How the 'Joe Rogan effect' and colonialism is driving populism in ...

Less than two years into its term, Labor has been warned the party risks losing a generation of young voters.

"It’s the economy, stupid! And if we in Labor continue to think

are the problem — implicitly stupid — they will deservedly punish us," writes Nick Dyrenfurth, author of a new report by Labor-aligned think tank the John Curtin Research Centre.

The threat of voter punishment is often thought to come from the party's left flank —

— but Dyrenfurth says there's another concern: young people flocking to right-wing populists.

In other words, Labor and Australia generally are not immune from populist surges we've seen around the world in recent years.

Political scientists often attribute populism's rise to economic decline and social changes, like immigration, stoking a feeling of loss.

But how a person perceives that loss is complex; gender, age, and a country’s history are vital in defining which populists they turn to.

Two recent shock results last month, on opposite sides of the world, prompted a new round of claims about a global shift to the right.

Days later, young people in the Netherlands were key to electing Geert Wilders — who once declared "I hate Islam" — after a campaign dominated by debate on immigration.

The Dutch result continued a trend across Europe; in 2022, young Italians flocked to Georgia Meloni, whose party has fascist roots, the same year the far-right Sweden Democrats seized on immigration to become the country's largest party.

Neither Milei nor Wilders holds views typically associated with young people.

Argentina, which was economically comparable to Australia a century ago, now bears the world's largest IMF debt and roughly 60 per cent of youths live below the poverty line.

David Smith, associate professor at the United States Studies Centre, says young people opting for Milei was a sign they were "pretty desperate to try something else" after decades of economic failure.

A global economy wracked by inflation, and housing crises in many countries, partially accounts for the ongoing far-right surge.

Smith notes that unemployment is comparatively low in the US, but many of the jobs available — particularly to uneducated young men — are "unfulfilling".

That's where lost social status — the feeling of losing one's "dominant place" in society — comes in.

"Populism isn't just a response to economic circumstances, it's how those circumstances are interpreted. When there's a sense of betrayal, a sense of having what is yours being given away to someone else ... [you're] a lot more susceptible to it," Smith says.

The changing social order, with women and second-generation immigrants achieving positions of power, creates a fertile breeding ground for right-wing populists to exploit.

Smith says immigration becomes a strong talking point in populist discourse, creating a sense of being "squeezed" from both sides: "treacherous elites milking everyone" and cheap foreign labour they use to "prop up" their power.

But that leaves women more immune, even when suffering the same economic disruptions.

"In relative terms, more secular-minded women aren't looking back to some Golden Age and thinking: 'It was a lot better back then'," Smith says.

When women are wooed by the far-right, as they have been in the US, their motivations are often religious.

Political currents in Ireland and Northern Ireland seem to be flowing left, even though headlines were dominated recently by a race riot in Dublin.

Democratic socialists Sinn Fein, historically the political outgrowth of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), have made large inroads in both countries.

The rise of a party with links to the IRA is particularly notable, given many voters have living memories of bloodshed in Northern Ireland caused by fighting Unionists and Republicans —

.

Sinn Fein won the 2022 Northern Ireland elections, before dominating vital council elections in a result likened to a "tsunami" by the BBC this year.

Across the border in the Republic of Ireland, Sinn Fein enjoys a strong lead driven by support from young people, which is at a level almost double that of the two major parties.

The political platform of party leader, Mary Lou McDonald, targets economic angst.

While Irish republicanism — the goal of uniting the island and removing UK governance in Northern Ireland — remains central to Sinn Fein, McDonald has declared housing her "number one priority" as rents in Ireland skyrocket.

Smith believes the sense of sovereignty being under threat is at the core of populism.

"The question is: where does the threat come from? Countries like Ireland, which have this long history of colonialism and the interference of a huge foreign power, [are] much more susceptible to left-wing populism," he says.

The motives are different for right-wing populism.

Looking at historically dominant countries, signs of that rightward trend are obvious.

While accepting many Australians feel angry about a declining blue-collar workforce and progressive social changes, Smith says the country's lack of historical colonial power "mutes" populism here.

"It doesn't remove it completely, but it's going to be a different kind of populism. It's a somewhat more modest version of populism, with somewhat more modest aims," he says.

Labor and the Coalition have suffered consistently declining primary votes, with young people in particular delivering the Greens their best election result last year.

But on the right, Smith says populist parties are restrained by the Coalition "absorbing" their messages when needed, parroting a feeling that social changes had "gone too far".

He says Australia does not have the same pressures on the border seen in the US and parts of Europe, and its mainstream conservative party has successfully spoken to the angst that does exist.

"John Howard was, in many ways, a pretty effective populist. Tony Abbott was a less effective populist, but that was definitely a role that he tried to play," he says.