2d ago

‘Nigel Farage feels real’: why young British men are drawn to Reform

www.theguardian.com ‘Nigel Farage feels real’: why young British men are drawn to Reform

Once, anti-establishment youth disillusioned with mainstream politics headed left. Now increasing numbers are tilting right. Why?

Josh is 24 years old and works as a carer. It’s not easy work, but he prefers it to his old job in a supermarket: most of his clients are elderly and “just want someone there with them, because they’re lonely”. In his spare time Josh used to be into boxing. But lately he’s got into politics instead.

Like many of his gen Z contemporaries, he’s thoroughly disillusioned with the mainstream kind. “The two parties that have been in power for 100-plus years have done nothing. The economy’s a mess,” he scoffs. But if he sounds like the kind of anti-establishment young person who once rallied to the radical left, Josh’s frustration has taken him in another direction. An ardent leaver in his teens, who backed Boris Johnson in 2019, he now belongs to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.

33 comments

I really don't get these people. This guy sounds and looks as phoney as they come. How dumb do you have to be to fall for his act?
- Same. I keep saying the right wing Conservatives have failed us, so why do you think the even more right wing Reform will be any better?
  We need proper left representation, but we need a media that isn’t pushing for right wing policies.
- I don’t ’get these people’ either. But clearly, popularist politicians everywhere do get them. All their lives they’ve heard promises from the ‘traditional’ left and right wing parties that have made little impact on their daily lives that they can see. They’re still in a terrible job, still hearing the media rattling on about how terrible things are, etc.
  So they’re ripe for the taking when someone comes along, tells them that the promises they heard from others are trash, that this new person knows who or what is really to blame, and luckily. It’s a group that’s easy to scapegoat and ‘other’.
  
  The average Reform voter's unhappiness isn't a matter of 'scapegoating an other' over a media construct.
  The consequences of the electorate refusing to accept this will only cause Reform's voter base will grow.
- They provide simple answers to their problems. Easy scapegoats. My ex thought highly of Farridge, Yaxley Lenton, etc. He thought Trump wasn't really racist, but was playing some kind of 4D chess to get the racist vote so he could drain the swamp.
  My ex was pretty intelligent when it came to other things, but he fell for every lie coming out these grifters' mouths.
  One thing that's significant: he still uses Facebook. Social media amplifes the right. It's weird how on a completely non political video in incognito mode, YouTube will dish up right wing videos. You can watch one seemingly innocuous video and the next thing, you'll get flooded with more and more extreme right content and before you know it, you're far right.
  It's clear that my ex, and another colleague I had who's into the right, parrot the same talking points they see on twitter and Facebook (classic one was parroting Musk's civil war predictions during the Southport riots). They're both anti establishment, without realising the people they admire ARE as establishment as they get.

Yeah, he "sounds kind of anti-establishment." The problem with vibes-based politics, as many have discovered throughout history, is that it's just perfect for con men.

LMFAO, feels real in what way? Like cabbage patch dolls are real?

Where's the left-leaning equivalent?
The status quo is bad so of course people are going to gravitate towards things that go contrary to the establishment. It's not exactly rocket science.
- I feel like a lot of people look at a bad system and go "We should change!" and then accept any change. But that's stupid. If you have a machine that often breaks down, yeah you should change that. But you shouldn't replace it with a machine that shoots rusty nails out every couple minutes while filling the room with toxic gas. Yeah, that's a change, but a change for the worse.
  Or like if you realize you got on the wrong train. You should change because you don't want to go where this one is going. But don't go on an express train going to the same wrong place!
  
  I absolutely agree. Unfortunately these people aren't that bright.
- There was Corbyn, who, after his antisemitism judgment, has been deplatformed by the mainstream media, not to mention repellent, self-serving tankies like Galloway. There was a media-savvy “dirtbag left” (think Russell Brand, in his sex-god-Che-Guevara era), though for some reason they keep turning fash as soon as it gets expedient, and are the opposite of a solution here.
- Arrested for protesting, keeping their head down, or trying to live their life outside of mainstream capitalist society is my guess.
  The left have been the targets of successive governments and vested interests, in most countries, for over 100 years. No wonder it's dead. Not to mention the infighting. Some of which I'm sure is natural but some of which will be instigated by those same governments and vested interests.
  
  We're just passing on our ideals through upbringing, storytelling and kindness, like we always have. These are powerful tools.
  Edit to add: we're also a lot sexier.

The brexit wasn't enough?
Now that the us is dropping out, the EU would really benefit from a strong collaboration with UK.
- Unfortunately I think there is a good chance that history will come to view brexit as a warning shot that was ignored.

Farage was given a decade or more of regular airtime on the bbc despite not having one MP. This is a top-down driven rise to political power. The bbc is a defacto nation state information operation, it primarily serves the interests of the British establishment, of which the very wealthy are a significant part. They prefer the alternative to the red/blue Tories to come from the right, rather than the left.
Young people have and are witnessing their quality of life and future prospects diminish on an ongoing basis. Climate change is the biggest crisis multiplier humankind will ever experience. It isn't just being ignored by Tories red and blue, protests against government inaction on it are now criminalised, and the surveillance state built to 'protect' society has reached a point of extreme data-totalitarianism that will breed extremists. Not to mention what happens when Tommy Robinson, or whoever is Farage's Musk takes control of that surveillance state apparatus?
All of this has rendered mainstream parties non-credible. It is just more of the same austerity, more economic inequality.
With the best will in the world, the scale of immigration (not far off a London a decade) is not sustainable. It is impacting the unskilled labour markets and 'benefits' system many of these potential Reform voting young people are reliant upon. Its use is the easiest of wedges for any politician to use. This immigration is nothing compared to the coming climate change refugee crisis. We haven't seen anything yet.
The home-owning-electorate's response: "These people are racist. We should rejoin the EU" (thus completely disenfranchising former brexit, now potential Reform voters) can only make this situation worse, if anything driving those young voters into the hands of worse extremists.

I feel quite the opposite about him, lol

There is no left representation, and people are told that capitalism and the right wing system are the only ones that work.

I really need people to understand that a) most people neither do or want to pay attention to politics, because they don’t have time or energy for it and because b) they are (rightly) convinced that politica just doesn’t work for them. So what will they do? They will tag on to anything that sounds oine it’s different to the same old bullshit.
Not because they don’t believe the new bullshit isn’t also bullshit, but at least it’s not the same bullshit that got us into our current mess.
Everyone in politics and the media lie to us all the time about everything. That’s not meant to be a true statement, but it is one that clearly feels true to most people. And Hannah Arendt once said something important about how people respond to such circumstances, and about what such a people can be brought to do. It’s not pretty.

Why?
Because the left is now controlled opposition ya fucking dunces.

Mike Nicholson has learned to expect sullen faces and folded arms when he enters a classroom. “They’re like, well, this is all going to be woke rubbish,” he says, ruefully. A former English teacher, Nicholson now runs Progressive Masculinity, which organises workshops for teenage boys in British secondary schools exploring positive ways to be a man. Teenagers so rarely hear the word “masculinity” without “toxic” attached, he explains, that they’re expecting a lecture. Once they realise they can talk freely, they barely stop.
Amen. I've been saying this or a while: stop using the term toxic masculinity! It's ostracizing men. The left has to stop treating men like the enemy and stop with their purity tests.
Do you believe big companies are a problem?
Yes
Do you think Marxism is the only solution?
No
You're out, fucking nazi.
Then the left wonders why people aren't flocking to them. They preach diversity, inclusion, openness, safe space, and so on, but if someone utters a thought that doesn't fit the narrative you're a nazi, a misogynist, an enlightened centrist, a capitalist, or whatever else can be thrown at you.
All in all, a great article, but if shared in left-wing circles, there'll probably a lot of name-calling and jokes about "men are afraid of strong women", "they're afraid of losing power", "see how it feels", and so on. It's like people cannot find the empathy in themselves they so loudly call for in others.
- but if someone utters a thought that doesn't fit the narrative you're a nazi, a misogynist, an enlightened centrist, a capitalist, or whatever else can be thrown at you.
  This is opinion, masquerading as fact, folks. It's most likely a regurgitated opinion in my estimation, too.
  
  Its not like you have to go far to see it, Lemmy has lots of people who will shout you down for being a step right of Mao.
- Lol mate you really are a dimwit
  Your idea of what the left wing is reads like a fucking spectator opinion piece.
  What are you describing is the bogeyman liberal of right wing pundits, not socialists.
  No one has ever said is marxism the answer. Marxism is a philosophical and historical theory of change. left wing people are often Marxists because it accurately describes how capitalism works. It just shows how little you understand. Numnuts

33 comments