My cousin recounted a story of a male pub patron at her work who, after being told he could not vape inside and was subsequently refused service, suggested the bartender was “discriminating against him”. I had many thoughts in my head. The man, white, who was confronted by the bartender, also white (and this is important), went on further, arguing “I bet if I was Black, you’d have no problem serving me”. In my mind, I had a clear image of the assailant. Gen X or older, a frequenter of Facebook, a voter of Reform. I was adamant. Except, I was wrong. I asked her how old he was and the group he was with, imagining upper lips covered in films of Guinness, suggesting the 50-60s age bracket. “No, he was like our age, maybe 21, 22” she replied. I was taken aback to say the least, though perhaps the vape gave it away a bit. There is nothing more Gen Z than that.
What surprised me was the stupidity of his comment in relation to his age. I know ignorance is not bound to a specific age bracket and racism is not reserved for the mature, but the vape smoker’s line back to the bartender is something straight out of a sensationalist newspaper akin to The Sun or The Daily Mirror. I was surprised that someone in their early twenties would believe such a take (that white people are now the most discriminated against…), when growing up alongside rapid technological advancements allowed them to develop a profound sense of discernment against ignorance like that online.
Sometimes it is hard to blame a Gen X anti-vaxxer who got sucked into it through the proliferation of false information on their feed. Even more so for their parents generation, I see what broadcasted messages my Gran receives on her WhatsApp, each week she receives a link to a YouTube video that purports the cure for Cancer or Diabetes. There is lack of digital literacy and that leads to higher susceptibility to damaging online echo chambers and an inability to recognise false information. It is easy to find oneself hoodwinked by a bombardment of information from ‘trusted sources’.
What the vape-smoking interaction also highlighted to me was the growing issue of conservative, right-wingers amongst the younger generations. I had already seen this in online spaces, but now it was all that more tangible.
Conservativism amongst young adults is on the rise. No longer can the idea that people only tend to get more conservative as they age be applied. Increasingly it seems as though antiquated modes of thought are appealing to Gen Z-ers in our current time of economic scarcity, borderline recession, and all together bleak looking future. The proliferation of right wing (and at times alt-right) ideas coincides with rampant social media use and the issue of 24/7 access. It seems as though being chronically online is the pipeline to (far)right wing thinking.
Anti-immigration posts are dispersed on popular meme pages, men in front of microphones espouse concerning opinions about sex, and in the next post, a woman posturing as a femininity coach instructs you on how to attract men using modesty, to which new heights of internalised misogyny are reached!
Gloria Grahame and Glenn Ford in The Big Heat (1953)
It often feels like there is no escape online, that the monetisation of right wing ideas surrounding often outdated traditionalism (hello tradwife) and unwavering nationalism (discourse around getting our country ‘back’) are taking centre stage. That growingly, the consensus is ‘let’s get back to the good old days’ and that includes it’s inseparable sexist and racist past. Progressivism is to be rejected and the woke agenda is to be dismantled, for the liberals have taken it ‘too far’.
We often talk about the alt-right pipeline in relation to men, how easy it is for them to be persuaded by right wing ideology and subsequently radicalised by alt-right rhetoric. The popularity of Adolescence (2025) holds a light to this stark reality. The reality is that young boys are a few YouTube videos away from being exposed to some of the most disgusting iterations of misogyny there is, gaming chats are a cesspit of unflinching racism, and ‘podcast bros’ drip feed young men sexist ideology until Pick-Up artistry doesn’t seem that bad or they find themselves adopted by a ‘Men Going Their Own Way’ group.
Often times however, women are left out of the conversation when we speak about the rise in right-wing and conservatism amongst Gen Z and Millennials, and this fails to highlight the true scope of the issue. From TERFs to Tradwives, things are getting alarmingly regressive and disturbingly patriarchal.
Sykes and Hopner in their ethnographic study of tradwives found that right wing influencers, particularly tradwives, seek to “co-opt and retrench patriarchy in both traditional and creative new ways” as “agents of right wing femininity” (2024: 454). Ideology they espouse revolves around devotion to nationalism, heteropatriarchy, and the importance of the nuclear family. They reject feminism in all forms (see: ‘feminine not feminist’) are explicitly pro-life, anti-trans, anti-LGBT and, depending on where they fall along the right wing spectrum, anti-Semitic, anti-immigration and pro-white supremacy.
You do NOT want to be Betty Draper. Mad Men (2007-2015)
Distinction must be made between the three main extreme right wing factions: Conservative Right, Alt-Right, and Alt-Lite (or the Dissident Right). Conservative Right put extreme conservative thought at the forefront, believe firmly in religion intermingling with the state, and vehemently reject any hint of liberal ideas. Chrisitan doctrine surrounding the role of man and woman, that being man ruling over woman, underpins their political opinions. They employ biological essentialism and complementarianism to back up claims that women should find themselves bound to the house, suited for nothing else but the role of Wife-Mother.
Alt-Rights are the most extreme in their right wing ideology. Ebner (2020) in her book Going Dark: The Secret Social Lives of Extremists quite humorously describes the movement as “identity politics for white people”. With supremacist fantasies of producing a white ethnostate, women in the movement are seen as either “wombs for the cause” or “caretakers of men” (Mattheis, 2018), best kept indoors and away from the public domain.
The Alt-Lite is the amalgamation of the two ends of the extreme right. They are at once repulsed by ‘woke lefties’ and disappointed with the Conservative Right for not taking a firm enough stance when it comes to extreme-right wing principles. Somewhat populist but mostly nationalist, Alt-Liters maintain the superiority of Western Culture, however they ‘attempt’ to avoid outright white supremacy. What underpins all of these extreme right movements is that they oscillate around misogyny.
Tradwives, who operate along the diverse far right-wing spectrum argue feminism and the ‘liberal agenda’ have destroyed true womanhood. They propose, through the propagation of nationalist, traditionalist, right-wing ideology via social media, for women everywhere to return to ‘authentic femininities’ (McCann, 2022). These authentic femininities are grounded in religious doctrine and assert the hierarchical role of women, this of course being the bottom of the pecking order.
Nara Smith, who merges fashion with domesticity, is thought to be a catalyst in the proliferation of tradwife content
It is a “radicalisation of domesticity” (Proctor, 2022) under the guise of looking pretty in pink whilst baking food. In actuality these women serve up nothing more than pervasive gender stereotypes which attempt to persuade women to wilfully subjugate themselves in the name of divinity and/or a surrendering to ‘softness’. Women can bake, and garden, and be homemakers, and be mothers, all without the imposing patriarchal rule that the tradwife-right necessitates. Feminism does not denigrate the role of mother or nurturer, rather, it pushes for all possible avenues for women to pursue and exist in to be allowed. Are we to forget that housewives, particularly in the 1950-60s, the period current tradwives idolise, were miserable? They had no identity beyond the kitchen stove.
Perhaps a rise in right wing thinking amongst Gen Zs and Millennials today is a reflection of exhaustion. Disillusioned by the myth of meritocracy, we are aware of the fact that our hard work bears even less fruit than it did for our parent’s generation. Owning a home, a stepping stone for achieving a family, seems further away from our reach, and because of that we’re locked into a weird state of non-adulthood. On the bus home from the cinema with my soon-to-be-twenty-five year old friend, I asked how she felt about her upcoming birthday, and we joked about what our fifteen year old selves dreamt up of life as a 25 year old. “Yeah, I thought I’d be in my dream career, married with a kid”, she replied, “in actuality I’m in my childhood bedroom”.
Whilst in part such achievements at the ripe age of 25 can be put down to naivety, they were not such a rarity for the generations before us. Within my friendship group all our mothers had at least one child by the time they were our age, also married, if not divorced. By no means are these the only true markers of a successful adulthood but establishing oneself outside of the parental home, finally flying the nest is something most of us will or are having to delay because of its near financial impossibility.
A 1950s aesthetical charm
Of course, when you see beautifully presented women in prop-like aprons in gorgeous kitchens baking delicious cookies with their doll-like children you think, “well maybe it could all be that simple”. It is easy to fall prey to tradwifery online when capitalist fatigue makes you feel as though you’ll never earn enough to live the life you wish to live. Finding answers in a higher power when the world feels nonsensical is the very function of religion, and it is no surprise people find themselves cosying up to religious, traditional ideas when it seems nothing else is working.
Faced with the day-to-day ramifications of economic strain, people are more susceptible to populist sentiments and scapegoating of the (racialised) ‘other’. Critical engagement with media and text is the best antidote to this, but as we can see by the opinions held by many, this is practised only by a few.
On a date when talking politics (it had been the General Election some months prior) we expressed our feelings of hopelessness towards British politics as a result of The Reform Party’s rise. When I told him who I voted for he paused in surprise and replied “oh, so very left”. I think he found himself to be more apolitical. The subject matter moved swiftly along.
I am liberal in my leanings and, of course, a lefty, if not purely for the basic fact that I believe each person has a right to respect. Throughout my education it became apparent that right-leaning theorist offered ahistorical, decontextualised answers to social issues, championing supposed ‘cures’ to societal ills instead of working towards prevention. For me, that just doesn’t do. The right wing way is antithetical to my way of being.
The rise of the right and of course the far-right across Europe, the US, and in our own backdoor unsettles me. Though an optimist, it sometimes renders me despondent. Regression is undeniably scary. I hope through education things get better. I hope that we don’t lose young boys to the alt-right pipeline and lose young women through the adoption of Old Testament thinking and the relinquishing of autonomy. I still do however, hope.
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