Last month, 27 percent of France’s millennials supported Jean-Luc Melenchon. Meanwhile, in Great Britain, Jeremy Corbyn and his Labour Party received two-thirds of that generational vote in last week’s election. On the other side of the pond, Bernie Sanders received more under-30 votes than Hillary Clinton and now-President Donald Trump combined in last year’s presidential primary elections.
Despite the economic instability worldwide, such as France’s 20 percent youth unemployment, millennial tolerance for intolerance is intolerable. “Corbyn has been a lonely defender of various terrorist groups, and has been under fire for tolerating creeping anti-Semitism within his own party,” National Journal’s Josh Kraushaar wrote. “Melenchon raged against the global financial system like a true French revolutionary.”
Mélenchon, who placed fourth in the first round with 19.5 percent of the vote, ran on a platform based on socialism, anti-Americanism, leaving the European Union and NATO, and building friendly relations with Russia. He also ran on taxing income above €400,000 ($448,180) at 100 percent, increasing government spending, and reducing the workweek from 35 hours to 32 hours.
In an interview with Red Alert, Aurelia Allouche, who lives just outside of Paris, said she does not identify with the 27 percent of French folks her age who backed Mélenchon.
“I don’t like him because he is too much authority and he hasn’t got any interesting campaign programs for France,” she said.
Corbyn proposed capping corporate executive salaries, withdrawing the UK from NATO (though he supports the UK staying in the EU), and is opposed to striking ISIS and Assad’s regime in Syria. He has even sympathized with Hezbollah, Hamas, and other Islamic terrorist groups. He also supports universal childcare and nationalized transportation.
Finally, Sanders proposed a single-payer health system, universal childcare and prekindergarten, free college, the reversal trade deals like NAFTA, and increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour.
While those politicians aren’t at the helm of their government, the percentage of support they received from Generation-Y voters is astonishing.
In his Wall Street Journal article “Why Do the Young Reject Capitalism,” businessman Warren A. Stephens wrote:
Consequently, the merits of America’s free-market system are inspiring economies around the world. According to the Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes and Trends study, a global median of 66%, from developing and advanced countries, believe people are better off under capitalism. This view is particularly prevalent in emerging economies like Kenya, Nigeria and Vietnam, where growth has been ignited by expansion of the free market. Yet here at home capitalism is now condemned as an elitist system that enriches a few at the expense of the many.
Winston Churchill said that socialism is the “equal sharing of misery.” One can only hope that millennials, the next generation of leaders, will realize this soon.
