This seems to be the case yeah. The rhetoric of the left is preaching acceptance and solidarity, but in an uncertain world "feelgood rhetoric" isn't strong enough. The right are preaching what appear to be solutions (close borders, nationalism, tax cuts to income and gas, segregation and defunding social programs to adress debt) so people buy into it.

What they don't realise is that the tax cuts hurt the debt cutting messures and eroiding social security hurts nations and paves way for more insecurity, hate and fear (which fuels the right wing machine).

There's precious little education on politics and choices for 20-somethings, and people are left to try and understand what the media pushes out. Finland benefits from a trusted national news media, though they have been criticized by the right of being politically biased and not worth their budget. So people slanting toward the right tend to be sceptical of it, and are pushed away, toward other news sources.

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

There’s precious little education on politics and choices for 20-somethings

What does it look like, in your experience? Here we study our political systems throughout the upper grades, and in secondary school we study local political parties. As a bonus, in the final year we study general ideologies including Fascism and Marxism where I live, but I don't think that part is typical for North America.

Finland benefits from a trusted national news media, though they have been criticized by the right of being politically biased and not worth their budget. So people slanting toward the right tend to be sceptical of it, and are pushed away, toward other news sources.

That describes the situation in Canada too.

[–] MRPP@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

As it stands, vocational education is faltering but high school is still ptetty strong - and they are mandatory untill you are 18. Not all vocational school/trade schools suck, but I've talked with a good deal of young students (hundreds) to get s feel that there are staggering differences in how much the teachers care, or are able to motivte the kids into caring about learning.

If you take vocational education/trade school, there's a good chance you have a single course or two of publics, history or similar subjects and that's that.

It's also turning into a bit of a gender issue, since our high schools are skewing heavily toward female students, with boys opting more and more to do trade school, partially due to lack of grades, partially because they feel like the school system isn't for them and studying theory is unpleasant or downright hard. So they get demotivated and go where it's considered "easier", and scrape by.

After you graduate secondary education, a lot if guys don't pursue further studies, so their access to education and discourse stalls. Young women do pursue higher education though, but it is not an idel situation at all.

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 1 year ago

Interesting. There is a noticeably higher interest in academics among girls here as well.

I imagine young people use more government services and pay less taxes (do to lower wages) over there too, so that's not a great selling point for the right. One thing I've wondered is if the "culture wars" message plays better in a country where there's actual continuity into the deep past.