The Kids Are Alt Right?

Is Gen Z actually becoming more reactionary?

Young people are the future, and it’s usually held that they will bring progressive ideas with them. Baby Boomers are the prime example of this in popular culture, with the civil rights activists and hippies forming the basis of what we see as advancements in societal progress made during the 1960s and 70s. The unstated part of this conventional wisdom is that if the youth were to turn against social progress, then any of the advancements made during the 20th century would be in serious jeopardy.

The concerns over what trends are present in youth movements rose to new prominence after 2024 election exit polls showed that voters under 30 voted for Trump in record numbers. It dovetails with another similar issue, that being the rise of ‘manosphere’ figures like Andrew Tate among boys and young men. These trends have seemingly come together to form a new chimera of ideology, the so called ‘rightward shift of Gen Z’. It brings to mind an apocalyptic vision for the more historically informed. Maybe the Italian Blackshirts of the 1920s, maybe the Reaganite Baby Boomers of the 1980s, maybe a little bit of both. Either way, if it comes to pass, an entire generation would be spent reversing the advancements made during the past 20 years.

‘Gen Z’ could roughly be defined as anyone who was in school at the time of the Covid-19 pandemic, the psychological effects of which it will take years to fully comprehend. Because of this ambiguity everyone gets to have their own reasons for why the supposed shift to the right has happened. There is no real social risk to being a pessimist, which makes hysterical predictions about the supposed descent of Gen Z into fascism easy to throw out and difficult to disprove. Lack of economic opportunity, a void of political leadership, and ‘the damn phones’ are popular explanations across the left to center of the ideological spectrum for the phenomenon.

Rising inflation and a locked up real estate market made Gen Z slightly more optimistic about Trump’s policies on housing than other generations even if there was never much in the way of a concrete plan from his campaign. A massive upwards wealth transfer during the pandemic coupled with deepening inequality for those without real estate assets. While racial wealth inequality deepened during the pandemic, those who owned real estate (overwhelmingly older Americans) were relatively better off. The difference in growth of financial assets was 35% between Black and White Americans, while in real estate, the difference was a little under 15%. Inflation and cost of living were issues that carried Trump to victory in 2024, apparently showing that the American youth sought a right wing plan to fix it.

Source: New York Federal Reserve

For the politically active members of Gen Z, 2020 was not just the year of the pandemic, but also a year of profound disillusion. Bernie Sanders had mobilized thousands of young people (myself included) to an electoral goal which inspired genuine hope for the future of the country. In the last minute before Super Tuesday, most other candidates dropped out to support former vice president Joe Biden, who had been almost completely dead in the water before the South Carolina primary. It was incredibly cynical move by the Democratic Party establishment to secure the nomination for the most conservative candidate in the primary, and one whose mental faculties were being questioned even before the Iowa caucuses.

This understandably left a bitter taste in the mouth of many left wing Gen Z activists as Covid-19 was declared a pandemic 8 days after Super Tuesday. Even after his victory was all but assured and the pandemic was declared, Biden was still encouraging his supporters to go vote in person. Biden’s