Another year and another episode of Charlie Brooker bringing us his distinctively nihilistic perspective on the previous 12 months. Although Brooker delved into an agglomeration of issues raised by the popular media in 2013, one sardonic observation stood out above the rest. With Mandela now dead and every nation on the earth scrambling for a piece of his legacy, is Russell Brand now the most influential political figure with a mainstream voice?
It was of course, like everything Brooker says, to be taken with several heaps of salt, but it unearthed some unanswered questions that have been lingering like a bad smell over cyberspace ever since Brand’s notorious clash with Paxman on Newsnight in October. How is it that a popular charismatic espousing some vague call to egalitarian revolution can strike such a chord with the seemingly apathetic youth of today?
After all, the generation of 2013 is hardly the generation of 1968, despite fringe left-wing publications trying to play up some of the student protests materialising on University compasses across the country. Generation Y, what Jean Twenge terms ‘Generation Me’, is the product of the unrestrained individualism of the 1980s and the narcissistic consumerism that had its roots in the ‘Affluent Britain’ of the 50s and 60s. Right?
Perhaps, but it does a great disservice to my generation to tar us all with the same post-Thatcherite brush. You need to look no further than the Stop the War Coalition or recent campaigns against the privatisation of student debt to detect that the picture of post-war political indifference is not as monolithic as it once seemed. The Millennials have a political consciousness and their attraction to Brand’s rhetoric, however vacuous it may be, reflects this.
None the less, the elevation of Brand from a self-absorbed, ex-junky comedian to a spokesman for the disillusioned masses has worrying implications for the left. Firstly, it is an indication of just how starved of heroes the modern socialist movement has become. Let’s face it, RESPECT have been severely discredited by the numerous scandals surrounding George Galloway and Michael Foot’s death in 2010 was a stark reminder that the Labour movement of Tony Benn and Nye Bevan has drawn it’s last breath.
Secondly, the content of Brand’s address seems to go against everything the movement needs to be striving for. Advocating further apathy will not lead to a revolution of consciousness, it will only act as a buffer against those on the left who are actively pushing for change every day. In this respect, Robert Webb’s well-publicized rebuttal of Brand’s drivel was a welcome development in the online debate.
Despite Michael Gove’s venomous remark to Will Self on Question Time earlier this year, ‘populism’ should not be a dirty word. Appealing to the wishes of the people who elect you into office is not a sign of a weakness. Rather it is the foundation of social democracy. The Cameron administration seems to have neglected this seemingly obvious truth of late, and with the pace of cuts to public services and austerity measures actually gaining in momentum, there seems to be little that Generation Y can do to stem the tide of the Neo-Liberal consensus.
Or at least, that is what Jean Twenge and other social scientists who write off this generation as apathetic and entitled want us to think. Let us prove them wrong.
