Youth protests in Europe: An anger that wants so much

In the last few weeks, a very specific genre of text has become increasingly popular: very old middle-class white media men are snorting indignation at left-wing youth - and trying (quite miserably) to figure out where their anger comes from. And this desire for destruction, this new longing for socialism, which is expressed in the protests from France to Germany via Serbia and Albania.

It's almost amusing to see how these seasoned intellectuals grope in the dark. Almost as if the last time they spoke to a young person on an equal level was when they were young themselves - and never with anyone outside of their middle-class white milieu.

Instead of dealing with the perspectives of these young (and older) leftists with a minimum of empathy, the old men prefer to simply impute some kind of intentions to them. For example, the French journalist Bernard-Henri Lévy writes in a guest article in the Süddeutsche Zeitung about an “anger that fights for nothing” and a “nihilistic revolt, nourished by resentment and hatred, which no longer hopes for anything and wants nothing more.”

The taz is an independent, left-wing and opinionated daily newspaper. We have been arguing in our comments, essays and debate texts since the taz was founded in 1979. We often cannot and do not want to agree on an opinion. That's why you'll find some completely opposing positions here - all part of the very broad left-wing spectrum of opinions.

And in the taz, Udo Knapp thinks he knows that the young people's protests are nothing more "than the well-known cry for more money" - rather, according to the tenor of the text, Gen Z should understand how well they are doing, how much progress society has made that would benefit them.

The supposed intellectual greats fail because of a step in their thinking that is as simple as it is elementary: the insight that their truth - their experience of being in this society, their temporal, geographical and political frame of reference - is different from the truth of those who, to put it bluntly, are simply no longer interested in this system - and even less in the future that it seems to bring with it.

I myself am one of them. But I also know the world from which this deep civil incomprehension of the protests comes; I grew up in this bourgeois-liberal world with its bourgeois-liberal truths.

It is a world in which, when the Chancellor speaks of increasing “our” national wealth, you can imagine yourself as a beneficiary of his policies. In which home ownership and stock assets are the norm and talk of expropriation or a wealth tax causes fear and terror in Berlin. In which the police are actually a friend and helper, with whom you only have to deal with if someone has tried to break in in the neighborhood.

It is a world in which the state guarantees and defends one's own freedoms and privileges. Where children can become almost anything if they try hard enough. In which there can be no better, freer political system than ours, liberal-democratic capitalism. In which the only danger in the future is that someone - Putin, the socialists from Berlin or the refugees - could take all of this away again. And it is a world in which Germany, France and their friends are the good guys and fight against evil.

In this bourgeois world with its bourgeois truths, it is unimaginable how one can have so much anger at this system at such a young age that one would like to tear it down and, since that is not possible, start with its shop windows.

Only - and actually this should be within the scope of what is known or at least imaginable even for the old men in the features section - these truths do not apply to everyone. Some lack the German passport, the white skin, the property, access to the right degrees and networks, in other words: the “right” class background - or even the ability to adapt to this system in a way that still grants them some of its privileges. And for more and more people, these truths are less and less valid; they turn out to be pseudo-truths.

The anger at the system, the radicalization of young (but also older) people to the left is based on a completely different truth, a completely different experience of being in this society. It is the truth of those who know that they are only involved in extra work, but only get breadcrumbs from prosperity, if at all.

Who, despite working, are becoming less and less able to afford life - not to mention a good life. They know that they will never belong, no matter what they do, how well they speak the language and adapt to German bourgeois customs. They know that they are tolerated here just enough to work for others.

Those who are treated by the state as oppressors instead of as helpers, who are beaten and harassed by the police. They see that the rich and powerful would rather accept climate collapse, support genocide or send them to war than give up part of their wealth and power. They are the ones who suspect that a political business as usual does not have a good future for them.

How grotesque, how ignorant it is to claim that their anger is one that doesn't want anything. This generation of leftists wants so much and so important things: a planet that can continue to live in the future and a dignified life with equality and security for everyone. But that is not the future that this political system, whose primary criterion is economic growth, has in store for us. That's why it should burn.