How Far Right-wing Parties Go to Seduce Young Voters in Europe
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The Guardian
Young people abandoned mainstream parties in last weekend’s European elections – a sign that their anxieties are not being heard.
That far-right parties fared well in the European elections was no surprise – surveys had consistently foretold their triumph. The populist right has been on the rise in Europe – through democratic elections – for the past two decades. Thus, 2024’s vote is a natural culmination of a long trend. The combined vote for far-right parties secured them a fourth of the seats in the European parliament – on par with the largest group, the center-right European People’s Party.
But we are nonetheless witnessing something new: the first signs of a populist insurrection of the young. In both European and national elections, voters under 30 have given their support to far-right parties such as Alternative fĂ¼r Deutschland (AfD) in Germany, Rassemblement National (National Rally) in France, Vox in Spain, the Brothers of Italy, Chega (Enough) in Portugal, Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest) in Belgium and the Finns party in Finland.
The lowering of the voting age to 16 in Austria, Belgium, Germany, and Malta and to 17 in Greece is only magnifying this trend. In Germany, the ultra-right AfD enjoys unrivaled popularity among the young, gaining the support of 17% of 16- to 24-year-olds who voted. French students have not been chanting, as they did during the 2017 presidential election: “Neither Le Pen nor Macron, neither the Patriot nor the Boss: we deserve better than that.” This time, 32% of the French youth, irrespective of gender, supported the National Rally. The gains were so substantial that they prompted President Emmanuel Macron to call early elections.
This is in stark contrast to the 2019 EU elections when young voters overwhelmingly backed Green parties – true to our image of young people as cosmopolitan, culturally liberal, and worried about the planet. Just five years later, they voted for forces who want to undo the Green Deal and rein in the EU. Indeed, Green parties suffered severe losses this weekend. Fridays for Future – the youth-led international climate movement that was started in 2018 by Greta Thunberg, then a Stockholm schoolgirl – now seems to belong to a bygone age.
So, what happened to the young? Why this dramatic change of heart?
Young people around the world are increasingly miserable and restless. The 2024 World Happiness Report signaled that young people are currently unhappier than older generations. But while a visible minority of them are mobilizing against global warming and far-away wars – long-standing sources of youngsters’ angst and outrage – the silent majority of our youth seem to be troubled by the same quality-of-life concerns that keep their elders awake at night. Reportedly, the rising cost of living is the top concern for 93% of Europeans, followed by the threat of poverty and social exclusion (82%).
But in this case, why not vote for the left? Rising support for the far right is all the stranger because surveys indicate that the left’s trademark themes of social and economic justice are now more important for voters than the far-right’s flagship issue: immigration. The left’s agenda – combining cultural liberalism with social justice and care for the environment – would seem to respond to many young people’s concerns. Yet Europe’s youth are abandoning left-leaning parties. A similar shift is at play in the United States. In a formidable reversal of the trend of young people in the US supporting the Democratic party, Donald Trump is gaining support among young voters.
What ails the young is a novel concern – economic uncertainty, or rather “livelihood insecurity”. If older people are living in fear of job loss, younger generations fear they will never land a job, no matter how many master’s degrees they might invest money, effort, and hope in. Authors of the 2024 study Jugend in Deutschland (Youth in Germany) established that fears about future prosperity (rather than cultural chauvinism) were driving a shift to the right. The exasperation of poverty might foster a desire for radical change and support for the political left, but fear of loss of social status nourishes conservative instincts for stability and safety.
There is also something else at play here. It could be that young people do not navigate politics with the same ideological compass that their parents and grandparents have been using – with arrows pointing either to the left pole of cultural liberalism and social justice or the right pole of cultural traditionalism and economic freedom.
Despite how we usually view “populist parties”, they are not uniformly culturally conservative, nor do they embrace the free market, as their denomination as “rightwing” would suggest. Parties such as the French National Rally and the Dutch Party for Freedom typically marry an allegiance to liberal values (from freedom of speech to gender equality) with appeals for social, economic, cultural, and physical safety. Marine Le Pen’s 2022 manifesto promised to scrap taxes for the under-30s, provide financial assistance to student workers and boost student housing. Geert Wilders campaigned last year on investing in healthcare and housing, as did the leadership of AfD.
It is Western liberalism that such parties vouch to protect from the supposed threat of Muslim traditionalism that they claim is hostile to women’s emancipation and LGBT rights. Thus, they combine features of cultural liberalism and racist xenophobia into a defense of a “European way of life”.
So has Europe’s youth turned reactionary? Let us not rush to this conclusion just yet. For now, all we can glean from the populist revolt of the young is that the political mainstream is not providing satisfying answers to their grievances. The left’s promises for inclusive prosperity aren’t so convincing when weighed against the social cost of the green transition. The moderate right’s promises for fulfilling lives of professional achievement and economic comfort are less believable when weighed against a job market of insecure employment. It is the populism of the political center, with its facile and implausible answers, that may be fuelling the rightful rage of the young. It is clear, then, what the adults need to do – square the circle of stable livelihoods, ecological sustainability, and cultural freedoms for all. As long as no such plan exists, young people in Europe will vote for the next best thing – for forces that tell them how to preserve what they already have, at the risk of losing who they would like to be.
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