Drawing on a survey that gathers data from nine European countries, with a sample of young people aged 18–35, we test those factors that have been used to explain why people use violent repertoires of action: social background, gender, political values, and prior experience in protest activism. The results relate ‘radicalness’ to experienced economic difficulties and the more contentious political activism. The difference between the young ‘radicals’ in right and left are, however, defined by gender and adherence to authoritarian values.
Existing research on young people predominantly focuses on two things: young people’s political alienation and their lack of interest in politics (Blais et al., 2004), and the fact that youth has opted for unconventional forms of political activism rather than the more common, electoral type of politics (Norris, 2002). Scholars have paid far less attention to the political attitudes of young people. Some consider the latter as not well equipped to make informed political decisions (Everett, 2013), and we hardly know what young people mean when they make reference to the ‘left’ or the ‘right’ (Mieriņa, 2018).
