Young people appear in polls around the world increasingly leaning towards the extreme right, using the symbols and flags of fascism and even Nazism. It is something new and little explored that is worrying the democratic forces.
Some wonder with some astonishment why these young people, initially considered idealists and supporters of the values of freedom, end up being trapped by extremist and violent forces.
Perhaps it should be remembered that, as traditional psychology teaches, young people experience the most turbulent age of their lives. It is most puzzling for those who don’t yet feel like adults, but also don’t feel like children. And at the same time, they are attracted to violence. Maybe because it’s also the Age of Rebellion.
Those of us who have lived long know that in the past the left came to offer young people ideals intertwined with violence to set them free. It was violence against the bad guys who were then the bourgeoisie, the exploiters who kept them in poverty. Suffice it to recall what the figure of Che Guevara was in Cuba and later worldwide as a symbol of resistance and idealism for young people. It was the fight of good against evil. Today this idol is broken, like so many others created by the extreme left.
Words like revolution, left, fight against capitalism and fascism were magical to young people in search of ideals. It allowed them to express their violent instincts in search of better dreams.
When we talk about young people, we must not forget that, yesterday and today, they are all attracted to violence, whatever the sign. They are the flags of rebellion, whatever the political persuasion.
There are families who are surprised that their growing and sometimes young children are fascinated by violent, gory games and movies. Psychology has always studied this phenomenon from a physiological point of view. It’s that moment when your son or daughter isn’t grown up yet but doesn’t feel like kids anymore. You just feel uncomfortable. That’s why they tend to be together, in groups, in gangs, with their symbols of whatever color. They even tend to dress all alike for fear of being cornered. It is the phenomenon of the pack that protects.
All of this is known. It’s a classic. For this reason, it should come as no surprise that today’s young people feel more disarmed and helpless than ever in a historic moment of radical change, artificial intelligence that frightens even adults.
Always in search of the new and the ideal, young people are no longer attracted to what we called the ideals of the left, summed up in the slogan of the French Revolution of equality, liberty and fraternity, because of us, not them.
No one can deny that for a young person today, politics is seen more as a business than as a way of life. In the democracy that was once a symbol of freedom against arbitrariness and slavery, young people today discover corruption and petty private interests.
One goes into politics to get rich, even if it means betraying the core of democracy and its values. And today that includes the left and not just the right. Where are the political idols that can make the hearts of young people and their ideals vibrate today? What they hear even from their parents is that “everyone is a thief” and that they all fall into the trap of creeping interests far removed from previous ideals.
But why do young people today, no longer enthusiastic about the ideals of the left, admire the violent new right? After the idealism of freedom and the struggle against slavery, why do today’s youth come up against the myths of God, country and family, symbols of the most rank conservatism?
Why do the young people who once fought for the ideals of pacifism and cried, “Make love, not war” now join the black ranks of the violent politics of an extreme right that delights in awakening instincts? Any more animals?
The answer to these troubling questions is not easy, but it is imperative to analyze them because they may end up weighing on those who will be the leaders of the future. There must be something to the violent slogans of the extreme right if they are able to attract more and more new generations when in politics all they can offer them is incitement to violence and a love of arms and death.
It is no coincidence that here in Brazil, the extreme right-wing Bolsonaro immediately launched the armament ideal, the passion for firearms, and even made it possible for minors to attend shooting clubs. During his election campaign, he even taught a five-year-old girl he held to mimic firing a gun with her innocent fingers.
No, it is not young people who betray the ideals that one day enabled them to dream of politics and exercise their natural fighting instincts. We are the elders betraying our liberating ideals with politics and a democracy increasingly clouded by personal and petty interests.
Young people will always be in search of ideals to unleash the fire that fuels them in their veins. If the left, once a symbol of liberating hopes, once offered refuge and peace to young people, today it seems – a sad paradox – it is the extreme right that offers them the illusion that they can unleash the demands of struggle and unrest naturally for your age.
For those of us who still believe in the values of democracy and freedom, our denial of the resurgence of far-right banners should not be enough. We must save for our young people the resurgence of new, liberating ideals, adapted to the new times of change in which we all, and not just young people, are caught and confused.
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