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.)
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.
In much of Europe the left have been victims of former success. Many of the (former) leftist political parties and their constituents have foregone leftist policies because said policies gave them the social mobility to move into a higher strata of society.
In effect it is successful class war waged by the capitalist class, who have dismantled their greatest political opposition and employed a tactic of divide and conquer for the lump sum of petty cash.
Note, I do not say that having a fair and egalitarian society isn’t a part of socialist ideology, but focusing on cultural symbolics instead of improving material conditions is just bourgeoisie propaganda.