No, Gen Z is not ‘yearning for fascism’

More than half of British youngsters allegedly ‘believe Britain should be ruled by a dictator’, according to new research from Channel 4. Apparently, Gen Z is ‘yearning for fascism’, led down this path by difficult economic conditions and ‘right-wing grifters’ like Andrew Tate, Nigel Farage and Donald Trump. There is ‘clear evidence of disengagement from democracy’, Channel 4 claims.

That may sound grim, but fortunately Channel 4 also has ‘three major solutions’ to the problems raised by its own commissioned research. Speaking at a joint Channel 4 and Royal Television Society event in London last week, Channel 4 CEO Alex Mahon proposed, first, introducing a ‘trustmark’ to indicate ‘factual, trusted accuracy for content that emerges from professionally produced, regulated media’. Second, she called for new regulations to ensure that content produced by ‘public-service media’ like Channel 4 is given algorithmic prominence on social-media platforms. Third, she suggested training AI to ‘use validated public-service media content’, in order to ‘create outputs that are based off of quality inputs’.

So, to counter the threat from the baby authoritarians of Gen Z, Channel 4 wants to feed them state-sponsored news from legacy media organisations like, er, Channel 4. Mahon says that organisations like her own are ‘defenders of truth’ funded and promoted to protect us from ‘the online pied pipers who wilfully subvert truths’.

Wading through this nonsense, it’s hard to know what’s worse. Is it the desperation of a multi-million-pound media organisation seeking to shore up its position by insisting it holds a monopoly on The Truth? Is it the use of dubious ‘research’ about young people to provide a warrant for this claim? Or is it the fact that this ‘research’ has been widely and uncritically reported by other legacy media organisations to fuel a rapidly emerging caricature of Gen Zers as the shock troops of ‘fascist’ or ‘authoritarian’ populism?

Let’s start with the research. Gen Z: Trends, Truth and Trust was commissioned by Channel 4 from the market-research company Craft, which focusses mainly on the media sector and demonstrates a particular flair for word salad. For the Gen Z report, Craft used a ‘comprehensive, multi-method approach to uncover the nuanced realities of Gen Z’s lives, behaviours and values’. This boiled down to some desk research of existing data, a survey of 2,000 13- to 27-year-olds and 1,000 28- to 65-year-olds in the UK, and ‘in-depth’ interviews with 30 youngsters.

Some of the findings are familiar from established research, but others are distinctly dodgy. For example, the headline-grabbing claim that 52 per cent of 13- to 27-year-olds think that ‘the UK would be a better place if a strong leader was in charge who does not have to bother with parliament and elections’ directly contradicts more reliable sources of data. As political scientist Chris Prosser objected on Bluesky, the British Election Study Internet Panel has asked the ‘strong leader’ question eight times since 2016. In 2024, it found that only 13 per cent of Gen Z supported a strongman leader (compared with Craft’s 52 per cent), and that compared with other age groups, they were ‘the least likely generation’ to do so. Meanwhile, Craft’s own study finds that 73 per cent of Gen Z think democracy is a ‘very’ or ‘fairly good’ way of governing the UK. That’s hardly in keeping with a desire for dictatorship.

An obvious question, particularly for media organisations dedicated to upholding ‘objective truth and validated news’, would be to ask how Craft arrived at its startling conclusions. Yet before the full report was even published, outlets from The Times to LBC were breathlessly reporting the ‘kids want a dictator’ claim, and talking darkly about the state of the nation’s youth. Even the critical faculties associated with basic journalism seemed to fly out the window in a desire to paint Gen Z as the new Hitler Youth.

The irony is telling. The trusted, verified news that the ‘public-service media’ want us to rely on turns out to be a bollocks survey commissioned by a broadcaster wanting to increase its market share. It’s then been lapped up by others keen to peddle a dystopian fairytale about the fascist-adjacent leanings of today’s teenagers and young adults.

Sweeping generalisations about generational attitudes yield no real insight. They tell us more about the people making those claims than they do about the cohorts themselves. Over the past 20 years, we have seen the Baby Boomers constructed as greedy, selfish ‘sociopaths’ on a mission to rob young people of their future, and the Millennials constructed both as victimised, centrist idealists who just want a nice life, or as entitled snowflakes who just won’t stop whining.

Now the chattering classes are defining Gen Z in terms of their own fear of populist politics and alternative media. Their hyperbolic fantasies about how ‘misinformation’ is going to harm children become a handy justification for regulation, as we have seen already with the Online Safety Act. Worse than that, it has become an excuse for not engaging with what youngsters are actually thinking. If the appeal of podcasts or influencers can be dismissed as Gen Zers falling prey to the lure of ‘fake news’, the established media does not have to ask itself why it is failing to help them make sense of the world.

‘Gen Z curates [its] own understanding of “the truth”’, says Mahon sniffily. ‘For many, this is exacerbating societal tensions and undermining the value of democracy.’ Perhaps Gen Zers’ desire to find their own ways of seeking the truth springs from a sense that mainstream news outlets are often blinkered, biased and that there are other questions worth asking? Could it be that (gasp!) some of the content out there online is just better than much mainstream journalism and commentary? In any case, presenting our children as the authoritarian barbarians at the gates seems a decidedly odd way to resolve social tensions and promote democracy.

Instead of demonising young people, mainstream media organisations would be better off looking at their own failings. Perhaps then they would be able to produce a service that keeps younger audiences engaged.

This article was first published by spiked.