The best way to make young people love neoliberalism is to call them morons

Why didn't anyone think of this before?

In a recent column, someone called David Mitchell had the perfect response to young people who are giving up on western-style neoliberal democracy: he talked down to them and called them stupid! The headline of Mitchell’s column in The Observer read:

Here’s a shocking finding, gen Z: democracy isn’t perfect

If that headline wasn’t quite patronising enough to correct the thoughts of those wayward simpletons, he followed up with:

According to a new poll, half of our 13- to 27-year-olds can’t see the point of all those time-wasting elections and parliaments. Why do they not know that authoritarianism is worse?

Mitchell, who reportedly was a comedian before becoming a politics person, astutely pointed out that democracy is imperfect. What he meant is that neoliberalism works for him and he doesn’t care much that you are being screwed!

What was brilliant about Mitchell’s column was the complete lack of curiosity about why gen Z feel the way they do. Mitchell can’t fathom why these useless fuckers won’t shut up and know their place. Must be the iPhones or something.

We’ve spent a lifetime whining that young people don’t talk about politics and now that they are talking about politics, it’s the job of people like Mitchell to say “no, not like that, you idiots!”

Obviously, the opinions of young people must align with the Blairites. Incidentally, I saw a young Blairite once. He carried a briefcase, dressed like a 45-year-old accountant, and everyone shunned him, but it doesn’t matter that almost everyone hates Blair and the mess he caused. Mitchell is one of 36 people in the UK who like neoliberalism, and this is why he was given a job as a columnist. You didn’t think it was for his insight, did you?

Like David, I have never spoken to a gen Z person, but I’m confident their preference is that our slightly imperfect democracy should be replaced with a terrible system like the one in China where they censor the internet like we do, but at least they build train lines. Fucking lunatics. Everyone knows lack of infrastructure is the price you pay for freedom and democracy.

When we say “freedom”, we mean you are free to waste your meagre disposable income on subscriptions, and we are free to yell at you for buying coffee at Starbucks, even though you’ve never set foot in Starbucks.

When we say “democracy”, we actually mean “neoliberalism”, and we must do neoliberalism forever because no other system could possibly work. Clearly, we have the best system in the world and changing it would mean authoritarianism.

We don’t do infrastructure in the UK because we spend our time stripping away people’s rights, giving our money to the rich, punishing disabled people for the crimes of billionaires, treating journalists and social media users as terrorists, censoring the internet to halt the rise of wrong think, and involving ourselves in endless wars that are going to result in World War III, but any alternative would be unthinkable.

David Mitchell understands this better than anyone. His grasp of politics is so advanced that he managed to avoid spelling mistakes in his column with the help of a spell checker, something even I can’t do consitsently and I’m a genius. No wonder Mitchell feels confident enough to put himself forward as one of the great thinkers of our time.

Mitchell seemed particularly upset that young people no longer watch TV, which will come as a surprise to those who grew up hearing complaints that young people watch too much TV. It seems we wanted young people to watch TV all along because it’s the best way to brainwash them, and now they have broken free of our influence, we have a problem on our hands.

Gen Z are starting to think for themselves and place value on their own lives. They’re not interested in being robots and they don’t seem to understand, they don’t get a say in the matter. This is how democracy is supposed to work. I can’t believe they don’t understand this. I can’t believe they don’t love our slightly imperfect system.

The system that was tested under Corbyn and showed we are not allowed an alternative to neoliberalism, the system that committed a genocide in the Middle East, the system that destroyed the housing market, made education unaffordable, and stole the future of even those who got a university degree, the system that is now besties with *checks notes* Al Qaida, that system might not be perfect, but you’re a fucking moron if you don’t like it!

Yes, Mitchell really did call his target audience “morons” because they weren’t his real target audience, smug centrist dads were. Mitchell is such a big believer in democracy that he argued young people shouldn’t be allowed to vote because their opinions are so rubbish. His key point was that most gen Z would prefer a strong man who makes their lives better over a corrupt bunch of wankers who screw them over. I mean who would want to not be screwed over?

It does not matter so much if we have a functioning democracy as long as we pretend we do. If you tick a box once every five years, it doesn’t matter that your vote counts for nothing and the same people stay in charge forever. The point is you ticked a box and we whipped you into a frenzy during the election cycle as though that one tiny act made the slightest difference. Meanwhile, we continued telling you we must privatise your NHS and force disabled people to look for work.

Why would anyone reject a form of democracy where you are not allowed an alternative to this cruelty? What do you people expect from democracy? Meaningful choice?

The UK is so democratic that Starmer’s staff are boasting to the press they’re the ones in charge and he is like a child who thinks he is driving a train. Only difference is the child would be smiling, and Starmer isn’t capable of expressing human emotion. He is more like a mannequin that has been placed in the driver’s seat to reassure the passengers that the train is totally not gonna crash.

We depend on you not knowing what is really taking place in government because we are terrified that you might push the emergency stop and get off.

When Angela Rayner tried to get foreign donors out of politics with the support of her colleagues, unelected Lord Alli blocked the move because he likes to give lots of money to our government. Of course, he expects nothing in return for his generosity, other than to overrule senior politicians and decide how the country is run.

Lord Alli is the guy who loves Starmer so much, he gave him £32,000 to spend on designer suits. He loves Starmer’s wife so much, he bought her lovely designer dresses, but to be fair, Lady Starmer is quite hot.

It’s a real alpha move to let another man buy your wife dresses, isn’t it, fellas? I don’t know about you, but I’m relieved we have a prime minister who is so corruptible, even his wife is not out of bounds. I feel much better about all the dark money he is receiving now. Thank god someone put Rayner in her place.

Rayner’s foreign donors plan would have meant the £4 million Labour received from Quadrature Capital would have been illegal, rather than just unethical. The last thing we need is laws to protect the public from the unethical practices of our government.

Rayner’s proposal was simple: donors to political parties would have to be registered to vote in the UK. Obviously, this was a ridiculous idea: the people who aren’t allowed to vote should have more influence over our government than you do, but Rayner thought otherwise. Rayner wanted to announce her plan alongside former prime minister Gordon Brown, but former prime ministers hold about as much influence as current ones, i.e., none at all.

The best part of Lord Alli’s intervention is that Elon Musk is free to bankroll Reform who are four points ahead of Labour, meaning the plan is working: the UK is being pushed into fascism. Mr Musk can buy the next election for £100 million and then the rules can be changed so he gets a huge return on his investment, meaning it will cost him nothing to buy the country, it will cost you. Isn’t this exciting?

Obviously, the only alternative to the form of democracy where billionaires buy elections is dictatorship. Young people would not prefer a democracy that was actually democratic and improved their lives. They would all hate that because TikTok made them evil, and we would also hate that because we would have no one to exploit. Oh god, have I just found common ground with gen Z?

All I know is we couldn’t possibly democratise our system by getting big money out of politics, abolishing the monarchy and the House of Lords, wrestling back control of legacy media and social media from oligarchs, and putting workplaces under the control of workers because we’re not fucking commies!

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