Slouching Towards 1984: Shocking Numbers of Young Americans Embrace the Surveillance State

 

One wonders whether they still teach Orwell in schools these days.  Almost one in three members of Gen Z says that they would accept government surveillance cameras in their home.    

A new survey from the Cato Institute asked Americans about their view on government surveillance and central bank digital currencies. 

The survey found that large numbers of young Americans would be happy having Big Brother watching them. 

Almost one third of 18- to 29-year-olds said that they would favor having the government install surveillance cameras in their home to monitor them for illegal activity.    Only 6 percent of Baby Boomers would allow Big Brother into their homes.    

It’s not just their homes.  Gen Z also is happy having Big Brother in their pockets.  32 percent of Gen Zers support CBDCs.

In fact, 24 percent of Gen Z would support CBDC even if it meant that government could freeze the bank accounts of political protestors. 

That’s exactly what happened in the Canadian trucker protests in which the government ordered banks to freeze the accounts o truckers and other protesting the government’s authoritarian (and unnecessary) COVID lockdown. 

History shows that when governments have the ability to squelch dissent they will do it. 

Whether it is the East German Stasi, the Chinese Communist Party’s social credit system or the National Security Agency’s domestic bulk data collection program (for which they lied to Congress about its existence), the tools of government surveillance are the tools of totalitarianism.