Why Europe’s youth are embracing the hard-right

Ah, the impatience of youth. Some aren’t even bothering to wait until middle-age before becoming conservative. That’s one of the takeaways from this month’s European elections and one worth bearing in mind this weekend during the first round of the French parliamentary election in which large numbers of young French people will vote for Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (NR).

The adage, “If you aren’t a liberal when you’re young, you have no heart, but if you aren’t a middle-aged conservative, you have no head”, is attributed to, among others, Burke, Disraeli, Churchill, and King Oscar II of Sweden. On the grounds that he has few other memorable quotes perhaps this one should go to the Swede.

In the EU elections in Poland, 30 per cent of voters under 30 went for the hard-right Confederation Party, an 18 per cent increase from 2019. In Germany, the hard-right AfD tripled its share of the under 25 votes to 16 per cent, and, in France, Le Pen’s NR party gained 30 per cent of the youth vote – a 10-point rise from 2019. There was an increase in young people voting right wing in Austria, Spain, Portugal, Finland and the Netherlands.

This surge in support from younger people is noticeable in recent national elections as well. In the Netherlands, the victory of Geert Wilders’ anti-immigration Freedom Party was helped by 17 per cent support of people under 34 – more than double the previous election. In Portugal, the Chega! (Enough!) party went from 12 seats to 50, boosted by 25 per cent of the 18-34 age group. This month it won two seats in the EU Parliament.

In Spain, there’s a new kid in town: 34-year-old Luis Pérez Fernández, better known as Alvise. His anti-immigration group Se Acabo la Fiesta (The Party’s Over) won three seats. Alvise who, according to El Pais once worked for the Liberal Democrats in the UK, wants to build Europe’s largest prison. He says “Even a person who has a gang tattoo: you’re going to f**king jail. If we have to put 40,000 guys in there, we will… and if the UN shows up, I’ll laugh in their face”. As far as is known, this is not a traditional Liberal Democrat policy but he’s moved a long way since moving back to Spain.

Alvise receives hardly any coverage from traditional media – and that’s part of the explanation of why he, and others like him across the continent, are getting traction. His Instagram profile and Telegram channel each have more followers/members than any political party in the country. It’s a similar story in Germany where the AfD TikTok feed reaches as many young Germans as all the other parties combined.

The hard right and hard left parties have been much quicker to understand that young people increasingly get what political knowledge they have from social media. They jumped onto platforms such as TikTok, Telegram and Instagram before many senior people in the established political scene even knew such things existed. Now establishment parties are playing catch up and trying to reach an audience they don’t understand, and which doesn’t trust their “same old-same old” politics.

A generation in which many believe that their lives will be harder than their parents will contain significant numbers of people resistant to centrist politics. However, they may listen to a party that suggests the under 30s shouldn’t have to pay income tax, that students should have free train travel, and that benefits should be extended. These are all solid left-wing policies but were proposed by NR whose President, and heir apparent to Marine Le Pen, is Jordan Bardella, a 28 year old politician with 1.6 million followers on TikTok. 

Young French supporters of NR do not believe the mainstream media narrative that the party is “far right”. Its roots in the extremes of the Front National, led by Le Pen’s fascist leaning father Jean Marie, are to them ancient history. Nor are they as scared as many of their parents about being accused of racism if they explain concerns about levels of immigration and lack of housing.  

Marine le Pen has had enormous success in detoxifying her party and presenting it as reasonable, and most of her young supporters do not resemble the far-right thugs of the 1990s Front National. They believe in gender equality, sexual tolerance, and other modern stalwarts of Western liberalism. Few are seen displaying the sort of overt racism caught on a short video last month in which young Germans on the upmarket holiday island of Sylt are seen dancing to a popular song and chanting “Deutschland den Deutschen, Ausländer raus!” (“Germany for the Germans, foreigners out!”). The clip went viral, and the song and chant have been heard at several of the recent Euro 24 football tournament games.

So are the kids alt-right? No, most young Europeans do not support the extremes. Centre parties won the most young votes across the continent. It’s worth noting though that the far-left France Unbowed, led by Jean Luc Melenchon, is also attracting the youth vote. Some of that may be from people who like its leader’s serial ambiguous statements about Jews, international finance, and superiority.

We can’t yet know if, in the longer term this trend for younger voters to follow the extremes will grow. Inflation is down to an average of 2 per cent across the Eurozone and unemployment down to 6 per cent although it’s higher for young people. However, one of the drivers of support for the hard right is immigration which is more likely to rise than fall over the next decade. In the short term though, the polling from the French vote results will show us a snapshot of the near future.

Speaking of the French –  the excellent, and time-sucking, quoteinvestigator.com site has a nice version of the “if you aren’t a liberal when you’re young” adage. President Clemenceau (Le Tigre) is sitting in his office when an aide rushes in and exclaims “Your son has just joined the Communist Party!”. Clemenceau looks at him for a moment before calmly replying “Monsieur, my son is 22 years old. If he had not become a Communist at 22, I would have disowned him. If he is still a Communist at 30, I will do it then”.

 Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose?

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