Radical Right Youth Wings Are Fueling Europe's Populist Wave

Extremist Youth Wings: How They Shape Europe's Political Future

A common, often overlooked trait unites the leaders of influential populist radical right parties in Western Europe. Matteo Salvini, Jordan Bardella, Jimmie Åkesson, and Tom Van Grieken all led the youth wings of the parties they now head. These movements shaped their political personalities and now mold the future direction of the European scene. Giorgia Meloni, Italy's prime minister and former extremist youth wing leader, emphasized: „More than my development as a politician, I owe my growth as a person and as an Italian to the activism in the youth wing. There is no richer training ground than this.”Until recently, little was known about these incubation chambers of populist radical right parties. While researching our new book, Youth Wings of the Populist Radical Right , we examined 10 such organizations across Europe.

From the Austrian Freedom Party's youth wing to France's National Union, we found these structures help recruit, train, and promote base members, representatives, and future leaders of the radical right. They also serve essential functions for their parties today: encouraging young people to vote for them, providing key labor during election campaigns, managing party branches, and influencing policies.

Specifically, we discovered that leaders and frontline members of these wings help achieve three key objectives for the radical right as their parties expand in the 2020s: internationalization, professionalization, and normalization. First, these youth wings go further than their older counterparts in building new transnational alliances. Beyond street activism, international workshops and conferences of the far right have proliferated, such as the Transatlantic Patriot Summits, held annually in Budapest since 2022. These events gather young leaders from Europe, India, Israel, Latin America, and the US to discuss common goals and forge connections that will last through their careers. Many young leaders we spoke with openly mentioned how these international ties will be useful „when we are in government.” Second, these young people are heavily involved

Second, these young people are heavily involved in political training at international, national, and local levels. Once dismissed as a bunch of amateurs (and rightly so in some cases), the populist radical right now invests significantly in professionalization. Young joiners are taught not just about policies and history, but also rhetoric and media communication. They are trained as future politicians, and figures like Åkesson, Bardella, Meloni, and Salvini are proof of this concept.

Third, recruiting university-educated young people—who look and sound very different from the stereotypical angry far-right youth—fuels the growing normalization of the populist radical right. Producing more eloquent, professional, and presentable leaders can help their parties be seen by voters as legitimate political actors. The more distance they create between themselves and earlier generations of unpolished leaders, like Jean-Marie Le Pen in France or Umberto Bossi in Italy, the more young people like them can be attracted.

How can mainstream parties respond

But this refinement of the radical right's public image does not reflect a softening of the message. The young leaders we interviewed do not intend to steer their parties toward moderation. They may find ways to smooth the rough edges of their movements, but the ideology remains exclusionary and nationalist. In other words, the radical right's regeneration through youth wings makes it an even more significant challenge for liberal democracy.

How can mainstream parties respond to this challenge? One way is to stop focusing on the radical right as the root of their problems, and to look at themselves and their own youth wings. Recent research on youth wing membership found that center-left and center-right youth groups are dominated by men, people from political families, and careerists. If mainstream parties want to win back young voters, this must change. Governing parties could do much more to address the issues young people face in the 21st century.

For most of the postwar period, younger generations in Western Europe grew up with the implicit promise of better life prospects than their parents. This promise has been broken. In fact, with the rise of insecure employment, compounded by the housing crisis, a significant minority of European young people still live with their parents into their late 20s and early 30s. It is no surprise that many have little faith in mainstream parties' ability to change their lives.

In contrast, the young activists of the populist radical right we interviewed spoke about how their parties speak clearly to them about the issues that concern them and offer solutions. Mainstream parties should do the same.

Cas Mudde is the Stanley Wade Shelton UGAF Professor of International Affairs at the University of Georgia, and author of The Far Right Today ; Duncan McDonnell is a Professor of Politics at the Jeff Bleich Centre, Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia. Youth Wings of the Populist Radical Right , co-authored by Duncan McDonnell, Sofia Am