The assumption that old people are inherently right wing and young people are inherently left wing is just wrong. Correlating age with political beliefs is a fucking pseudoscience, and so is the whole concept of generations like boomers and zoomers. Their marketing terms, the baby boom was a uniquely United States thing and to apply that term to 20 odd years of people from across the world is just factually wrong. We got to stop self identifying with these terms because they are ageist and they divide us and they allow for shitty excuses like “it’s just their generation” to excuse shitty behavior.

What’s the point of this? Stop dunking on old people. Old people aren’t inherently reactionary.

  • mufasio@lemmygrad.ml
    ·
    1 year ago

    We are all the result of our material conditions. Which is why as marxists we should assess groups of people that are useful for propagandizing and radicalizing to our cause. And “old people” are the last group I would be focusing on and that I would expect to have success with. Yeah, most boomers aren’t capitalists but most of them support capitalist interests even when it goes against their own interests. They are too far gone and shouldn’t be trusted as a group to support the cause. If that hurts some boomers’ feelings, then honestly, shut the fuck up and go talk to your peers and convince them to quit fucking over the planet.

    How many boomers told you that you would become more conservative when you got older? I don’t know about you but I’ve only become more radicalized and I can see the same thing among my fellow millennials even the ones that don’t have class consciousness. And the zoomers are doing even better. We are all the result of our material conditions and boomers as a whole were given opportunities that they stripped from their children and future generations. Even now as we sit in the crumbling ashes of late stage capitalism they still support the same failed policies that got us here in the first place and are eagerly embracing fascism. Understand your enemy, and never underestimate their contempt for you.

    • Wheaties [she/her]
      ·
      1 year ago

      Which is why as marxists we should assess groups of people that are useful for propagandizing and radicalizing to our cause. And “old people” are the last group I would be focusing on and that I would expect to have success with.

      Yeah, I agree with this assessment. I... just worry sometimes when I see harsh language directed at a whole demographic, even one as butts as the yankee boomer. "At the risk of sounding ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by feelings of love" and all that.

      • mufasio@lemmygrad.ml
        ·
        1 year ago

        Thanks for the discussion and that quote is a good reminder that it is my love for the people that makes me a Marxist. Everyone that sees this thread and hasn’t seen The Motorcycle Diaries should put it on their list, it played an important part in my early radicalization.

        There’s a lot more I could and want to say but probably shouldn’t. But I just want to finish by saying that we would be so lucky to be in our 60s or 70s and living in a world shaped in the image of our politics and to have the younger generations yelling at us to shut up because we are out of touch. I hope that we both see that day comrade.