Ever since the election, there seems to be a torrent of polling that shows Americans in their late teens and early twenties are fairly reactionary (young men overwhelmingly so). I’m old so I don’t know anyone IRL in that age bracket. But something about what the media has been claiming for months now doesn’t seem to sound right. Idk maybe it’s 100% true but it’s something I have a hard time taking the media’s word for. I know we have quite a few users here in that age bracket. What are your real-life experiences (i.e. not online) with this? Do you think this age demographic is actually trending reactionary?
(I do remember digging into the details of one poll, and while it seemed there was more affiliation with Republicans than previous, it also seemed like there were an also very large segment that were openly showing to be further left than the democrats? So maybe more reactionary sentiment but also more genuinely leftish sentiment?)
What does painting such broad strokes accomplish? Does it feed a sense of political nihilism for you, make you feel like there’s no point? Or does it make you want to change it for the better?
My experience is that the youth are not reactionary. Or they’re incredibly reactionary. As always, relations to economic class and imperialism are what tend to set people’s opinions on these things (in addition to culture etc) and these systems are breaking down more and more for regular people, especially us young folks.
Student movements have been a huge part of the resistance against the US Empire in it’s war on Gaza, because it’s really many fronts of the same war now. Students by and large, both in the news and from my experience, care a lot and are radicalized a lot. Anyone younger than that, who knows, we don’t have a crystal ball to see how they’ll develop, but they’ll probably follow the same trend because everything is getting worse and there’s people and movements explaining why.
So I try to be hopeful and say the kids are alright