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| Momentum’s video is full of simplistic prejudices and won’t win over anyone | Momentum’s video is full of simplistic prejudices and won’t win over anyone |
| (6 months later) | |
| The leftwing campaign group’s dinner-party video has provoked outrage. That’s not surprising: it’s a divisive attack on baby boomers• Deborah Orr is a Guardian columnist | |
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| Fri 28 Jul 2017 17.16 BST | |
| Last modified on Mon 27 Nov 2017 19.20 GMT | |
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| That great moral arbiter, the Sun, is very upset by a video from the Labour campaign group, Momentum. The film shows four smug members of the baby boomer middle-class, along with a middle-aged son, discussing how they don’t understand why Jeremy Corbyn appeals to young people. The Sun declares this to be “hateful class war”. | That great moral arbiter, the Sun, is very upset by a video from the Labour campaign group, Momentum. The film shows four smug members of the baby boomer middle-class, along with a middle-aged son, discussing how they don’t understand why Jeremy Corbyn appeals to young people. The Sun declares this to be “hateful class war”. |
| The newspaper is being typically hysterical, of course. If there’s any discernible message in the film, it’s that affluent narcissistic sociopaths suck. Who knew? | The newspaper is being typically hysterical, of course. If there’s any discernible message in the film, it’s that affluent narcissistic sociopaths suck. Who knew? |
| Of course, one isn’t supposed to go around sprinkling psychiatric diagnoses over people when one is not a psychiatrist. Happily, however, these five dudes are fictional, so that doesn’t pertain. Certainly, there’s no other label that could fully account for the colossal lack of self-awareness or empathy on display around Momentum’s imaginary alfresco luncheon table. | Of course, one isn’t supposed to go around sprinkling psychiatric diagnoses over people when one is not a psychiatrist. Happily, however, these five dudes are fictional, so that doesn’t pertain. Certainly, there’s no other label that could fully account for the colossal lack of self-awareness or empathy on display around Momentum’s imaginary alfresco luncheon table. |
| There’s the guy who sneers at young people who expect a free higher education, when he benefited from one himself. There’s the woman who doesn’t understand their complaints about getting on the property ladder, when she bought her own £1.5m home for £20,000 in 1981. And there’s the son who was employed at an ad agency founded by a father with inherited capital, yet believes, “Nobody ever helped me out.” | There’s the guy who sneers at young people who expect a free higher education, when he benefited from one himself. There’s the woman who doesn’t understand their complaints about getting on the property ladder, when she bought her own £1.5m home for £20,000 in 1981. And there’s the son who was employed at an ad agency founded by a father with inherited capital, yet believes, “Nobody ever helped me out.” |
| Politically, it’s hard to see what the film is likely to achieve. It exists only to confirm very simplistic prejudices that already thrive in abundance. No one who sees their own hypocrisy parodied in it is likely to decide that perhaps it’s time to check their privilege. No one who sees their own resentment expressed is likely to reflect that resentment is like drinking poison, then waiting for the other person to die. The film’s agenda is purely divisive, like the Sun’s own agenda. It’s satirical, but only at an embarrassingly cartoonish level. | Politically, it’s hard to see what the film is likely to achieve. It exists only to confirm very simplistic prejudices that already thrive in abundance. No one who sees their own hypocrisy parodied in it is likely to decide that perhaps it’s time to check their privilege. No one who sees their own resentment expressed is likely to reflect that resentment is like drinking poison, then waiting for the other person to die. The film’s agenda is purely divisive, like the Sun’s own agenda. It’s satirical, but only at an embarrassingly cartoonish level. |
| The frustrating thing is that the film’s makers seem to be unaware themselves of what they are satirising. They focus on age and class, as if only the old and the rich are capable of self-interest. They mock the idea that the young and poor could ever be motivated by self-interest. They don’t appear to have noticed that baby boomers themselves led a youthquake, once upon a time. | The frustrating thing is that the film’s makers seem to be unaware themselves of what they are satirising. They focus on age and class, as if only the old and the rich are capable of self-interest. They mock the idea that the young and poor could ever be motivated by self-interest. They don’t appear to have noticed that baby boomers themselves led a youthquake, once upon a time. |
| The posh old folk in this film would have once thought themselves to be very hip to the groove, founding new ad agencies and setting up home in run-down parts of town. They’d have been going to Who concerts, hoping they died before they got old and laughing at the “I look up to him” sketch by John Cleese and the Two Ronnies. They might have voted for the first time in 1964, and opted for Harold Wilson. Or maybe not until the hugely increased majority of 1966. If you bother to think about the film for five minutes, it falls apart. Because it’s not conceived to actually be thought about. | The posh old folk in this film would have once thought themselves to be very hip to the groove, founding new ad agencies and setting up home in run-down parts of town. They’d have been going to Who concerts, hoping they died before they got old and laughing at the “I look up to him” sketch by John Cleese and the Two Ronnies. They might have voted for the first time in 1964, and opted for Harold Wilson. Or maybe not until the hugely increased majority of 1966. If you bother to think about the film for five minutes, it falls apart. Because it’s not conceived to actually be thought about. |
| Yet, the baby-boom generation, of which I’m a part, does need to be thought about. This was the generation that claimed huge cultural power and influence for the young, that seized on individualism as a liberating means of expression and urged the world to do it if it felt good. There’s irony in the way this group seems so comfortable in mocking the “millennials” as self-indulgent, self-centred and innocently naive when such things were, in their young days, qualities to be established and nurtured. | Yet, the baby-boom generation, of which I’m a part, does need to be thought about. This was the generation that claimed huge cultural power and influence for the young, that seized on individualism as a liberating means of expression and urged the world to do it if it felt good. There’s irony in the way this group seems so comfortable in mocking the “millennials” as self-indulgent, self-centred and innocently naive when such things were, in their young days, qualities to be established and nurtured. |
| This year, a US venture capitalist, Bruce Cannon Gibney, published a polemic called A Generation Of Sociopaths: How The Baby Boomers Betrayed America. It argues that “an unusually large number of boomers have behaved antisocially, skewing outcomes in ways deeply unfavourable to the nation, especially its younger citizens”. His argument is overstated. Yet in Britain, as in the US, it’s hard to gainsay the idea that current dysfunction has a great deal to do with the groundwork laid in preceding decades. The trick is to learn from the mistakes of previous generations, rather than repeat them. | This year, a US venture capitalist, Bruce Cannon Gibney, published a polemic called A Generation Of Sociopaths: How The Baby Boomers Betrayed America. It argues that “an unusually large number of boomers have behaved antisocially, skewing outcomes in ways deeply unfavourable to the nation, especially its younger citizens”. His argument is overstated. Yet in Britain, as in the US, it’s hard to gainsay the idea that current dysfunction has a great deal to do with the groundwork laid in preceding decades. The trick is to learn from the mistakes of previous generations, rather than repeat them. |
| This Momentum film sets out to portray affluent older people as wholly bad – existing in a social echo chamber that only ever reflects their own view. Yet it is likely to be admired only by people just as guilty of the same tunnel vision, from the other end of the tunnel. | This Momentum film sets out to portray affluent older people as wholly bad – existing in a social echo chamber that only ever reflects their own view. Yet it is likely to be admired only by people just as guilty of the same tunnel vision, from the other end of the tunnel. |
| Politics today is notably polarised – black and white, binary, split. The idea of “the centre-ground” is distrusted by both sides, the very concept ceded to one discredited figure: Tony Blair. As if his way were the only way possible of governing from the centre. | Politics today is notably polarised – black and white, binary, split. The idea of “the centre-ground” is distrusted by both sides, the very concept ceded to one discredited figure: Tony Blair. As if his way were the only way possible of governing from the centre. |
| Contrary to Momentum’s crude vision, there are plenty of affluent older people who are worried for young people and keen to help them out. These are the people the movement needs to appeal to, if it wants its man to win the next election and establish a functioning government. Instead, it risks alienating every single person who has any doubts about Corbyn’s ability to lead with maturity and subtlety. | Contrary to Momentum’s crude vision, there are plenty of affluent older people who are worried for young people and keen to help them out. These are the people the movement needs to appeal to, if it wants its man to win the next election and establish a functioning government. Instead, it risks alienating every single person who has any doubts about Corbyn’s ability to lead with maturity and subtlety. |
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