While many believe young people are becoming more liberal, data shows that 12th grade boys are nearly twice as likely to identify as conservative compared to liberal. Around 25% of high school seniors identify as conservative while only 13% identify as liberal. In contrast, the share of 12th grade girls identifying as liberal has risen to 30%. Many factors may contribute to this trend, including the rhetoric of Donald Trump which appealed to disaffected young men, and the focus of progressive movements on issues of gender and racial equality which some young men perceive as a “matriarchy.” However, most high school seniors claim no political identity, and many boys in high school do not actively discuss
The same thing fascism seemingly has to offer: easy solutions to complex problems.
I’m not saying (especially white) young men are treated unfair but as one myself it’s easy to come to the conclusion as you do feel a rift between fulfilling conservative societal norms you grew up with and learned from your elders for which isn’t really a space left anymore except of conservative circles so you do kinda feel like being privileged is a burden because you think you have to fulfill more expectations than other groups and I think there’s a lack of addressing this in public discourse without simply demonizing young males for trying to find their identity in a way that also includes a healthy relationship with one’s own masculinity. If you discuss this I feel like you’re quickly drifting into incel and alpha bullshit territory because they’re the only ones addressing those problems but of course they don’t offer actual solutions because that’s not really part of their business model.
It’s important to recognize that fascists are not evil comic book villains. If you are a member of their ethnostate they will come off quite pleasant. They will say “You are beautiful, you are kind, you are wise. We are building a utopia and we’d like you to join us.” Then eventually they will say “We cannot build a utopia because they stand in our way. They are ugly, they are cruel, they are stupid.” And then before you know it you are building gas chambers.
It’s also fun to be in a group and authorian regimes usually have nice aesthetics. It can be very tempting when a group includes you and you think you’ll have a purpose as a human being by joining.
Maybe we should found a fascist group just without the fascism and it’s including for everyone where everyone dresses nice and we march together and some guy holds energetic speeches about random stuff like that one time his dog ate an entire birthday cake and there’s a specific greeting we use.
Unfortunately fascism can’t actually work without an “other” to be a scapegoat. Fascism frames history as the struggle of an infallible ethnostate towards prosperity. Therefore any imperfection in the state is the result of the influence of “others” working against the state. Without an “other” fascists would actually need to take responsibility for society’s shortcomings.
aw hell, uniforms by Hugo Boss?