Because “Fuck you, got mine”
Wealth makes people more likely to be conservative, as does age.
The poor young man who recorded Fuck tha Police is a very different person to the multi-millionaire media star being interviewed on Fox.
Early trends for Millenials and young Gen X has them not getting more conservative as they are aging, or at least substantially less so than older generations.
Because they don’t have the same generational wealth.
I believe it's because there's no reasonable conservative option. There's nobody even pitching "fiscal responsibility" or "small government" anymore. You've gotta drink the Kool aid and support The Donald or you're a liberal cuck. There's no room for being just right-leaning; you've gotta go all in.
Gen Xer here, I’ve never seen a republican led federal government that ever actually acted fiscally conservative. Being fiscally conservative and small government has always meant cut social programs and cut taxes but never cut spending to one of the biggest cost centers in the government, the military. There’s nothing fiscally conservative about cutting taxes and ballooning the deficit. There’s nothing fiscally conservative about starting two wars and essentially putting them on credit cards. The American people only put up with them for so long because the only ones who had to sacrifice for them were those that died or came back maimed. If we had to pay for them with higher taxes instead of passing the bill to the next few generations, those wars would never have even happened.
Wealth yes, but the age thing might be a myth. It turns out that people solidify their political leanings during major movements. The older generation just happen to be affected by Reaganism and Nixons southern strategy.
The most conservative leaning generation are not boomers or silver generation, but apparently Gen X.
Edit: I posted some sources in replies below.
There also seems to be a bit of weirdness even surrounding what "conservative" means. It used to mean an intent toward preservation of certain existing institutions/trends and preexisting stability, with a distrust for new institutions that may upset existing social calm. Which often is at odds with beneficial change but isn't inherently against it, favoring instead that it be slow and precise. When I think of myself as conservative that's the concept I have.
The problem is that "conservative" now can also include a group of people for which preserving an existing state (as in condition/mode of being ) is no longer acceptable, the demand either a reverse or entirely new directions.
As an example that's a little less hot button - vouchers for private schools. That's an active novelty and a change from an existing institution, rife with potential long-term impacts on both culture and stability that could be negative, and yet some positions push for it (often without addressing those problems). That's not a conservative position. That's a progressive one (maybe not in the direction someone on the left would want obviously).
Conservative got irrevocably linked with Right due to some preexisting social constructs and the urge to preserve them, but realistically it should hold just as well that a conservative would seek to preserve left-wing establishments as much as right-wing ones, or at least advise any changes to them be slow and incremental to avoid pop-up problems. Admittedly things like technology complicate that due to the speed with which it changes and demands response.
If you cannot understand how conservatism would LOVE to conserve the racism and rapant capitalism of the US... You might not actually understand what "conservatives" actually want to conserve...
It's the social order of things where they're on top. They've literally always been supremacists. Just not necessarily openly bigoted ones.
That was my first though.
breaking news: impossibly wealthy people vote for tax cuts and reduction in social services
Dude. Ice Cube has always been "fuck you got mine." People are only just now noticing?
this. coming into money doesn't change who you are. It magnifies who you've always been. Sure, people can change, but it isn't the money doing it.
A German Black rapper (Sam Deluxe) once said: "as a black person you can't really choose your political opinion freely, because one side only wants you out of the country." Many join the left because it means protection.
I think parts of hiphop culture fits quite well to a conservative worldview when it comes to money, masculinity and the role of women.
Ice cube is an anti Semitic piece of shit. Of course he siding with the Right, they're anti Semites too.
They got money.
I mean... Well I'll start with I have a bit of a conspiracy theory
So old white men ran the record industry when rap got hot. Clear channel and the top record companies can make anyone a star. Notice the over arching ideals and values they prop up
Much like the CIA released crack on minorities. Record companies released drugs addiction, gang banging, spending frivolously via glamorization On minorities
Always felt like minorities were being fed values that lead to failure. This is a continuation.
Or because many of these rappers came from poor and violent areas, where drug addiction, gang banging, and frivolous spending was what they knew
Except that a lot of early and grass-roots rap railed against those things, but that wasn't what got large scale commercial backing in the long run
Rich people and temporarily embarrassed millionaires and all that. Perfect victims for the right wing propaganda machine.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Scrolling through Twitter a couple of weeks ago, I came across a clip of rightwing commentator Tucker Carlson interviewing a face I never thought I’d see on his platform: Ice Cube.
He’s joining a long list of rappers – Kanye West, Da Baby, Kodak Black, Lil Pump – who have all put themselves in dangerous proximity to conservative politicians even as rightwing populism threatens to destroy their communities.
Still, hip-hop legends like Jay-Z continue to peddle this demented lie because that is the very function of capitalism: keep the poorest in society busy providing cheap labor while they chase an impossible dream.
Say what you want about Democrats and what they have or haven’t done for Black people in America, but Kanye West campaigning for Trump wasn’t some stroke of genius – it was one of the most self-hating and objectively stupid moves that a person in his position could have made back in 2016.
I don’t blame Black people – burned by decades of generational disenfranchisement and then walloped over the head with the illusion of meritocracy – for trying to keep their place at the top no matter who they have to play nice with.
But romancing fearmongering xenophobes isn’t keeping us at the top, it’s digging a pitiful hole to the bottom, a new low from which Black people as a community will not recover if we don’t put a stop to it now.
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"Why have rappers who have always been edgey and anti-establishment supporting an edgey political party that (pretends to be) anti-establishment?"
I think it has to do with the fact that the left is actively hostile towards men, to the point where men go conservative.
It's one of those "it hurt itself in its confusion" type situations, and that's coming from a leftist.
That’s… that’s not true.
Source: a male.
I mean, it's not untrue either. Here 58% of the students who completed their masters degree last year are women, yet the vast majority of the gender quota based bonus points still go to women. And then there is a group that claims this is still not enough progress - it seems they are more interested in revenge than equality. So I can certainly see how some men get the impression that "the left is not for them".
I'm sorry... what? It's the left's fault that women are getting more masters degrees than men?
Apart from anything else, isn't that suggesting that men getting more masters degrees than women is some sort of natural state? I'd like evidence for that one.
and that's coming from a leftist.
That has some strong "fellow kids" vibes.
"As a black man..."
There's definitely a subset of people on the left who are outright hostile to men in general... but they're a barely vocal minority. Anyone who leans right because of them was already halfway there, and was just using them as an excuse to dive headfirst instead of dipping a toe in.
I'm a man and a leftist.
Wtf are you talking about lol. The left isn't hostile towards men. They just aren't hostile towards women, poc, lgbtq+, etc like the right are.
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