Page by George Monbiot | @georgemonbiot.bsky.social

1. I’m thinking aloud here, as I really don’t have the answers. This is a thread about the political challenge of the very large numbers of young men now supporting the far right. I’m writing it without blame or derision. I’m just trying to find a way through. 🧵

2. Young men are a core constituency for Trump and other demagogues. This isn’t how it was “meant” to be. Young people were supposed to be progressive, while the far right was meant to attract the votes of older people.

3. I’ve been reading a bit recently about the extreme isolation many young men suffer, alongside other erosions caused by neoliberalism (loss of good steady jobs, prospects of a decent home, sense of meaning, purpose, utility). They suffer humiliation and frustration: dangerous forces in politics.

4. The right-wing influencers of the manosphere speak to this frustration and alienation. Demagogues pitch a politics of hyper-masculinity, and suggest that men can transcend their humiliation by asserting a warrior ethos. There is now a major political gender divide among young people.

5. A far right supported by large numbers of young men is far more dangerous than a far right supported mostly by older people. The potential for mobilisation and the chances that this mobilisation tends towards mass violence become much greater.

6. People like me cannot possibly act as a counterweight. Earnest, speccy intellectual types won’t cut through. This is why, when he burst onto the political scene, I was enthusiastic about Russell Brand. I thought he’d reach demographics people like me could not. Well, we know how that worked out.

7. Perhaps it always cuts that way. Is it possible that charismatic, extrovert, attention-grabbing folk, loose with the facts but able to penetrate the alienation and disillusion that surrounds young people, will always head rightwards? Is that an inevitable outcome of their personality type?

8. Or are there counter-examples? Most of the charismatic young voices I can think of are women, and I suspect that this has to be a matter of men talking to men. I might be wrong.

9. We on the left have a good story to tell. A story of fighting corrupt, grabbing elites, reclaiming our freedoms, building a society in which everyone is valued, in which everyone has a sense of belonging. But how, and through whom, do we tell it? I’d value your thoughts. Thank you.

10. Putting all my recent threads on Skywriter, as I think it's handy to see the text on one page: skywriter.blue

Page by George Monbiot (@georgemonbiot.bsky.social)

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