Keith

Such developments suggest we have entered a distinct new phase of capitalist modernity – a patronising, anti-adult era characterised by adolescent diversions and pop-cultural infantilisers.

But while infantilisation was taking hold all around us, it was its impact on the political sphere that concerned me the most. Here, my issue was not simply with politicians acting like attention-seeking adolescents on TikTok, or celebrity pundits stupefying the political arena with their ill-informed opinions. Rather, what worried me was the emergence of a new anti-adult form of political

expression evident in everything from ‘Brexit-derangement syndrome’ to the look-at-me hissy fits of middle-class Just Stop Oil protestors. However, it was the toxic fallout that followed in the wake of Donald Trump’s election that really brought home the full extent of the new infantocracy.