Right at Home
Unlike their millennial predecessors, generation z prefer home-making and raising a family to travelling. They are part of the new conservatism. By Wyatt Batt.
Millennials wanted to occupy Wall Street but most still occupy the bedroom they grew up in. My generation - Generation Z - grew up wanting them to be our role models but, to put it politely, they disappointed us instead.
Generation Z sees the world differently. A series of recent studies has shown that Generation Z has radically different priorities and voting patterns.
Support for progressive parties amongst those aged under 24 is significantly lower than it was 10 years ago. In 2009, 56.5 per cent per cent of Australians aged under 24 supported either Greens or Labor; in 2019, this figure had dropped to 47 per cent.
Generation Z also has different ambitions in life. According to research by Deloitte, the most popular ambition of Millennials is to travel the world (59 per cent); for Gen Z, it is buying a home (70 per cent). This corresponds with the desire to start a family – 34 per cent for millennials, 56 per cent for us Gen Zs. And we are younger than them!
The effect of this is that the 18-24 age bracket is no longer the leftist stronghold it once was. Gen Z still votes in large blocks for the Greens and Labor but we are not as zealous or brainwashed as our immediate seniors.
The same distinction applies in relation to what James Goodhart famously dubbed “Somewheres” and “Anywheres” in his bestselling book, The Road to Somewhere (2017). Millennials are “Anywheres” – tied to their collective values rather than a place or culture, let alone a country or political system. Research by the Market Research Foundation in the United States last year found Gen Z are different. Fifty one per cent of us favour the idea of nationalism, especially when it comes to public policy.
This weakening of progressivism in the youth vote has consequences for the Labor Party, which relies heavily on this demographic. The 2019 federal election was predicted by some news organisations like The Guardian to be a moment “of generational change”. Academic Emily Millane said on the ABC the young would “rise up against the old” and bring in a new wave of progressivism.
Instead we Gen Zs rebelled against the establishment, and we are part of a broader global movement towards the right among most age groups. Hungary and Greece have just elected centre-right governments; nationalism is on the rise in Europe; and of course Brexit, Trump and Scott Morrison’s quiet Australians all indicate the renewed populism of conventional nationalist policies.
If anybody is out of step, it is the forlorn millennials and their enablers in the media and social media behemoths.
This should come as no surprise. In many ways it reflects a trend of new generations trying to carve out an identity distinct from the one that preceded them. While progressivism was all the rage with millennials, we take a different view.
In this way we mirror our parents, Gen X, who also made a distinctly conservative departure from their predecessors, the baby boomers. This helped lead to Reagan’s landslide re-election in 1984 and Margaret Thatcher’s epochal 11 years in power. We might one day look back on Trump and Morrison with similar admiration and gratitude.
Additionally, rebelling against the establishment is very different now from what it was when the Millennials were younger. Big companies, government institutions and the mainstream media all have a distinctly progressive slant. Young people seeking to be alternative are now much look likely to stream YouTube videos from right-leaning personalities like Ben Shapiro and Paul Joseph Watson than watch television news.
And thus, it really should not be a shock that the millions of young people who made Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life an international best-seller want to clean up their room and take responsibility for their lives.