In praticular the mainly American kind of agism, and more specifically towards the younger people I’ve noticed, as an example: a 17 year old is somehow a child and knows absolutely nothing, but an 18 year old is suddenly a full grown adult that’s expected to do everything on their own now right away, unless it’s inconvenient in whatever conversation is occuring, then that 18 year old is still a “kid” when in another conversation they’re an “adult”, which I’ve never seen anyone point out whatsoever when it occurs, and with it also the “groomer” and “paedophilia” hysteria the American media is endlessly pushing onto the people and causing further age hierarchy and superiorites among the people (said “groomer” and “paedophilia” panic also being used against the LGBT+ community), only intensifying these points. I’m sure I’m not the only one noticing this trend, it’s overwhelmingly everywhere on the internet now in one form or another and has become or is becoming the norm beyond just America, it’s spread to other regions and is gradually becoming more and more prominent with each year, even in my day to day life now I’m noticing ageism becoming slightly ingrained in society with time, it’s now normal in certain societies and the internet as a whole to discriminate against an adolescent and harass them solely over their age or for doing anything even remotely hinting at sexual behaviour or any form of romantic relationship between them and others - basically anything and everything that can be used to discrimate against that adolescent will be used against them I’ve noticed (and in the case of older people: discriminating against them solely for being too old or talking to people younger then them), causing people to be treated on the basis of “higher number = human decency, too high or low of a number = discrimination, isolation, and harassment” and call pretty much anyone that doesn’t agree with them on this as a “paedophile” with full acceptance from the internet and certain societies as a whole - and completely distorting what that term even actually means, very remenisent of the red scare to an eerie degree (same exact way some Americans and especially the bourgeois and media call any social democrat a “communist” without even knowing what “communist” actually means - or purposefully leaving that detail out and creating a whole new definition of it by lying over and over again in the case of the latter, but now applied to age and with “paedophile” instead). To me it’s yet another way to divide us through hysteria and lies, it solely exists to weaken us, keep us afraid, keep us divided, and keep us biting at one another over anything and everything, be it skin colour, nationality, religion, hobbies, biology, sexual orientation, gender, language, or age, instead of looking to the roots of our systematic suffering and uniting in solidarity to end it, it’s nothing new whatsoever, especially from the United States who’s notorious for setting these trends in the first place, but nevertheless extremely saddening to see be pushed upon the masses until it becomes the norm in one form or another, adding further to our already fragmented and disjointed world and causing further suffering for everyone, be it young or old. Though what are you’re thoughts of this my fellow comrades? I’d love to see others’ analysations of this trend.

  • Muad'Dibber
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    11 months ago

    I totally understand it when people substitute ageism for class struggle: when we look around us (at least in my country, the US), a few boomer haute-bourgoesie own like 80% of the real estate, more “landlord / small business owner”-type boomers own like 15%, and everyone younger than them own <5%.

    All boomers, regardless of class, also watch a ton of reactionary media, that tells them its the youngers generations that are at fault for everything (despite us having no control of production, property). You’ll see even poor boomers praise the US… and this is from the generation that, when they were young, built a much stronger anti-war movement than we have even today. The media indoctrination did its work.

    But yes, ageism is ultimately reactionary, and this substitution is not real or positive in any way. Production will pass into the hands of haute-bourgeois Gen-Xers, Millenials and Gen-Zers, and their populations will also be indoctrinated into liberalism just as much as boomers are. Just going by personal experience, millenials and genzers are just as indoctrinated into liberalism and imperialism as anyone else. They think socialism just means they get social services funded off the backs of workers in the global south. They support every war, have little to no anti-war movement, are very anti-communist, and hate every single country the US tells them to. The methods and means of indoctrination are arguably stronger nowadays via social media, than they are with boomers watching cable.

    There’s also a very childish tendency in the west, to wish death upon their elders for having reactionary ideas. The system which reproduces these ideas is out of their control, and they could just as easily be brainwashed (I mean that in the positive sense from Mao, that their brains very much do need to be washed of the filths of racism, sexism, anti-LGBT attitudes) to positive ideas. I try to do this with my parents, but its exhausting and usually not fruitful, because then they turn on fox news, and it reproduces the very ideas I just tried to work out of them for hours. Its no better with those that watch “democrat” media, since that also permits reactionary individualist ideas, and now racism against Chinese and Russian peoples.

    This is a societal problem tho, that can only be solved via socialism in power, in control of the organs of media and social media. And the target isn’t old people, but the economic system.

    Ageism really shouldn’t be permitted in socialist spaces.

    • QueerCommie
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      1011 months ago

      I wouldn’t say gen z is that anti-communist, (though they don’t like America’s current enemy of the day). I think many of us are just very ignorant of international history and politics. People know climate change is bad and caused by oil companies and the overturning of roe was bad, but little more. I am reminded of an interaction I had today. Someone read the “anti fascist action” sticker on my laptop and asked what fascism is, “Is it like China and North Korea?” And I replied emphatically no, it’s like the Nazis. They mention my hammer and sickle sticker and asked “is that like the USSR… we’re they bad… we’re they good?” And I replied “they were good, with big quality of life improvements, developments in the sciences, and they defeated the Nazis.” And they just said “oh” and moved on.

      • Muad'Dibber
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        811 months ago

        That is true, but just as a virtue of not having been on the planet for as long. Years and years of full-on liberal indoctrination via social media will take its toll on gen-zers too.

      • Zymefish🏳️‍⚧️☢️
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        11 months ago

        Nobody is born with that knowledge, and generations of anti-communist indoctrination heavily tilt the playing field. I’ve learned to not get surprised if somebody else doesn’t know something, because I’m sure there’s a ton of stuff I don’t know. Having knowledge and also not having it can both be a curse.

        • QueerCommie
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          11 months ago

          That is true, I’m not surprised when people kno very little about the world outside the US because of how shitty our educational system is on that stuff. I hope my random commie comments might make it easier for people to move left in the future and not fall down the anti-communist rabbithole. It’s the least I can do.

  • @darkcalling@lemmygrad.ml
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    11 months ago

    The young certainly matter and should not be disregarded by the old. Cuba’s practice of having children stand by ballot boxes comes to mind. Think of the future, of them when you enact policies kind of deal.

    Age can be a proxy for position in the labor aristocracy in the imperial core to an extent with lots of exceptions. The fact is someone born in 1950-1970 say had a lot more opportunities economically to luck out (good paying union trades, cheap schooling without debt, good buying power with their dollars, etc) wage increases, purchasing power throughout their lifetime (vis-a-vi owning a home versus renting forever for example among other things) than someone born in 1995 onward. There are of course poor boomers and wealthy zoomers, PMC zoomers who make 200k a year and so on. But as a whole there has been a degradation of the ability to live an economically stable, non-indebted life with prospects for a good retirement with leisure at a reasonable age over time as the fall of communism has resulted in claw-backs against gains won by the working class. It is likewise true that older generations having already benefited from capitalism shrug or even laugh as the ladder is pulled up after them for those younger.

    Ultimately stopping at age and being like the liberals who think of demographics as destiny and have been crowing for a while now how the boomers aging out and dying will mean a permanent demographic shift and control for the Democratic party and agenda is un-Marxist.

    However we cannot ignore the realities as they exist either if we’re to be completely honest in our appraisal. It shouldn’t be a focus and isn’t helpful to go around chanting about throwing the old into the sea or something like that when it’s class that matters. But in understanding relations it is definitely interesting.

    I do think there is something to be said for people becoming set in their ways with age. Many people become very resistant to new things, they don’t want revolution, they don’t want to challenge their assumptions about the US. So while I wouldn’t suggest being foolish enough to fall for the bourgeois deception of blaming the old. We also should not seek to specifically target and sway the old over vying for the young. Purely as a matter of investment, getting a 16 year old or person under 30 into communism is much, much more valuable than getting a 50-year-old into it in how many years of their life they can yet give to the cause. More than that as I mentioned people get stuck in their ways. The value of debating with a 50-year-old anti-communist who’s going to retire nicely is much less than that of debating with the much less economically stable, more likely to be class-conscious zoomer or millennial who is uncertain if they will ever be able to retire. And we must also not forget, revolution is an activity for the relatively young. You will never have a revolution won with the fists and on the backs of over 45 people. It’s always the young who revolt, who have energy, strength (physical and otherwise), less broken spirits, etc. Not that there can’t be older leadership, wisdom from those older but it is the young who will carry it to success or failure in prolonged fighting, in impassioned speeches, organizing that leaves less time for sleep, etc.

    I must be frank, if humans lived for 120 years on average (and their bodies physically didn’t start to deteriorate meaningfully until 90) I would push back the date for a successful revolution in the US by at least a decade from wherever I would place it otherwise. People are creatures of habit, that includes the habit of being happy in the known misery of capitalism as it decays (and of course blaming something else as the propaganda absolutely works) and resisting attempts to change something that has been a constant for them. To a certain extent death is helpful as it pushes old ideas out, gives fertile ground for new ones. The youth who never knew a golden age of a thing are more easily turned against it than those who lived it, benefited from it and would find it easier to believe the propaganda about why something else other than the thing is the problem.

    We should look for example at the Soviet Union and its fall. Many of the youth were disillusioned about it because they only knew it in its revisionist age. The older generations tended to be much more patriotic but at age 60 what could they do to fight the police and army? So the youth stood by in indifference with a shrug as it fell, some protests but no vigorous action to truly fight the counter-revolution and those who had the ideology, the Marxist education were too old and too few and had no influence with the youth. (And this kind of disconnect between young and old must be prevented in parties and socialist societies)

    The old must not scoff at and immediately dismiss the young as likely to change their views when they age and the young must not dismiss the old as having no value at all.

    Lastly I will note there are reasons for very specific restrictions on the youth. Brains are still developing until you’re about 25 give or take a year or so. Discouraging binge drinking, alcoholism, bad and anti-social coping mechanisms under socialism for the growing youth I think is a good thing. The whole sex negative thing goes back to the Christian ethic in the US specifically. Back to patriarchal views as part of that. Back to seeing women and girls as property to be married off as virgins. Back to this whole racist panic about white daughters and control of bloodlines. Back to shaming the sinner and controlling women through shame over our bodies, our desires, our actions.

    • @Lemmy_Mouse@lemmygrad.ml
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      211 months ago

      Very well said and great analysis.

      “And we must also not forget, revolution is an activity for the relatively young. You will never have a revolution won with the fists and on the backs of over 45 people.”

      This is what I keep trying to tell Russia yet their obsession with MAGA persists. Russia always zigging when their potential allies here zag. In the 60s they supported the Panthers at the height of social democracy here and it went no where. Now when there is a large left base, they preach to the aging and shrinking pette bourgeois. (facepalm)

  • Neptium
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    911 months ago

    What I find peculiar about age discourse in online anglophone social media is that it’s especially Euro-American centric.

    Of course over here we have the same old elders who reminisce about a time that has passed, many on the supposed destruction of traditional values. Hell, my country was the progenitor of the infamous “Asian values”, which I would say is a prime example of what Amin calls reverse Eurocentrism or backward-looking culturalism.

    But what I see in age discourse is rarely that, instead, it becomes a sort of individualistic free-for-all where each age group complains about the perceived slight that another age group had inflicted on them.

    A lot of what I seem to see in Amerika is the effect of an hyper individualist consumer culture, that they propagate in their youth the rugged individualism and settler dream of owning your own land and house. Pushed to the extreme, an artificial age threshold is set where you must move out and be “independent” (a settler) or be perceived as free-loaders. That is when you become an adult.

    Everyone seems to know about the trans generational homes in a lot of Global South societies. I see that as a stark contrast to this “ageism”.

    So I do have to wonder if this ageism actually manifests to more than just rhetoric by disgruntled teenagers online, or heavily propagandized boomers. And what I mean by this is that does age (-ism) truly assert itself within a social structure, of a similar pervasiveness to that of, for example, race (-ism)? Does it have a mechanism of self-reproduction? (Besides the obvious role in social reproduction).

    That final question is important because I think if it doesn’t - if it’s merely an expression of other aspects of culture and the economy, than it’s use as a unit of analysis falls away quite quickly beyond a primarily descriptive typology. Because unlike all the other things you mentioned, like gender, race or sexuality, everyone, if not artificially shortened by NATO drones, will grow old and will follow through the indoctrination and economic processes @muad_dibber@lemmygrad.ml described.

    Regardless, vulgar ageism, of which your traits are predetermined solely by your age, is, well, infantile. It definitely is ridiculous and I don’t think anyone here will disagree to that.

    Also, please format paragraphs. It’ll make your post much more readable.

  • @Cysioland@lemmygrad.ml
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    911 months ago

    As @muad_dibber@lemmygrad.ml put it, there might certainly be a class/net worth element to the age differences, at least in the contemporary world. And in that sense we could certainly think of the age struggle as of a proxy for the class struggle.

    Yes, some of the age restrictions certainly seem a little bit reactionary at times (like being able to enlist at 18 in the US but not being able to drink until 21, and yes, I know what the science has to say about this but the science certainly wasn’t what motivated the MADD to run the campaign). What some people don’t consider is the inverse. People saying how elderly should no longer vote since they won’t have to live in the world they’ve created for very long. I disagree with that as especially with the lengthening lifespans there certainly might be some boomers who’ll feel the effects of their policies (also this thinking could certainly be used to cut retirement/elderly benefits, as a political version of the selection shadow).

    However, pointing out ageism is also a favourite pastime of the terminally online Western anarchists (eg. the cries of “abolish bedtime”), furthermore it might slippery slope into the “actually it’s ephebophilia” claims of someone being “mature for their age”. So we just gotta be careful when talking about that.

  • ButtigiegMineralMap
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    711 months ago

    Ageism is the easy answer to come to, understanding class dynamics is the real answer. Ageism gets confusing at times, like Diane Feinstein, she represents California and does a horrid job at it because she is so old that she A.) rarely even votes for anything, B.) is often confused as to what’s happening, C.) doesn’t accurately reflect the ideas of her constituents. No other way around saying it, I’m sorry but Dianne Feinstein is incompetent now BECAUSE of her age, there’s nothing else at play in that situation. There are some evil old mfs in the Republican Party that still know who they are and where they are and how to vote, even if they are pure evil, they shouldn’t get kicked out simply for being old. Once you start to slip a bit cognitively, I think it’s time to look for replacement, period.

  • relay
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    11 months ago

    In the USA in particular, the wealthier you are, the longer you live. Those that live in poverty live short lives. Those that are wealthy experience the best experiences of the capitalist system and not exposed to the horrible aspects of the capitalist system. The current generations are downwardly mobile thus seek to change the system, but propagandized against taking the most effective action.

  • Makan ☭ CPUSA
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    411 months ago

    @muad_dibber@lemmygrad.ml Typically, you also see PatSocs using ageist insults against the CPUSA’s current leadership in their bid to take it over.

    Unfortunately, the current leadership of the CPUSA won’t always be here so I aim to learn what I can from the people that taught Fred Hampton and were there during the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, etc.

  • @BlinkerFluid
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    411 months ago

    I think anyone is capable of being decent and practicing fairness at any age.

    Knowing what to do might take some experience, but your intentions, what is important to you, those can be as noble at 17 as 70, sometimes moreso.

    Nievity is a thing and you can and will be taken advantage of. Yeah, I know. I thought I knew everything when I was 17 too.

  • @CountryBreakfast@lemmygrad.ml
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    11 months ago

    I think its all discursive. Basically, we are subjected to this discourse and are resigned to participate in the discourse as a way of parsing out our identities and social contexts. Sure, there are certain features of age. You can be young enough to not know the difference between what happens rarely and what happens all the time. You can be old enough to become a bit set in your thinking, or saturated with misinformation. But ultimately the problem is maturing alongside discourse, and living in dynamic, confusing circumstances.

    I once was told that millennials are basically failures because they did not rebel enough against climate change and corruption. In the next breath they prescribed voting exclusively Democrat because this is how we can build a third party because the Green Party is run by Putin.

    This is not really a product of age alone. Perhaps they are too young to see things like this play out, but certainly liberal discourse is the only thing they find credible and have been inoculated to alternatives via Russiaphobic discourse.

    Likewise, older folks have told me millennials are too lazy and too concerned with social problems. This could be a case of being set in your ways or an unwillingness to understand the difference between the times they grew up and the present. But it is certainly a product of discourse.

    The discourse transcends reality. This is why we can talk about communism without talking about communism at all. Its why we can have anti-capitalists that are not against capitalism at all. Furthermore, sometimes ageist diatribes have interesting points. The classic being that millennials are “entitled.” Of course, generally speaking Americans of all ages are entitled and this certainly does play into the problem of toothless anti-imperialism in the core. We are not so interested in socialism outside of the context of American myths of the golden age that we missed - cheap suburbia, cheap land, cheap food, cheap commodities all around - just as reactionaries do also miss it in their way. This is a result of imperial discourse that I call imperial melancholia.

  • @Lemmy_Mouse@lemmygrad.ml
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    11 months ago

    Yet another peeled layer in the shit onion that is America. On the flip side one can thank them, who needs drugs to open ones mind to endless alternative possibilities when this system shows us endless angles of misery?

    I think it’s a natural consequence of the material conditions. The oldest lived in a time when the economy allowed great opportunity to become rich, the middle aged received a medium amount of opportunities, and us young Americans got fucked.

    This also reflects in class membership (most bourgeois are old or older and white as the US has always maintained it’s apartheid despite virtue signalling with movements and laws that never changed the status quo when it came to property ownership/wealth) and the politics thereof advocated.

    However, the size of the bourgeois class to the proletarian class defines the fallacy that is subscribing to the ageist idea instead of Marxism: The bourgeois class is, has always been, and will always be smaller than the proletarian class, and thus the majority of old Americans’ interests align with the proletarian class as class determines politics. One can demonstrate this by visiting a local hospital or “old folks home”, how many rich old people do you see? The country is filled with non-rich old people, and even though the big bourgeoisie are indeed predominately old white men, that does not mean all old white men or all old people are the bourgeoisie.

    There is also the asterisk, the anomaly of the poor identifying as the middle class. I believe this is a mix of the economic environment the old workers spent most of their developing years in, as well as the faith the bourgeoisie have earned from them in that time and so they are more likely to drink the koolaid, to ask how high when told to jump, etc…

    There are other contradictions such as specific characteristics of either age group which do not correlate to economics/politics which lays this nonsense bare as well such as if old people are the enemy and thus they control society, why aren’t loud cars blasting music considered terrorism? Why are prescriptions not free for all old people? Why are “retirement homes” hellholes? Many many many holes in this scenario.

  • Makan ☭ CPUSA
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    311 months ago

    It is rife when it comes to the previous generation of communists.

    I’m talking about, of course, the ageism that’s present on the Internet against the National Committee of the CPUSA.

    The main leadership especially gets lots of “ageist” insults.