Once, anti-establishment youth disillusioned with mainstream politics headed left. Now increasing numbers are tilting right. Why?
Josh is 24 years old and works as a carer. It’s not easy work, but he prefers it to his old job in a supermarket: most of his clients are elderly and “just want someone there with them, because they’re lonely”. In his spare time Josh used to be into boxing. But lately he’s got into politics instead.
Like many of his gen Z contemporaries, he’s thoroughly disillusioned with the mainstream kind. “The two parties that have been in power for 100-plus years have done nothing. The economy’s a mess,” he scoffs. But if he sounds like the kind of anti-establishment young person who once rallied to the radical left, Josh’s frustration has taken him in another direction. An ardent leaver in his teens, who backed Boris Johnson in 2019, he now belongs to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.
The opinion was presented as a universal truth, not a rare occurrence, or even a common occurrence. The word “sometimes”, or similar would have had to have been used for it to be “something that happens”.
And I think you know that.
Yes, it probably would have been phrased better as “often” or “frequently”, but you then saying it was entirely opinion and worse not even something they had the wit to come up with on their own was also poorly phased given that you then admitted it does happen.
Irrelevant; it is still opinion masquerading as fact. It is an opinion I have encountered many, many times. So the conclusion that it is not an original thesis is reasonable.