Unpacking Europe's Youth-Driven Political Shift

We have Fraser Myers , who is deputy editor of Spike and covers Europe for Spike , and Frank Ferretti , who is executive director of the NCC think tank in Brussels . Gentlemen , welcome . Well , we have so much to talk about . Joel , you want to kick us off ? Sure kick us off ?

And what's fascinating about the dynamic in Europe is a lot of young people who've traditionally been into identity politics or been into the left what's called the left have gradually moved over to the more populist insurgencies , and when you go to any of these rallies or meetings in Holland or Germany or France , you'll see that they are 18 , 19 , 20 year old , a

lot of women participating in it . They're basically saying that they really want a new world and I think they are extremely worried about their culture becoming no longer respected . They're really worried about economically becoming marginalized .

They really hate the Green Deal , the net zero policies which punish ordinary people by forcing them to buy electric cars instead of driving diesel or other kind of cars . So you have this mood that I've never seen before in all my life and I'm old enough to have been a 1960s radical and I remember that kind of mood of optimism and things are really changing .

And I remember that kind of mood of optimism and things were really changing . And when you go to France at the moment , you do feel that there's something similar in the air and so it's kind of captivating and it's really nice to see that kind of forward looking belief that something can happen , that things can change .

It might be hard for international kind of viewers and listeners to understand , but you know , being a member of the European Union really constrains a country's national sovereignty . You know the governments that you elect are actually there's a lot of things that they can't do because so much , so much is decided in Brussels over people's heads .

You know , there's a kind of almost like pseudo-democratic element to Brussels with the European Parliament , but really that's not where the big decisions are made .

Those are made behind closed doors and often on those three issues there is a kind of consensus , and there's a very cast iron consensus among the mainstream sort of centrist parties , among the sort of bureaucrats in Brussels , and these populist parties .

Although many of them are very different they come from different perspectives , different traditions what they all have in common is that they are challenging that consensus in some way , and so people feel that these are the best vehicles for them to have a voice . And sometimes you know it's not that there are problems with many of these parties .

Some of them actually have roots in fascism . I mean , they're not fascist now , but they do have those roots . Some of them take issues to extremes , they have racist elements , but that is not what people are interested in fundamentally . People have not suddenly .

People haven't woken up in Europe , you know , a few weeks ago , and decided we're all fascist again now .

It was a time of promoting global citizenry , right , you know the idea that you know we're building people that go beyond their national borders , that have sensitivity to the needs of others . Can't we all get along right ? Can't we all work as one ? And that launched into a political movement , and are we seeing the end of that now ?

Is this the end of that global citizen , 60s , baby boomer ideal ?

And I think people are realizing that , at the end of the day , citizenship , if it's to mean anything in a democratic sense , must have an organic connection to people that you know , that you trust , that you work with , whose language and culture you share to some extent .

And it seems to me that one of the problems that Europe has and Fraser alluded to that is that sovereignty , national sovereignty , is really demonized by the European Union oligarchy . They regard national sovereignty as somehow morally inferior to the international institutions that they love .

They think that expert-led , technocratic social engineering is a much better way of running the world than a democratically accountable government . And one of the things we're seeing is a kind of sense of a yearning for a kind of sense of belonging which gives meaning to people's life , and that's often dismissed as being somehow nationalistic and maybe xenophobic .

But what it really is in historical terms is patriotic . And patriotism as a concept does not involve hating other people or being opposed to other people .

It simply means that you take seriously your own identity , your own community , and you want to build on that , and at the moment , a lot of Europeans feel very insecure that the world that they've been born into is gradually being taken away from them , and the one thing when I was in France recently , we went around northern France , a place called Pas-de-Calais ,

traveling around in the smaller places , and what you will find in all the different small towns is people saying I don't recognize my town anymore . It's not something that means something strong to me in the way that in the past , and it's this real concern that one morning they're going to wake up and they're going to live in a different world .

I think one thing that should be mentioned , which is very difficult for Americans to understand , is that there's also an issue with Islam , because what we're seeing in effect is , to some extent , the Islamization of Europe , and I'm saying that not as something that's anti-Muslim , but I know , for example , in Brussels , where I work , we , for example , had somebody

elected by an Islam party , and they get people elected by running as members of a religious or a quasi-religious sort of political party , and a lot of people feel that it's one thing to have friends who are Muslim or even have a mosque down the road .

It's quite another thing when you have to change your life , when you have to adapt to a culture that is alien to yours and you have to , for example , dress in accordance with cultural pressures that are alien to you .

So Islamization is a huge issue in places like Holland , belgium , france , it's even in Germany , and that accounts to some extent for the political upheaval that is now taking place . I should also mention that , unlike in the past , you now have a new coalition of people who call themselves left-wing and Islamists .

I mean , I think that's an unprecedented development when you have , like in France , someone like Mélenchon essentially building a coalition of religious ideologue with people who claim to have some affinity to what's historically being called left-wing politics .

So , fraser and I think this is also happening in the UK as well how do they reconcile the reality of the Islamic ideology and how it's practiced in the Middle East and such things as gay rights , transgender ?

I mean , you know my daughter said to a high percentage of the students at Sarah Lawrence are gay , said what do you think would happen if we dropped you into Gaza tomorrow ? How does that work ? I mean it seems like cognitive dissonance . You know , on steroids .

And you place in the UK every year , hundreds of thousands of people go and it's you know , the crowd is full of Palestinian flags . No one thinking that if the you know hundreds of people murdered at a music festival in Israel only a few months before , you don't see any , you didn't see any Israeli flags .

Loads of the artists , famous bands , talking about Palestine , palestine , palestine , yet no one making the connection between you know , actually , yeah , an attack on similar people . And it's the same with gay rights or women's rights .

In fact , you know , not only do they not think of these kinds of things as contradictory , you'll be told you're racist if you raise questions about it . You know .

So if you object to the burqa , for instance , which obviously , you know is oppressive to women or , you know , suggests that maybe there's a problem with perhaps anti-semitism or homophobia or any of these things , or patriarchal culture within muslim communities , that would be seen as simply , uh , stereoty , not fair , even when it becomes clear as day , it's just a

taboo subject . So yeah , the contradictions are never quite reconciled .

And in their eyes , when you actually talk to them , they regard particularly Jewish people as almost the personification of hyper white supremacy , of being more Western than Western .

So from their point of view , this alliance makes perfect sense , because it's all targeting the enemy they really genuinely cannot bear , which is that of the whole legacy and the whole culture that's linked to that kind of humanist impulse within Western civilization .

Is that really where we've progressed ? To Progress is kind of a probably unfortunate way to say it but is that where we've gotten to ?

There was a very famous case where this young woman was raped by a young Muslim immigrant that came into her town and she complained that she kind of denounced the immigrant for raping or anything else .

So in the end she got criticized by the judge for making those kinds of statements and the judge said you know , what I really think is a big problem is that this poor immigrant was not assimilated into society enough so that he learned about the way we live our lives .

So it's almost as if she became the problem the fact that she reacted to her oppression in that kind of way , rather than the person who they were , you know , this kind of immigrant rapist who they were insulating from being seen as guilty and in some sense being a criminal and transgressor that it became a problem of .

Oh , what a pity that we couldn't assimilate this person better , we couldn't educate that person to be a proper German .

And um , and maybe we're at a Bastille moment where people you know we're a large part of the population , um , particularly if it spreads to young people are just saying I don't , I don't like this direction . I mean , when we were in France last year , my wife's family's from Paris , um , they were , uh , people were very open about this .

So are we at some sort of tipping point ? And how are the forces aligned ? You know , you have certainly the mainstream media , and the institutions we have this year too , are clearly on the sort of establishmentarian worldview . Are they going to be able to block this movement ?

I mean , people have been going out in the past week or so when we're recording this in the French establishment openly calling , you know , the national rally a kind of a Nazi party , you know , not just hard right but actually fascistic . I mean it has fascist roots but no one seriously believes that it wants to bring fascism into the country .

So the warnings that they used to rely on , the kind of appeals to , you know , don't go there , don't go back , don't go back to the 1930s , are just not working because , a people can see they're bogus , these parties are not like that and B people are so fed up with the sort of centrist mainstream establishment , whether that's the centre left or the centre

right , whether that's the centre-left or the centre-right .

I mean , you know , not only do these parties that are ostensibly democratic parties that you think are supposed to listen to the public and respond to public sentiment , not only do they not listen to the people , they scorn the people , you know , they tell people that they're wrong and fascist and racist for making what are often quite normal demands , like you know

, should we have control of the borders , or , or you know , people are worried about , um , the the economy not growing and they're worried about their wages stagnating , or they're worried about too many laws coming in from brussels that the climate thing combines all . You know many of those things right , because it's both .

Many of many of this kind of climate policies come from brussels . That means that they're decided by someone you didn't vote for and you can't vote out , and they're , you know , incomprehensible , uh , create an extreme kind of economic burden , um , and you know , then you're like what can you do about it other than to say there's only one ?

That guy is saying it's wrong , so I'll vote for them . That person is articulating something that I feel .

People's experience with fascism is generations old , and so that doesn't seem to be working anymore as a dog whistle that people can respond to .

Just the very use of these labels now has become so promiscuous that it basically means that I mean I spent a lot of my time telling people when I debate them , informing them that , contrary to what the guy said , I'm not a fascist , that in fact I spent a lot of my youth fighting fascism .

Because fascism becomes a label that's attached to you so easily when the newspapers time and again , day after day after day , I mean just look at the newspapers , newspapers time and again , day after day after day . I mean just look at the newspapers . Everybody who in the old days would have been mainstream , conservative or whatever , is now hard right .

I mean there's no such thing as even right anymore . It's either far right , extreme right . You know you get all these different kind of expressions .

So the struggle over language , I think , is a huge , huge issue in Europe , in Britain as well , and that's something that people like Fraser in Spike and other people really need to get a grip on , because they are controlling the language and we're always fighting catch-up .

We somehow got to basically have a language war against them to demonstrate that words should really mean something rather than be used in that kind of horrible way .

new media to get a contrary message out and at least , as of now , they can't censor it . At least , as of now , they can't censor it . I mean , do you really think that this is also sort of the abandonment of the elite principles and the loss of credibility from the elites ?

I mean , when you start hearing about how they're going to have to get rid of half of agriculture in the Netherlands , which is the most efficient agricultural producer probably anywhere outside , maybe of California , I mean , have we reached a point now where people just aren't listening ? And , by the way , it's not just the left-wing press .

If I read the FT or even the Wall Street Journal , it's more establishment party line than anything that really challenges the establishment . I mean , do you think we've reached a point where enough of the people no longer trust the mainstream media and establishment to revolt in huge numbers ?

He said that you know the working class in France , or you know the majority of people now , are just , they're actually just independent , almost they're not part of the , they're not , just , they're not taking the instructions as intended , just they're not taking the instructions as as , as intended . You know they're , they're not .

Um , it's the message just from the establishment just isn't , isn't reaching them in the same way . And and why is that ? Whether it's because , as we're talking about the promiscuous use of language , you know , if everything's far right , then nothing is , then nothing is far right . Is it the lack of trust ?

Is it the fact that you know again , again , another word that you know I'm guilty of using and I've used it today , is talking about the centre .

But the centre , you know , the sort of centrist moderates , if you take a step back and think about it , are completely crazy , right , I mean , they're the people who believe in this net zero stuff and , as you said , joel , basically willing to destroy European agriculture at the flick of a pen .

They're the people that will tell you that women can have penises or whatever it might , whatever crazy fad that comes along , they're the ones going on board with it .

And yet in the mainstream media certainly and we all kind of end up going along with it we call these people centrists , we call them sort of center left or center right or moderate , and that kind of makes no sense and it is very hard to push back against that .

And so you know , I guess shame on us for living in a world where our economic system is dependent upon being able to suck in readers on whatever premise possible .

It's the dominant institution in society because , as political parties have declined and we should talk about that the way that in Europe , political parties have become zombie parties these are the mainstream parties , the mainstream parties that dominated Europe since Second World War . They barely exist anymore .

Even the CDU , the German Christian Democratic Union the last one is gradually unraveling and is losing its members . As that has occurred , the media has acquired an incredibly important political role . So at the moment , elite hegemony relies entirely on the media and being able to provide a script for the different institutions of European society .

And if you look at the way that things work , for example , if you look at the way that things work , for example , if you look at something like Political Magazine , which is probably the most important European newspaper outlet , they play a very important role in almost prompting different individuals within Europe about what the new script is , what the script for the

week is , and it doesn't come out of the playbook of politicians or political parties . The media plays that kind of a role , which is why I think that the language they use is so homogeneous .

I mean , it's interesting Every single European society is the same language , the same words , and not only that , but they've simply refused to report important things that contradict their version of events .

For example , after the elections in Paris , there were riots anti-RN riots breaking out all over France , where they were burning down houses and attacking shops , even in places like Bobigny , which is a Parisian suburb . This was going on almost like the most anti-democratic flattening of an electoral result .

I pick up my newspaper and there's not a mention of it , not even a hint , not even two column inches about something that is crucially important that basically , you have a significant section of society that's refusing to accept the results of an election . Imagine if they were Trumpians . What a blowback that would be against that in the media .

Today it's a little bit different because , in addition to the media , you have cultural institutions that are systematically trying to indoctrinate society , particularly young people .

So when young people come home now and they basically have been told that their nation is worthless , that their history is a history of shame , that there are 120 genders rather than just men and women and this is something they already pick up at the age of six , seven and eight A lot of parents are at a loss to know what to do .

They're not laughing about it , they're not saying look how idiotic it is about what's on the school curriculum . Instead , a lot of parents are intimidated and they basically become paralyzed . I've got so many friends who are telling me that they're losing their children .

So you have this kind of problem , which never existed in a communist society , even though it was meant to be totalitarian , but it was far less total than what we're seeing today in terms of how the media and the cultural institutions work .

Or the alternative for Germany , second most popular in Germany among German youth after the sort of centre-right Christian democratic union .

I think there's an element of partly it was always just a bit of a stereotype , I think that young people are all into these sort of left-wing progressive parties and in safe spaces or it takes a sort of section of kind of middle-class youth and and says that that's what all young people are like .

Or , you know , in recent years we had a lot of the sort of Greta Thunberg inspired climate protests and you know people in the media , in particular people in politics , like to say look , you know , we are on the side of them , that's what the future looks like . So there's so partly is more , you know're seeing really , uh , the shattering of a stereotype .

But also I think I do think that there are many , you know , particularly that younger generation . If they're only just coming out of school , they will have been confronted with , um , I guess , sort of woke ideology . You know their boys in particular I mean it is mostly boys and and men being told that their masculinity is toxic .

They've had that sort of shoved down their throats from a earlier age , so you can kind of see that if they were going to rebel against their parents then , um , this is how they do it , rather than , uh , turning to , um , you know , turning to the progressive left , when actually that would get them a gold star from a lot of the adults in the room .

Are we headed towards a period of just , uh , of sort of chaos in our , in our political life ? Is , is that , um , you know ? So where is it going ?

don't know .

A lot of it depends on how the sort of centre ground reacts because for certainly the past 10 , 20 years they've tried their best to maintain a kind of cordon sanitaire around these parties to say , you know , they can't be part of the government , we must exclude them at all costs , telling voters that you know it's OK to vote for the party that's meant to be

our rival if it keeps out the , you know , the horrible hard right populace . And that is one of the things that we can to be our rival if it keeps out the horrible hard right populists . And that is one of the things that we can see is crumbling now and not working .

We've also seen in some cases I think Giorgio Maloney in Italy is a good example of this where actually the populists have been cowed slightly , they've got into government , they've made lots of concessions and accommodations and to some extent it hasn't really worked . So in Georgia Maloney's case , you know she has been courted by the EU .

She's often seen as sort of good friends with Ursula von der Leyen , but she was not in the room at all when the EU was carving up the top jobs and deciding who the next EU president or European Commission president should be and who the next European Council president should be .

So I don't know whether she will sort of learn the lesson that you can't necessarily deal with the powers that be with the Brussels establishment and still deliver for your voters , powers that be with the brussels establishment and still , uh , deliver for your , your voters , um . So there's that .

Um , it depends , yeah , how much do the populists stand up for themselves and how much do uh are the elites able to resist and keep them out with this sort of cordon sanitaire strategy ? So , can you give us odds ? Can you give us ? Well , I think the populists , I . I can say what I think the voters will do . I think the populists will .

I can say what I think the voters will do . I think the populace will gain in in popularity , because I , my sense is that the reaction from the establishment is always to try to shut these things down , try to censor them , try to ignore them , not engage with um , not engage with the issues people care about .

So I think the actual in terms of how well they were doing in elections , I think the you know the sky's , the sky's the limit , really the only way , is up . But you know , in the sort of weird kind of post-democratic age we live in , it doesn't necessarily just because people vote for something doesn't mean it will happen .

Unfortunately , especially in the EU , frank , especially you .

And whenever people become part of the conversation , then I think you can have a greater confidence that some kind of democratic decision-making may take off .

But realistically , I would say that at the moment , what we're seeing is the implosion of the elite parties , and they've created a space where populist movements can advance , and so it's not simply the case that it's an inner drive within populism that has led them forward , but the fact that there's been a vacuum , that people have basically abandoned these old

mainstream parties who are retreating all the time . The way that I look at it is that things can happen very fast .

I think the situation in France is crucially important , because whatever happens in France , even if the RN doesn't get to be the governing party , even if they just maintain their existing vote , that's a game changer , because it basically means that France , which is one of the mainstays of the European Union along with Germany , has gone rogue as far as their eyes

are concerned , and this is something that in Brussels and elsewhere , they are watching with trepidation . They know that they cannot simply carry on in the old technocratic way . So what I think is really important is that this has happened .

Populism will continue to grow , but it will take a long time because most parties lack the maturity , the political maturity , and lack the programmatic clarity to know exactly what it is that they want . They have not yet learned how to stand on their two feet and to basically become clever maneuverers in politics . So that's going to take a bit of time .

But there are two things that I'm very pleased about . One is that the youth are moving in the right direction and , as Fraser was saying , there's a large number of kids that are becoming politicized in the right kind of a way .

Of course it's still polarized because by and large , university students are still sort of supporting the status quo parties , the status quo movements , but most of the other kids are moving in a slightly different direction and that's really positive because that's new certainly new in my lifetime to see that kind of kind of genuine sort of youth radicalization occurring

where young working class kids you know , men and women , girls and boys , and also a lot of black and North African people are taking part in this . It isn't just simply a white kind of phenomenon , or moving in the right direction .

I should also put in a plug for my own country , hungary , because I think what Orbán has did the prime minister of Hungary is by giving two fingers to the European Union and calling their bluff .

It's basically a situation where a lot of other people are saying that if Hungary can give up basically give two fingers to the oligarchy in Brussels then maybe we can do as well .

And I can see that a lot of other parties , a lot of other movements of different political complexion are all drawing the conclusion that they don't need to be good boys and good girls anymore , that they have the right to stand up and fight for their national interest rather than roll over all the time . So , basically , I wish I was Fraser's age .

I wish I was a baby a little bit younger , because I would like to get stuck in and do things better than I did in the 1960s and maybe contribute to developing this movement in a more positive and in a more future-oriented direction .

If we're headed into this resurgence of global , of national interest rather , is it something that you see as cyclical Do you see that ultimately there will be some kind of synthesis that comes out of the juxtaposition of national interest versus global commonality that will ultimately result in changing the institutions in Europe and around the world ?

They've become exhausted and they've lost the capacity to motivate people , and therefore we're now in a situation where we've got to rethink what kind of politics we would like to see moving forward . What kind of politics we would like to see moving forward .

Are we going to get stuck and remain with labels like left and right , at a time when their meanings have completely changed and almost have an absurd kind of content ?

And myself , what I'm looking forward , what I'm hoping is going to occur in this crucial moment that we're heading into , is that people will begin to basically not just simply repeat the ideals of the past , but try to find a way of reappropriating that in such a way that it answers the questions of our time , which are very different than the questions that we

had to answer 20 , 40 , 50 years ago .

There are so many things that , especially in the context of the european union , but I think it's true of the us as well you know ideas , you know contests about the economy , questions about borders , questions about sovereignty , questions about well , the climate is another , another one .

They're just decided um by experts , by technocrats , by officials , by judges , and you know the populist parties are saying no , we actually um , we don't agree with this approach and we want to do something different .

Whether you agree with their exact um approaches or not , I mean , and all of them have different , uh , you know different views all across europe and across the world . It doesn't matter . The point is that these ideas and issues are being put up for discussion again , that you know nothing .

Um , the establishment might say that here's the consensus and you have to accept it , and these parties are saying you don't , and that , for me , can only be a positive thing . You know these parties are not the finished product , they're not necessarily .

You know something that , uh , they don't have all the answers , but they , in opening up the debate , in bringing more people into the debate , in getting people excited about politics and political change . I mean one thing that's worth pointing out is that in every election recently where turnout has gone up , you see the populist vote go up .

So it's clear that people who had felt apathetic , demoralised , that people who had felt apathetic , demoralized , depoliticized are excited again , hopeful again .

We look forward to seeing how all of this plays out and to having you back on the podcast . Thanks again , thank you .