The Occupiers

In one of the best-remembered scenes in the '50s biker movie "The Wild Ones", a citizen asks leather-clad Marlon Brando, "What are you rebelling against?". Brando curls his upper lip and says, "Whaddaya got?"

The "Occupy Wall St " protests, now spreading worldwide, seem to have taken a bit of a lesson from Brando. A young female protester interviewed on the BBC this lunchtime was stunningly incoherent. Unable to explain why the focus of the protests was that temple of Mammon, St Paul's Cathedral, she said she was angry about "high government taxes and corporate banks' high interest rates". Maybe I haven't been paying enough attention, but I'd be surprised if many of her fellow protesters were in favour of tax cuts. The London protests have also been blighted by the presence of the creepy opportunist Julian Assange, who delivered a ludicrous "human megaphone" address to the crowd before throwing them candies.

The supposed lack of a coherent message has been picked up by the more right wing US media, who have been brought to an incandescent rage by the whole "Occupy" movement. The shrill blonde harpy Ann Coulter has suggested that the Occupy crowd lack three things that the Tea Party has: jobs, soap and a point. Well, maybe so, Ann, but one thing they may just have is support. A poll published today on Slate suggests that twice as many respondents support the occupiers as support the Tea Party.

Mark Steyn has joined in the occupier-bashing, but his latest piece on the subject provides, perhaps inadvertently, a plausible explanation for the phenomenon. (The article first appeared in the Orange County Register, but it's reprinted on Steyn's own website). Here's a key quote:

Beneath the allegedly young idealism are very cobwebbed assumptions about societal permanence. The agitators for "American Autumn" think that such demands are reasonable for no other reason than that they happen to have been born in America, and expectations that no other society in human history has ever expected are just part of their birthright. But a society can live on the accumulated capital of a glorious inheritance only for so long.

That seems right, if incomplete. Steyn is suggesting that the post-WW2 generation of Americans, the self-proclaimed "greatest generation in history", developed a having-it-all mindset of endless entitlement that has been passed on to today's young people. What today's generation is now realising is that even their forebears were only able to have it all because they mortgaged the future to pay for it. For the first time in many generations, the prospect of living better than one's parents did is becoming remote for all but a few young people. It's surely no surprise that they're not happy about it, even if they're more than a little confused about what they can actually do about it.

Post-war Europeans maybe didn't cash in quite as much as Americans did -- though not for want of trying -- but the copycat Occupy protests are highlighting similar issues. For example, there was a demo on Saturday in Madrid, capital of a country in which 45% of under-25s are unemployed. Sure, it might be preferable if the protesters had solutions to offer, rather than just inchoate rage, but can anyone really be amazed that they're taking to the streets in protest? Surely the only real shock is that it's taken so long for this to happen.