The racial relations nostalgia is particularly weird for anyone old enough to have been alive at the time and poor enough to have been exposed to actual blacks. My sense is that most of those reminiscing about 90s racial relations live in nice white suburbs and think all blacks in the 90s were like Michael Jordan. The reality for those of us who lived in proximity to blacks was far different - a case like Irina’s would’ve been a regular occurrence. Barely newsworthy. Black violence in LA was so intolerable that Mexicans ethnically cleansed them in retaliation. NYC ethnic cleansing worked in reverse - much of the white working class fled. For me it’s a class and age signal when people claim race relations were better then. It may be true that upper middle class blacks were less radicalized - but that’s hardly a useful indicator.
The 90s are being 'member-berried because the millennials are getting old and the cold draft of mortality is starting to be felt on their neck tattoos.
The same thing happened for my cohort about the eighties.
The nineties were the beginning of token black friends, widespread drug use, what used to be called political correctness, single Manhattan lifestyles over raising families, normie tattoos, inoffensive gays, protecting black criminals, and college feminism. I don't want a return to that.
All of this is fair. While the 90s are shrouded in a rose-tinted nostalgia, there were certainly many issues. The only real "conservative media" of that time was Rush Limbaugh and National Review. And while there was great bands like Nirvana, Radiohead, and Oasis, there was also a TON of trash on the radio (most of it R&B slop). And even then, there was plenty of annoying leftist propaganda in schools--back in those days, I remember stories about Mexican immigrants and global warming being forced on us constantly.
I actually think the yearning to return to those days largely stem from the fact that the internet had not quite become mainstream yet. Yes, there was the dial-up modem and big boxy PCs, but for young people, your only real option for socializing and having fun was going out of the house. I this kind of face-to-face bonding is what people are missing.
And of course, "it's the economy, stupid." Basic stuff like food, housing, and cars were affordable. Even traveling was affordable. People could go "backpack in Europe" in those days. Plus, one didn't have to go into indentured servitude to earn their undergrad degree. I remember
a lot people delaying adulthood by getting their Masters or PhD for the fun of it. All of this was affordable. *Sigh* Good times.
I don't know. There was a lot to miss from those days.
The 90's were not utopia for anyone that lived through that decade but they were preferable to 2025 America. The vast majority of Americans were content and optimistic about America and its future unlike today. Christmas was always a joyous time and store clerks and strangers would wish you a Merry Christmas also unlike today. People did have more in common owing to whites being a supermajority of 72-73% and the radical anti-white left was just a fringe element of the Democrat party back then.
But the 90's were also when white people started being villainized and vilified in movies and TV sitcoms much more than previous decades and movies were made depicting blacks as heroic and defeating white racists in various settings. Higher Learning comes to mind but there were others. American History X showed us that whites taking their own side solves nothing and actually makes things worse. And lest we forget the Jewish owned mainstream media and some elected politicians began touting and celebrating America's demographic transformation to being more non-white.
Tucker Carlson once seemed to imply that the 90's were a golden age of race relations but the L.A. race riots and O.J. Simpson verdict should dispel that belief. White-black racial tension was a real thing if you weren't rich and insulated like Tucker and others.
It's ironic that a fair number of Democrats during the Clinton era were more conservative than many members of today's GOP on several issues.
90's nostalgia has never resonated with me at all. Even when it was a big thing with apolitical zoomers on scrolling apps, I thought it was stupid as hell.
An important point with regard to what Greer is discussing here is what a major distraction the no fun puritanical right is. Steps could've been taken at that time to ensure the 90s went on indefinitely. And, just as now, many people who don't want to see whites exterminated, or who want a comfortable middle class life, also enjoy porn, aren't really interested in eradicating homosexuality (it wasn't directed at children for the most part) and realize it's much more sensible for incapable low IQ people to have an abortion rather than give birth. Yet again, and in a time when doing so has far more dire consequences, people who are focused on such things are distracting from the racial issue and even actively encouraging people to ignore it. They, more so than any other economic changes (which are downstream) are the reason the 90s are gone. Because of the focus on porn, gays and abortion, the right was not focused on keeping America white, which has driven up the cost of food, housing and healthcare, owing to the fact that non whites are a net drain on the economy, especially blacks at about a quarter million a head. Immigration of course only makes this worse. Another distraction is penny pinching on food stamps, which again, if not for the presence of non whites, would be a non issue.
The LA riots could've been a great impetus for reviving the colonization movement, that opportunity was squandered. Following on, the right could've focused on curtailing loans to irresponsible blacks which would've prevented the financial crisis (a crisis that denied at least an entire generation from partaking in the American dream) but they were too focused on terrorism, costly unproductive wars, and attacking democrats for being spineless cowards. This hamfisted approach not only ruined the economy, but made a fire breathing mulatto racist into a viable candidate. I would disagree slightly with Scott and say that within a few years, if drastic steps were taken, we could be back in the nineties again, if people would be less squeamish about getting tough with non whites and leaving their prudish sexual ethics to themselves. It is not economics, or larger inescapable realities which prevent us from living in the 90s (as Scott seems to imply) but our own orthodoxies and lack of political will. We could return to the 90s anytime we like, but apparently masochistic Americans are in love with their own misery.
Not only is it clear you never paid the slightest bit of attention to anything the man ever said (Obama did so much to ingratiate himself to working-class whites that he won both Indiana and North Carolina in '08), but it takes some real gall to call someone a racist after writing two paragraphs so full of anti-black racism it's practically oozing out of every comma and period.
The lack of self-consciousness here is so palpable you could cut it with a swastika.
And if whites killed each other or blacks in anything like the numbers per capita blacks did (to whites and themselves), that might mean something. The only reason Obama won the mandate he did (which he squandered) was because Dubya (another anti racist, saying there's nothing wrong with Arabs or Muslims, doing everything he can to make sure there are more Africans for the massive black population explosion coming our way) was so absolutely atrocious. When did Obama do this ingratiating? When he said he was ashamed of his own racist white grandma? When he said whites who don't want to live in a diverse country (take a look at the rampant violence, brutality and corruption in most of the non whtie world) were the problem? When he blamed all the rampant black violence on ignorance and prejudice? When he said they cling to guns and antipathy? When the bailout gave tons to the white hating NGOs that up until Trump defunded DEI virtually ruled the roost? When he appointed a guy (Eric Holder) who thought white racial consciousness was a bigger problem than the rampant destruction in urban areas unleashed by blacks that turned them into unlivable crap holes? When he knowingly lied about Russian collusion to try and cripple his political opponents? When he used the IRS to target his political opponents? When he supported dreamers and the like, destroying wages, hiking up the cost of health care and housing? When he advised a group of blacks that voting was the best revenge? When virtually everyone he surrounded himself with were radical racial activists? When he pretended that Trayvon Martin dindu nuffin? When he pretended like hands up don't shoot was real? When he drug his feet condemning what happened in ferguson? When he defended the lies of the Floyd narrative and the open season on whitey during the peaceful protests? You're an idiot. It's a wonder you even know how to breathe.
Generations of people born in the teens, 20's, and 30's were still very influential and present back in the 90s. Those people were much more culturally homogeneous and conservative. They grew up in a time that was extremely different from the suburban life that became common in the 50's and 60's. They acted as the primary push back against Leftists from the 1960's to the 00's. Now they're basically all gone and it has resulted in major changes for America today.
The 90s and early 2000s were probably the peak of the sexual revolution. The number of young people doing hookups have declined since. The apps only slowed the trend.
I think the early 20-oughts was the most depraved period in US history. Every girl was wearing a thong and Britney, Gwen, and TaTu were the big pop stars. Yes, they were White and yes, every man enjoyed a half chub almost the entire day, but we're lucky that we survived that period without all turning into Puerto Ricans.
Well, it’s 2026 and the girls are wanting to be degenerate again. The thongs/ whale tails are in fashion again with Gen Z women, they all have some disgusting tats and sleep around (usually with the top 10% of guys cause Gen Z men are struggling)
For all the yapping women did about not being sexualized they sure aren’t showing it
Crazy to say that before porn became a part of mainstream life, Onlyfans, social media making it so every other girl is posting at least softcore porn on instagram, etc. Directly responsible for the rise in right wing sentiment among young men. Obama wouldn't have been elected if 2010-20's sexual degeneracy was comparable in the aughts.
Everything you're pointing out is correct, but these are all online phenomena. In the real (i.e. offline) world, all the statistics show that people are having less sex now than they did a few decades ago. Porn and online degeneracy are at all-time highs now, but abortions and AIDS were rampant in the 80s and 90s.
Really?? Most of the girls I met in the 1990s were lesbians. Or maybe that was the one period where girls weren’t in to charming handsome tall athletic intelligent educated funny nice guys?? I think maybe that changed in the 2000s but then I lost my hair. 😔
No, that's ridiculous. Onlyfans didn't turn average woman into pornstars until the late 2010's, accelerating into the 2020s. Porn wasn't as much a part of mainstream life, women's bodycounts weren't insane. The aughts sexual immorality was a tease compared to the full unleashing that occurred in the 2015-early 2020s period.
Again, showing your ignorance. Young people had more sex then and younger. This has actually been declining. And no, it isn't because porn made sex uncool or gross or whatever, it's because idiot right wing influencers have been telling guys if they never have sex and play video games they're based or something, while telling women if they embrace their sexuality, they're whores, while women have been getting the left wing BS from the other side telling them that if they put out or cater to their boyfriends they're "degrading themselves for men" or are "enabling the patriarchy". The miserable puritanism of this era is stifling, hence why porn has become so ubiquitous as a kind of stop gap. No wonder so many of them are castrating themselves or committing suicide. Between the trads and the feminist helicopter parents, a whole lotta unaliving needs to happen and soon.
For as bad a person Bill Clinton is/ was, I will admit, the 90’s were much better economically. I was dirt poor (still am lol) but my mom could fill a whole grocery basket with $20. Working 2 jobs and having a degree was not a guarantee but a great way to move upward socially. And, all the Mexicans and fellow Browns were usually mostly in California, Texas, border states.
You make a point, the 90’s were eh, it’s just people missing Pokémon toys in Burger King kids meals and Pizza Hut and Reading Rainbow. I prefer the 80’s tho I feel it wouldn’t have been paradise either but better given the demographics
Regarding movies from the 90's that was a decade that saw greater roles for blacks and which showed them as smarter, better and more heroic than whites. In the 70's and 80's blacks were largely tokens in Hollywood movies with bit parts and supporting roles. There were also some remakes that recast white characters from books and prior movies into blacks. I Am Legend is one movie that comes to mind where negro Will Smith played the part of a white doctor.
The greatest lesson of the 1990s--the one we are not allowed to speak of or remember--is that the federal government balanced the budget for multiple years. People paid taxes, services were provided, and the national debt went down. When people act like raising taxes will destroy the US economy, remember that we had a growing economy and were paying down the debt and people paid higher taxes than today. America was not destroyed; it grew.
The 90s, when leftists could be rebels but the moral majority stopped them from doing anything too stupid.
This is incorrect. The Moral Majority didn’t even have the muscle to make Marilyn Manson go away back then.
The racial relations nostalgia is particularly weird for anyone old enough to have been alive at the time and poor enough to have been exposed to actual blacks. My sense is that most of those reminiscing about 90s racial relations live in nice white suburbs and think all blacks in the 90s were like Michael Jordan. The reality for those of us who lived in proximity to blacks was far different - a case like Irina’s would’ve been a regular occurrence. Barely newsworthy. Black violence in LA was so intolerable that Mexicans ethnically cleansed them in retaliation. NYC ethnic cleansing worked in reverse - much of the white working class fled. For me it’s a class and age signal when people claim race relations were better then. It may be true that upper middle class blacks were less radicalized - but that’s hardly a useful indicator.
But see https://www.newsweek.com/rage-privileged-191560
The 90s are being 'member-berried because the millennials are getting old and the cold draft of mortality is starting to be felt on their neck tattoos.
The same thing happened for my cohort about the eighties.
The nineties were the beginning of token black friends, widespread drug use, what used to be called political correctness, single Manhattan lifestyles over raising families, normie tattoos, inoffensive gays, protecting black criminals, and college feminism. I don't want a return to that.
Difference is the 80s were actually good
All of this is fair. While the 90s are shrouded in a rose-tinted nostalgia, there were certainly many issues. The only real "conservative media" of that time was Rush Limbaugh and National Review. And while there was great bands like Nirvana, Radiohead, and Oasis, there was also a TON of trash on the radio (most of it R&B slop). And even then, there was plenty of annoying leftist propaganda in schools--back in those days, I remember stories about Mexican immigrants and global warming being forced on us constantly.
I actually think the yearning to return to those days largely stem from the fact that the internet had not quite become mainstream yet. Yes, there was the dial-up modem and big boxy PCs, but for young people, your only real option for socializing and having fun was going out of the house. I this kind of face-to-face bonding is what people are missing.
And of course, "it's the economy, stupid." Basic stuff like food, housing, and cars were affordable. Even traveling was affordable. People could go "backpack in Europe" in those days. Plus, one didn't have to go into indentured servitude to earn their undergrad degree. I remember
a lot people delaying adulthood by getting their Masters or PhD for the fun of it. All of this was affordable. *Sigh* Good times.
I don't know. There was a lot to miss from those days.
The late Irving Cristol was probably right: "There's nothing wrong with America that another Great Depression can't fix".
The 90's were not utopia for anyone that lived through that decade but they were preferable to 2025 America. The vast majority of Americans were content and optimistic about America and its future unlike today. Christmas was always a joyous time and store clerks and strangers would wish you a Merry Christmas also unlike today. People did have more in common owing to whites being a supermajority of 72-73% and the radical anti-white left was just a fringe element of the Democrat party back then.
But the 90's were also when white people started being villainized and vilified in movies and TV sitcoms much more than previous decades and movies were made depicting blacks as heroic and defeating white racists in various settings. Higher Learning comes to mind but there were others. American History X showed us that whites taking their own side solves nothing and actually makes things worse. And lest we forget the Jewish owned mainstream media and some elected politicians began touting and celebrating America's demographic transformation to being more non-white.
Tucker Carlson once seemed to imply that the 90's were a golden age of race relations but the L.A. race riots and O.J. Simpson verdict should dispel that belief. White-black racial tension was a real thing if you weren't rich and insulated like Tucker and others.
It's ironic that a fair number of Democrats during the Clinton era were more conservative than many members of today's GOP on several issues.
90's nostalgia has never resonated with me at all. Even when it was a big thing with apolitical zoomers on scrolling apps, I thought it was stupid as hell.
How many of these people were alive in the 90’s?
An important point with regard to what Greer is discussing here is what a major distraction the no fun puritanical right is. Steps could've been taken at that time to ensure the 90s went on indefinitely. And, just as now, many people who don't want to see whites exterminated, or who want a comfortable middle class life, also enjoy porn, aren't really interested in eradicating homosexuality (it wasn't directed at children for the most part) and realize it's much more sensible for incapable low IQ people to have an abortion rather than give birth. Yet again, and in a time when doing so has far more dire consequences, people who are focused on such things are distracting from the racial issue and even actively encouraging people to ignore it. They, more so than any other economic changes (which are downstream) are the reason the 90s are gone. Because of the focus on porn, gays and abortion, the right was not focused on keeping America white, which has driven up the cost of food, housing and healthcare, owing to the fact that non whites are a net drain on the economy, especially blacks at about a quarter million a head. Immigration of course only makes this worse. Another distraction is penny pinching on food stamps, which again, if not for the presence of non whites, would be a non issue.
The LA riots could've been a great impetus for reviving the colonization movement, that opportunity was squandered. Following on, the right could've focused on curtailing loans to irresponsible blacks which would've prevented the financial crisis (a crisis that denied at least an entire generation from partaking in the American dream) but they were too focused on terrorism, costly unproductive wars, and attacking democrats for being spineless cowards. This hamfisted approach not only ruined the economy, but made a fire breathing mulatto racist into a viable candidate. I would disagree slightly with Scott and say that within a few years, if drastic steps were taken, we could be back in the nineties again, if people would be less squeamish about getting tough with non whites and leaving their prudish sexual ethics to themselves. It is not economics, or larger inescapable realities which prevent us from living in the 90s (as Scott seems to imply) but our own orthodoxies and lack of political will. We could return to the 90s anytime we like, but apparently masochistic Americans are in love with their own misery.
So Obama was a "fire breathing mulatto racist"?
Not only is it clear you never paid the slightest bit of attention to anything the man ever said (Obama did so much to ingratiate himself to working-class whites that he won both Indiana and North Carolina in '08), but it takes some real gall to call someone a racist after writing two paragraphs so full of anti-black racism it's practically oozing out of every comma and period.
The lack of self-consciousness here is so palpable you could cut it with a swastika.
And if whites killed each other or blacks in anything like the numbers per capita blacks did (to whites and themselves), that might mean something. The only reason Obama won the mandate he did (which he squandered) was because Dubya (another anti racist, saying there's nothing wrong with Arabs or Muslims, doing everything he can to make sure there are more Africans for the massive black population explosion coming our way) was so absolutely atrocious. When did Obama do this ingratiating? When he said he was ashamed of his own racist white grandma? When he said whites who don't want to live in a diverse country (take a look at the rampant violence, brutality and corruption in most of the non whtie world) were the problem? When he blamed all the rampant black violence on ignorance and prejudice? When he said they cling to guns and antipathy? When the bailout gave tons to the white hating NGOs that up until Trump defunded DEI virtually ruled the roost? When he appointed a guy (Eric Holder) who thought white racial consciousness was a bigger problem than the rampant destruction in urban areas unleashed by blacks that turned them into unlivable crap holes? When he knowingly lied about Russian collusion to try and cripple his political opponents? When he used the IRS to target his political opponents? When he supported dreamers and the like, destroying wages, hiking up the cost of health care and housing? When he advised a group of blacks that voting was the best revenge? When virtually everyone he surrounded himself with were radical racial activists? When he pretended that Trayvon Martin dindu nuffin? When he pretended like hands up don't shoot was real? When he drug his feet condemning what happened in ferguson? When he defended the lies of the Floyd narrative and the open season on whitey during the peaceful protests? You're an idiot. It's a wonder you even know how to breathe.
Generations of people born in the teens, 20's, and 30's were still very influential and present back in the 90s. Those people were much more culturally homogeneous and conservative. They grew up in a time that was extremely different from the suburban life that became common in the 50's and 60's. They acted as the primary push back against Leftists from the 1960's to the 00's. Now they're basically all gone and it has resulted in major changes for America today.
The 90s and early 2000s were probably the peak of the sexual revolution. The number of young people doing hookups have declined since. The apps only slowed the trend.
I think the early 20-oughts was the most depraved period in US history. Every girl was wearing a thong and Britney, Gwen, and TaTu were the big pop stars. Yes, they were White and yes, every man enjoyed a half chub almost the entire day, but we're lucky that we survived that period without all turning into Puerto Ricans.
Well, it’s 2026 and the girls are wanting to be degenerate again. The thongs/ whale tails are in fashion again with Gen Z women, they all have some disgusting tats and sleep around (usually with the top 10% of guys cause Gen Z men are struggling)
For all the yapping women did about not being sexualized they sure aren’t showing it
Crazy to say that before porn became a part of mainstream life, Onlyfans, social media making it so every other girl is posting at least softcore porn on instagram, etc. Directly responsible for the rise in right wing sentiment among young men. Obama wouldn't have been elected if 2010-20's sexual degeneracy was comparable in the aughts.
Everything you're pointing out is correct, but these are all online phenomena. In the real (i.e. offline) world, all the statistics show that people are having less sex now than they did a few decades ago. Porn and online degeneracy are at all-time highs now, but abortions and AIDS were rampant in the 80s and 90s.
Really?? Most of the girls I met in the 1990s were lesbians. Or maybe that was the one period where girls weren’t in to charming handsome tall athletic intelligent educated funny nice guys?? I think maybe that changed in the 2000s but then I lost my hair. 😔
No, that's ridiculous. Onlyfans didn't turn average woman into pornstars until the late 2010's, accelerating into the 2020s. Porn wasn't as much a part of mainstream life, women's bodycounts weren't insane. The aughts sexual immorality was a tease compared to the full unleashing that occurred in the 2015-early 2020s period.
Again, showing your ignorance. Young people had more sex then and younger. This has actually been declining. And no, it isn't because porn made sex uncool or gross or whatever, it's because idiot right wing influencers have been telling guys if they never have sex and play video games they're based or something, while telling women if they embrace their sexuality, they're whores, while women have been getting the left wing BS from the other side telling them that if they put out or cater to their boyfriends they're "degrading themselves for men" or are "enabling the patriarchy". The miserable puritanism of this era is stifling, hence why porn has become so ubiquitous as a kind of stop gap. No wonder so many of them are castrating themselves or committing suicide. Between the trads and the feminist helicopter parents, a whole lotta unaliving needs to happen and soon.
I think you're right. If I remember correctly, the number of abortions performed in America peaked in the 90s.
For as bad a person Bill Clinton is/ was, I will admit, the 90’s were much better economically. I was dirt poor (still am lol) but my mom could fill a whole grocery basket with $20. Working 2 jobs and having a degree was not a guarantee but a great way to move upward socially. And, all the Mexicans and fellow Browns were usually mostly in California, Texas, border states.
You make a point, the 90’s were eh, it’s just people missing Pokémon toys in Burger King kids meals and Pizza Hut and Reading Rainbow. I prefer the 80’s tho I feel it wouldn’t have been paradise either but better given the demographics
Ugh we completely agree! You may enjoy our article on this if you are interested in checking it out! P.s. loving your notes at the moment ♡ https://open.substack.com/pub/genumagazine/p/be-interesting-and-be-interested?r=q5tm1&utm_medium=ios
This misses the reason for nostalgia entirely. We don’t miss the nineties for what the decade had but for what it didn’t have, namely:
1. No foreign terrorist attack on the scale of a war.
2. No financial crisis on the scale of an economic depression.
Regarding movies from the 90's that was a decade that saw greater roles for blacks and which showed them as smarter, better and more heroic than whites. In the 70's and 80's blacks were largely tokens in Hollywood movies with bit parts and supporting roles. There were also some remakes that recast white characters from books and prior movies into blacks. I Am Legend is one movie that comes to mind where negro Will Smith played the part of a white doctor.
The greatest lesson of the 1990s--the one we are not allowed to speak of or remember--is that the federal government balanced the budget for multiple years. People paid taxes, services were provided, and the national debt went down. When people act like raising taxes will destroy the US economy, remember that we had a growing economy and were paying down the debt and people paid higher taxes than today. America was not destroyed; it grew.