Adolescence: Why Liberals Need a World of Fictional Foes
For the past month, the UK has been undergoing a national struggle session, caused by the release of Netflix drama Adolescence.
Adolescence follows a 13-year-old White boy named Jamie who has murdered a girl his age in a stabbing. Over the course of the four-part series, we learn that the boy was driven to murder because of latent misogynistic aggression, originating from his discovery of “redpill” influencers like Andrew Tate, as well as online discourse focused around inceldom.
The series is well-acted and watchable, but it’s a little hard to suspend disbelief around the show’s premise. Knife-crime is a problem in the UK, but it’s very rarely coming from young, middle-class White boys like Jamie.
Across England and Wales, 38% of knife-crime possession charges among youths are from people who self-define as ethnic minorities, a significant overrepresentation in a country that is still 83% White. It’s harder to find data for knife-murders, but in England’s capital London, Black individuals (13% of population) account for 61% of knife murders; Whites, just 18.1%.
And while that still leaves a lot of White knife murderers in the UK, these are usually domestic altercations, crimes of passion, and so-called “booze and blades” scenarios caused by pub fights or street brawls. In other words, boys like Jamie don’t exist. There isn’t any indication that the proliferation of “red pill” content is leading to a great upswell in violence against women. The Crime Survey for England and Wales, which attempts to record typically unreported incidents of domestic violence for the largest possible scope of this problem reports consistently declining rates of violence against women.
Of course, politicians and media pundits won’t let boring details like crime statistics get in the way of a good narrative. Adolescence sparked a national — then international — conversation on the apparent crisis of violent adolescents being radicalised by the red pill. The leaders of both Ireland and the UK promised to introduce showings of Adolescence to schools. Irish Taoiseach Simon Harris credited Adolescence for sharing insight into how “toxic influencers” fill a void in young men’s lives. Keir Starmer even invited the creators of the show and a cadre of NGOs to 10 Downing Street to discuss this imagined crisis.
Knowing the reality behind the growing knife-crime problem in countries like the UK and Ireland, it has been quite surreal to watch liberal elites completely invent a narrative that fits their biases, then begin implementing policy on the assumption it’s real. But then I remembered how often the same kind of people moved by this show invoke Harry Potter, The Hunger Games and The Handmaid’s Tale.
What causes this clinging to the simple morality tales found in teen fiction and dystopian slop? Part of it is just the overlap between a liberal disposition and being drawn to the arts and fiction — liberals score far higher in the personality trait of Openness than their conservative counterparts. But, as evidenced by the response to Adolescence, it isn’t just that they enjoy fiction more, it really does activate deeper political instincts in them to the point of mistaking fiction for reality.
One fact that has been well established in recent years is that left-wing people have significantly higher rates of mental illness. A well-publicised, peer-reviewed study in 2023 found a strong correlation between “left-wing authoritarianism” — people on the left who think it would be legitimate to overthrow the state and impose their politics — and dark triad personality traits associated with narcissism and psychopathy. The authors conclude that “individuals with dark personalities — such as high narcissistic and psychopathic traits — are attracted to certain forms of political and social activism which they can use as a vehicle to satisfy their own ego-focused needs instead of actually aiming at social justice and equality.”
This applies to the more extreme end of the political left, but a trait that seems to be common among political liberals — both moderate and extreme — is their neuroticism. Neuroticism is one of the “big five” personality traits used in clinical psychology, and it measures someone’s tendency toward negative emotionality: depression, anxiety, frustration, self-loathing, loneliness etc. and along with the trait of openness, is something liberals score noticeably higher in than conservatives.
How does this tie back to their resonance with fiction? A 2020 psychological paper studied a phenomenon called “catastrophic thinking”, a trait that is common to all kinds of mental disorders. As the name suggests, this causes afflicted individuals to catastrophise otherwise minor challenges or worries. Not only would we expect to see this trait far more represented among the more neurotic left, but the study itself notes that political progressives were more prone to viewing systemic issues as immediate, existential threats. If there is any kind of political message in fiction they are moved by, especially something portraying a dystopian future or imminent social crisis, these individuals will be deeply affected.
Catastrophising biases attention toward worst-case scenarios, a trait amplified by dystopian fiction’s focus on irreversible tyranny. As it is an irrational pattern of thought, it makes sense people engaging in it will overlook data or more charitable interpretations of their political enemies. During the 2024 election, mentally unstable feminists really did believe that Donald Trump and JD Vance were going to make The Handmaid’s Tale a reality. Now, progressives really are panicked about a generation of violent young men being turned into ticking time bombs by encountering “toxic” influencers.
A century ago, W.B. Yeats wrote that "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity." Yeats' observation is well vindicated by psychological research, which shows that mentally unstable and psychopathic people will often be drawn to politics with a “passionate intensity” others lack.
More fundamentally though, liberals typically adopt their views more for social capital than any strong ideological commitment. Modern liberalism is constructed around a series of “luxury beliefs” — viewpoints which come at no personal cost to them and are held primarily to signal virtue and status, but have potentially severe consequences for other members of society. The classic example is the Hollywood millionaire actor signaling support for open borders from gated estates, or urban liberals imagining White incel killers while ignoring who’s actually wielding knives.
Some of these beliefs have become so ludicrous that they require constant affirmation from fiction to reinforce them. People that have actually lived around non-Whites are generally less idealistic about dreams of multiracial harmony. If you wanted to embark on a moral crusade about women’s rights or White supremacy in the 1960s, there was some real world material you could draw on to justify hysteria. Now, liberals need a world of Black scientists, White gangs, racist police officers and incel killers to justify their beliefs, which can only be provided by a constant supply of regime media.
In the end, the only thing Adolescence is a wake-up call to is how disconnected otherwise educated people are to what’s happening outside their living rooms. Even in the digital age, well-produced media is still capable of social engineering on a grand scale, and the UK may yet experience the real-world consequences of yet more draconian censorship laws as a result. The stories progressives tell themselves may reflect little about reality, but they will bend the world to their script.
Great article Keith. Nothing demonstrates the bizarrity of the situation more clearly than this interview on BBC Breakfast: https://x.com/addicted2newz/status/1910281285798396237
Another fantastic article.
A few points. Firstly, the shear volume of this world-view affirming neoliberal propaganda is basically infinite. It is created faster than anybody can keep up with, and crosses all mediums. It has not slowed for lack of commercial success, and has generally very high budgets and production values.
Secondly, there is a pervasive myth called "get woke go broke". It has been repeated like a mantra for a certain film and culture review slop-flinging sector of cultural critics, such as Nerdrotic and his panel guests, or Jamie at the Quartering. Its basically a mainstream phrase at this point, even among the apolitical and moderate. This is a myth, because the intention of all of this propaganda is to control the culture and utilize repetition of certain themes, such as the dopey white father, the benevolent ethnic, or the girl boss.
By controlling the culture and the Overton Window, not to mention constantly rewriting history, control of a large enough percentage of the population is achieved. This mass of plebs is often comprised of the informationally bereft leftist, the neurotic, the childless old feminist, and the usual rather detestable and angry spit-talkers. As Keith mentioned.
But it does give them a unified symbology and set of reified beliefs. It allows them to out-group dissidents to the system, and often violently suppress them, as we can see in pro-life groups, the or the now perhaps slightly ashamed white BLM supporters.
"Get Woke go Broke" is a fallacy because the intention was never to make money- that was a very nice side benefit during the century or so that Hollywood and their ilk controlled the entertainment scene. We are now sliding back into an era, maybe we can call it the Greenblattian era, where elites just ham-fistedly belch out vitriol and threats, while providing what is obviously propaganda that is tiring and dull. Good old-fashioned propaganda.
It all points to loss of control for The Regime, but lets disabuse ourselves of the idea that the propaganda itself will stop because it loses money, now. The Beeb or Hollywood can lose billions up front, it still allows for the theft of trillions on the back-end. It also provides moral justification for the increasing persecution of populists, and what is looking like a majority of the population, the NATIVE population, at least of a growing list of countries, from Canada to Ireland.
Interestingly, China has officially given the middle-finger to faltering efforts of Hollywood in their country as part of the trade war, recently. That policy may have some of the most interesting outcomes. Hollywood was supposed to expand into that market to make up the losses for its failing products at home. As well as losing money, people are just able to see this propaganda for what it is, and reject it more forcefully. Its efforts are becoming risable, and counter-productive. But I doubt that lack of financial success will slay the beast. It has to be replaced by a better competitor.