I finished watching the conversation between Ash Sarkar and Lewis Goodall on The News Agents, and there's one topic that I wish they dived deeper into.
For generations, the political establishment relied on a playbook that assumed voters largely start off progressive and then gradually lean conservative as they age. This has meant that parties have historically "tuned" their messaging accordingly, leading partly to the kind of identity politics that Ash writes about in her book and which we experienced most acutely as millennials.
But Gen Z is clearly violating that narrative. Recent election cycles in France, the Netherlands, Italy, and yesterday in Germany are showing strong support for extremist parties among young voters, and especially men aged 18–35.
Ash and Lewis talk briefly about the reasons for such support, and how extremist parties at both ends of the spectrum borrow from each other both in terms of messaging and methods to attract younger voters.
However, they don't touch on two questions which for me are becoming more and more pressing, and which the media rarely touch on:
1. Could we be witnessing the birth of a generation that’s polarized from the start?
2. Is this support only temporary, and if it's not, will this trend accelerate over the next decade, leaving Europe with an entire cohort of young people, especially men, casting votes overwhelmingly for extremist parties (AfD, National Rally, Reform UK, PVV, etc.)?
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