MatthewToad43 on Nostr: Unfortunately there are young fascists too. Something between 10 and 30% follow or at ...
Unfortunately there are young fascists too. Something between 10 and 30% follow or at least agree with fascist influencers such as Andrew Tate (polls vary), so there will be a ready supply of brownshirts even once what currently appears to be the tory gerontocracy die off.
The default assumption in the UK is that politics is all about age. It *looks* at first glance, especially in e.g. post-election opinion polls, like a gerontocracy: the old people turn out, and vote tory. The young are less likely to turn out and much less likely to vote tory. The age at which more people vote tory than Labour was 47, has been rising, and is now 70 (since they are 20 points behind in the polls).
But that's not what's really going on.
The fact that millennials (including people in their early 40s and younger) are not getting more right wing as they age is interesting and useful. But it's mainly due to the fact that the ongoing collapse of civilisation is hitting them more visibly. Home ownership is never going to happen, kids are unaffordable, even if they have kids their kids will have to deal with the increasingly visible and direct impacts of the climate and biodiversity crisis, and so on. Having kids makes it harder to deal with that, but that's another discussion. 😀
And while there are many relatively well off home owning pensioners, many of whom identified as working class when they were younger, there are also many pensioners whose lives are precarious and dependent on landlords and shrinking government benefits (other than the state pension itself).
The tories, the GOP, the fascists, are a threat to everyone, and "pensioners" are not a homogenous group; women tend not to get a full state pension, disability and race also affect both lived experience and politics.
Many voluntary organisations, including spicy ones like XR, rely on retired volunteers. Pensioners in training, organising, and sometimes even arrestible roles, hunger strikes, etc, are not uncommon.
Speaking as a middle aged disabled white millennial. Not young enough to be "the young people", not old enough to be "retired tories". 😀
The default assumption in the UK is that politics is all about age. It *looks* at first glance, especially in e.g. post-election opinion polls, like a gerontocracy: the old people turn out, and vote tory. The young are less likely to turn out and much less likely to vote tory. The age at which more people vote tory than Labour was 47, has been rising, and is now 70 (since they are 20 points behind in the polls).
But that's not what's really going on.
The fact that millennials (including people in their early 40s and younger) are not getting more right wing as they age is interesting and useful. But it's mainly due to the fact that the ongoing collapse of civilisation is hitting them more visibly. Home ownership is never going to happen, kids are unaffordable, even if they have kids their kids will have to deal with the increasingly visible and direct impacts of the climate and biodiversity crisis, and so on. Having kids makes it harder to deal with that, but that's another discussion. 😀
And while there are many relatively well off home owning pensioners, many of whom identified as working class when they were younger, there are also many pensioners whose lives are precarious and dependent on landlords and shrinking government benefits (other than the state pension itself).
The tories, the GOP, the fascists, are a threat to everyone, and "pensioners" are not a homogenous group; women tend not to get a full state pension, disability and race also affect both lived experience and politics.
Many voluntary organisations, including spicy ones like XR, rely on retired volunteers. Pensioners in training, organising, and sometimes even arrestible roles, hunger strikes, etc, are not uncommon.
Speaking as a middle aged disabled white millennial. Not young enough to be "the young people", not old enough to be "retired tories". 😀