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The difference is that in Europe existing parties tried desperately to keep out ‘new right’ populists almost everywhere so young people still believe things can actually change.
When the AfD joins a governing coalition and turns out - just like Meloni in Italy - to be another center-right party that in practice will do nothing about mass immigration, their supporters will probably abandon them pretty quickly. Le Pen in France is another example, she’s much less reactionary on immigration than people think (only Zemmour was the truly anti-immigration candidate). The Sweden Democrats have strongly moderated too, they’re barely to the left of the Danish Social Democrats if at all.
I do kind of suspect that eventually the voters will get at least some of what they want if they continue to win elections. That may be naive of me.
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Meloni's party has crashed from 26% of vote in the election to... uh, 27% of vote in the polls currently.
Yes, because there is no alternative. In practice Meloni has only seen increases in mass immigration to Italy, she has betrayed those who voted for her on that platform. But that is nothing new; the Tories did very well in 2019 after a decade of overseeing rising immigration but promising lower immigration too, this is common in Western countries.
Poll numbers don’t mean that she implemented her manifesto or fulfilled her promises.
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