CHALLENGE: THE FAR RIGHT’S WAR FOR THE MILLENNIAL SOUL

SOLUTION: DON’T TAKE PROGRESSIVE SOCIETY FOR GRANTED, ECONOMIST WARNS

While millennials are increasingly mobilizing to fight for causes they feel passionate about, some of the activism is taking a darker turn.

This is a move from the resurgent far right or alt-right, which has made inroads with millennials across the globe and may yet influence the federal election in Canada.

Such forces were emboldened by the election of Donald Trump, as well as European leaders like Hungary’s Viktor Orban, helped along by ‘fake news’ propaganda on social media.

“The millennial is not a unified political category,” said Tanner Mirrlees, a political economist of digital media at Ontario Tech University.

“Often, when we talk about millennials, we assume they share the same beliefs or political ideology, when in fact it’s just not the case.”

Instead, millennials are divided among themselves, often as mainstream Liberals, Conservatives, Greens and Ndpers, but also as radical socialists and fascists. For Mirrlees, such divisions are similar to what their baby boomer parents experienced.

This has opened the way to a battle for the millennial ‘soul’, between mainstream politicians like Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Green Party Leader Elizabeth May, and extremist figures like Faith Goldy, a Toronto political commentator whose far-right views were considered too extreme for Rebel Media, which fired her in 2017 after she appeared in a podcast on The Daily Stormer, a neo-nazi website.

Mirrlees warned Canadians not to take their socially progressive society for granted, as far-right figures are making inroads into the Conservative Party and People’s Party of Canada ahead of the October election.

Conservative leader Andrew Scheer appeared at the ‘United We Roll’ yellow vest rally in Ottawa earlier this year, where both Goldy and PPC leader Maxime Bernier also addressed the crowd.

Far-right personalities such as Goldy are typically socialmedia savvy and have seen success recruiting followers in what Mirrlees describes as “increasingly horrid economic times.”

Indeed, a well-educated and digitally-connected generation, coming of age at a time of poor job prospects and a general sense of hopelessness is an ideal breeding ground for the far-right. Social media networks have also allowed previously-marginalized extremists to come increasingly into the mainstream.

The future that far-right ideologues are pushing for is a white ethno-state at the expense of other racial groups, according to Mirrlees. Some even advocate all-out ethnic cleansing of anyone who does not conform to a white European racial identity.

“What the far-right has done is say, ‘We are able to explain it to you and offer you some sort of path to a better and different future’, ” said Mirrlees. “Of course, the path they offer is xenophobic, hateful and often terroristic.”

Despite such worrying trends, Mirrlees is still hopeful the far right’s rise will be thwarted.

The Canadian government and security services are also waking up to the threat of neo-nazi terror attacks, in the wake of the Christchurch and El Paso massacres.

“I’m optimistic that the forces of democracy and social justice will win out over barbarism in the long run,” he said.