Spite. When you dig down to the essence of modern right-wing politics, you are left with little else. This was not always the case.
Former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher and US president Ronald Reagan offered clear, coherent visions of society, even if their worship of free markets delivered economic insecurity and stagnating living standards. While today’s Conservative Party and “Trumpified” Republican Party remain committed to defending privileged interests, their driving ambition seems to be deliberately provoking fury among the progressively minded, much to the delight of their supporters.
It is this tendency that led former US president Donald Trump to denounce Mexicans as criminals and attempt to ban Muslims from entering the US. It is the same tendency that drove British Secretary of State for the Home Department Suella Braverman to declare that her “dream” and “obsession” was to see a flight transporting asylum seekers to Rwanda.
Cruelty is precisely the point.
This spite has found a particular target in younger Britons and Americans, many of whom increasingly embrace progressive social values such as anti-racism and LGBTQ+ rights (granted, this relies on a generous definition of youth as millennials — while the oldest members of Generation Z are only in their mid-20s, the most senior millennials have now reached their early 40s).
These generations have become a common enemy for the right. The feeling is mutual.
New research and survey data show that millennials are defying a supposed iron law of politics, that we shift to the right as we age. No other generation in recorded political history has retained such an entrenched rejection of right-wing politics as they have grown older.
The right has become its own gravedigger for two reasons: first, by building an economic model that promised individual freedom, but delivered mass insecurity; and second, by intentionally and repeatedly insulting the social values of the young.
British culture fetishizes home ownership even while its economic policies make this an increasingly distant dream for younger citizens. Young people have also borne the brunt of austerity, being saddled with university debt and suffering the closure of youth and Sure Start centers.
Yet a generation that is more educated than ever, but simultaneously deprived of prospects is treated with unadulterated contempt by the right. It is, after all, labeled the “snowflake generation,” which the Collins English Dictionary has defined as “the young adults of the 2010s, viewed as being less resilient and more prone to taking offense than previous generations.”
On both sides of the Atlantic, the right fears a younger generation of economically insecure and socially progressive citizens. Commentators and politicians treat younger people as woke barbarians at the gates, threatening to tear down everything conservatives hold dear.
The moral panic over so-called “cancel culture” is a striking example of this. What it really boils down to is an attempt by millennials and “zoomers” to assert their progressive social values and reject the bigotries found among some older Britons and Americans.
“Millennials are the silencing generation,” complains the right-wing Wall Street Journal, denouncing them as “perpetually offended” (what this perhaps really means is that younger people are less keen on demonizing migrants or obsessing over the existence of trans people).
“Millennials were woke enough ... but the next generation is much worse,” cries the Telegraph, denouncing university students as “Stalinist foot soldiers.”
Younger people are more likely to defend the rights of the minorities bullied and harassed by right-wing politicians, and conservatives hate them for it.
So the British and US right have apparently condemned themselves to a political doom loop: savaging the progressive values of younger generations, and in doing so driving them further into the arms of the left. This bile might serve a short-term political purpose in rallying the core vote of the Conservatives and Republicans, but it seems that conservatives have thought little about what will happen as younger generations come of age politically and culturally.
Perhaps right-wingers believed that the historic precedent of voters shifting rightwards with age would automatically assert itself, but much of the young remained locked out of the prosperity their parents had enjoyed.
What is intriguing is how right-wing politicians and commentators alike have doubled down on poisonous invectives that alienate young people. Perhaps this is evidence of a fatalism: They know their fate is sealed, so nothing is to be gained from restraint.
As a case in point, last week a British right-wing shock jock announced that she would choose the life of professional misogynist Andrew Tate “over the life of a half-educated, autistic, doom-mongering eco-cultist” Greta Thunberg. Her use of autistic as an insult was indicative of an increasingly vicious right-wing culture, but the unapologetic loathing toward Thunberg — whose offense is to seek to prevent humanity from destroying itself — was revealing.
Thunberg has become emblematic of progressive younger generations: The bile frequently directed at her speaks to a hatred and fear of those whom she is seen to represent.
In building and benefiting from an economic model that has left younger people bereft of a secure future, and repelling them with a “culture war” against progressive values, British and US conservatism seems to be authoring its own demise. Young people voted for Thatcher’s Conservatives in the 1980s, but little more than one-fifth of them voted for the party in 2019. While young Americans flocked to support Reagan in the 1980s, today their political icons are US Senator Bernie Sanders and US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
The political right has treated the young as the enemy within. It might soon realize what bitter harvest it has reaped as oblivion awaits.
Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist.
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