This past week in New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani endorsed three different political candidates in local races—each of those candidates won their election. The natural question is: why? Why is it that Mamdani has such political pull? Why is the guy that blew through New York City’s budget in six months and then demanded a $12 billion bailout from the state considered to be, at the very least philosophically, the future of the political left? Some have made attempts to answer this question by pointing to the rising costs of living—home prices, gas prices, grocery costs, and rising debt—these all may be real peripheral reasons as to why younger generations flirt with socialism and Marxism, but they aren’t the fundamental reason. To put it simply, they have been strategically conditioned over their lives to be evangelists for and agents of Karl Marx and Friedrich Nietzsche (along with others, but we’ll keep it simple).
For many, these names have no intellectual significance. Often these names and the “isms” that are associated with them are thrown around in political debate and discourse as, in some cases, a slur and, in other cases, an end-all-be-all authoritative doctrine. And as fun as it would be to dive deep into the murky waters of Marxism and nihilism, that isn’t the purpose of this essay. What both Marx and Nietzche represent in political and theological thought is a denial of universal and normative moral ethics and laws and a construction of a political entity predicated entirely on power. Nietzsche famously made the claim that “God is dead” in the late 19th century. This claim ushered in the most tumultuous and dangerous century in the history of the world. One in which we experienced the rise of totalitarian governments, the deaths of hundreds of millions of human beings in two world wars, several authoritarian regimes (Naziism, Soviet Russia, Maoist China, American Liberalism [between 35-40 million infants slaughtered by abortionists and mothers]), and the creation of technology like the atomic bomb and the internet.
With a godless society and a political and economic ideology built on power, the new liberal world order—started by the United States and her allies in Europe—transcended the brutality of the early 20th century and began building a globalized civilization on the same presuppositions as the Soviets and Nazis, but now with different terminology and in a much more discrete and hidden technological way. Instead of barbarically slaughtering people who disagreed with them in World Wars, the new World Order simply and quietly murdered people in their mothers’ wombs—a quick and easy way to control populations and ethnic groups. The methods of Marxist implementation changed while the ideas did not.
Only now, everything can be much more secretive and discrete. The government can now hypnotize people (MKUltra) and control their habits and actions through technological manipulation and repetitive conditioning on TVs, phones, and other devices—something Francis Schaeffer (an American Christian philosopher in the 20th century) predicted in his book, How Should We Then Live? in 1976.
Nietzsche famously made the claim that “God is dead” in the late 19th century. This claim ushered in the most tumultuous and dangerous century in the history of the world.
The abilities of mass control and manipulation that the United States federal government now possesses are that of which Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and the great authoritarians of past generations would have killed for. To be able to manipulate entire generations to "willingly” go to war and vote for particular candidates like in the case of Thomas Massie’s recent election in which he lost to Ed Gallrein, a man nobody has ever heard of, is historically unprecedented. Republican donors spent over $30 million on this race—the most in a congressional race in American history—all to beat a candidate who votes with Republicans over 90% of the time. Why? Because Thomas Massie wasn’t obedient to the Republican overlords. He didn’t blindly vote for and support every single Trumpian action without question. And for that, he was canned.
But by whom? In Massie’s case, the data shows that he lost only one cohort of voters: baby boomers. Thomas Massie won every other generation by a landslide and lost the baby boomers. The ones watching FOX News every night and being told, repetitively, to do the will of the Republican oligarchs in Washington. This kind of power, the power of televised hypnosis, was never used prior to World War 2. And this kind of power is fundamental to why the Socialists and Marxists keep making a comeback. They are willing to and have the capacity to use any means of manipulation to build their Tower of Babel. They will manipulate and ideologically enslave people to help build their demonic kingdoms.
In the modern case, this is happening with the younger generations. Just not through television manipulation. Now it’s by social media algorithms and postmodern rhetoric. As I said earlier, the modern Liberal World Order shared Stalin’s ideology, they only change the terminology. Instead of murder, a universally recognized word that has had one specific meaning for all of human history, they use words like “abortion”, “medical aid”, “healthcare”, and “dying with dignity” in place of "murdering infants", "slaughtering people with mental disabilities", "injecting deadly chemicals into people", and "eugenics".
The combination of building a new system of language and words with the methods of control in the modern technological era give way to an unprecedented modern ability to control populations and take their freedoms away without them even knowing it and, in most cases, with their own participation.
This leads to why Gen Z and the Millennials are coming out in droves to vote for outspoken Socialists and Marxists—especially the Millennials in the case of Socialism. It’s because the entire generation of Millennials have been taken captive or possessed by the Spirit of Karl Marx. His theory, economics, philosophy, and presuppositions were all cudgeled into the social imaginary of the Millennial generation. This was done mostly through the government school system. Government schools have, at their core, one aim and goal in their existence: to create and control generations of children through Marxist (or “Big Government”) indoctrination. The teachers, administrators, and government officials tied to and in charge of the Government Education system take great precautions to not bite the federal hand that feeds them. In other words, they cannot, due to self-interest, teach children to shrink the Government and its outstretched tentacles of power because the logical conclusion of teaching contrary to Big Government is having a small government and having a small government would mean that government educators and administrators wouldn’t have a job. They must preserve their own interest, even if its implications destroy the country (as it has been doing for over 100 years).
The idea that a moral order is essential is predicated on two presuppositions: one is that an eternal and unchanging God exists and has built the moral law into the natural law so that they can work in union with one another
But there is a flaw to the method of the Marxist and Big Government telos (aim). The flaw is that, regardless of how impersonal, static, and inhumane the federal bureaucracy becomes, in previous generations that Government was still predicated on interpersonal human relationships, no matter how shallow those relationships actually were. To teach Marxism and Socialism and Communism up until the middle 2010s, a teacher had to have the in-person relational attention of the student. They were not at odds with iPhones, tablets, smartwatches, and other devices that easily steal the attention of the student. This interpersonal and inherently human way of doing education and teaching made it so that the Marxist and Nietzschean ideal could never be truly realized because, as is the result of both philosophers’ thoughts, to destroy normative and universal ethics and morals we must get rid of interpersonal relationships.
The idea that a moral order is essential is predicated on two presuppositions: one is that an eternal and unchanging God exists and has built the moral law into the natural law so that they can work in union with one another, and two, that God’s creation, humans foremost, are to be preserved and not destroyed. If God's purpose for creation was to be destroyed, then any moral order or law would be unnecessary as moral orders tend to regulate negative (or destructive) behaviors and actions rather than encourage them. Personal relationships and the negotiating and language based human interactions are what moral ethics and doctrines are founded upon. The fact that humans, and no other animal, speak and negotiate and engage in rhetorical play makes it so that we must have a moral code to speak, negotiate, and play by. If we don’t, all of that falls away and humans devolve into animalistic shells rather than flourishing persons.
Marxism only takes this so far though. This is why the Millennials (the older of the two generations in question) are wholly captured by Marxist theory and have not yet devolved into animalistic treachery (although they are close). Because the cultural catechism of their time was one in which interpersonal relationships still needed to exist to communicate the rules of the game—no matter how broken and destructive that game was. In other words, they still relied on shared communication rules and shared language structures.
Because language is the foundation of morals and laws, a shared system of language is necessary for a functioning society. Of course, as Christians we know that this heavy emphasis on language comes from God, or the Logos (Jesus Christ), and the idea that humans are made in the image of God is directly tied to their capacity to play by any set of rules predicated on language. This gives theological underpinnings to the significance of a shared language system. The Millennials inherited fragments of the language systems that were passed down to them that have been passed down through history. From the Tower of Babel to now.
These rhetorical, grammatical, and historical rules of language and interpretation have, built within them, a particular set of inherent rules themselves. Each letter of any given alphabet is only understandable and communicable within the context of other letters within that alphabetical system. The system is inherently ethical because there are parameters and regulations around how that system works. Those rules and regulations cannot be created by something already created and therefore must be either a creation of God or inextricably a part of God’s own nature (the latter is the truth) because the rules of the system of language are all predicated on the existence of the other letters and rules within the system. If one of these rules or letters didn’t exist, the entire system couldn’t exist. You cannot have an English language without the letter “a”. If you tried, the whole entire system would fundamentally fail.
The Millennial generation inheriting and being the last generation to be educated on the basis of those unspoken rules of communication and language means that their form of Marxism is still, to some small degree, interpersonal. And an interpersonal ideology, even if for the sake of power and personal gain, is better than an entirely inhuman and anti-personal ideology.
This leads to Gen Z; a generation that grew up in the digital age with no real restrictions and regulations (even from their parents). The Marxism from the Millennials that is still interpersonal is being eroded within this new generation. Instead of being taught by human beings and having to engage in the rules of language required for communication and negotiation, this generation has begun to unravel the literal framework of existence and the Logos. This can be seen in how they attempt to communicate through text using new and degraded terminology and phraseology and, even further, through apps like Snapchat in which language is altogether gotten rid of; sending pictures of themselves is the replacement. Gen Z has begun, unknowingly, the unraveling of the World.
This can further be shown in Gen Z by plain observation. Many older generations have complained that they cannot even have conversations with members of Gen Z because of their inability to contribute any substantive thought to a dialogue. This can be proven easily—go and have a conversation with a Gen Zer and see how far that conversation goes and how thought provoking it really is. The degradation of language and therefore, the degradation of interpersonal relationships with any substantive meaning and communicable purpose, is how the World begins to unravel. Gen Z is not the final domino in a series of generational desecration—they are only the next step (and a very significant step) in the process of interpersonal elimination.
Older generations must understand that Gen Z is the first generation to hold devices that they do not understand with application and algorithms that they cannot control (lest they completely get off of them) and which are not simply a “tool” of communication but rather a weapon against true communication. And because they have desecrated their ability to speak and negotiate, the next step in this devolution is not societal anarchy, as many have suspected, but rather it is globalized totalitarianism. Incommunicable slaves need masters and Gen Z is desperately and subconsciously waiting on a true fulfilment of the Nietzschean assumption. The fulfillment will look, in some sense, like a world in which generations of humans have no ability or desire to know another human being intimately.
This will be done through more technological advancements that will be more and more tailored towards each person’s own individual fantasies and desires. A need for true human interaction will soon look like a thing of the past as we look forward to our language-forbidden cities and societies of transhuman androids being fully controlled by the oligarchs of the tech industry while simultaneously being titillated into cheap pleasure by their devices.
Gen Z is the first generation to hold devices that they do not understand with application and algorithms that they cannot control (lest they completely get off of them) and which are not simply a “tool” of communication but rather a weapon against true communication.
But of course, prophets of the past warned of this language destroying philosophy. C.S. Lewis in his Narnian book, Prince Caspian, gives clear articulation of the dangers of totalitarianism and the Nihilistic obsession with language destruction when Trufflelhunter (a talking Badger) says of the other Narnian animals who now lack the ability to speak,
“You know very well that the beasts in Narnia nowadays are different and are no more than the poor dumb, witless creatures you’d find in Calormen or Telmar."
And later on, when Lucy asks her sister, Susan,
“Wouldn’t it be dreadful if some day, in our own world, at home, men started going wild inside, like the animals here, and still looked like men, so that you’d never know which were which?”
For Generation Z, this question still hangs in the air as the sands of time continue to fall and the technocratic engineers progress towards Babel. Housing costs and grocery prices won’t prevent this dramatic fallout. Only a renewed adherence to the language of our forefathers and the rules of our Lord and Savior can begin the process of unraveling the unraveled World.
