For many millennials, this election cycle will be the first in which we are able to vote and also our first taste of what elections will be like. But this election, as we are told, is unlike any other. There is no question that students and millennials today are starkly divided between the left and the right.
According to an Odyssey/UMass-Lowell survey, data shows wide divides among millennials between either side of the political spectrum. In fact, 30% consider themselves to be a part of the “alt-right,” while 66% call themselves, “progressives.” The fact that such a large number of millennials could have supported a self-proclaimed socialist on one side and a highly bigoted bully on the other is absolutely… understandable.
Taking from my experiences as a millennial college student, I believe the emergence of the alt-right and its counterparts to the left are the result of a polarized media and isolated friend groups.
Most people my age (around 19-25 years) do not actively seek to engage in a dialogue about any issue unless it aligns with their own opinions. Naturally, our university provides plenty of outlets from which any student can debate or challenge one another, but more often than not, clubs, organizations and groups of friends are extremely like-minded. We hang out only with people we can understand.
Knowledge of hot-button issues seems to come almost exclusively from short videos and shamelessly biased short articles that circulate sites like Facebook and Twitter. Political conversations revolve around the latest popular YouTube excerpt from John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight or an inflammatory news story from Facebook.
Regardless of which side of the spectrum a millennial sits, his or her social media is inundated with one point of view. Millennials are constantly guided politically further and further apart with every popular commentary video or Facebook post.
This breeds distrust among millennials, as apparent by the results of this poll. Most millennials, 70 percent, believe that, “most people would try to take advantage of you,” if given the chance. 58 percent believe “you can’t be too careful in dealing with others.”
College campuses have unquestionably liberal milieus. Before (and to a large extent, after) Bernie Sanders dropped out of the race, Bernie stickers, T-shirts, posters and even graffiti were common sights on and off campus. Huge swaths of students were supporting Bernie, a person who literally calls himself a “socialist.” As a result of the Bernie campaign, Hillary Clinton was forced to move further to the left to compare with Senator Sanders and try to gather more of the millennial vote. All the while, right-leaning millennials were left to sulk and watch as America tilted ever-leftward.
It is not surprising, therefore, that a new and more opinionated counter-group would arise in response. Which is why 30% of those surveyed consider themselves a part of the “alt-right,” a far-right group which was made famous through criticisms by Hillary Clinton and ear-catching stories from alt-right news sites like Breitbart and Infowars. Millennials consume easy-to-swallow and opinionated summaries of current events and politics from left and right leaning sites. People aren’t required to do much thinking, and conversations devolve into arguments.
Most political discussions that I have been witness to were less like thoughtful debates and more like angry, even contemptuous groups of people speaking past each other. Each side walks away believing the people to whom they have just spoken are stupid for holding a contrary opinion. In the end, nothing is achieved but a sort of mutual resentment. It is the partitioning of sources of information that creates a bizarre and highly frustrating environment for young people, an environment with no foreseeable end in sight. Trump’s rhetoric, often defended by prominent Republicans, will only serve as ammunition for the left for years to come. Hillary Clinton’s scandals being brushed off as mere mistakes are equally aggravating. It is the millennial generation that is being entirely disillusioned about the legitimacy of elections in the United States as staunchly divided media outlets pit millennials against each other.
