Conservative Chic: Is being right-wing trendy right now, and is it the Internet’s fault?

Illustrations by Grace McKenna

We’ve all heard the “it’s a trend” trope well when it's applied to “blue-haired liberals” and Instagram “social justice warriors”. But what of the new conservative youngsters emerging out of society’s fringe and into the mainstream of social media? 

The news tells us that a rising share of the youth vote is trending towards conservative candidates, such as Donald Trump in the U.S. and Pierre Poilievre in Canada. A recent Gallup poll reveals that American Gen Z teenagers identify as more conservative than their parents at a higher rate than millennials.

We’re even witnessing conservative lifestyle choices “trending” online; people are vowing celibacy to escape casual hookup culture, abandoning secularism in favor of devout religion, and tossing their hard-earned contraceptive pills and vaccines because they’ve been told it’s better to go “natural”.

It’s impossible to write on this topic without touching on its extreme genderedness. As Gen Z was socialized almost entirely online (thanks to the pandemic), young men and women have fallen into gender-segregated spaces online, creating a massive rift in their politics. As the “trad wife” movement gains traction, encouraging women to quit their jobs or drop out of school to become housewives, men are falling into hyper-masculine rabbit holes and online “incel” (involuntary celibate) culture. In 2023, 8 in 10 British teenage boys had watched Andrew Tate content, and nearly half of them shared that they had a positive view of the creator, who is now under judicial control and barred from leaving Romania in the face of sex trafficking charges. 

It's clear that the far right has mastered the art of Internet politics. When Republicans lost the 2008 election to the fresh and relatively young Barack Obama, they scrambled to appeal to the new voting generation: millennials, who notoriously endorsed left-wing candidates and were the first young people to engage with online politics. The modern Internet, at the time, was still a novel sphere reserved for youngsters and progressives willing to ditch the status quo—the conservatives couldn’t keep up.

Since then, right-wing candidates have figured out that the way to influence young minds is through their handheld screens, not their TVs. The American and British right have both developed a massive Internet presence with the help of podcasters and charismatic influencers who connect directly with young audiences. Charting this trend reveals that Trumpism was neither an anomaly nor a surprise; it emerged simultaneously alongside Brexit Britain and Bolsonaro’s Brazil, whose conservatism took root online and spread like wildfire, undetected, long before 2016. 

Now, the right-wing Reform party polls near 20 percent among 18 to 24 year olds in Britain, and is leading among young men without degrees. I’d wager that much of this sentiment has emerged—as most radical populist movements do—from the fact that one in eight British young people are NEET (not in employment, education, or training). Amid a cost of living crisis that seems to have gone global, young people buried in more university debt than ever before and frantically navigating the treacherous, AI-ridden job market are losing faith in the ability of mainstream political parties to solve these new-age problems. 

The Independent found that boys between 16 and 17 were 21 percent more likely to have consumed Andrew Tate videos than to have heard of then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. Obviously, young people are not turning to established political figures for their conservative political fix anymore. Instead, they revere online content creators who are distant if not critical of the mainstream political scene. There clearly exists a widespread distrust of institutions, with the think tank Onward reporting that 60 percent of 18-24 year olds agree that the country would be better run by a “strong leader who does not have to bother with parliament or elections”.

After the neoliberal boom of the 90s and early 2000s, is it a form of youth rebellion to be conservative? Or has there been a gap left by the institutional failings of our tried-and-true parties? If the latter is the case, that gap is currently being filled by none other than the new populist right, which often seems to be the only faction stepping up to the plate. 

This isn’t quite true, though. Zohran Mamdani’s massive win of the youth vote—78 percent— is a sign that the left might be similarly able to similarly swoop in and reinvigorate the disenfranchised youth. There has also been a recent wave of strong support for the UK’s Green Party—polling as the most popular party among young British women. What do these new left-wing figures have in common with the right-wingers we see dominating political media discourse? They’re critical of the mainstream, the establishment, and the status quo. While women have veered left and men have skewed right, they share a common distrust of institutions. They also share the weight of economic hardship and fear for the future of the job market. This commonality may be why the right, whose parties have traditionally attempted to strike down superfluous governing, is winning so many of their votes. 

The left also has an angle here, but to win back the youth, it must think outside the box and make waves online. It must make its way into the headphones of teens navigating faulty public transport to get to school and young professionals scrolling during their virtual, part-time, freelance jobs. This rise in conservatism may be a trend, but as young people become more educated, tech-savvy, and worldly, it's clear that institutional skepticism is here to stay. It’s anyone’s game.