There’s probably no way to measure it, but it’s hard to think of more generational beef than today’s progressive boomers have with based Gen Z in America.
I’ve been staying a few days with three Groypers in southern California. The media portrays this group as misogynist, racist incels – “christofacists” is one of the more updated slurs. They supposedly promote white nationalist views, oppose immigration, feminism, LGBTQ+ rights, and advocate for isolationist policies. A substantial amount of Holocaust denial goes down in the wider Groyper army. We have departing views on many things, alignment on others.
If we lived in a sensible world, where leaders made sensible, fair decisions, Groypers would unlikely exist but if they did, they would be chased into Wyoming’s mountains to scrounge as some outcast militia and reservation police would be permitted to shoot on sight. Unfortunately our world isn’t sensible – and it’s our current leaders who are exclusively responsible for the shape and popularity of a young man like Nick Fuentes, the de facto commander of the Groypers – a young American conservative activist regarded as the most canceled man in America, if not the most polarizing.
Finance is a big alignment; they blame things like the US Chamber of Commerce’s decision to outsource manufacturing to China in the early 2000s as a source of the mestizaising obstacles impeding their participation in the jobs and housing markets. Contrary to what is said about them, they don’t worship Donald Trump – in some cases, many have to come loathe him – they view high tech Palantir as satanic adjacent, they don’t obsess over George Soros, or his oddball son, and for the most part, they don’t appear particularly interested in America’s wars – past or present.
But white progressive boomers are the biggest alignment. We’ve sat out late in California’s sensational heatwave drinking tequila and playing boomer top trumps: you show me some hideous English specimens – I’ll show you some American ones.
Wasn’t like this when my grandfather was alive. His generation fought genuine evil, were rationed, mastered the basics – which sharpened instincts they used to lay foundations for future prosperity…which their children then went and spaffed up a wall.
The Groypers told me a story that would have unlikely happened when I was their age. Two of them were watching a sports match recently, at one point standing from their seats to applaud. There was a bellowing roar from the row behind them: “SIT DOWN!” They turned to discover a white boomer wearing a rainbow t-shirt. “Whatever,” the Groypers responded, “hope your piles get infected.” I would have caught a right hook had I spoken to my airforce pilot grandfather like that, but he wouldn’t have shouted at me in that way – and he wouldn’t have been seen dead in such sick couture.
These sorts of responses from Gen Z profiles to boomers are now ubiquitous; in December, the idiot Piers Morgan of boomer middle management, decided he would invite Nick Fuentes onto his trainwreck channel with the objective of humiliating him. It didn’t go well for Morgan.
When it came to surrender-monkeying progressive boomerism at the convergence of politics and media, I laid out the case for SABC lifer Max du Preez being one of the most epic examples of ladder burning cheerleading. They were reasonably convinced. From their side, they raised the profiles of former and present Republican Senators Mitt Romney and Lindsay Graham: one was a predatory capitalist, the other is a warmonger with a girl’s name – despite never having fought in a war himself. I (reluctantly) agreed that these parties cancel each other.
Our timing has been excellent. In the last few days, BBC progressive boomer John Simpson’s best friends have been dying – again. Commenting on the death of possibly one of humanity’s most evil profiles, Simpson described the Iranian security chief Ali Larijani as “clever and reasonable”. He said something similar when Ernie “Lastig” Solomon, the Cape Flats gang boss, was machine-gunned near a petrol station – “witty and charming” were the words he used there.
Legacy media have already condemned America’s Groyper Gen Z with a series of oversimplifications. But what has struck me is the concern their for friends, family and the succeeding generation; western boomers and early Gen X entrants (my generation), by contrast, clearly forgot about these things, reflected in, amongst others, the decay of capitals, DEI pilots and the devaluing of money. Inheritance – not shooting up schools – is a fundamental feature of their perspectives (campus assassinations appear the preserve of a different, erm, “group”).
I had one card left. Michael White is a former political editor of the Guardian, and the father of Sam White, one of Keir Starmer’s inner circle. Michael White describes himself today as “elderly sage and hack”, so I used him as lead donkey – final boss boomer – for the last parts of our comparitive analysis.
There isn’t an issue in today’s UK Michael White can’t give monkeypox to. The rape of minors (“complicated”), violent machete assaults (“complicated”), Keir Starmer (“possibly the best PM in history”). The position he and millions of Englishmen occupy is just repeating motions of surrender by over compensation and pandering – literally centrist (“elderly”) dad ground zero.
I’m an outsider entering a cultural phenomenon at an advanced stage – but I can already see one pronounced consequence: the traditional relationship grandsons share with their grandfathers.
I concluded a while back that history is going to be most unkind to progressive boomers, but what on the strength of what I’m hearing in America’s most progressive state, I’m upgrading that to much worse than unkind. Of course, you only worry about things like this if history means anything to you.
[Image: https://www.pexels.com/photo/a-person-in-white-sweater-holding-a-cellphone-with-message-6632997/]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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