Let me tell you about my friend Alison’s son. He graduated recently. I’ve known him all his life. His mum has a white collar job, his dad is a tradesman. They’re good, ordinary folk. Average beliefs, incomes, and lives.
Something has happened to Alison’s son lately, though. As a teenager, he was never political. It was football, music, girls and gaming. But after university, he changed. He couldn’t move out of his parent’s house because he couldn’t get the sort of job he went to university for, so now he’s trapped in zero hours hell. His mum says he feels "hopeless".
However, it’s not just hopelessness that worries Alison. Her son has become a political extremist. The first signs were a few sexist comments. Then the anti-migrant rhetoric, the racism, the homophobia. Today, he’s praising Donald Trump and following the far-right ghouls stalking British Twitter.
Alison’s son is a case study in why today’s youth are moving towards the far right. The success of far right extremists in the European elections was helped considerably by the youth vote. Commentators blame TikTok propaganda, Covid desocialising the young, or the Ukraine conflict spooking kids that they’ll one day have to fight a European war.
That’s just window-dressing. The young are moving to the far right for the same reasons as Alison’s son: the political status quo in the West has failed them.
Today’s young are the first generation to see living standards fall in comparison to their parents. Our children will not have better lives than us, and they know it.
If democracy has failed you, why vote for it any more? It’s that brutally simple. Why be surprised at kids abandoning this failed settlement and seeking answers in strongmen and authoritarians?
Fascists and extremists offer scapegoats for the hopeless. Blame foreigners, blame minorities - blame anybody but your tribe.
What’s happening should scare us. Allegiance to the far right has traditionally been the reserve of angry, older men. However, now that the young are shifting to the extremes, we’re facing a demographic time bomb. If the young are embracing the far right now, what will their views be like when they hit middle age?
Statistics from the European elections should make us tremble. We’re entering a new era of the far-right and much of the success of extremists is down to the young. In Spain, 22% of voters aged 18-24 say they back far-right parties like Vox.
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In Germany, the far right AfD polled 16% among those aged 16-24, and 18% for those aged 25-34. By comparison, only 8% of those aged 70 and older gave the far right their vote. When not excusing Hitler’s SS, the AfD ruthlessly targets the young.
In France, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally is the most popular party for those aged 18-34. Opinion polls show NR on 32% among the young - far ahead of its nearest rival.
So much for the notion that every kid is woke. Rather, the kids are alt-right.
Le Pen is particularly savvy in messaging aimed at the young, promising to eliminate taxes for anyone under-30, and offering financial assistance and better housing to students. She made 28-year-old Jordan Bardella party president.
In Belgium, Portugal and Finland younger voters back the far right in numbers that either equal or exceed older voters. In the Netherlands, Geert Wilder’s far right party won the 2023 election by linking lack of housing for young people to immigration.
It is long past time for the parties of the centre left and centre right to wake up. The failed status quo they offer is driving the young into the arms of extremists.
The far right bends the knee to Russia. Picture a world in which Trump is in the White House, and the far right in power across much of Europe. The result? Ukraine defeated, democracy cowed, Europe’s eastern border imperilled.
To halt the flight of the young to the far right, we must fix the economy. The young need hope. They need to know democracy works for them. The success of democracy is contingent upon the success of the economy. If the young don’t believe they’ve an economic future under democracy they’ll shift to the extremes.
We can blame the young all we want. Call them stupid, say they’re disgusting, throw around whatever epithets and theories we wish. But the fundamental reasons for the rise of far right youth is us: their parents and grandparents.
We allowed this system to take root, we saw it going wrong and did nothing to change it. We voted in the same failed politicians who let it all stagnate. Build a swamp, and people will act like they live in a swamp.
There’s some hope. In nations where the far right and populists have tasted power - like Italy and Poland - the young have shifted away from the extremes. In other words, once kids get a taste of what they’ve been fool enough to vote for, buyer’s remorse kicks in.
In Britain and America, the young haven’t been captured by right-wing extremists as they have in Europe. Why? Because Trump’s Maga movement and Nigel Farage’s Reform haven’t got the brains to cut through with the young.
We should thank our lucky stars they’re too busy blaming the young and mocking them as snowflakes. When they start reaching out to them, matters might become more troubling.
For those clutching their pearls about Reform being referred to as "extremist", read the report in Tuesday’s Times outlining how one in 10 Reform candidates are "friends" on Facebook with Gary Raikes, the former BNP organiser, who founded the New British Union.
NBU activists call themselves "Blackshirts"; the party wants a "fascist revolution", and sees democracy as an "obstruction" which needs replaced with dictatorship. One Reform candidate said Britain should have been neutral and not fought the Nazis.
If my friend’s son could afford to rent a flat, and be given some hope that one day he’d get a job which matched his talents, then I know for sure that the anger which is tipping him to the extremes would fade and he’d become the same decent democratic citizen as his mum and dad.
But while we live in a society controlled by politicians who couldn’t care less about his life, how can I blame this boy for what he’s become?
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