Teen Vogue makes misguided attempt to spin basic neighborly help as radical activism
November 6, 2024
Teen Vogue recently introduced its young readers to the idea that lending a hand to neighbors and supporting local communities is not only commendable but somehow revolutionary.
The magazine paints acts of basic decency as “mutual aid,” branding them as “progressive,” “liberating from capitalism,” and defiant against “The Man.” Sure, helping those around us is essential. But does it really need to be dressed up in woke jargon?
Fundamentally, supporting our neighbors and local community isn’t groundbreaking—it’s adulthood. Teen Vogue, however, seems intent on portraying these everyday acts as radical, as if solidarity and goodwill were novel concepts instead of timeless values.
Here’s how they put it:
“Mutual aid is an integral part of social justice movements, through which people work together to imagine a more just world… We’re all sharing what we have together and making resources more accessible to fight against the systems of oppression that tell us we’re so different from one another.”
This narrative implies that helping others is a form of resistance, an act of opposition. But if the writers at Teen Vogue understood government philosophy, they’d know this idea is as old as Edmund Burke, the 18th-century conservative thinker who observed that society is strengthened by “little platoons”—local groups helping one another. The essence of community aid isn’t inherently leftist; it’s actually deeply conservative. The truly radical notion here is the idea that caring for one’s community is subversive.
Teen Vogue even goes further, quoting that “mutual aid is oppositional to the government,” as if this were an original insight. Burke, and the conservatives who followed him, would argue the opposite: government is there to handle what local communities can’t, after neighbors have helped each other. Government is a backstop, not the first response.
Framing this timeless, cross-partisan value as a rebellious concept only promotes a misunderstanding of both history and community. Helping those around us is not some weapon in a fight against “systems of oppression”—it’s the backbone of society itself. Teaching the next generation otherwise is a disservice to the very communities Teen Vogue claims to champion.