Class of 1970

The narrator is someone we know. Raised in the shadow of the Cold War, he stood as a nineteen-year-old before the falling Wall and believed, like so many of his generation, that everything would now get better. It turned out differently. Not worse right away. But quieter. And then, almost
imperceptibly, less free.

Class of 1970 tells the story of this generation - through a fictional narrator, guided by real facts. His question is simple and uncomfortable: How did we get from the West of the 1970s and 1980s - with its awkward, contentious democracy - to the world of today? What happened to us? Was this change unavoidable?

The historical events are documented. The political developments - from Guantanamo through the financial crisis to Covid and the new moral taboos of our time - are verifiable. What the narrator experiences is invented. What he discovers along the way is true.

The answer does not lead to conspiracies, but to something far closer to home: human nature, which, without external constraints, unfolds its own dark sides. The West did not lose its discipline because of external enemies. It lost it because the external rival disappeared. September 11 ultimately opened the door to everything that followed.