Ahead of the European election, striking data shows where Gen Z and millennials’ allegiances lie.

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.)

  • AFK BRB ChocolateEnglish
    3•6 months ago

    I feel like a bad thing that happened to us started when, through science, we started finding more and more things that contradicted the bible, at the same time as some evangelical sects were pushing for a more and more literal interpretation of the bible, and so their only argument was that science is evil/blasphemous/whatever. So more and more people on the right got comfortable just disregarding scientists, facts, and information-driven conclusions. Instead, they just pick whatever narrative they’re comfortable with and even a lot of people who disagree with it treat it like a legitimate belief.

    We used to call those people nutjobs. Now we call them Fox news viewers.

    • @afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4•6 months ago

      You know this isn’t new. People have always knew that there were problems with this book. Part of the reason why so many put corrections in it.

      Bible literalism is a legacy of Luther. Once he rejected the church and it’s teachings all he had was the Bible.

      • AFK BRB ChocolateEnglish
        1•6 months ago

        Oh, completely agree, but for the first two thirds of the 20th century, most Christians, like most people generally, were very pro science and took the bible as a book of lessons. It’s only in the last several decades that such a huge percentage of Christians equate science as antithetical to Christianity.

          • AFK BRB ChocolateEnglish
            1•6 months ago

            Solid point. Still, the prevailing attitude in the 40s and 50s was that science made things better, with perhaps a detour related to nuclear bombs/energy.

            • @afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.worldEnglish
              2•6 months ago

              Yeah techno-utopianism. The thing about this stuff is any civilization is going to be diverse but what gets preserved is not going to be. Which gives us all a slanted flat view of history.

              You remember Asimov you don’t remember the Beatniks. So your view becomes that prior to say the 60s every single person had utter faith in science making the world better and the key to understanding the universe.

              Talk to any atheist about American free thought history and you get Thomas Jefferson, nothing, and then Madyln O’Hare.

              Ok…what about Ingersoll, or Rand, or Twain, Bierce, or Madison, or H.L. Mencken? They don’t exist. Everyone in that 200 year period had the same religions convictions exactly.