OK, Boomer: A Post-War Psychoanalysis
I hadn’t planned to write another essay this year, but one topic has been on my mind for the past few weeks. Due to the impending collapse of the German pension system and the Baby Boomers’ complete lack of understanding or willingness to address the issue, there has been significant back-and-forth between the Boomers and the younger generations. Much of this exchange has been filled with hate and spite. Their proposed solution is simply to raise taxes on everything—taxing private pensions, investments, and self-employed individuals more heavily to fund the pensions, while the generations following the Boomers will likely receive no pensions at all.
Since I have a premium subscription to my favorite podcast, Aethervox Ehrenfeld, I’ve noticed that many guests, including the host, are from my generation, Generation X. They often describe their parents and childhood experiences in ways that resonate with my own. I’ve been trying to understand why my generation and those that follow harbor such strong feelings against the Boomers. My parents are Boomers, so this analysis is general assession and not aimed at specific individuals. However, I find that I connect more with the Silent Generation (my grandparents) in terms of their worldview compared to the Boomers.
I believe the Boomers have a negative reputation (“Ok, Boomer”) not only in Germany but also in many Western countries, and this issue has multiple causes. Here, I will focus on the phenomenon in Germany, which appears to be particularly problematic.
Luckily, one of my favorite authors, Raymond Unger, has written several books that thoroughly explore his hypothesis about the trauma of the Boomer generation.1 I just need to summarize his thesis before adding my thoughts.
The War That Never Ended
Ungers’ hypothesis suggests that the parents of the Baby Boomers, known as the Silent Generation, were children during the Second World War and experienced significant trauma. They faced bombing raids, such as Operation Gomorrah in Hamburg and Dresden, as well as displacement, rape, loss of relatives, hunger, battles, and the deaths of friends. Almost every person of the Silent Generation includes individuals who either died in the war or returned home injured.
My maternal grandfather’s older brother died in the war. My grandfather was severely wounded near Stalingrad in 1942 with 18 years by grenade shrapnel in his back, which ultimately saved his life. His unit that started with over 15,000 men was already decimated to 8,714 soldiers with just 14 remaining tanks when they reached Stalingrad. He was evacuated over the frozen Volga shortly before the Stalingrad pocket closed, leading to the destruction of his entire battalion, Panzer Pioneer Battalion 40 (24th Panzer Division). Most of his friends perished. Only 1,500 survived and got into war captivity, the rest died of wounds, starvation, sickness, or exhaustion.
He made sure I hated war by telling me horrific stories, like the one where he just survived because his friend was sick and he offered him his place in a station wagon. That wagon was hit by a grenade that night. He also told me how he had to hide in a hole silently for a day while a Russian tank was parked above his fighting position. And he told me how awful human flesh smelled after the soldiers of the flamethrower pioneer divisions had “cleaned” houses in the urban warfare in the south of Stalingrad.
One of his comrades, Günter K. Koschorrek, a machine gunner, and his unit could break out of the city and escaped before Christmas 1942. He later wrote the book “Vergiss die Zeit der Dornen nicht” (Don’t forget the time of thorns) about his experiences.
Throughout his life, my grandfather sought to understand the trauma inflicted on his generation by reading 4,000 books about the war. He often cycled through Russia, visiting the civilians he found so friendly during his time as a soldier. He never harbored resentment against Russians; instead, he loved the entire country.
My paternal grandfather was shot in the arm in Russia and lost it up to the shoulder due to gangrene while walking hundreds of kilometers through the snow, wounded. I never learned the details because he was so traumatized and never spoke about the war; I heard him speak only 3 or 4 times in my life.
My grandaunt was evacuated as a child from Hamburg to the countryside due to the extensive firebombing that devastated large parts of the city. However, even in Wolfsburg, there were raids on the tank farms of the Volkswagen factory. My grandmother recalls roof tiles flying off their house from a nearby explosion. After the war, she returned to her family’s partially destroyed flat in Hohenfelde, where a bomb had created a large hole in the ceiling, which is still visible. She lived with multiple families squeezed into one flat for a while and remained there until her death at the age of 92 in 2023.
I know very little about my grandmother’s life during the war, but it was difficult. She had to work in the fields alone, with some help from Russian prisoners of war. I know even less about my paternal grandmother, who was born in Bratislava. She had to leave her home, likely due to the approaching Russians or because she was expelled. I believe they first went to Berlin, where she worked in civil service, and later moved to Wolfsburg after the war.
After the war, my maternal grandfather worked tirelessly every day from 4 a.m. to 7 p.m., including weekends. He aimed to expand the small carpentry business his brother had founded before the war into a large drywall and construction company. My maternal grandmother assisted in the office daily.
My paternal grandfather, disabled from the war, could not work due to the loss of one arm; he spent the rest of his life sitting on a couch, staring into space. He needed my grandmother to help him with daily tasks and cut his food.
The Silent Poison: How Trauma Became Shame
Unger states that this traumatized generation suppressed their emotions to survive and rebuild the country. As a result, they became emotionally unavailable to their children. They provided materially for their kids but struggled to emotionally mirror or regulate their feelings. Any intense emotion in the child triggered their own repressed war trauma. Consequently, this led to a systematic emotional abandonment of the Boomer children.
Children interpret their parents’ emotional coldness egocentrically, thinking, “There is something fundamentally wrong with me,” rather than recognizing, “My parents are overwhelmed by their own past.” This perception fosters deep, existential toxic shame (“I am wrong”)—not guilt for a specific action that can be atoned for, but a pervasive shame about one’s very existence that cannot be repaired through action. The core wound stems from a lack of emotional mirroring in early childhood, resulting in a disturbed identity (“I don’t know who I am”) and chronic inner emptiness.
The result, according to Unger, is a narcissistic and needy personality that constantly seeks external validation and control to fill an inner void. This individual has a persistent need to compensate for and alleviate unbearable shame, using common defense mechanisms such as projection (“Others are bad/wrong”), shaming and morally condemning dissenters, perfectionism, arrogance, control, moralizing, judging, caretaking, and people-pleasing.
Hypermorality and political correctness serve as ideal tools for discharging one’s own shame while stabilizing the fragile self. The collective self-accusation of the West and Germany—“We alone are to blame for the misery of the world”—manifests as externalized toxic shame. This often results in an inability to set personal and national boundaries, leading to co-dependency and a helper syndrome. The open borders of 2015 exemplify the psychological inability to say “no.”
The dominance of feminine narratives—such as care, equal distribution, control, and interventionism—has led to the devaluation of masculine narratives, which include competition, self-assertion, personal responsibility, and acceptance of hierarchy. Many Boomer men remained emotionally attached to their mothers and lacked an initiating, boundary-setting father. Most children of my generation recall the constant struggle with our mothers, who disapproved of “boys’ things,” like knives, toy guns, wildness, and rough play. I believe my mother was relieved when I “found” joy in computers and spent most of my time indoors. This contrasts with my early childhood, when I was often outside, interested in being a Boy Scout, collecting knives, and playing in the forests.
Unger identifies one acceptable form of pride: “Schuldstolz” (pride in one’s own guilt). The only socially acceptable identity is to be the person who bears the greatest possible guilt—whether historical, colonial, climatic, or otherwise.
The climate movement is currently the most successful example of “outrage management.” Old issues such as migration, crime, and the euro crisis fade away, while a new apocalyptic guilt narrative takes shape. Dissenters are pathologized and demonized as “Klimaleugner” (climate change denier) and “klimaschädlich” (harmful to the climate).
This psychoanalysis of the Boomer generation clarifies many of their recent political stances. These include unregulated immigration, the dismantling of Germany’s energy security by eliminating nuclear energy, gender and LGBT ideology, an obsession with COVID-19 and zero-COVID, climate change, a psychosis against the AfD as looming fascism, and an irrational fear of a Russian invasion of Germany.
I have observed these issues with my parents across nearly all topics over the last few years. In 2011, I read the entire Koran and became critical of the politically intolerant aspects of the religion, especially after the significant wave of immigration, primarily of men from Islamic countries, that began in 2015. I still remember the discussions with my parents, who have never met any immigrants in their lives but have strong opinions about the goodness of all of them. Even the break-in into their home by a Bulgarian hit-and-run gang stealing electronics and money, or the beating my father received as a young man from a group of “Mediterranean-looking men,” didn’t changed their opinion.
As a child, I remember the large anti-nuclear movement in our region due to plans for a nuclear waste repository. After Chernobyl, my school and parents traumatized us with books about nuclear fallout. We couldn’t play outside for months, and my parents even bought new sand for the sandbox. They supported every climate change concern and fearmongering promoted by the media.
My parents fully supported all COVID-19 measures. They received their vaccines early and still continue to get every booster today. My father became obsessed with the R-value and tracked the current danger level every morning in an Excel table. They prioritized regulations over family harmony, which led to constant arguments. I remember needing to leave after Christmas because they wanted to celebrate New Year’s Eve with my grandmother, and regulations prohibited me, as an unvaccinated person, from joining. Instead of ignoring the regulation they basically told me to leave. They also ignored the RKI leaks, political corruption, vaccine damage, and various scandals that emerged after the pandemic. Everything I sent them was dismissed as a “conspiracy theory,” so I stopped discussing these issues with them.
When Trump was elected, they constantly repeated the “Orange Man Bad” and “Trump is Hitler” propaganda until I became tired of it. I enjoy Trump, including his humor and social media posts, although I am critical of his protectionist tariff policies. Early on, I could fact-check every speech and the lies spread about him, and I realized that nearly everything reported in the media was false.
My parents fully support the anti-AfD sentiment but are too lazy to engage politically as “Grannies against the Right.” I have had numerous discussions with them in which they claimed the party aims to deport all immigrants, abolish democracy, and establish a fascist dictatorship. My father even asserted that he read the party’s extensive program, becoming angry when I asked where any of his claims were mentioned in it. Recently, he was shocked to discover that his lifelong friends, with whom he drinks beer every week, have started voting for the AfD.
They also support the Russophobia promoted by public broadcasting. A few months ago, my mother sent me pictures of a home bunker. I’m not sure if she was joking, but they genuinely believe that the Russians will invade soon.
Three Fatal Blind Spots
The situation is already complicated by a narcissistic, hypermoral generation, and I have identified additional factors that further complicate the issue.
One factor is the Boomer generation’s struggle to engage critically with media. When my parents were children, television was first introduced in black and white, later transitioning to color in 1967. At the time of my mother’s birth, ARD was the only television channel, and “Tagesschau” was the flagship news program. In 1963, a second channel, ZDF, was added, followed by regional stations (HR, BR, NDR, SFB, RB, etc.) between 1964 and 1969. It wasn’t until 1984 that the first private channels, RTL plus and SAT.1, were launched. The childhood and early adult experiences of Boomers were shaped by one or two authoritative sources that presented information as fact, leaving no room for alternative viewpoints or verification. Their TV consumption during my childhood was typically German, featuring Lindenstraße every Sunday, Tatort, and the “Tagesschau” or “Heute” daily at 20:00, along with the occasional talk show and Wetten, dass every few months. And it still is like this today.
Occasionally, I remember my parents reading “Der Spiegel,” “Stern,” and other magazines. My father always praised these print publications. Additionally, they subscribed to a local newspaper that they read every morning without questioning its content.
The failure to recognize that every newspaper and media outlet has its agenda and political bias is one reason many Boomers have not noticed the changes in the media landscape since 2005. Many still avoid alternative media and trust official fact-checkers and government-sponsored narratives. While 77–98% of Boomers watch TV regularly, only 43% of Generation Z does. They struggle to understand that everything shifted with the advent of the internet and that most legacy media is in a desperate fight for survival. They either adopt subscription models that often prove unprofitable or enter into partnerships with the government and NGOs, becoming reliant on state funding or donations from billionaires like Bill Gates.
In contrast, my generation, Generation X, was born during a pivotal time for media. We grew up with newspapers, magazines, radio, television (especially MTV), videocassettes, DVDs, and later, the internet. We jokingly referred to Boomers as “Internetausdrucker” (internet printers) because they printed emails or websites to read them. From the beginning, we had access to a wider range of media sources and learned early on to discern which formats to trust or distrust. While the Boomer generation was largely idealistic—focused on civil rights, anti-war movements, and the optimistic post-WWII boom—Generation X is more cynical and pragmatic, shaped by political corruption scandals and existing between the analog and digital worlds.
One of the biggest factors for their blind obedience to authoritative sources is likely the late introduction of the internet into their lives. Boomers never learned to use it effectively, as they were already in their 40s when it became common in German homes. Initially, the internet resembled a walled garden with services like AOL (“You’ve got mail”), and most boomers found the browser intimidating, avoiding the vastness of the internet. For instance, my parents learned most of their computer skills from me. My mother still rarely uses the internet today, while my father is just beginning to explore AI.
In comparison, Generation X was born into the computer age. We learned to hack, program, tweak, surf, Google, download, share, rip, and burn. Most teenagers in my generation had game consoles, PCs, Walkmans, iPods, and other technology. We are internet natives; we know how to use search engines, conduct research, follow links, and explore forums like Reddit and Digg. Growing up with the movie “The Matrix” our generation regularly talks how we “are going down rabbit holes” to research topics deeply. 🐰🕳️ Many have already moved on from Facebook to newer platforms like 𝕏 or Instagram, leaving Boomers behind. This shift is why our generation mockingly refers to Facebook as “Boomerbook.”
The third factor I identified is likely one of the most important. The Boomer generation speaks little to no English. Although some received basic English education in school, they rarely used it, as most worked for a single German-speaking company throughout their careers. In contrast, many in Generation X and younger generations can at least read and listen to English, with many being fluent. As a result, Boomers struggle to read or watch political speeches and articles, relying blindly on our publicly funded broadcasting system and their claims.
The Reckoning
To summarize, Boomers often exhibit narcissistic and needy traits, requiring constant external validation and control. They tend to trust corrupt government propaganda, media, and fact-checkers, lacking the technical skills or language proficiency to verify primary sources and validate claims made by the world’s largest publicly funded broadcasting company. With 97% of editorial staff voting for leftist parties, there is a significant socialist bias. Many Boomers enjoy good pensions and a 57% homeownership rate in low-immigration areas of Germany while supporting socialist and eco-socialist policies. This situation explains a lot.
I don’t see a solution. The AfD is already the strongest party among all generations except the Boomers, who will live for another 5 to 20 years. Their voting power and large numbers block any change or reform. I never expected to receive a pension, so I invested for myself. I used already taxed money that I earned, and practiced abstinence from consumption for a better future. Now, the state takes 25% of my investment gains and plans to take 30% or more. Germany has already the lowest pensions in the EU and we won’t probably get pension at all (or with 80 years) and we are called upon to make private provisions. And when we do, they steal that money. The pressure will continue to build until it explodes, potentially leading to massive emigration, civil unrest, or worse. The generations following the Boomers will no longer accept a bleak future where they constantly have to pay for declining services. At some point, the anger will be unleashed.
One of the most important tasks, in my opinion, is to dismantle the stranglehold of public broadcasting. It must be dismantled, privatized, and destroyed. People shouldn’t be forced to pay for their own propaganda or to be insulted and mocked by an elite group of presstitutes.
I recommend converting as much worthless fiat money as possible into assets, preferably gold or Bitcoin in cold storage, where the government cannot access it. At some point, the entire system will fail, and the euro will either hyperinflate or be replaced by a CBDC, resulting in a digital financial prison. After the Third Reich and the GDR, Germany is attempting socialism once again. The government quota has already exceeded 50%, and the only sector still growing in employment is the government.
House-searches for “hate speech” have becoming common with a new public case nearly every week. The last especially scandalous case involving a libertarian user, who posted on 𝕏 that all people who live of other peoples money, were parasites. He received a police raid at 6 in the morning, confiscating his digital devices and dragging him to the police station for finger prints, photos, and even asked for DNA samples. The Stasi is active again and most Germans don’t even notice it, because the television is not reporting about it.
How does the old anti-socialist quote go? You can vote your way into socialism, but you’ll have to shoot your way out.