this post was submitted on 29 May 2024
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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.)

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[–] [email protected] 226 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (93 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (17 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago (4 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Thanks for this insightful response. It's clear I need to do more reading on this.

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