Once, anti-establishment youth disillusioned with mainstream politics headed left. Now increasing numbers are tilting right. Why?
Josh is 24 years old and works as a carer. It’s not easy work, but he prefers it to his old job in a supermarket: most of his clients are elderly and “just want someone there with them, because they’re lonely”. In his spare time Josh used to be into boxing. But lately he’s got into politics instead.
Like many of his gen Z contemporaries, he’s thoroughly disillusioned with the mainstream kind. “The two parties that have been in power for 100-plus years have done nothing. The economy’s a mess,” he scoffs. But if he sounds like the kind of anti-establishment young person who once rallied to the radical left, Josh’s frustration has taken him in another direction. An ardent leaver in his teens, who backed Boris Johnson in 2019, he now belongs to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.
They provide simple answers to their problems. Easy scapegoats. My ex thought highly of Farridge, Yaxley Lenton, etc. He thought Trump wasn’t really racist, but was playing some kind of 4D chess to get the racist vote so he could drain the swamp.
My ex was pretty intelligent when it came to other things, but he fell for every lie coming out these grifters’ mouths.
One thing that’s significant: he still uses Facebook. Social media amplifes the right. It’s weird how on a completely non political video in incognito mode, YouTube will dish up right wing videos. You can watch one seemingly innocuous video and the next thing, you’ll get flooded with more and more extreme right content and before you know it, you’re far right.
It’s clear that my ex, and another colleague I had who’s into the right, parrot the same talking points they see on twitter and Facebook (classic one was parroting Musk’s civil war predictions during the Southport riots). They’re both anti establishment, without realising the people they admire ARE as establishment as they get.