Posted under Culture & Survival of the West
It’s no secret that young people constitute the dynamic core of Ron Paul’s surprising popularity. The reasons are many. For one thing, there’s a new, deep distrust of big government felt throughout society, but especially by the young. Disapproval of DC’s wars is near universal, but young people, who are the ones who must fight these wars, feel an understandable urgency to rein in an out-of-control government that thinks it must run the world. Little wonder Paul receives more donations from active military personnel than any other candidate.
Young people are attracted to Ron Paul’s courageous stands against a ruling elite and its institutions, which they feel have betrayed them. Good jobs are hard to find. Many are saddled with crushing student loans.
Steve Sailer believes something new is taking shape, “the decline of the generation gap.” The young are no longer viewing their parents as the enemy. As Sailer reminds us, “to get organized, people need to be in opposition to somebody.” Without an external enemy, people find one at home. (See “American Civil War.”) And the rise of multiculturalism, says Sailer, is creating a new generational unity within ethnic groups.
Young people who imagine the older generation is their enemy are learning hard lessons about who’s who in an increasingly hostile, “multicultural” world. Here’s a vivid and VERY satisfying example:
A vicious Marxist gang known as “Antifa” has staged violence attacks all over Europe. The group calls itself “anti-racist” and targets members of right-wing groups. Members of the gang routinely cross national borders to commit violent assaults. One of the ongoing projects of the gang in Germany is to vandalize Thor Steinar clothing stores. The group claims that the Arab-owned clothing line caters to “Nazis” by putting Viking/Norse imagery on some of their t-shirts.
However, a group of Antifa gangbangers got some poetic justice when a mob of Kurdish immigrants stormed their Berlin gang house and brutally beat members with baseball bats. The attack occurred just days ago. The Kurdish immigrants simply wanted to attack some white people, any white people.
The newspaper quotes a white female “with dreadlocks” as saying she is leaving the area for fear of “Kurdish and Arab mafia.” The newspaper states “the left’s worldview is faltering.”
Savor that last clause: “the left’s worldview is faltering.” The more your ideology clashes with reality, the harder reality is going to hurt. The “Antifa” saw themselves as noble, altruistic whites. The Kurd gang, however, only saw whites.
As Dr. Samuel Huntington has observed, “In the post-Cold War world flags count and so do other symbols of cultural identity, including crosses, crescents, and even head coverings, because culture counts, and cultural identity is what is most meaningful to most people. People are discovering new but often old identities and marching under new but often old flags which lead to wars with new but often old enemies.” The Age of Ideology is dead, and the Age of Culture has arrived.
Matt Weber on 24 Feb 2012 at 6:02 pm #
I don’t know. I guess the generation gap is receding, but I’m too young to have ever had any experience of that anyway so it’s hard to say. On the whole though, it seems to me that most young people I see are blandly liberal. Individual freedom is supreme, and group identity is taking a backseat. I can’t think of anyone who would self-consciously limit their personal choices due to group identity concerns, with the exception of the normal bonds of family and friends (though even friends don’t seem to stop many people nowadays). For the most part, getting ahead in terms of money and stuff is all we care about anymore.
I run in the upper-middle class aspirant circle, so that probably has an effect.
Kirt Higdon on 24 Feb 2012 at 8:52 pm #
I think young people are becoming more libertarian, but opposition to war has little to do with it. Since there is no draft, there is no one who “must fight these wars.” Those who join are in it for money, benefits, excitement, adventure, the chance to play real live video games, etc. There is a strong inter-generational conflict due to the ponzi game reverse Robin Hood structure of social security and medicare, which takes from the relatively poor young to give to the relatively affluent “senior citizens”. Same goes for long term government debt. This inter-generational conflict overlaps ethnic conflict since non-white populations tend to skew young and white populations tend to skew old.
The Kurds beating up German Marxists is certainly poetic justice but I seriously suspect another motive, either political or personal, rather than just a generic Kurdish desire to beat white people. The only white Germans they could find in Berlin were Marxist militants? C’mon – I’ve been in Berlin. The only Kurd I know is married to a tall blonde American friend of my daughter and I hear his brother is also married to a tall blonde American. These guys were born in Iraq but brought up in Sweden, so I guess there is where they acquired the taste for blondes.
RonL on 24 Feb 2012 at 10:03 pm #
A few leftist beaten or killed means nothing. How many hippies were killed in the 1960s and 1970s? Despite all the crimes and dead, they recreated the culture. Terrorists like Ayers write curriculae.
WE may be in an age of culture, but the elites and the leftists who countrol the commandiung heights of cultures are oikophobes who want to destroy their cultures and civilizations.
roho on 25 Feb 2012 at 6:12 am #
I’m surprised? Most of todays youth have been so indoctrinated with tolerance agendas, that I’m shocked that they stand for anything other than universal PC?
HarrisonBergeron2 on 25 Feb 2012 at 2:34 pm #
Matt Weber,
Actually, with the constant and intense assault on traditional values young people endure in the government indoctrination centers, it’s a wonder any are able to think for themselves. Only the most independent and strong-willed can resist.
The cream will rise to the top.
Chris Hewlett on 26 Feb 2012 at 1:43 pm #
Matt Weber and Roho are closest to being correct in my opinion. I have direct experience with this through my daughters – discussion this past weekend with my oldest revealed that she likes the liberal part of Ron Paul. She likes the non-intervention part but also all the libertarian things such as legal drugs. She sides with O concerning the Catholic Church. Thinks the aspirin joke is a total insult to women – I thought it was funny and a simple demonstration of female virtue. She thinks the rich should be taxed more – and I pointed out that if that is her position Ron Paul is not her candidate. In short, young people are all over the place and are blandly liberal as stated.
mike on 28 Feb 2012 at 12:53 am #
I agree with Chris and roho, most young people today are total brainwashed its not even funny. thankful Im not! lol
Catholic Trotskyist on 01 Mar 2012 at 9:14 am #
I think a lot of younger people are getting more conservative in regards to religion, and are interested in Ron Paul because of non-interventionism and because he offers some economic theories most of us hadn’t heard before during a time of economic crisis. But on racial issues I am proud to see us getting more annd more liberal, as we socialize more and more interracially; many of us even live in interracial dorms in our colleges. I am looking forward to the children of most of the people on this blog falling in love with and marrying African, Latino or Asian immigrants, and listening to your fruitless weaping at the destruction of the white race, of which I am a part and which I am glad to see being destroyed. God bless all of you, amen.
Chris Hewlett on 03 Mar 2012 at 4:45 pm #
No, you and your cousin – Mick Jagger – just like brown sugar.