- cross-posted to:
- europe@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- europe@lemmy.ml
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.)
You must log in or register to comment.
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.
Europeans have a long history of blaming foreigners for their problems when times are tough. This isn’t really anything new.
Humanity has that long history.
Even neighboring European countries,
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.
I don’t think I dismissed it but mearly made sure that all the factors leading to it were included. In fact, its people taking issue with me mentioning them who are dismissing things they dont like. If you’re in denial about that, then you’re probably in detail about how much of an influence America was on Hitler too.
For sure, its not like we need any help with making far right groups. However, we have help making them none the less.
I mean, maybe the rise of the far right in America and then a similar rise across the world, with a sufficient lag time, is completely unrelated. Maybe operation galdio didn’t do exactly what it set out to do. Maybe its better to blame people for the additional effect it has on them, outside of their control. I mean, that would be very in keeping with far right thinking.
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.
Own up to your own crap if you want to fix it
They said, without a hint of irony.
Again, said without a hint of irony. Please get some self awareness before replying again. Youre taking the sport out of it.
Some of us are capable of holding all the contributing factors in their heads and not just ignore the ones they dont want to talk about. It doesn’t mean we don’t have our own problems but it also doesn’t mean that there isn’t another very serious problem at hand.
Hmm clearly I need to repeat myself with you.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque
Let me know if you need a primer on logical fallacies. I am sure I can find one for your level.
Clearly you think yourself far smarter than you are. Especially considering you can’t even see yourself fall foul of the fallacy you claim to see. As adorable as it is, I remember when I first found out about fallacies too, its a bit boring and it wouldn’t make me wrong either. That is if you bothered learning any of the other fallacies.
Let me help you, as you’re clearly struggling here: why is it that only the Europeans, in this instance, that have to own their crap? Why are we not allowed to consider any other contributing factors? How is me mentioning another factor, while not denying the problems at home, not owing it?
It doesn’t make sense does it?
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.
Its funny, no one insists on that correction, when it comes to the Roman or British empires.
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…
Yep. Dunno what else to say, we’re absolutely responsible.
Must have been the freedom fries, right?
Yep
Tell me a joke funny man
What’s a pirate’s favorite letter?
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.
God no, the EU countries are not blameless. But they by far not the prime mover of the blowing up of the Middle East.
Junior partners are junior.
are responsible for a lot of the migrant waves Europeans are fearing
The EU is could very much send them right back where they came from, but they don’t and in a lot of cases, outright sponsor it
This whole immigration kerfuffle is simply top down shenanigans from the ruling elite to divide the poor
All immigration is a plot to divide us? Are the immigrants actors? That’s ridiculous, I know many people who wouldn’t support sending immigrants back and many people who don’t want any.
It’s a shame that there are people in this world so selfish that it’s literally inconceivable that others would willingly accept some economic pain in order to ensure people can be saved from almost certain death…
If we can figure out how to land a goddamn satellite on an asteroid and then have it return, if we can design and land a freaking bus sized rover on another planet using a freaking sky crane, then I think we can handle figuring out how to properly incorporate immigrants into our economy if we’d only listen to actually intelligent experts…
But no, let’s listen to angry shitty business running orange man and his contemporaries around the world… He said mean things about the people that make me mad so he’s my man!
The EU is could very much send them right back where they came from, but they don’t
That’s only for the war refugees. Sending people back to, say, Eritrea, would mean they’d be executed for leaving the country (which is illegal there).
Those only represent a tiny fraction of the immigrants though, and they’re not the ones “taking all the jobs”, that’s the worker immigrants.
They aren’t even “taking” the jobs. That’s the suits doing that. They decide who to hire. And if they had to pay the immigrants what they have to pay you then it would be a lot more fair of a labor market. But they don’t want you thinking about that. They want you thinking the boss just had to go with this random immigrant who showed up one day. Like he got to work before you and the boss was like, “I guess I have to fire Quack now?”
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.
For what it’s worth, it’s incredibly frustrating as a European with a functioning brain too.
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.
…thank you for informing me I guess.
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?
Remember right before the last Italian election some Italian guy screaming at me how no one in the history of Europe was racist or right-wing. When I asked them afterwards about the election he said the CIA caused it.
Ok buddy. Italy has no history of fascism or racism. Nice to know.
I feel like a bad thing that happened to us started when, through science, we started finding more and more things that contradicted the bible, at the same time as some evangelical sects were pushing for a more and more literal interpretation of the bible, and so their only argument was that science is evil/blasphemous/whatever. So more and more people on the right got comfortable just disregarding scientists, facts, and information-driven conclusions. Instead, they just pick whatever narrative they’re comfortable with and even a lot of people who disagree with it treat it like a legitimate belief.
We used to call those people nutjobs. Now we call them Fox news viewers.
You know this isn’t new. People have always knew that there were problems with this book. Part of the reason why so many put corrections in it.
Bible literalism is a legacy of Luther. Once he rejected the church and it’s teachings all he had was the Bible.
Oh, completely agree, but for the first two thirds of the 20th century, most Christians, like most people generally, were very pro science and took the bible as a book of lessons. It’s only in the last several decades that such a huge percentage of Christians equate science as antithetical to Christianity.
Scopes Monkey Trial happened in 1925.
This part
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”.
and this one
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?”
both imply the people laughing at other countries are the same group willing to “stick the fork in the electrical socket”. They aren’t.
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.
Weirdest political take I’ve ever had, but European far right leaders aren’t “dollar store Trumps”. Unfortunately, they’re often fairly smart individuals, with great academic records and very well regarded in their areas of expertise. Very unlike Trump. Which makes them all the more dangerous, because they don’t make the same mistakes that Trump somehow gets away with on the regular: no real life actions that go against their purported ideals (cheating or banging pornstars, for example), no blatant involvement in corruption or financial crimes either. Even in the way they speak, they’re often vague enough in their (authoritarian) statements that they can still claim to hold democratic ideals and get away with it.
I don’t think the UK is a great example of European politics, simply because UK politics is more akin to US politics than to any other European country’s politics. Despite the UK technically being a multi party system, in practice it often acts like a two party system.
Outside of the UK, there’s many European countries - let’s say, as an example, Portugal, Spain and France - which have historically been governed by moderate parties, either on the center right or the center left (left and far left respectively on the American political compass), which have fundamentally failed to solve the respective country’s problems.
Portugal, for example, has been ruled by its Socialist Party for most of its democratic existence. Despite that, it’s currently dealing with chaos in its healthcare system. There’s a general lack of doctors, hours long emergency wait times, years long surgery waiting lines, all because of a fundamental failure in creating a good way of financing the healthcare system. Governments in Portugal, both socialist and center right ones, have until recently mostly agreed on the idea that healthcare should be free. But Portugal has never been very successful economically - which means supporting a free healthcare service has always been way more expensive than the country could financially handle. For a long time the problem of financing the healthcare system was simply postponed. But now it’s reached a point where many of its hospitals are in debt, it’s been unable to give any raises to any of its staff for years, these staff have been leaving in droves for the private sector, it’s been incapable of financing many medical acts, in many hospitals even basic maintenance has been indefinitely postponed, etc.
While I still fundamentally agree with you that people are fools to trust the far right, I do understand why there’s such a big distrust in traditional moderate parties, given how much they’ve recently fucked up in dealing with many of the core issues in our countries - regardless of whether they’re on the left or on the moderate right.
Weirdest political take I’ve ever had, but European far right leaders aren’t “dollar store Trumps”. Unfortunately, they’re often fairly smart individuals, with great academic records and very well regarded in their areas of expertise
Could you provide examples about this? I only know of Abascal (Spain), and Meloni (Italy), the first never expressed any particularly insightful thought (to be generous), and the latter didn’t even go to college.
I didn’t mean to say they have insightful thoughts, but instead that they’re smart in the way they position themselves publicly and politically. André Ventura in Portugal is a good example. He has a doctorate in Law, is clearly a smart individual despite often playing a part of almost “anti-intellectualism”. He could easily fit in the description of your typical academic intellectual while somehow managing to gather the support of those who hate academic intellectuals.
He grew politically within the main center right party - a fact which he uses to claim that he’s not actually far right - and eventually jumped out of it and created his own party, arguing that his old party was part of the “establishment” - which he claims to be against. In truth, he left his old party because he had reached his political ceiling - his more extreme views meant he wasn’t realistically ever going to attain the kind of influence he wanted within a center right party.
Now, he offers no insightful thoughts of course. He often contradicts himself, changes positions wildly depending on the crowd or on the weather, offers no viable solutions to any of the problems he points out. But he’s very good at jumping on any mistake made by the bigger parties and capitalizing on those. He often points out the mistakes that everyone can recognize, exaggerates smaller issues to paint the parties in power as incompetent and then follows up with the dumbest solutions you can think of. But that’s the thing - since he isn’t in power, his solutions don’t actually have to resist the test of being implemented, they just have to exist. He can act like he has the solution to everything.
Publicly, he often toes the line of what’s “acceptable” speech, so he can both appeal to his more extreme supporters but simultaneously paint the idea that he’s actually a reasonable guy who’s unfairly vilified by the media and “the left”. In truth, like Trump, he grew up in part precisely because of how much the media insisted on attacking him - while giving him exactly the attention he wanted. As a somewhat funny stat, the lowest rating his party has had amongst the public in the last few years was during the pandemic, when the media was so focused on talking about Covid that his party practically disappeared from the public eye for a few months. In the last election they’ve got a really good result, so now they’ve officially become a permanent problem. They now have to be treated like a “normal” party, whether people like it or not.
I’d argue Meloni is a good example in terms of political intelligence as well. She has been able to successfully paint herself as a sort of reasonable and pragmatic far right leader, unlike any of the previous Italian far right leaders, which is a big part of her success. She claims to be pro-EU and is openly anti-Russia - contrary to her predecessors - which might seem like minor positions but have actually been very important for her to paint herself as a sort of far right leader that’s not that far right that she can’t work together with other European leaders. This is also important for many Italians since many see the EU favorably and a far right leader which is at least able to cooperate with the EU ensures that Italy can keep getting EU financing and can keep its influence within the Union. In practice, she represents the same ideas previous far right Italian leaders represented, but she tossed out many of their crazier positions in order to appear moderate by comparison.
Thanks for this insightful response. It’s clear I need to do more reading on this.
“as a European” is a sentence fragment I have read more than any other on the Internet.
I have a personal pet peeve with that. The expression “As a European” is almost always followed by something that’s entirely false or only concerns the commenter’s specific country or region. For some reason, people assume that things that are often specific to their country are “European”.
Just today I saw someone saying “us Europeans have to take a first aid course before getting a driver’s license”. WTF? I wish that was true. It’s certainly not true for my country. I’m not even sure that’s true for more than half of European countries. From a quick google search it seems that’s only a thing in maybe Germany, Austria, Hungary and Switzerland? There’s some twenty other European countries where that might not be a thing at all.
Like I said, even internet Europeans have the weird habit of assuming things specific to their country are some shared European value, when it’s almost always not the case.
Whenever I read that sentence I just mentally sub in for Europe “this one city I like in Europe” and move on.
It’s all about immigration and housing.
I’m pretty fair left. It’s weird that traditionally left leaning parties were about housing and jobs. But they seem to have lost their way.
The more you care about certain things the more you have to vote right because the left got their head in the sand.
I really wish the republicans weren’t trying to start a dictatorship and we had some actual options for who to vote for.
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.
Yeah you’re probably right. It’d likely just move the bulk of the expenditure over to Asia to contain China
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.
I’d prefer a multipolar world provided the other poles are actual democracies. Europe should step up and have a bigger say
Freedom fries = that thing that was a week long 21 years ago.
If it were a person it could legally drink…but you are welcome to bring it up again for another 21 years as some sorta attempt a a deep conversation killer.
I think that’s a bad take. Here’s the thing, “freedom fries” wasn’t a self-enclosed phenomenon. It was part of a broader jingoistic fever that swept through the US post-9/11. Yeah, sure, it’s fair to joke about Americans being dumb, but our brains dead ass shut off after 9/11, and anyone could do anything if they just waved their hands and said “terrorists, 9/11”. And Operation Iraqi freedom was just one of the turd sandwiches we ferociously gobbled down under such framing. Freedom fries happened because France wouldn’t support our stupid, pointless invasion, and the boomer email network kicked into overdrive to create a new meme (in the literal sense of the word) of replacing anything having to do with the treacherous French with Freedom. And that was what we did to people who owed us nothing, so it felt much more dangerous to step out against it as an American, at least in the early days of the war.
Never found any of it funny. You go ahead and make your “jokes” for another 21 years. Maybe someone will laugh at them.
Oh and btw I went to the Iraq protests. Maybe you were afraid but I wasn’t. Maybe that’s why I don’t feel like making “jokes” to feel tough now.
Not my jokes, and I don’t think it’s funny. You might want to re-read my post, I certainly wasn’t celebrating the attitude that spawned freedom fries.
Was your jokes.
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.
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.
This might be even more ingrained in German culture.
That’s a feature, not a bug. The far right has been attacking our educational system since Reagan, if not before.
They can’t exist with a well educated populace.
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
If that’s correct, that’s a much more significant difference than in the US.
Does Europe have the same kind of post war baby boom generation that the US has?
Cant speak for all Europe, but again in the UK it exists but is far less pronounced than in the US. A slight uptick rather than a boom. Dont forget that while the US economy was going gangbusters after the war as the only untouched industrial economy most of europe was either rebuilding from ruins or was close to bankrupt.
w.r.t. voting intension, I slightly over egged it from memory, but it was about 75% left for under 30s and 70% right for over 70s at the last election. link
A lot of people vote far-right out of despair. A “things are shit and can’t get any worse” mentality.
The best defence against the right is government that actually works for the people.
Which is why the right work so hard to assure Gov. does not work.
And why they dismantle the systems they’re tasked with protecting the moment they can.
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.
Look! We gutted the public system. Clearly the privatized alternative must be the solution. We support privatization btw, so you need to vote for us!
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.
who else can win the White House if not Biden.
I’d vote for him.
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!
Soros and Koch
Ohh, good for my bingo card
You know what the Kochs do right? And who promised to help that industry if they give them 1 billion?
Did I say everyone? It’s very easy to tell the ones that are though.
VERY easy.
Oh no! you left yourself verbal wiggle room. I guess some of them are nice people?
You’re username stands out, this an alt for your hexbear account or are you just at the same tier of not-being-able-to-think-critically?
Oh I’m fine. I’m just giving this as much effort as you guys right now. And no this isn’t an alt nor do I have a hexbear account. I just don’t think we should vote for someone whose an accessory to Genocide. It’s not a complex position.
So what, you will instead vote for the party that check notes promises to crush pro-Palestine protests and deport any foreign student participating, and writes down “finish them” on missiles used to kill Palestinians? OK.
Then who should we vote for? Someone is going to be president and literally the only choices are Dictator Trump and Status Quo Biden…
There are always exceptions. This is because the world we live in isn’t as back and white as you all like to paint it.
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.
Hold up. Are you telling me that 100,000 refugees already own homes? Be right back, need to go vote conservative real quick.
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.
A socialized capitalism will always be coopted by the ones with more money in pursuit of even more money.
What is a “Socialized Capitalism?”
I suspect they mean capitalism with a light sprinkle of social safety nets.
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.
Imagine letting conservatives ruin your economy and thinking “I need a more extreme version of this.”
Propaganda is a hell of a drug…
Conservatives make the world worse, they get booted out and liberals fail to fix it, they get booted out and then people look for a “strong man” who can cut through red tape and fix things once and for all.
The far right embodies that third person. An extra bonus of a far right rule is the Overton window lurches so far to the right that the conservatives can pretend to be centrist and the liberals pretend to be left-wing.
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.
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.
Which makes no fucking sense since conservatives just make those issues worse.
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.
Of course it’s not a safe bet, that’s why it’s based in fear. That’s how it’s always been.
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.
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.
The walls are being built.
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.
In the EU.
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.
