How has ageism been allowed to go unchallenged? - David Behrens

Let me put it another way: in a society in which it is impermissible to say boo to a goose because it might offend the poor creature and constitute a crime against political correctness, it remains open season for insulting the elderly.

It was a committee of MPs looking after ‘women and equalities’ that arrived at this conclusion. They blamed the march of technology – the replacement of high street banks, for instance, by websites that are confusingly indistinguishable from the ones run by criminals. More fundamentally they identified a shift in attitudes that has normalised ageism to the point where it is invisible to all but its victims.

The MPs were not the first to notice this. Two years ago the American Psychological Association reported in a similar vein that ageism was one of the last socially acceptable prejudices, a cultural cancer carried on the back of negative and inaccurate stereotypes.

Logically this ill-feeling must have been whipped up by people younger: millennials born in the 1980s and the nonsensically-named Z-generation after them – the very ones supposed to have embraced the environment and egalitarianism and general togetherness and scorned the likes of me for not doing. It turns out they’re as self-motivated as all the generations before them.

It’s unfair to generalise. Not every young person is ageist and even among those who are, dispensations are presumably made for relatives. But there is a tribalist tendency to gather beneath banners, to be seen to support the causes the loudest opinion-formers deem socially acceptable and eschew those that might induce criticism from peers.

One of the prevailing narratives is that baby boomers presided over a period of relative stability and economic comfort that bred complacency. But even if true, that isn’t a matter for universal guilt, any more so than suggesting those of my father’s generation who fought in the war were responsible for starting it.

Nevertheless it is a convenient off-the-peg ideology, a mast on which the misinformed can nail their colours, facilitated by social networks that make it possible for them to wear the badge of Social Justice Warrior without doing the research.

And while no-one is actively promoting prejudice against the elderly – not as far as I know – there is this tacit belief that older generations had an easier time of it. In some ways that’s fair: jobs were for life and pensions paid in perpetuity. But for baby boomers older than me there was also rationing, polio and an outside toilet to factor in. No generation gets a free ride.

So the suggestion that older people are somehow to blame for the privations of the present is as guileless as Rachel Reeves banging on about the previous Government leaving her without any money: it’s just not that simple.

How then has ageism been allowed to go unchallenged? A poll commissioned by Channel 4 the other week sheds some light.

Its headline statistic, that half of Z-generation types were in favour of turning Britain into a dictatorship, was widely reported but its underlying theme was that social video has replaced TV as the primary cultural compass for these people. Personalised ‘news’ feeds have made information gathering a matter of choice, not a shared understanding. Validation is nonexistent and opinions are formed on the basis of knee-jerk reactions that are entirely binary: good vs bad, old vs young, oppressor vs oppressed. Nuance doesn’t enter into it: if there are 200 people in a crowd they can’t all be wrong, even if they’re a baying mob.

Uncoincidentally that is also the model that brought back Donald Trump. He is nearly 80 and ought therefore to have been consigned to irrelevance with the rest of us. But he is also louder than everyone else and he knows that truth can be whatever he says it is. He’s made it ‘normal’ for people to believe what they want.

Today it’s acceptable to disregard the elderly; tomorrow, who knows what will be out of favour? Maybe it will be you.