Yesterday, at the 2015 One Young World summit held in Bangkok, Thailand, Bob Geldof, former lead singer of Irish rock band The Boomtown Rats, gave a stern speech about millennial ambivalence toward the growing conflict in the Middle East.
“This generation, your generation, is already stained with blood,” says Geldof, who is also known as the co-founder of Band Aid, Live Aid, and other activist projects. “Your age group are the killers of Syria. The people your age are murdering people in Beirut, Sharm el Sheikh. And most immediately in our minds right now, those people who went to a pop concert in Paris, who tried to watch a football match, who went out with their girlfriends or their parents for a drink or a coffee, those people were killed by people of your generation.”
Geldof has long criticized governments in the West for their failure to address the current crisis. After the Paris attacks, however, he strayed into all-too-familiar boomer vs. millennial clichés, accusing young people of apathy, comparing them to the killers in a well-intentioned, but still cringeworthy way (see above), and of course, bringing up Twitter: “Forget the tweeting that’s about bullshit. Tweet about serious things. Go back to your countries, get real with your governments, get the people of your age group to understand precisely what happens. Stop with violence, it doesn’t work. Come back to your country and take action.”
Watch/listen to the speech below: