What if Generation Z could save the West? In Anti-Civilization, Étienne-Alexandre Beauregard delivers a stark diagnosis: the dismantling of the norms that once shaped Western civilization has plunged society into a profound crisis, eroding the shared reference points that sustained it throughout the second half of the twentieth century. Runaway individualism, he argues, has fostered isolation and identity-based tensions, dissolving the social contract and replacing it with a clash of impulses and competing subjectivities. As heirs to this culture of deconstruction-and deprived of stable cultural and moral anchors-Generation Z is living through the full consequences of this illusory freedom, a pseudo-liberation that leads not to fulfillment but to alienation. Yet, Beauregard contends, young people are not merely victims of this crisis; they are its potential remedy. Precisely because they have been denied a coherent inheritance, they are uniquely positioned to recognize its value. While populism protests the excesses of progressivism, it risks deepening Western nihilism rather than overcoming it. Only a conservative renewal-rooted in tradition, culture, and the common good-can bring the era of deconstruction to a close and rebuild the social bonds between citizens and across generations.
