Oh, Yes, They Are

Joyless bores.

In which Dorian Lynsky tries to argue that the no platforming safe places censorious young are engaging in a quiet revolution. No, they ain’t. They are unpleasant reactionaries who try to silence voices that offend them.

The younger generation have been caricatured as easily offended puritans. But they just want to expand freedom for all

Because, of course, destroying freedom is how you do this. How wonderfully Soviet.

The natural process of generational change was memorably summed up by Grampa Simpson in The Simpsons episode Homerpalooza: “I used to be with it, but then they changed what it was. Now what I’m with isn’t it, and what’s it seems weird and scary to me. It’ll happen to you.” For at least the four decades between rock’n’roll and rave, it was understood that the latest “it” would be weird and scary because it was wilder, louder, sexier and more free, rendering yesterday’s rebel today’s square. The changing of the guard was uncomfortable for the middle-aged, but it had a certain logic.

“It” hasn’t changed. What has changed is the enemy. Whereas my generation kicked back against the older social conservatives, now we find ourselves faced by young social conservatives who are so bloody clueless they don’t realise that they are aping the Soviet Union. Not since Victorian times have we seen such puritanical behaviour and not since the Soviet Union have we seen such an orchestrated assault on freedom of speech. Perhaps one of the most over-used words in the English language today is “unacceptable”. Unacceptable to whom? And who should give a shit anyway? Just because you find something unacceptable it doesn’t mean that everyone else does, nor does it mean that the person saying it should be silenced. For that is what your “quiet revolutionaries” are trying to do and they are vile scum for doing so.

The generational tensions of the 2010s are strikingly different. The popular stereotype of someone under 30 is now no longer a sex-mad freak but a strange hybrid of totalitarian and wimp, forever saying, “Don’t”. According to an interminable genre of article, millennials and young people are puritanical snowflakes who insist on trigger warnings and safe spaces, don’t drink or take drugs, think clapping is too aggressive, can’t tell the difference between flirting and sexual harassment, and delight in explaining why you should feel bad about your favourite classic sitcom.

That’s precisely what they are and the term is reactionary. And I will not be lectured by a bunch of know-nothings who have no life experience on how I should behave or what I should say, for they have not earned that right. It is not okay for them to tell me what is or is not okay.

The current cultural tendency, whether you call it wokeness, political correctness redux or any of the other imperfect terms available, seems to lean more towards constraint, building new walls between the acceptable and the verboten. Inevitably, that looks less like fun.

Because that is precisely what it is. And anyone who uses the term “woke” is a class one twat who should immediately be ignored.

If you’re someone like Matt Groening, Terry Gilliam or Jerry Seinfeld, allergic to censorship and rules, accustomed to bucking the system and saying the unsayable, it’s unnerving to find yourself on the “wrong” side. Your natural enemies are the stuffed shirts and Bible-bashing moralists, not people 40 years younger telling you that, actually, what you just said isn’t OK any more. It’s an uncomfortable role reversal.

Yes. Because the freedoms our generation and the one before it fought for – the freedoms that the slaves of the soviet bloc fought for – are now being trashed by a bunch of ignorant puritans who have no idea just how precious those freedoms are. And anyone forty years younger than me having the effrontery to tell me what is okay or not will find themselves very quickly and sharply reminded that their intervention is not okay and where they can insert their “wokeness” such that it causes the maximum discomfort.

Sophisticated concepts such as privilege and cultural appropriation become cudgels when they should be scalpels.

Sophisticated? Bwahahahahaha! Bullshit. Seriously, bullshit on stilts. There is no such thing as privilege or cultural appropriation. Both are constructs designed to silence dissenting voices.

Nonetheless, when the excesses of a loud minority are amplified and turned into a caricature of a whole generation it looks suspiciously convenient. The idea that millennials are joyless bores absolves older generations of the need to keep up. It is a kind of self-flattery: “We struck the right balance between progress and fun, they’re the reactionaries.” If these people tell themselves that it’s impossible not to cause offence, then they can duck the need to ask themselves tough questions or rethink long-held assumptions. The backlash against #MeToo is the most glaring example of a reluctance to consider that the freedoms they enjoyed when they were young were unevenly distributed and frequently abused.

Word salad. Ignorant bullshit. I have never claimed any such thing, but by God, my generation certainly understood the principle of free speech a damned sight more than the denizens of the Student Union who would trash our history while learning nothing from it. It is impossible not to cause offence as we see on a regular basis. There should never be any protection from offence. If someone is offended, then they need to get on with life and shrug it off rather than whipping up a Twatter mob or demanding that the police intervene. Offence is a part of life. Grow up and get over it.

The caricature also obscures the fact that the “woke” also want liberation. Far from producing box-ticking morality tales, the relatively recent focus on diversity has already expanded the range of stories that can be told and the people who get to tell them.

I’m sorry but does this blither-blather actually say anything?

Older people who resent millennials because of a Twitter storm or some student union amendment that somehow became a national news story might consider why, at a time when social progress feels shockingly fragile, there’s a desire to draw a few lines – not in order to kill anyone’s buzz, but so that more people can feel more free.

Yes, because destroying the past and freedom itself is the way to freedom. Someone wrote a novel about that – back in 1948. These people have used it as an instruction manual.

Then maybe it won’t seem so weird and scary.

What a patronising prick Dorian Lynskey is.