ANALYSIS – It is becoming sadly clear that this may be the last generation of any real freedom in America as Generation Z (Gen Z or Zoomers) increasingly supports the surveillance and punishment state. Many are also exhibitionists craving 24-7 attention.
As I wrote about earlier – Gen Z ‘loves Big Brother.’ Big Brother being the term used by George Orwell to describe the totalitarian surveillance state in his dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984).
In that piece, I noted a Cato Institute poll that showed 30 percent of people under 30 support allowing the government to install video cameras in our homes to “reduce domestic violence, abuse, and other illegal activity.”
And we can blame a lot of that on the far-left woke culture at our colleges and universities. (RELATED: Popular Magazine Twists The Truth To Push Leftist Agenda Onto Teens)
It’s bad enough that many of this generation are willing to let faceless bureaucrats watch us in our homes, but Zoomers appear willing to go beyond even that. They are the generation of snitches and punishers, going after anyone they disagree with.
This generation has been taught to equate ‘unapproved’ speech with actual violence, so it makes sense that they’ll do whatever it takes to eliminate it.
Much of this can be traced back to higher education. Our colleges and schools are teaching our kids to be hypersensitive, ideological and woke snitches.
After providing various scary examples, including one where a professor used the oft-used term “sacred cow,” and a student filed a complaint that said the student would “not feel safe around him” any longer, Christian Schneider writes in National Review:
…part of the reason Gen Z has an unquenchable thirst for surveillance is what they are being taught at their colleges and universities. All the above examples were reports filed with campus “Bias Response Teams” — programs set up by institutions of higher education that incentivize students to narc on each other for expressing unpopular opinions or engaging in disfavored behavior.
Decades ago, courts threw out college “speech codes,” finding that public universities banning language was impermissible under the First Amendment. So when the internet grew as a tool, schools crafted a workaround: What if, instead of the schools targeting students for unpopular speech, it was the students themselves doing the targeting? And thus a majority of public colleges and universities began crowdsourcing their speech codes.
In fact, bias-response teams are actually worse than the traditional speech codes, which outlawed specific words: The new standard for determining whether speech is forbidden is simply anything that offends someone. Any oversensitive campus resident now has the power to log on and anonymously report a fellow student or professor.
Not to be outdone by its elite competitors, Stanford University implemented its own Orwellian system in which the school offered students a cash bounty if they reported insensitive speech on campus. In April, the school backtracked on the plan after an ensuing episode of national outrage.
You can’t get much more Orwellian than that.
But there is a big added factor in why this generation loves surveillance, “cameras are what young people now seek, hoping to parlay their everyday goings-on into a Kardashian-like media empire.”
Schneider notes that one poll found that nearly one-quarter of Zoomers in the United States planned to be internet ‘influencers,’ making their living creating videos for YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram.
Apparently, we no longer need doctors, engineers, scientists or lawyers (well, maybe not so many lawyers).
I don’t know about you, but a nation of empty-headed TikTok influencers scares me almost more than the Orwellian surveillance they like so much. (RELATED: Chicago Teens Kill Baby With Stolen Car Last Week, Still No Serious Charges)
Schneider adds: “Today’s young people have become both informers and self-exposers. If we’re not careful, their snitch culture will threaten privacy and freedom.”
I would go further. If we aren’t careful, very soon, America, as a free country, will be totally unrecognizable.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
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Gen Z to be Indoc robots, snitches etc
I left America when I was 26, almost 54 years ago, and it is already totally unrecognizable to me!
I recommended to my children to leave this country when they graduated from high school. My daughter thinks I have gone over the edge. My son can see my point. By the time he finishes med school, he will have a belly full and pack his bags. My wife is upset claiming we will never see the grandchildren again Not so. If they go somewhere like Belize, we could follow.
It starts in pre-K.
I am a retired teacher and unequivocally proclaim that there is no hope for America if Christians and conservatives allow their children to be indoctrinated in the public schools.
Public schools cannot be fixed.
Whatever victories gained trying to fix public schools will need to be monitored beyond the capacity of hundreds of volunteers. The teacher unions and their allies such as the ACLU own government schools. They will quickly take back any lost ground and they will not hesitate to do it in an under-handed manner while your group operates honestly and ethically.
We must rescue our children!
This country is no longer recognizable to me. I am 80 years old and this country has gone so far downhill that I am seriously considering moving to a different country. In another 10 years we will no longer have any Freedoms, there will be people telling us when we can eat, when we can go to sleep, when to do anything. We will be watched 24/1/365 with no pauses. The internet was intended to be a tool, not a social network. Young people today do not want to work, they want everything handed to them.
That should be 24/7/365. Apologize for the typo
Don, my grandfather fought in WWII. He would be rolling in his grave if he were aware right now. I feel for any Vet looking at the world as it is today. The govt has gotten so big, it seems impossible to challenge it and be successful. These people in high places, elected and appointed, are destroying this country, and putting Americans last. I worry about what will be of America in the coming years. And how do you counter the lies when they’ve already labled you a domestic terrorist? Feeling kinda hopeless, age 51.
Any school pushing CRT or not teaching the American way..should be defunded
Gotta catch them. There are other titles for it. And there are rogue teachers willing to lose jobs over it.
Im equally concerned about the sexuality being sold as ok in schools. Girls being raped, or ogled in gym, bathrooms, etc. Parents being arrested for speaking up. Children being labled different sexes and parents losing custody over pronouns. This is not good.
DNC Marxist Orwellian plan allowed by the Uni-Party and the SCOTUS!
SCOTUS Didnt make laws. SCOTUS only upholds Constitution. The abortion issue was given back to the states. Its the states deciding for or against. Maybe people should fight to make it a ballot issue, for or against abortions. And the current Affirmative action in schools was hurting other races, as it gave one race better odds. Thats racist. Asians were victims of that racism. Before you judge, know many ethnicities fall under the Asian category. Affirmative action alienated many minorities