Democracy remains popular across the world, but faced with a global array of challenges from inequality to the climate crisis, young people are far less likely than their elders to believe it can deliver on what concerns them.
According to a major international survey of 30 countries published on Tuesday, 86% of respondents would prefer to live in a democratic state and only 20% believe authoritarian regimes are more capable of delivering “what citizens want”.
However, only 57% of respondents aged 18 to 35 felt democracy was preferable to any other form of government, against 71% of those over 56, and 42% of younger people said they were supportive of military rule, against just 20% of older respondents.
I wish I could say I was surprised. Here in Finland we had a parliamentary election earlier in the year and ended up with the most right-wing government we’ve ever had, with zero leftist or centrist parties in the government. One fresh minister had to quit his post due to being a neo-Nazi, and the extremist party whose ministerial post it currently is replaced him with a pedophile neo-Nazi (who won a vote of confidence, so apparently that’s not a problem to anybody but leftists.)
Almost half of the under-25’s voted for right-wing parties. The most popular one was an extremist right-wing party (multiple neo-Nazis, politicians who openly fantasize about eg. murdering gay people, the works), and 2nd most popular was the “fiscally conservative” party (who really aren’t much better than the extremists, and in many ways actually worse).
Authoritarianism certainly should be treated as a global campaign. I think Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had it right when she said that progressives also need to take a global view with their politics.
There’s a free flow of ideas and lessons learned among the far right, whether it’s maga groups, Russia, Hungry, China etc. They all play from the same playbook both politically and in their rhetoric.
Progressives don’t seem to dissect their successes and try to propagate them to other progressive groups. At least not as effectively.
That said, I’m sort of skeptical that young people are becoming pro-fascist. This survey includes places like China and Russia, which are places you’re going to have difficulty getting honest, meaningful data from.
You’re essentially just dismissing the result because you don’t like it. Check out the poll, it’s linked in the article; here’s the percentages for “IMPORTANCE OF LIVING IN A DEMOCRACY Percentage of respondents per country who say it is important to them to live in a country that is democratically governed”