The hype around ‘Gen-Z’ is currently everywhere. ‘Generation Z’ is an artificial name given by some to an imaginary ‘generation.’ In America, the letter ‘Z’ is pronounced as ‘Zee.’ In Indian schools, it is taught as ‘Zed’ (in the British style). Despite this, the current chanting of ‘Gen-Zee’.. ‘Zee.. Zee.. Zee..’ even in our country shows the growing American influence.
For the past three decades, a kind of false belief has been continuously drummed into our heads in the name of demography. We have been taught to divide humanity into 15-year blocks and classify them neatly into 7–8 boxes. Each box has a different name. Artificial labels have been affixed—Baby Boomers, Generation X, Millennials, Generation Z (the favorite Gen-‘Zee’ of some!), and now Generation Alpha. Corporate companies use these labels to design their tables. Marketing companies use them to sell sneakers. The media uses them to increase their viewership. Politicians (and certain politically motivated media outlets) are using them to create artificial movements.
Behind the catchy names and ‘innocent’ masks of these labels lies a highly systematic and dangerous reality. In the theater of modern geopolitics, the artificial classification of generations has not remained just a market tool. It has been turned into a systematic weapon. Although it is a naive belief that everyone in a particular age group thinks or behaves the same way, certain marketing campaigns have realized the possibility that ‘they can be made to think and behave the same way.’
As soon as they realized this marketing success, intelligence agencies began drawing up plans to achieve similar ‘success.’ Political experiments began. Through persistent efforts, they achieved limited success in certain restricted situations. Consequently, such efforts multiplied. America’s CIA, China’s MSS, and Pakistan’s ISI all actively entered the arena. ‘Psychological Operations’ (‘Psy-Ops’) began—formulating dangerous plans and operations by using psychological methods (brainwashing and continuous marketing tactics) through networks of intelligence agencies, NGOs, select media, tech companies, and market forces to create political dissent worldwide, engineer ‘revolutions’ at will, destabilize sovereign nations, and manufacture intense emotions and hysteria. Intelligence agencies like the CIA found this kind of shortcut to engineer the artificial revolutions they desired.
To understand how a generation is being exploited, one must first understand the fundamental lie of generational theory. All the ideological diseases of modern society were born in Europe and America. The concept of dividing society into generations with peculiar names was popularized in the Western world by historians William Strauss and Neil Howe through their 1991 book Generations. Their argument is that “history moves in cycles of 80 years, and these cycles are born from generations of recurring patterns.” Using that very premise, America’s notorious ‘Pew Research Center’ drew a chronological Lakshman Rekha (boundary line) for these imaginary generations. By setting a ‘cut-off’ date of 1996 for the ‘Millennials’ generation, it ‘officialized’ the boundaries of artificial classification and began the effort to permanently plant it in people’s minds. Thanks to the continuous efforts of intelligence agencies, bizarre terms like Generation X, Millennials, Zee, and Alpha have now become household words.
It is natural for innocent people to fall prey to continuous media propaganda. But not everyone is a fool. Just as there are intellectuals who create myths to fool the public, there are also smart people who question them. Many serious thinkers and experts in the West have not accepted these classifications. In 2021, more than 150 social scientists signed an ‘Open Letter’ demanding that these labels be completely abandoned.
The reason is clear. These generational labels assume a false uniformity; they impose a false homogeneity. This theory portrays that a 20-year-old tech billionaire entrepreneur in San Francisco, USA, a 20-year-old farmer working in a field in Ohio state, a working-class youth in Uttar Pradesh, India, and a 20-year-old young Vedic scholar in Sringeri, Karnataka, all possess the same psychological characteristics merely because they were born in the same time period. It is bizarre to argue that family-less, drug-addicted youth in America and traditional youth from joint families in India share the same mindset.
What determines human consciousness is not the year they were born. A person’s mindset is formed by a blend of many factors—their family background, their socio-economic conditions, the values (samskaras) instilled in them, the inherent traits carried from birth, the nature of the soil, the culture of the land, the character of the nation, the foundation of religion, cosmic perceptions, and the specific events that occur in their individual lives. Don’t those rolling the dice of these bizarre theories know this? They know it too. Intelligence strategists are not merely ‘imagining’ a false uniformity; it can be said that they ‘want to create’ uniformity. Moving past the stage of imagining uniformity, they have reached the stage of wanting to artificially create the false uniformity they desire. Perceiving a specific age group as a single bloc and planning projects around it makes the tasks of targeting them, profiling them, and changing their minds much easier. That is today’s ‘culture-war’ manual, the toolkit.
According to political socialization theories, events experienced between the ages of 14 and 24 shape an individual’s political identity. The CIA and other intelligence networks realized this decades ago (long before the bizarre names of generations became popular). During the Cold War, the CIA covertly funded the US National Student Association and international student unions. The objective was to turn youth away from Soviet communism toward American liberalism. Under the name ‘Operation Mockingbird,’ many newspapers and alternative media outlets were also covertly funded, and international journalists were bought and utilized in favor of America. The media was used to portray rebellions against enemy regimes as natural and inevitable. Unaware of this, many (whom Lenin called ‘useful idiots’) blew the propaganda trumpet on their own. After the Cold War, it was declared that ‘Operation Mockingbird has been terminated.’ However, it is noteworthy here that Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence in the US who resigned recently, has given hints that ‘Operation Mockingbird is still active.’
Today, the tactics have evolved from funding student organizations to controlling ‘algorithmic echo chambers’ on technology platforms. This is the era of ‘Cognitive Warfare.’ Under this, the main warfare of this era is—to achieve collective psychological control over the younger generation of the target country; to control their emotions; to create despair and anger in them; and to incite them toward riots and ‘revolution.’
It is difficult to manufacture anger out of nothing from a vacuum. For that, there are massive projects aimed at ‘creating reasons.’ This is a three-stage process. The first stage—highlighting, magnifying, and grossly exaggerating existing genuine grievances. Activists identify issues like unemployment, inflation, price hikes, and corruption in the country. Then, the required spin/color is added to them. The next stage involves technological algorithmic plays, which experts call ‘algorithmic hyper-polarization.’ Vast networks of AI-driven bots, fake accounts, and targeted advertisements are utilized on social platforms like TikTok, Instagram, Discord, X, Facebook, and Telegram. Through them, attempts are made to magnify despair enormously and convert that despair into outrage. The next stage involves the creation of artificial public opinion. Operatives create the illusion that ‘the entire generation shares the same feeling’ with the help of all available media (aided by funded forces and ‘useful idiots’ who jump into the arena on their own). The objective is that even the youth who have not made any decision until then, trapped in the illusion that ‘everyone has already decided,’ succumb to these artificially created thoughts.
In this way, a debate over a country’s internal policy turns into a crisis that becomes a threat to the government itself. Such geopolitical machinations have succeeded in many places (Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, etc.). In some places, they fizzled out (Hong Kong, China). But the efforts go on continuously. Experts have identified that the stage for such psychological warfare is set in many places, including India.
Remember, the youth who plunged into the Gen-Z struggle are not foreign spies; they too are patriots. There may be a lot of truth behind their outrage. But most of them are unaware of the invisible forces that are handing them microphones, controlling their mobile algorithms, and designing their protest toolkits. In the conspiracy against their own country, it is a state where they unwittingly become pawns themselves. If we do not properly recognize how generational identities are being mapped and exploited by foreign powers, global superpowers will continue to use our younger generation as fuel for their political gains.
When looking at today’s classification of generations, we need to look beyond corporate infographics and catchy words instead of being fooled by them. Gen-Z (Gen-Zee), Gen Alpha, A, B, C, D, X, Y, Gen-this, Gen-that—these are not just demographic groups. Those subjected to such classification and experimentation are unwittingly turning into innocent soldiers of cross-border psychological warfare.
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