Millennials and Generation Z vote extreme
There is not only a generational change that can be seen in the predominance of technology in the Information Age; a transformation in consumption patterns and in the way in which a certain broad stratum of society interrelates. Certainly there is an ideology that is making its way and is beginning to take its political toll in elections.
The Baby Boomers continue to go to the polls to vote (despite their advanced age) and not only in the streets, but fundamentally in elections, at the time they used their vote to push for the changes that their generation demanded.
Then came Generation X, to which I belong. This is the generation of political disenchantment, every time the economy fails and expectations worsen, many people of this generation have stayed at home when there is a vote. They show their political disaffection by abstaining.
People of this generation work twice as much as their parents and live worse than their grandparents, yet they have treated millennials with velvet, demanding almost nothing from them and giving them a lot in their upbringing.
On top of that, they have empowered them with technology. I recently read an article that said millennials will be the richest generation in history: they will inherit all the assets of their grandparents, the Baby Boomers, and everything their Generation X parents have accumulated in assets.
Millennials have not been exempt from criticism in many countries mainly because of their ability to leave one job and move to another without complaint; because of their enormous mobility and because they want easy money. This is with much less effort than their grandparents and parents.
However, this cohort has become a major driver of social change; many of the most advanced pieces of legislation of our time are precisely the product of the enormous social (and political) pressure that millennials represent. Unlike their parents, they want to vote.
As is the case with generation Z, with those young first-timers who have come of age in recent years, and are eager to go and vote; to drop the ballot paper in the ballot box with a significant level of responsibility.
But the electoral tastes of millennials and generation Z are far removed from the centre and from the orbit that for decades has worked in the democracy of several countries where bipartisanship has been the foundational axis.
That is why we are seeing how, as time goes by and the Baby Boomers die off and begin to disappear, and as more and more people in generation X do not vote, the millennials and generation Z are taking on a dynamic role in democracies. And they are doing so to skew towards the extremes.
I note a lapse that is perhaps the fault of a deficient education in history, the result of so much fiddling (in all countries) with textbooks and their content. There is little discussion of democratic values; of the disaster of dictatorships; of the risks of National Socialism; of populism... of the risks of being identified with and seduced more by a figure than by a political party and its ideology.
On the subject
The extremes are gaining political ground and this should lead us as a society to reflect on the future that awaits the generations that are driving these changes and that will end up being the dominant ones, especially the millennials, because the other generations are suffering from the falling birth rate.
In Europe, in each political process, the far right is gaining more and more ground, and it is not exactly a cause for rejoicing. Young people believe that many of today's problems are imported: they are brought by migrants and economic and commercial openness, and the voters of the ultra-left do not distance themselves from this notion either.
In the end, polar opposites always end up attracting each other in various fields; there is already talk of a sweetened ultra-right, with fewer symbols and less outlandish and content disguised as sheep's clothing, although in the end it always leads to the same path: the politics of hate. The loss of centrality is definitely not good for the health of democracies in the 21st century.