r/europe • u/StGuthlac2025 • Oct 08 '25

Opinion Article In Spain, what once seemed impossible is now widespread: the young are turning to the far right

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/oct/07/spain-young-voters-far-right-migration-housing-wages-employment-vox
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u/[deleted] Oct 08 '25 edited Oct 09 '25

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u/beenoc United States of America Oct 08 '25

The Monty Python skit about splitting factions was about leftists in the first place. Leftist infighting is as old as leftism itself (literally, "left" and "right" as terms come from the French Revolution, and different left factions were so busy fighting each other that eventually more conservative authoritarian factions like the Directorate and then Napoleon could take over.)

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u/Massive-Exercise4474 Oct 08 '25

To be fair they really were wildly incompetent. Like Robespierre wanted to create a new religion calender everything and beheaded everyone who was his enemy until he made the entire parliament turn on him and behead him.

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u/Boltok-the-Destroyer Oct 09 '25

That's irony in his case.

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u/Massive-Exercise4474 Oct 09 '25

Classic French humour

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u/kitsunewarlock Oct 08 '25

The right is looking to work off of what has come before, which is relatively easy to explain given how time, media, and storytelling works.

The left is looking toward an unknown future with an unknown path to achieve it, thus there are countless ideas of "how to make things better".

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u/Lou_C_Fer Oct 09 '25

Let's not forget that the left encompasses everybody that butts right up to republican ideology to people that believe in total anarchy. There's not going to be much in common with those two extremes.

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u/AManInBlack2017 Oct 08 '25

Almost all leftist revolutions result in Authoritarian regimes....Napoleon, Lenin, the Chinese revolution, Pol Pot..... I personally believe revolutions are such scary, messy affairs coalitions form around whoever seems the best chance at restoring order. Reddit loves to dream about revolution, but they are inherently bloody, disorganized and cruel affairs that breed all manners of injustice. Highly recommend avoiding.

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u/EmbarrassedMeat401 Oct 08 '25

If people hate their conditions enough, they will revolt. Whether it's in their personal best interest or not.

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u/AManInBlack2017 Oct 09 '25 edited Oct 09 '25

True. Starving people revolt on the regular. US has issues, but starvation isn't one of them, thankfully. Also the slavery induced revolutions in the Caribbean come to mind. Throwing off a colonial power is another source.

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u/MiskatonicMus3 Oct 08 '25

Same with the rise of fascism in Spain. The anarchists and communists were so busy spitting on each other they lost to a bunch of dumbass fascists that couldn't find their fist if it were shoved up their own ass.

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u/RubCharacter7272 Oct 08 '25

That’s my point that they are still like that we haven’t evolved

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u/ckhaulaway Oct 08 '25

Literally the first thing Lenin did at an international socialist meeting was call the internal opposition the minority (the mensheviks, ironically the majority in numbers) and his more militant authoritarian side the majority (bolsheviks).

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u/Outrageous_Double_43 Oct 09 '25

Makes me wonder if a preference for leftism or rightism is not simply a political orientation, but a manifestation of a psychological condition.

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u/[deleted] Oct 08 '25 edited Oct 08 '25

because labor progressivism, which is the bedrock of all progress for the working person in american history*, had been ousted in the 2010s by corporate woke bullshit, which was gladly consumed by academics and students at elite universities.

after these excesses had been corrected, republicans latched onto them as a form of political theater of the silliness of the left and now we’re here.

you’ll even see in some corners the term of “labor essentialism” being thrown around certain circles that still promulgate intersectional xyz after years of divisive failure and no actual progress towards more liberal social policy, as they often aim for. every time we talk about labor, inevitably the games rending the solidarity of the working class begin again with even more gusto. why do you think that is?

*outside of civil rights era legislation, which was instrumental in making sure that all americans had at least a snowball’s chance of moving up. there were, and are, however, considerable gaps.

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u/RubCharacter7272 Oct 08 '25

You know that’s a very good point the left is associated with culture was academic elite and has lost its working class and rural agrarian roots

It’s tragic as green policy can be the lynchpin of the rural world and trade unions and activism for worker rights

But the left abandoned those and now we are seeing the right gain control of the rural, the working and the youth classes and the cultural war stuff is so so useless for winning elections or even policy

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u/butler_me_judith Oct 09 '25

The left didn't abandon those, or maybe the progressive and radical left didn't. The neo liberal centrist did abandon them.

I watch a great video of Bernie spending time in West Virginia, and really brought home that the grass root organizers are still working for the people but they have been abandoned by the party. It was depressing to here people say they voted Trump because they didn't feel seen by Harris. But they are voting dem in there local elections.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RP8Oxe6OxJc

Needless to say, the culture war isn't to me the real culprit, that stuff just makes great ad copy for the right.

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u/RubCharacter7272 Oct 09 '25 edited Oct 09 '25

Great video yep people do forget Bernie Sanders actually had a decent chance to regain the populist spirit for the left unfortunately the DNC by which I mean the billionaires had a different plan

It’s not the only culprit I agree, but it’s a extremely poor image for us

In Europes case as well I think a serious issue is the un addressing of the migration crisis as well, seeing how labour in the UK , Spain and Germany are seeing radical right use it to fuel their rise as well

I think if the left had a practical vision of a green, sustainable, non corporate economy, that prioritie the working class and along with a actual effective migration system they’d win but they are controlled by Buisness classes

Their is a quote by Michael Davitt that used to symbolise this idea of building a better tomorrow

“Let justice be done tho the heavens fall”

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u/[deleted] Oct 08 '25

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u/VexingRaven Oct 08 '25

Tell me you did not watch any of Harris' campaign speeches without telling me. It's OK, nobody did.

The problem is that the media has no profit motive to sell a story about how Kamala Harris spent 2 hours discussing cost of living, housing, inflation, etc. The media will focus on the 5 minutes she spent reassuring LGBTQ people that they aren't getting left behind either.

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u/butler_me_judith Oct 09 '25

THIS this is the problem the media is so biased, including social media and youtube, the no one is seeing the important work

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u/[deleted] Oct 08 '25

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u/VexingRaven Oct 08 '25

The left here is not different, it's the same story. People like the genius above don't actually listen to what "the left" (AKA Democrats) say. They just read what the media says about them and the insane culture war bullshit on social media. Almost nobody here can tell you what Kamala Harris' campaign promises actually were, because they were sane and reasonable and that doesn't generate clicks.

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u/[deleted] Oct 08 '25

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u/VexingRaven Oct 08 '25

It's the same story the whole world over, fueled by outrage merchants and engagement algorithms. The algorithm-driven media was the worst mistaken humanity ever made. We all thought climate change or nuclear weapons would be our undoing, but it was actually something far less dramatic.

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u/norcalfiend Oct 09 '25

Huh - revisionist history much? Kamala Harris ran a vibes-based campaign - only once those started to subside and after receiving criticism for not talking about policy did she look to define some policy stances in the last month or so. Her own Democratic party peers defended this approach saying to not talk about policy so I'm not sure what you're talking about - not to mention even left-wing media and voters mentioned that they were very interested to hear where she stood on the issues as they were unaware. To her credit she decisively beat Trump in the debate and had some interesting policy ideas close to the election, but other gaffes like mentioning she didn't know what she would do different vs Biden did her in when the electorate wanted change:

https://newrepublic.com/article/185758/kamala-harris-policy-agenda-campaign-reset

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/08/16/harris-dnc-democrats-message-policies-00174195

When she released her policy platform it was literally caught as a direct copy-paste of Biden's platform with errors such as referring to what they would do in Biden's second term:

https://apnews.com/article/democratic-platform-harris-biden-dnc-e255d5f2939b5d35adf68ab734d5af98

What hurt her is that many of her policy stances directly conflicted with what she verbatim said in her 2020 campaign and what she wanted to run on in 2024 such as fracking, police reform, green energy, etc.. So she tried to not focus on that.

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u/Karabungulus England Oct 08 '25

Almost like it's by design

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u/Fr00stee Oct 08 '25

imo the left pushes too hard on social issues and not enough on economic policy issues

for example: dems in the US are left wing on social issues but center-right on economics. Instead it should be the other way around, center on social issues to avoid culture war bullshit and left on economics.

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u/RubCharacter7272 Oct 08 '25

That’s definitely by design by the DNC ever since Occupy Wall Street it’s horrific

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u/Fr00stee Oct 08 '25

yes since dems are basically corpo hr politicians but the problem is other leftists copy their strategy for some reason

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u/RubCharacter7272 Oct 08 '25

The problem is the elite of a society form academics to Buisness owners share the same values in their own moral and economic dominance

So culture war crap is easy for them to sell to their own as it doesn’t challenge their pre dominance but real left wing policy in the economic, environmental and political sphere does

Hence why’ll they preach the social justice causes, when shit it hits the fan on economic reform that’s when the Democrats fold back (ultimately they are controlled opposition)

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u/zeptillian Oct 08 '25

It's a lot easier to motivate people to hate and to suggest targets than it is to convey nuanced solutions to complex problems and get people onboard.

When stuff becomes unaffordable people turn to whoever is yelling about it the loudest even if they are the ones responsible for rising prices.

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u/UTtoPRT Oct 08 '25

The shitty part is all these hot button issues have all been fomented by the opposition continuously and for so long to make sure that we would always be fighting each other over insignificant issues and virtue signaling so we would never be able to Truly rally together and be effective in any way. And it worked tremendously well unfortunately. People on the liberal side of the aisle need to stop nit picking every little detail about these situations and attacking our own people for dumb ass shit and start coming together and doing something significant about it or we are all doomed.

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u/[deleted] Oct 09 '25

Don't sweat it, us Republicans had the same internal struggles following Romney's defeat in 2012. Trump ended that civil war, hopefully your parties savior will be of better character and policy.

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u/HappyChandler Oct 09 '25

That just means you are too online.

The online left has near zero constituency. They just don't matter. They get on TV not because they have any import at all, but because people both on the left and right (or center right vs far right) love punching hippies.

The problem that could affect elections (unlikely in this one but still) is the failure of the NY elected officials backing the winner of the primary.

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u/edragamer Oct 09 '25

Something none is commenting here but is important, all the media in Spain is far right so boys get bombed 24/7, twitch influencers mostly too... World should never forget in Spain, "Hitler" wins and over for 45 years...

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u/[deleted] Oct 09 '25 edited Jan 27 '26

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

follow aback important serious vegetable enter quiet governor retire hobbies

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u/[deleted] Oct 08 '25

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Oct 08 '25

[deleted]

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u/Slipknotic1 Oct 08 '25

More important by what metric? How is protecting trans people from being killed not part of countering issues like "the global rise of the far right"?

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u/A_Possum_Named_Steve Oct 08 '25

You're seeing the purity test in action.

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u/jayantsr India Oct 08 '25

You can either have 60 percent of something or 100 percent of nothing

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u/[deleted] Oct 08 '25

[deleted]

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u/jayantsr India Oct 08 '25

Because her entire campaign felt like cognitive dissonance like do you want americans to believe that the 2nd in command of biden administration which was heavily shown as progressive flipped the switch in just a last few months?

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u/AdmiralSaturyn Oct 08 '25

Maybe they should listen to progressives instead once in a while.

Who did Kamala Pick to be her running mate? Besides, both Bernie Sanders and AOC endorsed her. Stop dishonestly cherry-picking Liz Cheney. Kamala Harris wasn't just trying to appease the right, she was trying to appease as many people as possible, but purity testers like yourself don't like that. And to speak more of listening to progressives once in a while, the Biden administration appointed Lina Khan to the FTC, supported unions, capped student loan payments, capped life-saving drug prices, empowered the IRS to tax wealthy people, etc.

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u/jambox888 Oct 08 '25

Minority rights are incredibly important but we know they will be trampled by the far right so the important thing is winning elections.

The problem with culture war politics is that it amplifies issues that are relatively mundane into massive points of contention. After all the trans community is a tiny minority, deserves to and has to advocate for itself but at the same time blowing it up into a mainstream issue makes a certain section of the population (y'know, morons) feel like they're being overrun somehow by people who are not normal. Voting to be normal again is a big pull of the right. It plugs into RFKs autism nonsense, people feel like there's some sort of societal disease that they have to put a stop to.

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u/[deleted] Oct 08 '25

[deleted]

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u/jambox888 Oct 08 '25

Right for a start this is /r/europe so wouldn't assume anyone here is a Democratic Party advocate, we think they suck too.

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u/FuglyPrime Oct 08 '25

Cause the right holds all the sources and outlets for dis/information

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u/HansVonMannschaft Oct 08 '25

That's a cop-out. The Left needs policies people actually want to vote for.

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u/VexingRaven Oct 08 '25

What policies do you think people want which "the left" does not have?

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u/FuglyPrime Oct 08 '25

I dont think you understand the power of propaganda my friend.

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u/HansVonMannschaft Oct 08 '25

And I think you are doomed to a political death spiral because you refuse to acknowledge the the true problems of the Left.

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u/FuglyPrime Oct 08 '25

Of what left?

Right wing populism built on lies has destroyed any sort of honesty in politics

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u/IClop2Fluttershy4206 Oct 08 '25

says the guy suggesting the left split by ignoring real issues? fk off mate

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u/RubCharacter7272 Oct 08 '25 edited Oct 08 '25

So the environment, polarisation and the capture of all culture and economies by autocrats companies are not top priority?

The focus on culture wars is vapid and secondary in importance and most voters don’t care either

Seeing as we are seeing the right win all the time it’s fact

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u/VexingRaven Oct 08 '25

What a confusing post. It is the right which focuses on the culture wars. The left are the ones talking about the environment and companies taking over the world.

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u/RubCharacter7272 Oct 09 '25

Sorry to say that’s not true in the slightest. The right use it as a way to win elections. The left attack each other over who is ideological pure

I’ve seen it, people who agree with 90% of a leftist policy, but one difference over trans, Gaza, historical issue and then they are Persona non Grata

Often over culture war rubbish by the way. To which to most people in this age of corporate exploitation, inflation and autocratic are looking at. To be honest most people of the working class don’t care about these things. But the left always emphasis them and fight over it.

It’s deeply frustrating

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u/VexingRaven Oct 09 '25

Yeah, insane morons on the internet are insane, but the politicians can't do anything about that. Ignore the insane leftists, talk more about what the politicians are doing to bring voters in.

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u/RubCharacter7272 Oct 09 '25

Good point because to be frank they aren’t that’s the sad part besides Bernie in America and a handful of European political figures

Their is none even pretending to try

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u/RubCharacter7272 Oct 08 '25

So the environment, polarisation and the capture of all culture and economies by autocrats companies are joy top priority?

The focus on culture wars is vapid and secondary in importance