A MONTH ago Compact magazine published The Lost Generation, an article by the leftist millennial writer Jacob Savage. It went viral and divided opinion. To conservatives it was old news or even faintly humorous. To millennial leftists it was an uncomfortable revelation, though it’s highly unlikely Savage will effect any long-term change in their ideology or behaviour since their entire ethos has an inbuilt requirement pushing it towards ever greater extremes.

What was it he wrote that made them – risking a thrashing in the waters of the online moment – share, and thus acknowledge, their shock and discomfort?

Savage explains, in a way more devastating for being regretful rather than vicious, what the impact of DEI policies looks like. He describes the rather obvious fact that Diversity, Equity and Inclusion policies might better be described as Discrimination, Entitlement and Injustice. It also comes from an insider, a signed-up fellow traveller. Savage is a screenwriter who ticks all the boxes in terms of the politics and ideology now demanded in his industry.

This is a writer who ‘cared about social justice’, voted Democrat, and subscribed to all the uniform opinions and highly delusional leftist self-image of themselves as bringers of justice, righters of wrongs, and champions of the poor, the oppressed and the vulnerable.

Savage begins his critique with personal details of hardship, referencing his poverty as he struggled in his career and talking about a specific incident when a screenplay and a writing post were denied to him because he is a white male (explicitly stated to him by the industry figures involved in the decision). He doesn’t phrase this in an angry or even annoyed fashion, but almost wistfully, like a man describing a beloved girlfriend he let go.

The use of personal experience is of course entirely in line with woke prioritisation of emotion and feeling, especially in ‘lived experience’ narratives of discrimination and the tendency towards ‘my truth’ accounts. What makes it so effective is that Savage knows this literature and has spent much of his life agreeing with it, but turns its devices back upon his own treatment and that of white millennial males generally.

He writes: ‘The doors seemed to close everywhere and all at once. In 2011, the year I moved to Los Angeles, white men were 48 per cent of lower-level TV writers; by 2024, they accounted for just 11.9 per cent. The Atlantic’s editorial staff went from 53 per cent male and 89 per cent white in 2013 to 36 per cent male and 66 per cent white in 2024. White men fell from 39 per cent of tenure-track positions in the humanities at Harvard in 2014 to 18 per cent in 2023.

‘In retrospect, 2014 was the hinge, the year DEI became institutionalised across American life.

‘In industry after industry, gatekeepers promised extra consideration to anyone who wasn’t a white man – and then provided just that. “With every announcement of promotions, there was a desire to put extra emphasis on gender [or race],” a former management consultant recalled. “And when you don’t fall into those groups, that message gets louder and louder, and gains more and more emphasis. On the one hand, you want to celebrate people who have been at a disadvantage. On the other hand, you look and you say, wow, the world is not rooting for you – in fact, it’s deliberately rooting against you”.’

What grounds this complaint in reality is those stark and significant drops in white male representation.

Read More – DEI and a stark admission – it’s a war against straight white males