"It's like we're trying to find a home." Canadian Right-Wing Youths Differing Pathways to Activism


Kayla Preston, University of Toronto

The right-wing cannot be represented as a monolith in Canada society. In fact, many right-wing Canadian groups and organizations have vastly different opinions, thoughts and hold differing political issues as key to their organization’s platform. This fact also holds true to right-wing youth social movement organizers in Canada. In this paper, I analyze 40 interviews as well as over 200 hours of ethnographic fieldwork with right-wing youth organizations and with individual members affiliated with these groups. During these interactions I found that my interlocutors could be grouped into two major categories, what I call the ideologue or the careerist. The individuals in these groups differ in three major ways. First, the extremeness of their views. While ideologues espouse quite extreme views (anti-immigration, anti-trans and queer rights, anti-COVID mandates and anti-woke), careerists are more moderate in their ideas both in interviews and in group settings (pro-same sex marriage, believing in multiculturalism, supportive of COVID vaccinations). Second, these groups differ in their affiliation with political parties. While careerists have been employed by a political party and are stringent in their party affiliation, ideologues tend to support whoever they believe will implement the strictest policies but are very critical of the political establishment. Third, ideologues and careerists typically have differing relationships to family and/or childhood trauma. While careerists have strong bonds with family members, ideologues typically have a history of childhood/teenage trauma related to family separation, in-fighting within families, bullying, feelings of isolation, death of close family members, or abandonment. However, while these groups of individuals differ in many aspects related to their activism, they are often a part of the same group or organization. Theoretically, I pinpoint the reasons of these divisions between pathways toward activism as a political and emotional reaction to personal turbulent times, and the shifts in political ideology as a reaction to trauma in the life course. I use the literature on activism as a reaction to social disenfranchisement to identify how turbulent life events push youths toward activism (Munson, 2008). This literature suggests that some individuals turn to activism as a response to trauma in the life course. Furthermore, this paper takes serious allegations that activism is simply biographically-drive, individualistic behaviour but is rather a collective response to a social phenomenon. Hochschilds (2016) study of Tea Party voters in the deep south United States and Gests (2016) study of white working-class individuals in formally industrial cities highlight how the economic recession and the loss of social status propel individuals to become political, either on the right or on the left. My paper suggests that youths who turn toward the political right because of life trauma may be more adamant in their political views and be more extreme because, in their activism, they have found a political and ideological home that they must maintain. This also makes this sector of youth more invested in their social movement. Meanwhile careerists are politically active and interested in political issues however their identities are less invested in right-wing issues or values and therefore they do not hold such extreme ideas.

This paper will be presented at the following session: