The Spectator's recent piece (linked below), on the resurgence of America's radical Left captures a disturbing trend visible across the Anglosphere. What was once fringe: explicit socialism, identity-based redistribution, and hostility to classical liberal institutions, has gained significant traction, particularly among younger generations. Polls consistently show higher support for socialist policies among those under 35 than any other cohort. This is not a temporary youthful flirtation with rebellion. It reflects a profound failure of education, culture, and the post-Cold War liberal order to transmit the basic lessons of prosperity, human nature, and historical experience. The new radical Left is filling a vacuum created by its predecessors' successes and blind spots.

Older generations who lived through the Cold War, stagflation, or the undeniable failures of 20th-century socialism retain instinctive scepticism. For many young people, socialism arrives as moral common sense rather than contested ideology. "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" sounds compassionate when you have never experienced the shortages, queues, and authoritarianism that inevitably follow. Decades of relative peace and prosperity have dulled the memory of why market economies, however imperfect, outperform central planning.

Social media amplifies this. Algorithmic echo chambers deliver curated outrage and utopian promises while shielding users from counter-evidence. Universities, captured by the long Marxist march through the institutions, no longer function as places of open inquiry. They often act as seminaries for critical theory, framing Western civilisation as uniquely oppressive and capitalism as the root of all evil. Young graduates emerge with high debt, uncertain job prospects in a credential-inflated economy, and a worldview that attributes their struggles to "late-stage capitalism" rather than policy failures, cultural shifts, or personal trade-offs.

Radical socialism offers seductive simplicity to the young. It diagnoses inequality as systemic theft rather than the natural outcome of differing talents, choices, and family structures. It promises free education, healthcare, housing, and a dignified life, without the discipline of markets or the constraints of tradition. In an age of delayed adulthood, social media comparison, and declining social trust, the offer of collective salvation feels empowering. The radical Left also provides moral purpose and tribal identity in an atomised society. Opposing "the system" becomes a substitute for building a meaningful personal life.

Identity politics supercharges the appeal. By layering race, gender, and sexuality onto class analysis, the new radicalism creates a hierarchy of oppression that flatters the young as righteous insurgents. "Equity" sounds fairer than equality of opportunity. "Decolonisation" sounds like justice rather than erasure of the cultural inheritance that produced unprecedented living standards. The result is a generation more likely to view the West's achievements with embarrassment than gratitude, and more open to dismantling the institutions that made those achievements possible.

This rise did not occur in a vacuum. The post-2008 financial crisis, stagnant wages for non-graduates, housing unaffordability, and elite hypocrisy (open borders for thee, gated communities for me) created fertile ground. The COVID response: lockdowns that crushed small business while enriching big tech and pharma, further eroded trust in institutions. When the liberal centre fails to deliver broad-based prosperity and cultural confidence, extremes gain ground.

Universities bear special responsibility. Once transmitters of the Western tradition, they became factories for grievance studies and administrative bloat. Students are taught to see themselves as victims of invisible structures rather than agents capable of shaping their destinies. The result is a cohort primed for radical politics that promises to tear down the system rather than reform it.

The Warning for Australia and the West

Australia is not immune. Similar patterns appear among the young: higher support for expansive welfare, wealth taxes, speech restrictions, and climate policies that prioritise symbolism over practicality. The long march through the institutions has been global. If the radical Left's appeal among the young remains unchecked, it will shape policy for decades, with predictable consequences of slower growth, cultural division, and institutional decay. An Australian republic becomes a certainty, with the end of the constitutional monarchy, a key Left objective.

The antidote is not mere opposition but renewal. Reclaim education for truth-seeking rather than activism. Demonstrate through results that market-oriented policies with strong families and cultural confidence deliver better outcomes for the many, not just the few. Address genuine grievances: housing, cost of living, elite disconnect, jobs, without conceding to the socialist diagnosis. Most importantly, transmit the historical record: every attempt at radical socialism has ended in authoritarianism, poverty, or both. The young deserve that knowledge, not takes that flatter their discontent.

The rise of the new radical Left among the young is a symptom of deeper civilisational malaise, the failure to defend and renew the institutions and ideas that made the modern world. Recognising it clearly is the first step toward countering it. The future belongs to those who remember why the alternatives failed, not those who romanticise repeating them.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2026/06/the-rise-and-rise-of-americas-radical-left/