist" was more about pragmatism. The UK is surprisingly dominated by the Conservative Party. By the end of the 2024 Parliament, Labour will only have been in government 16 of the previous 50 years. If you're a British left winger, history trains you that you're not allowed to have nice things, you have to accept a compromise that's moderate enough win over middle England. The best we can hope for is not a government that gives us vast social reform but a government who isn't going to try to privatise the NHS and remove worker protections that already exist. It's rubbish, innit.
As a "centrist dad" (and Gen Xer) myself, I feel like this analysis hits pretty close to the mark. I think the major events of the last few years, the housing crisis and the covid pandemic are convincing both gen Xers and millennials that the current system just makes the rich richer and socioeconomic mobility gets more and more difficult.
Sees on Aug 12, 2020: "The Democratic nominee will likely support some form of universal healthcare." *laughcries*
Another thing to think about with the divide in generations, besides the “break” that occurred with 2008 and the economic change, we also have the Theory of Medium with Marshall McLuhan and his work such as “The Media is the Massage”. The age divide between the electronic age of media with TV and talk radio, to the digital age with YT and the podcast culture.
That’s true, the medium(s) through which our political discourse is continued has changed hugely. Perhaps that’s allowed certain ideas to hit the mainstream that previously might not have made it through the funnel of editors at print publications. I think that’s becoming less the case however as the Cambridge Analytica Stuff reveals...
I see Cambridge Analytica (and really all corporate-governmental entities whether private like FB or public like the NSA in the US) as a symbol of a conflict reminiscent of the dawn of the print age of media with the Gutenberg Press. Every new media age allows for greatly increased spread of ideas. This is both seen as beneficial and detrimental to the powers at be. At first the new media explodes because it provides a "new economy" of potential. But, then almost natural response that comes as well is the "Censor" and the "Blacklist" and general control which also comes from the authorities because of the spread of subversive ideas.
While I do not subscribe to reductionist theories of human change, I do think that McLuhan provides an interesting frame by periodizing history by the mediums of communication. (I guess it's kind of like a different take on the Dialectical theory of history proposed by Hegel.)
Oh, sorry forgot to mention, same guy, different account.
But, another frame to consider: Gerontocracy.
At least here in the US, their is a big problem with leadership (of the elite society/classes) both public and private... *cough cough Koch Bros.*... which continue to age into older years without having to give up power or pass it to a younger generation.
Welcome to lefttube, my dude.
I've watched a few of your videos during the last three days or so and I must say I really enjoy them. Subscribed!
they call themselves dads becouse thats the only vaguely normal thing about them
I liked this Tom. You stayed clear of (uninformed) opinion while posing thought-provoking questions. More please!
Thanks! Definitely more similarish stuff in the works.
hahaha... if they r afraid of millenials, prepare for gen z, cuz we r even more radical ;)
Hum yet people as they grow hold they become more moderate and conservative, that does seem to be tendency across generations.
I know i dont have the same ideas then i had when i was 20. While im still liberal socially, im not as radical, and you could say, im on a totally different spectrum then most of the left this days. In fact the more i age the more, i am a libertarian.
I'm an old Gen X er, my parents are older than boomers, but follow that centrist line of believing all MSM and they think the internet is just crackpots with tinfoil hats spouting conspiracy theories from their basement. I am getting more left leaning as I get older and see hope in the younger generations.
First time watching you, I subscribed.
Ps I'm rooting for Bernie, Yang or Tulsi over here.
Brilliant. This gives me the confidence to start the political analysis youtube channel I’ve always dreamt about.
I fall into the centrist dad category, though not a dad. I was in college when the 2008-9 financial crash occurred, and could not find a job in my given field. So, I looked outside the box and became an insurance adjuster (there's always gonna be natural disasters, especially with global warming). Now, I work for myself as an independent adjuster, set my own fees and workload, and do quite well. I still have that idea of you have to look out for yourself and can't rely on government because it is wholly unreliable. I suppose this has shaped my view to support social progress, but in terms of economics, make some policy changes on the edges without ripping the whole thing up. But I was lucky, I suppose. I was able to look outside the box and find something worthwhile.
Tom you are a gem! Just subscribed. Very old Gen Xer here 1966. As I hid under my desk in first grade because we had to practice kissing our little asses goodbye to nuclear devastation, I had a similar understanding when faced now with nuclear plus ecological devastation... Wait a minute people this stuff just does not add up! Thus my RUclips name, toto NOW pull back the curtain the Wizard is back there doing unspeakable things. ( little did I know the meaning of toto in today's lexicon. LOL appropriately) Thank you for adding your effort to help us understand where we are. We can understand it. Some of us did understand it at its most simple base level in first grade. Not to mention other things like my best friend in first, nearly the only black kid in our whole school, understood this scenerio... " They just cast me as the gingerbread boy in the first grade school play. Wonder why?" Knowing look.
Older generations really disempowered and disenfranchised an entire generation of people and their offspring, then really have the gall to sit back and wonder why they're so disdainful of the almighty Capitalism (which isn't even true unfettered Capitalism, though they try to argue otherwise). Like, what'd y'all think was gonna happen?