Ahead of the European election, striking data shows where Gen Z and millennials’ allegiances lie.
Ahead of the European election, striking data shows where Gen Z and millennials’ allegiances lie.
Far-right parties are surging across Europe — and young voters are buying in.
Many parties with anti-immigrant agendas are even seeing support from first-time young voters in the upcoming June 6-9 European Parliament election.
In Belgium, France, Portugal, Germany and Finland, younger voters are backing anti-immigration and anti-establishment parties in numbers equal to and even exceeding older voters, analyses of recent elections and research of young people’s political preferences suggest.
In the Netherlands, Geert Wilders’ anti-immigration far-right Freedom Party won the 2023 election on a campaign that tied affordable housing to restrictions on immigration — a focus that struck a chord with young voters. In Portugal, too, the far-right party Chega, which means “enough” in Portuguese, drew on young people’s frustration with the housing crisis, among other quality-of-life concerns.
The analysis also points to a split: While young women often reported support for the Greens and other left-leaning parties, anti-migration parties did particularly well among young men. (Though there are some exceptions. See France, below, for example.)
This is so frustrating to watch as an American. I spent much of my youth on the internet getting clowned on by Europeans for the consequences of my country's hard right policies. The UK has been deservedly getting clowned on for the consequences of embracing the Tories. It beggars belief that the same people clowning on the US and UK would then turn around and say to themselves "yes, but it will be different for us, it will work for us, our situation really is different, you don't understand". No, it won't be different. Pretty soon, you're going to be following the path that the Tories set the UK on, marvelling at how dysfunctional your government is, and hearing about how the only solution is even more gibs to the people who are already the most economically advantaged and the private sector. Before you click reply, just consider that you guys deserve to get fucking dunked on, because you guys spent decades laughing at other countries for doing this shit just to say "hmmm... but what if sticking the fork in the electrical socket works out for me?" I'm honestly sad and disappointed for Europe, not least of all because after years of deservedly shitting on the US for being racist, all it took was one big wave of immigration for you guys to hold up blonde dumbasses with bad hair and worse ideas as the solution to all of your problems.
"Oh, great bozo of the European trailer park, what is your wisdom to save our culture from the immigrants?"
"Deregulate sewage plants. You will certainly not regret deregulating sewage plants."
Enjoy your US-style healthcare system in a few years, I guess.
Unfortunately, American politics is so toxic, its infected nearly every country its come into contact with.
Understanably, american money and election interference is the reason European politics is becoming more americanised. For example, it was regan who radicalised thatcher. It was American and Russian dark money that funded vote leave (brexit). It was the CIA who funded far right groups all over Europe. Its American, far right Christian groups who try to lobby to take away reproductive freedom for women etc. etc.
America is empire now and no ones laughing anymore.
Europe has had so many far right groups throughout history and they haven’t gone anywhere. You can definitely think of a few in recent history, not even mentioning Russia. You can just dismiss this away as some foreign influence, this is a problem the world is facing and it’s a problem with me and you.
Must suck living in a place with 450 million people none of which can think for themselves and instead are just vessels for the thoughts of other civilizations
Own up to your own crap if you want to fix it, or don't own it and blame foreigners. See if I care.
You keep missing a few key words. American Corporations and Global Billionaires. Our politicians and far right think tanks have their marching orders. They aren't the driving force themselves.
Arguably the hard right foreign policies of the US from the last 10-20 years are responsible for a lot of the migrant waves Europeans are fearing. You guys blew up the middle east...
You think the EU didn't have a hand in that? Who did Libya again? Who was famous for doing stuff in Northern and Western Africa? Who drew the lines that fucked half the world? Who insisted on keeping their colonies until it was absolutely too late to stop strong man rebellions from becoming dictatorships?
The US is in the picture, but it's not alone by a long shot.
Don't worry man, we will get you a megaphone to shout "I told you so" as (only men) are conscripted to go throw our lives away for D-Day v2 in Europe, lol. Have fun in the tailgunner's seat.
Every 70-100 years, some absolute cunt like Putin or Xi rises up and decides it's a brilliant idea to kill all their young men, some other country's young men, and the "undesirables" on the other side. They that the war will only last four weeks and victory is guaranteed. It. Never. Is.
Fuck populism and authoritarianism. People get bored and never learn.
This is so frustrating to watch as an American. I spent much of my youth on the internet getting clowned on by Europeans for the consequences of my country’s hard right policies. The UK has been deservedly getting clowned on for the consequences of embracing the Tories. It beggars belief that the same people clowning on the US and UK would then turn around and say to themselves “
If we can put it off just a few more years I'll be too old to conscript back into the military and I can go hide in the mountains.
This comment shows a large misunderstanding of european culture, policits, everything really. And I mean this with no offense, but there's no nice way to say it.
The people who were - and still are - clowning on Americans for their politics are a different group than the people currently voting far right. You're not dunking on the people you think you are. It's tragically funny in a way because internet active and mostly left leaning circles still spend a lot of their time dunking on american politics while failing to see the growing trend of far right acceptance in Europe.
Europeans also aren't a singular entity. The comparison of the US vs Europe is almost always bad IMO, as much as people of the internet love to make it - both americans and europeans alike - because the differences between two neighboring european countries are often larger than those between the two most culturally different US states. The country next over is so radically different to mine in terms of politics, economic choices, language, culture, that the only thing making us both "European" is a similar looking ID card and similar looking road signs. When I cross the border and order a coffee they look at me strange and then serve me what I would expect to get at an american coffee shop.
Europe is facing some of the same problems of the US politically speaking. Summing it up to "getting one big wave of immigration" is naive to say the least. There's a growing discontent with traditional and more moderate parties, which have fundamentally failed to solve what many people see as big issues in their lives. There's a housing crisis, an ever increasing wealth gap - which even left leaning socialist european parties, which were in power for decades in countries such as mine, have done next to nothing to prevent. There's a perceived decrease in security - which is real in some places, while false in others but amplified by social media -, a bunch of high profile corruption cases all throughout Europe - often associated with high ranking members in more moderate parties. In short, there's an ever increasing number of real issues which traditional parties have fundamentally failed to solve. Some because they're genuinely complex issues, others because of sheer incompetence.
The media in Europe has spent the last few years treating far right parties the same way the media in the US initially treated Trump - painting them and their followers as crazy people which should be ridiculed and often pushing aside whatever issue they pushed as their political flag. The problem is that far right parties in Europe often pick very real problems as their political flags - such as corruption in the case of my country. They offer no actual solutions to the problems, of course, but the attitude of the media helps them paint the idea that the media and traditional parties are aligned in protecting corrupt individuals and that the only way to tackle the problem is to vote for extreme parties. Whatever the "main" political flag is varies from country to country, but the logic is always the same: Problem exists -> problem is pushed aside by media and traditional parties for whatever reason -> far right party picks up problem as their political flag even though they offer no solutions -> people vote for far right party after years of seeing problem be apparently ignored.
The last part on healthcare makes little sense as well. Public or partly public health services are culturally ingrained in a lot of European countries and many of the far right parties have been very outspoken about defending these services - not because they like their existence I'm sure, but because these healthcare systems are too popular to openly attack. A common attribute in a lot of European far right parties is that though they often claim to despise "the left" and make big claims about socialism having destroyed everything and etc, they'll quickly incorporate any left leaning measure they perceive as popular - often defending measures which are so far left that you won't even find them in the political plans of far left parties. Far right parties in Europe will incorporate anything they see as popular in their political plans - which they then use as a promotion point, arguing that they are "above" the left and right divide, instead focusing on whatever is "better for the country".
Add to all of this a fundamental failure in left wing and moderate right wing parties to address many of these issues, even while being in power for decades in the came of some European countries, and the constant attempts by these same parties to silence anyone who so much as mentions hot topics like immigration - often by labeling them as racists, fascists, etc and what you get is a growing distrust in these parties.
The people who were - and still are - clowning on Americans for their politics are a different group than the people currently voting far right. You’re not dunking on the people you think you are.
But that's sort of the point they were making, isn't it? Left-leaning Europeans giving Americans across the spectrum shit for right-leaning politics even though the majority in all cases is slim and vulnerable to reversal?
The right in the US really isn't so different. The thing we know for sure is that fascists lie and lie often. The fascists here in the US aren't above paying lip service to certain issues; Trump tried to convince the libertarian party to vote for him by letting the guy who ran Silk Road out of jail, for example. But they'd be fools to believe them, as Europeans are fools to believe their own dollar store Trumps when they say they'll protect or embrace the social programs. Exhibit A: what the Tories have done to the NHS. The program really isn't all that complex, they just sneak in some modest reforms that erode the service and enshittify it slowly, or do some bullshit temporary measure that puts the service permanent behind in terms of (one to all) money, employees, or output. Then, they use that as evidence for why they must further enshittify the service and give more taxpayer money to the private sector.
I don't know what deregulation of sewage plants would even look like. Do you mean I'm how they are built or their design or their day to day operations or how many of the workers at them are private vs public?
IIRC, one of the effects of Brexit is that the UK's sewage outlets to the ocean were no longer bound by EU regulations, which led to extremely high sewage contamination and closing of a number of English (specifically English, I want to say) beaches.
I would always point out that European security has been subsidized by the American taxpayer for 70 years. Finally starting to see that change, I just hope idiots like Geert aren’t the ones leading that charge.
I mean, not trying to sound like a pessimist as much as a realist. Even if Europe started paying the full sum of what we're paying in defense subsidies, I seriously doubt we'd cut that spending. Raytheon and Lockheed's investors are counting on us.
American hegemony was a conscious American policy choice. We didn't want the Euros having an independent foreign policy, we wanted them reliant on American military protection. This was how the US kept those bits of its empire in line.
Notice how the only Western European country that even pays lip service to independent action is France, the one Western European country with a military capable of independent operation. And then we get "Freedom Fries" and all that shit whenever they don't do whatever the current US admin wants.
The single biggest thing Trump fucked up for the US was pushing NATO countries to spend more on defence. This will drastically reduce US influence over the continent in the coming decades, speeding up America's worsening diplomatic isolation.
That's not actually all that surprising. The far-right, at least in Germany, is far more prominent on social media. It sucks but I don't think we can prevent that. We have a lot of complex problems but social media favors short answers instead of complex ones. A lot of younger people simply lack the critical thinking to see these simple answers for what they are - bullshit. And I can't blame them, they have been exposed to this bullshit for most of their lives.
I don't know how it is in Germany, though I am convinced our methods in the U.S to educate and school kids and teens actively hurt critical thinking skills. They're not taught to make decisions. They're taught to follow set rules, ask for permission, and be ashamed if they fail. They're not taught to learn, they're taught to work.
I was coming in here to suggest this. The right around the world, almost certainly with the aid of Russia's massive troll farm, has really stepped up its game in terms of internet outreach to young people.
I do agree that social media is a huge driver of our societal problems and not fixing them, but I think you have the order reversed, social media is extremely effective at transmitting short, easy answers to our problems because that’s what people gravitate to on the whole. Especially extremely scared and desperate people, and young people especially see a lot of reasons to be afraid about what the future is going to look like.
We haven’t even really gotten to ecoFascism yet, but I think it’s inevitable to rise as things continue marching forward without dramatic societal changes
We aren't getting to eco fascism because pollution populism is all the rage. After all, if Taylor Swift can fly around the world easily, why can't I drive around in my emotional support truck?
It's amazing that it needs to be said, but Boomer politics won't die with boomers. We'll still have the same problems, but people will be more desperate as we will have fewer solutions and resources to throw at them than previous generations
Also worth pointing out that only a slight majority of boomers are very conservative. If you look at the demographics of the last couple presidential elections, you'll see that only slightly more boomers voted conservative than liberal, and only slightly more younger folks voted liberal than conservative.
There's this impression that the distinction is much more significant than it actually is. As a liberal boomer, I'm a little sensitive about it.
I dont know about the US but in the UK the age gap is vast. Something like 80% of 75+ vote tory or extreme right and a similar % of under 30 for lib/lab/green
People are losing faith with the failing status quo, so some are (incorrectly) adopting a highly reactionary position to cling to what they percieved has been lost, rather than progressing along to Socialism.
This is a consequence of the long term failings of Capitalism, coupled with weak leftist movements and a lack of general theory-reading.
Disillusion with our future is setting in (and to what part it's due to the negative news cycle, the growing gap between rich and poor, social media propaganda or other things can be argued).
But there was, and is, no large, left movement with an attractive message to pick up those people, and right wingers both own all the big media and have long been conditioned to blame liberals and the left at large for all of their problems.
During the Occupy Wallstreet days, I had hope, but what once was a movement of angry people with a good cause feels like it has since been replaced by a movement of even angrier people fighting those that want to fix things.
There’s a lot of them right here on lemmy. If you don’t know what to look for, they’re the ones yelling at everyone not to vote. They’re the ones you’ll see on every post that’s critical of Biden, but they’re nowhere to be found n any news critical of Trump.
They’re the ones that either disappear, or resort to personal attacks when you simply ask them who else can win the White House if not Biden.
They’re all over lemmy. They are just counting on you not being aware of it.
Yup, everyone who doesn't like your president or your team is a horrible no good far right troll. It's amazing how well one can do when you get paid by Soros and Koch!
My young coworkers seem to believe that 250k refugees of which 100k got a house are the reason we have a housing shortage of well over 400k.
These kids are worse off than i am when it comes to housing, so how surprising is it that they vote far right.
One of them asked me: "so, you're not racist?" Nah "shame, really". Motherfucker forgot my family isn't from here and i've often been treated like subhuman trash for being a foreigner despite being born here and speaking the language like it is my own (because it is).
They asked you if you're not racist, as if it's normal to be racist??
It's sad to see how people get manipulated to the point that they can't understand that even a natural population growth without immigration can cause a housing crisis, if we don't build and maintain the houses. And immigrants come to work anyway, which provides a disproportionately high value to the economy compared to what most of them are paid.
It's almost like if the most profit comes from building giant expensive houses then all you're going to get is people building gigantic expensive houses and no "starter" homes....
hat even a natural population growth without immigration can cause a housing crisis
Eh it's more complicated than that because populations in Europe aren't growing. It's about urbanisation there's plenty of houses available in villages you don't want to live in, and I don't mean that as an insult to the villages they're more often than not perfectly quaint. Another factor is shifting standards, people by and large have much more space per person than in the past.
This is exactly, literally true. The hard right folks in all branches of government are always throwing wrenches in the machine and then complaining that we have to get rid of the machine because it doesn't work.
Trust me you don't want a conservative government. They won't fix the problem they'll just seek to line their own pockets and then by doing so make everything worse.
This is not about conservatives, many of the countries listed here currently have or recently had conservative governments. The far right is a whole other level.
Prominent gender gaps in the results, which is entirely unsurprising (men much more likely to vote far right than women). I think the left-right breakdown could be more explicit too, as in many cases the left wing votes are being split between a bunch of parties, with the right wing settling on only one or two. That's still in an issue in countries that use FPTP voting systems, of course.
Probably because things are getting worse but liberal parties are more concerned with keeping up the status quo than actually improving things, so you get a lot of apathy and people taking a gamble which will not pan out well.
When people find themselves in stress, they will always vote conservative to ensure their own survival. Right now, many young people can't afford housing, they have to spend more time working than living. This is not surprising.
Reactionary viewpoints are a result of crumbling and decaying societies. They cling to what once was, rather than trying to progress onward to Socialism.
Reactionaries are wrong, of course, but the origin of these viewpoints currently is from Capitalism's failures.
It makes all the sense in the world. Horrible people want to be in power. So they market themselves as the just the strong man you need to deal with these problems. No problems? well then they just create them. There isn't anything stopping them from just lying about where the problems came from, so it turns into a self licking ice cream cone.
in stress, they will always vote conservative to ensure their own survival
That isn't a safe bet, though.
The cornerstone of the conservative M-O is withdrawal of services and opportunities for the 99%. Sure, this sticks it to immigrants, but only because it shafts everyone but the rich.
And when those services go away - healthcare, unemployment protection, programmes sponsoring training so people can get back to paying tax sooner - they never come back under this administration. It's left as the sole focus of the fools who follow them and have to stoch a country back together out of the unmaintained underpowered mess of a system the elitist scum left them with.
What the elites didn't sell to themselves for a song at any rate. That's the other part of it, they raid the government for parts and then turn it into a profit service no matter how many people they end up killing.
In America, it's starkly divided by generational lines, with the remainder being down to race, education, wealth and urbanness, which actually makes me think what's going on in Europe is a somewhat unrelated phenomenon.
Jan 6 guys are nothing like a representative sample. Trailer park grandpa couldn't show up to that for multiple reasons. Even then, I'd guess a median age of 45 just based on the videos. The shaman guy was like 32 and he was kind of a baby.
I know less about normal Trump rallies, but I don't really need to because there's actual polling to rely on. MAGA youth exist, but they're underrepresented and even more heavily poor, white, uneducated and rural. Meanwhile, in Europe, there's basically no correlation. Young and old alike support AfD about the same.
What we have on this continent is definitely fascism, fueled by pure, barely-directed hate and hostile to democracy. In Europe, I wonder if it's more of a reversion to Japan-like policy, which might have been more natural for these ancient kingdoms all along. That's just a wild guess, but I hope so, because I like democracy.
just proves that manipulation works, and that everyone being online on "smart"phones (== owner dumber on average) has made it so much easier to reach them, and social media is giving the algorithms the crucial information on how best to manipulate each individual.
I hate it.
Yep. This hardship has been coming at us for over 100years and, given the choice, most people will choose to have some faceless 'other' bear the problem than to share the hardship with the rest of the world. The climate crisis is real and this is just the tip of the mass migrations that will want to occur. If we don't let them in, soon they will stop asking permission.
Perhaps, with enough propaganda, we could get them so turned back on themselves and they will be too weak to attack us before they realize their true enemy. Western-style politics has proven it a potentially viable strategy.
The right-wing promises you may be burdened, but others will be more burdened to make you feel like you are not the bottom. The left doesn't understand, or is unwilling to accept, the emotional deficiency of people like the right.
Gen Z/Millennials/Boomers are all terms to describe generations specifically in just America. Why are they being used when this article is talking about the EU?
In the Netherlands, Geert Wilders’ anti-immigration far-right Freedom Party won the 2023 election on a campaign that tied affordable housing to restrictions on immigration — a focus that struck a chord with young voters.
In Portugal, too, the far-right party Chega, which means “enough” in Portuguese, drew on young people’s frustration with the housing crisis, among other quality-of-life concerns.
In 2022, while Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s far-right Brothers of Italy received votes from every age bracket, data suggested the young favored left-wing parties more.
Bardella’s strong presence on TikTok might have something to do with it: Pollsters found that about one-third of young people said they rely on the app to follow the election campaign.
The survey results also don’t automatically translate into electoral success, as the researchers estimated just 30 percent of young people would end up casting a ballot.
“Flemish Interest is very well aware of this, and explicitly targets young women in its campaign to adjust its image,” said Peter Van Aelst, a professor at the University of Antwerp.
The original article contains 960 words, the summary contains 172 words. Saved 82%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Yeah, there was a poll recently near me (online local news so sampling issue) that found zoomers and boomers were more often right wing while X and Y were more often left wing
I'm not surprised by the male/female gap. The past decade, young men have been told that white men are the worst thing to be. The left has not provided any role models for young men.
As a white dude I don't feel like this at all. There are plenty of outspoken progressive men all over popular media, and at every level of society. It only feels this way because progressive messaging asks men to do a lot more soul searching, while conservative messaging is effectively information warfare designed to validate low effort biases and reinforce historical power structures.
Most of the progressive role models I see for straight white men focus on uplifting minorities and the disenfranchised. When it's not done to white knight or virtue signal, that's awesome. But it misses a crucial part of what a role model should be. Someone who understands your struggles and promotes self love and empathy. And encourages you to stick up for yourself. Secure your mask before helping others.
But when these men talk about their struggles they're branded as incels. If they say they're proud of their heritage they're branded as racist. If they try and do something about injustices they face they're branded conservatives.
LOL...the right has one. As someone who is relatively a-political, I perceive much more pressure to "be a manly man" (whatever the fuck that is..I guess DRIVE TRUCK, EAT MEAT, FOOT EVERY BALL, LIFT EVERY WEIGHT, JESUS, NO MASK! NO VACCINE! and PUFF OUT CHEST) than I do to "not be a white man" but I guess I don't spend all day in my basement worrying about what people with anime profile pictures are posting on Xitter, nor watch the big, angry puffed chest man underground truth news featuring screamy mc redface rant about it nightly...so I'm not as black pilled as you are.
As a white dude I sometimes think our suicide rate is a good thing. The left will never reach out and the other side are fascists. White men is what people think of in the alt right, they own us no mater how we vote.
They're kinda right, but not in the way they think they are. It's not that the left has being advocating for minority rights that is the problem, it's that they have been focusing on that while dropping policies to support the working class that is the issue. The fact that getting more women and black people on to corporate boards has been more of a focus than affordable housing has been slowly driving alienation from mainstream left wing parties.
That sounds pretty shit. I'm pretty ignorant of EU voting laws, what kind of laws prevent young folks from voting? Is it a high voting age or are there even more restrictions?
100% the fault of a political class that puts the needs of donors ahead of all else. Fascism has always been the result of neoliberalism. It's absolutely predictable. The best and the worst ballot choices that most people have all lead to the rise of fascism.