“Youth is completely different”

On the German-Austrian Youth Values Study from 2021

by Marita Brune-Koch

(5 November 2021)  Nowadays, “youth” is often equated with “climate youth”. This implies that youth today are “green” and organise or identify with “Fridays for Future”, Greenpeace, animal protection and similar organisations. However, this is by no means the case. The majority of youth “ticks” quite differently. This was shown in a study by the Austrian social scientist Professor Bernhard Heinzlmaier,* which he presented at the beginning of 2021.

German journalist Markus Langemann interviewed Bernhard Heinzlmaier on 8 May 2021 in his programme “Club der klaren Worte“ (Club of clear words)¹ about this “youth values study”. This article reproduces key statements from the interview and correlates them with current developments.

On the occasion of the Corona-related restrictions, Heinzlmaier examined the well-being of youth in Austria and Germany and interviewed 1000 young people between the ages of 16 and 29 in each country. His result: “In this age group we have something like an emerging crisis of representation of the state and young people. [...] People no longer trust the government, but the opposition is not an alternative either, they don’t trust it either.” Even before the Corona crisis, acceptance of the government had not been great; this problem had been exacerbated by the Corona policy. Heinzlmaier explains:

“The most important thing that can be deduced from this study is that in crisis management, one simply focused on the medical aspect. At first, the crisis was interpreted as a medical crisis to be solved with the means of medicine. That is too narrow a view. What was not considered were the economic, social and cultural consequences. And that is also the reason why the young identify so badly with politics and corona management, because 70% of them feel that politics does not care about their lives, does not care about the effects that, for example, lockdowns and restrictions on civil liberties have for their lives.

They complain that schools and universities have been closed too rigorously, that people have cultural needs even in a pandemic, and last but not least, they complain that politics does not deal enough with what the economic consequences might be and what that means for their personal position on the labour market and what that means in terms of the value of the education they are currently completing, they feel that politics does not represent them enough and does not take them into account enough.”

The percentage of German youth who do not trust the government and are critical of it, is lower than that of Austrian youth.

Lower and middle class are critical of government, upper class are compliant with government

What seems extraordinarily significant to us is the key result of this study, “that it is rather the lower and the middle social classes who protest against the government, who rebel against the government, who are dissatisfied, who criticise the Corona policy. [...] The upper third of society is highly identified with the government and is happy when the government brings the ‘mob’, as they call it, the lower and middle classes, under control. This is an absolutely new phenomenon. If we make the comparison with the 1968 period: in the 1968 movement it was the upper third of society, that is the children of the elites, who were on the streets questioning the system, and middle class and lower class were on the side of the system saying get rid of these long-haired rioters. That has completely changed.

The upper third of society is on the side of the government and is more or less happy when the authorities act consistently and furthermore, they are not very critical when it comes to restricting civil liberties. They look at it positively and say, yes, it’s time to take drastic measures. Whereas the middle and lower classes are more sceptical and critical. This is understandable because the middle and lower classes will be the ones who have to pay the bill in the end. It is on their backs that the restructuring of national budgets, which are now being stretched, will take place.”

At first glance, one might think the climate youth movement – keyword “Fridays for Future” – is critical of the government, after all, young people take to the streets. But the reality is quite different, according to the study.

Heinzlmaier explains: “’Fridays for Future’ is a movement that comes from the upper third of society, meanung a movement of educated youth, youth from the socially upper classes. In Hamburg, this is the youth from the Blankenese district; these are the young people who attend a grammar school, who attend a private university, you are looking at the high society.

The young people of the high society show us an adapted movement, everything is taken care of, they wear masks, they keep their distance, they are neatly dressed, they have beautifully painted signs, and usually they go to the demonstration together with the teachers. In other words, what is being done here is not a revolt against the system, but the vast majority wants to improve the system, make it more beautiful; this is not a social revolution, but rather in many cases an aesthetic revolution and also a very idealistic revolution, a movement, I would say, of adolescent idealism.”

All the established parties have taken up climate policy, and the climate youth are applauded and cheered. Greta Thunberg is allowed to speak at the UN and is received by the Pope. Recently, a climate youth summit took place in Milan, where Greta Thunberg was once again allowed to insult all politicians and was widely heard in many media. The results of this “summit” are to be presented to a meeting of ministers.³ This “movement” is thus quite obviously widely promoted, also financially; how else could it afford a congress in Milan? A movement critical of the government probably looks different.

But contrary to all the media bluster, only one third of the youth is inclined towards the contents of this movement. Heinzlmaier speaks of a “division of society into an upper third and the lower two thirds. There is a lack of understanding between them.

Those ‘below’ do not understand those ‘above’ and those ‘above’ do not understand those ‘below’. The problem with the ‘top’ is that from there – to use a more left-wing terminology – a class struggle is waged from above. This means the upper third of society – which is also involved in the climate movement, where the proportions of green voters are very large – actually believes that those ‘down there’ are too stupid to understand this climate problem and that they must be managed, strictly managed by the state so that we can save the world and get out of this climate crisis. In other words, this is a relatively disrespectful way of treating those people.

If someone from the lower social classes is a commuter and drives to work every day in a diesel car, then he is being signalled that he is a complete idiot. This then leads to resentments being stirred up from that side and so there is hardly any way of communication between these two groups."

Resentment is expressed – inarticulate at first

You probably remember the so-called riot nights during the Corona lockdowns in Germany, e.g. in Stuttgart. At the time, the media and politicians were stunned by these events and could not put them into perspective. “People can’t understand it”, was the headline of the Süddeutsche Zeitung.3

Heinzlmaier draws the following conclusion from the results of his study: “Those who are labelled party youth are the young people who have the feeling that it is no longer about me in this state and in this society. No one cares about me. And that also leads to fuelling aggressions and the need to express oneself and to say to those up there: ‘hello, we’re still here too, we won’t let them treat us like that’.

In other words, the crisis of representation in politics ultimately has the consequence that if the people down there and in the middle no longer feel represented by politics, then the area or the place of political debate shifts from the representative system to the streets. And what we will certainly see in the next 10 to 15 years will be similar conditions to what we know from France – for example, the “gilet jaune” movement – where there are very similar reasons why it occurred the way we remember it. These people will take their discontent to the streets, show there that they don’t agree with what is happening here in this country.”

Youth want stability, security, continuity

Something that one would not think at all, based on the media coverage, is that most of the youth is oriented towards traditional values. Heinzlmaier says: “I think you can sum it up like this: the upper third of society is moving to the left, and the middle and the lower strata of society is moving to the right. This has nothing to do with radical left and radical right, but I would rather say that the upper third of society is left-wing democratic and the lower third is right-wing democratic.

When society moves to the right, it means that traditional values gain in importance again. Then it’s all about order and economising, these are the old traditional values that are highly valued again. Cleanliness plays a role again, it’s about stability in society again, that everyone has their place, and there is a renaissance of traditional symbols. Traditional costumes and folk culture are hip again.

What is evident here is the great need of young people for stability, security and continuity. Security means that in three weeks and two months and three years you will still have your present job, you will still be in the flat you have rented, that you do not have to constantly fear losing your job, losing your flat, having to start all over again, having to reinvent yourself.

This is euphorically communicated today, that it’s great to reinvent oneself. But people don’t want to reinvent themselves – they want a continuous life of security and stability. To achieve this, they are striving for traditional values again. In sociology, we talk about ‘regrounding’, which means that young people want to have solid ground under their feet again, which is provided by traditional values you can relate to.”

The media-generated narrative of the “digital nomad”

Interviewer Markus Langemann counters Heinzlmaier’s remarks with the narrative of the “young urban person” who, as a “digital nomad”, is “sitting on a beach somewhere, earning big money”.

Bernhard Heinzlmaier responds to this challenge with some facts: “we know, for example, that only 25 to 30 percent of the jobs that exist in the Federal Republic of Germany are home office jobs. What you describe only concerns a small minority of people for whom such a life is possible. For people who work in a caring profession, in retail or in the construction industry, it is impossible. People who don’t have to deal with abstract work, who don’t have to deal with communication, but who have to be concretely hands-on, for those people such a world doesn’t exist at all. For me, that is also an obvious reason for the division of society.

This narrative you have just mentioned – that soon there will be no more offices, that mobility will become extreme, that you can sit on the beach with your own laptop in a pair of shorts and do your work from there – that is a ‘narrative’ of the upper third of society. The lower ones have jobs to do and also have a work culture that is absolutely incompatible with that and they have no use for these messages. They are not even touched by these messages because it simply has nothing to do with the reality of their lives.”

“Perception of the elites is lopsided”

This narrative, Heinzlmaier continues, was invented by the media because it is “completely in the hands of people from the upper third of society. The media today is run by the privileged. And it is hardly surprising that it just reports on their issues. The problem I see is that this upper third of society thinks [...] that it’s world represents the whole world. So there is something in the perception of these ‘elites’ that has gone awry. They no longer recognise that there is a second world that has nothing to do with their world.”

The media did not portray the world as it is, but according to the way it perceives it or would like it to be. This is not due to a conspiracy of the media professionals, but is simply due to the fact that they themselves belong to this upper third layer “and actually see the world this way”.

Heinzlmaier further emphasises that as a sociologist and youth researcher he has never experienced such a strong rift within the youth. It seems that until the 1970s “politics was made more in the interest of the lower social strata, that there was empathy for this strata of society, that more effort was made to consider the interests of this normal population. That is no longer the case today.”

Heinzlmaier describes the aversion of the elites toward the lower classes in drastic terms: “the upper classes do their thing and the lower classes are a hindrance to them, are an embarrassment to them, they are culturally alien to them, somehow, one is also a bit disgusted by them [...], that is, we have a snobbish upper third of society for whom the ‘simple’ and ‘uneducated’ people no longer mean anything and with whom it doesn’t want to have anything to do anymore – and it is of the opinion that they must be managed strictly and tightly by the government.“

As a result, he says, a massive and impermeable layer of isolation has formed between social groups, so that “really an extreme rift has emerged.” Heinzlmaier predicts that at some point, in some way, the lower and middle classes will make themselves heard: “we now have the situation that these middle and lower classes are still embarrassed and apprehensive and silent because they feel too weak. However, if this difference continues to be exacerbated, at some point there must be an explosion or at least some development where this extreme neglect of normal people will come to the surface somewhere and will lead to some kind of activity.”

The media create the world they want

This study is so significant and turns so much up-side-down of what is usually communicated that there should really be an uproar in the media world. But nothing is noticeable. If you don’t specifically look for it and are focused on the topic, you won’t come across this study.

Heinzlmaier classifies this silence as follows: “These people sitting there believe that language creates reality, therefore they speak the language that creates the reality they would like to have, the reality they imagine and believe in it. That is why it is unreasonable to them to include other scenarios in their communication.

If I present a study today in which I see that there is a re-traditionalisation in the values of young people, that people are more oriented towards security again, that it is about order and economising and cleanliness again, that they want to be oriented towards economic stability again, then that is not the world these media people want. They feel threatened by it and in order to get it under control, they simply try to exclude it.

You try to exclude it by not talking about it, so that you can continue spreading your own ideas and ideologies about the world to all audiences and viewers. [...] One does not want to accept that the world is the way it is, but one wants a world that only corresponds to one’s own ideas.”

We are very grateful to Markus Langemann for interviewing Bernhard Heinzlmaier.

1 https://clubderklarenworte.de/jugendwertestudie-2021/ or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkykd5PW-qM

2 See Tages-Anzeiger (CH) from 29 September 2021.

3 Süddeutsche Zeitung from 20 June 2021. “Krawalle in der Pandemie: ‘Die Leute können es sich selber nicht erklären‘“. („Pandemic riots: ‚People can‘t fathom it‘“).

https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/krawallnacht-in-stuttgart-alkohol-corona-1.5326697