17.12.2015

Peace out, man

The response of young people to the government’s decision to bomb Syria came as a welcome surprise to Commissaress

We are a world away from the days of youth pacifism. In the 1960s, students and young people led the wave of anti-establishment protests and culture, of which an integral part was the anti-Vietnam war movement. There was a consensus that teenagers are natural rebels, fighting against ‘the man’ from their parents’ house and wanting to ‘make love, not war.’

This perception is still very much alive, and it is quite common to see references to ‘the rebellious teenage phase’ and to the oft-quoted line, ‘If you’re not a socialist in your 20s, you have no heart; if you’re not a conservative in your 40s, you have no brain’ - which, of course, implies youthful political ‘idealism’. But it is a hopelessly antiquated way to think about young people and politics. The baby-boomer generation, which was at the forefront of the counter-culture surge, is now at retirement age, and has, for the most part, given up radicalism and started voting Ukip; or, as the rightwing adults in my life emphatically tell me, it has grown older and wiser. And youthful radicalism ‘mellowed’ as it did.

These days, as I have come to realise more and more in the last couple of months, the youth are less radical than almost anyone else. Sure, some young people (fewer than one would imagine) are disillusioned with politics, and some of these people (again, a minority) start doing something about it. But political radicalism is no longer a phase people go through in their mid-teens, as some seem to think. Even on an everyday level, people are not considerably more rebellious in their teens than they are at other points in their lives: youth crime is continuously decreasing,¹ subcultures and ‘alternative’ ways of dressing and living are not nearly as noticeable as they once were (and when they are, such as on ‘alternative’ social media platforms like Tumblr, they do not tend to be accompanied by a consciously rebellious outlook; they are just for the sake of ‘coolness’) and being anti-establishment is just generally not so fashionable any more, whether this establishment takes the form of an evil chemistry teacher, current fashion trends, the police or whatever else. The dominant outlook seems to be something like ‘I don’t really like the way X is, but … I don’t know, let’s just get through it and make it work.’ It is better to comply than to complain.

This complacent outlook applies as much to politics as it does to everyday life. Just as many people are now spending their teenage years grinning and bearing their everyday problems, they tend to grin and bear the decisions of this wonderful government we have and its almost as wonderful allies. Rather than instinctively opposing what the establishment does, most people I know - including most young people - instinctively support what it does, either on the grounds of a genuine belief that it is for the best or because opposing it is futile, short-sighted or - my favourite - ‘not pragmatic’. I have Jewish friends who refuse point-blank to admit to the atrocities of the Israeli government due to their strong sense of loyalty to the religious establishment and to the beliefs which their parents have passed on to them. Opposing the government is so totally 1968.

I am so used to this sort of political sucking up that on the day after the government decided to commence its air strikes in Syria, I wanted to bunk off school even more than usual. Having double maths on that day was bad enough without having to listen to everyone blithely singing the praises of British imperialism, totally oblivious to the actual effects - apart from ill-defined ‘revenge’ and ‘victory’ - which air strikes would have on the situation in Syria.

But they did no such thing. To my surprise and delight, they were angry. And not just angry in a moralistic way, which is almost as annoying and indeed reactionary as support for imperialism. They recognised that the ‘eye for an eye’ approach which is being used to promote intervention in Syria is archaic, that bombs are not going to do much to fight Islamic State relative to the harm they inflict upon civilians and even that the government has hidden economic and political incentives to carry out air strikes and involve itself in the Middle East. There was pretty much unanimous agreement that air strikes are a bad idea, we should do what we can to end them and the government is not on our side. And this happened at a school which is generally very rightwing and supportive of the Tory government. At other schools, people may have been even more ready to go against the grain.

This may not seem like much, but the fact that more than a tiny minority of people have the confidence to question the motives of the government and entertain the possibility that it is not just trying to protect us is a great step forward, and an opportunity. The ugly truth of imperialism is becoming more and more obvious during the current crisis in the Middle East, as millions of civilians are forced to flee their home countries and pour into Europe, where they are met by xenophobic politicians who tell them pointedly to ‘go home’ - where they proceed to sanction the destruction of their homes. And, as people grow more aware of this, it is quite possible that anti-establishment feelings will become widespread amongst youth - and hopefully everyone else - once again, just as they did during the war in Vietnam.

But, of course, being revolutionary is more than just being anti-establishment. What starts as an outburst of anger against the government could become a revolutionary movement, but is more likely to become liberal, ineffective and ultimately useless, as shown by the way the wave of radicalism in the 60s and the more recent Occupy movement (the latter certainly did not reflect the attitudes of the majority of youth) ended up degenerating into ‘peace out and eat kale’ hippie lovefests with horribly moralistic undertones. There is a reason why there was no socialist revolution in 1970 or 2011. The recent beginning of a resurgence in anti-government sentiment amongst youth risks going the same way unless it is accompanied by clear revolutionary direction.

And so the ‘morals of the story’ here are the same things that I have been nagging leftwingers about at conferences, at meetings and in this paper all year: theoretical clarity and involvement in grassroots activism are absolutely imperative if we want to fight imperialism and rebuild the revolutionary left.

2016 is going to be an interesting year for us, as imperialism, austerity and their effects on the lives of people across the world become ever more pertinent problems. It should be a productive year too.

Notes

1. www.gov.uk/government/statistics/youth-justice-annual-statistics-2013-to-2014.