More than ever, if the historic votes of Nikolas Ferreira, Lucas Pavanato and Eduarda Campopiano surprised by the incidence of reactionism among youth, with millions of votes and high engagement on social media in hateful speeches, it is clear that youth and the student movement are already assuming for themselves the nickname of the main opposing sector to Flávio Bolsonaro and his reactionism. In schools, students aged 12, 13, 14 raise their flags, as LGBT symbols against all transphobia, and propose taking to the streets to prevent the election of the far right. They are the same who thank on social media "tagging" their teachers for History, Geography, Sociology, Philosophy classes that debated topics such as dictatorship, social inequality, slavery. If Pavanato and company call teachers scumbags and accuse them of "indoctrination," with millions of voters, we have seen a significant phenomenon of young people paying recognition, thanking their teachers, valuing this category that has been so attacked, as well as the critical content taught.

In universities, assemblies of hundreds, as were not seen in federal institutions since the Education Tsunami against Jair Bolsonaro, once again focus on confronting the far right. In recent years, the student movement has been facing attacks from radicalized bolsonarists who campaign against public universities, ethnic-racial and trans quotas, and Marxism. This meeting of young people of different ages and social origins, from schools and universities, is seen in the streets. In Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais, Pernambuco and even in that which became known as the stronghold of the "Communist Hunt" in São Paulo, Mackenzie. Hundreds, thousands and even tens of thousands reject all Trump's capachos. The video of Mackenzie students burning the United States flag at the doors of the institution that collaborated with the 1964 coup and the persecution of left-wing militants is a symbol of the moment, marked by an anti-imperialist yearning. From the apathy pointed out in much of the first round, it now becomes evident that something deeper is brewing and can open new paths - to the right, but also to the left.

With this article, we want to open some initial reflections.

What did the polls say?

A generation marked by precarious work, debt, which takes longer to leave their parents' home, which, according to some research, has less sex and suffers much more from anxiety, even "climate anxiety". These are some of the characteristics of the so-called Generation Z, who is rising in various countries around the world. It is, above all, for this generation that the current political system, institutions, and regime have failed.
Already in December 2025, an Atlas Intel poll, in partnership with Bloomberg, stated: the younger the voter, the greater the tendency to identify with the right. In Generation Z (especially aged 16 to 24), 52% of respondents declared themselves Right or Center-right, in contrast to 31% who positioned themselves on the Left or Center-left. At the same time, according to the same survey, 45% of these young people said that the political system needed a "complete change," while 34% advocated for a "gradual reform" and only 2% believed that existing structures worked well.
Furthermore, when asked about who has the real capacity to transform the country, 61% said they would primarily trust their own young people. When describing their economic situation, 34% of respondents classified it as "very bad." This perception would directly shape the electoral priorities of this age group: the economy, cost of living, and employment led with ease the concerns that define the vote (66%) of Generation Z, closely followed by fighting crime and public security (56%) and education (55%).

Among Generation Z, 65% of young people declared themselves pessimistic about Brazil's future, being 42% "very pessimistic." In daily life, the biggest obstacles faced by these young people appeared to be mental health and stress (38%), high cost of living (37%), low remuneration (36%) and difficulty finding stable employment (27%), added to the constant challenge of balancing study and work (24%). When asked about their view of success, 57% prioritized career achievement, while only 15% placed marriage or raising children first. Reluctance to have children appeared associated with obvious material constraints: for 64% of Generation Z, financial conditions directly influence the postponement of parenthood.

In concerns, a portrait of the country: does the far right appear more anti-system?

Without the need to go so far, recent data from IBGE and studies on the Brazilian labor market confirm that youth (especially between 18 and 24 years old) concentrate the highest unemployment and underemployment rates. About 70% of young people in the labor market work in informality or precarious regimes, in temporary positions without guaranteed rights. The current generation is the first in decades to have the statistical expectation of being poorer and having fewer labor rights than their parents' generation.

What does the extreme right defend in response to this? The demonization of labor rights based on ultra-individualism, a type of prosperity ideology, and entrepreneurship. Each person, if they strive, work hard, and are not hindered by taxes, laws, or governments, can become wealthy. It proposes ever more slavery, masked as exacerbated freedom ("you set your own hours and get paid for them," as Flávio Bolsonaro defends). Combined with this, it crafts a certain anti-regime discourse that attacks primarily the STF and the sludge of corruption, concealing all the links between bolsonarism and the extreme right with that same sludge of bankers like Daniel Vorcaro and watered down by privileges. Young bolsonarism seeks to appropriate for itself the location of victim and enemy of the regime, when it is increasingly integrated into it.
But, after all, someone always needs to be blamed. In extreme right forums, permeated by red pill ideology, influencers, "Nikolas's bench" say that the cause of youth suffering is not capitalism or precarization, but rather women, feminism, LGBT movements, and the left. They import, as footstools, the worst of Trumpism. It is necessary to protect the traditional family core, so threatened, they say. Threatened by the right to legal abortion in cases of rape, threatened by insubordinate women, threatened by questioning gender identities, by an increasingly LGBT generation. Thus, concrete material bases, reactions to more progressive phenomena, and "opposition to everything that is there" which means frustration and precarization open space for aberrant phenomena of the extreme right among youth, which above all reinforce the capitalist order of oppression and exploitation.

But what did Lula-Alckmin's Broad Front do in the last four years, with approval from much of the Brazilian left? What did those who justly took upon themselves the defense and management of "everything that is there" do? They undertook the protection of the political system, institutions, and regime, attributing to the STF the defense of order and democracy. Lula preserved each of the reforms approved since Temer and Bolsonaro that pushed towards precarization and informality. It was the Labor Reform that first sold the idea that "the fewer rights, the more jobs," that one should be paid by hour worked, with intermittent work. A reform that remained intact in the last four years. In short, the promise of social ascent proved to be dead letter, in the face of ever-increasing instability in employment, salary, and life. More and more young people with bags on their backs riding cities on motorcycles and bikes. In general terms, managing this crisis system, preserving the work that came before, from the 2016 coup and the extreme right, was to take upon oneself the defense of the order that pushes generations towards increasingly frustrated prospects.

We could blame social media, poor government communication, the power of Churches, conservative youth. It is undeniable that Big Techs, promoting misogynistic publications and bolsonarist trash, fulfill their role. In a world marked by "connected loneliness," by collective mental health dramas, Churches point to some type of sociability for youth, influencing values, indeed, and had their economic and political power kept intact by the Broad Front. It is evident that when schools are taken over by New High School, which teaches the neoliberal entrepreneurship syllabus and seeks to empty any critical teaching, which increasingly means repression and punishment in the face of content that empties itself, despite teachers' resistance, other forms of sociability gain weight. But it is also a matter of youth from rap battles, slams, solidarity on social networks that helps very young students raise their blacks and reaffirm their gender identity and "dissident" sexuality. That is why we need to explain conservatism among youth above all by the failure of class conciliation, which opened the way for the seduction of an expressive part of youth by extreme right ideology by taking upon themselves the defense and maintenance of the bases of this precarious reality.

Not everything is a wasteland

As starting points, votes for other figures such as Érika Hilton, Jones Manoel, and Ana Elisa point to an opposite arrow, even though we have fundamental debates with that sector in different orders. But more than that, votes on the far right do not, however, express complete adherence to their program. Even José Dirceu needs to admit that it is not true that this generation assimilated the entire Bolsonaro program. Surveys already released show that even among self-employed workers there is a majority that defends the rights of the signed work contract. And it is obvious that the deeper phenomenon is the defense of ending the 6x1 shift, which has social majority in our country and still keeps the far right on the defensive. In fact, one of the moments of greatest crisis for Nikolas Ferreira was when he attacked the demand, being criticized and widely questioned by his followers. "I voted for you. I work the 6x1 shift and I was very disappointed with your position on this issue"; "Leaving to follow!! Will you also work 6x1?!!"… These were some of the responses among thousands that a quick survey allowed us to find.

But the same trade union centers and student entities that at this moment show they are capable of mobilizing and want to channel everything into the urns, without moving the immense Brazilian proletariat and youth to face the capitalists, opted for emptying the streets in the last four years. They fulfilled the recipe: bet on agreements from above, always showing themselves as the "palatable" opposition to big capitalists. So, youth is up for grabs, but who has been fighting for it? More than ever, we need to draw lessons so that the strength and resilience demonstrated at this moment in each assembly, in each act, in each measure does not turn into more skepticism and demoralization. We are already preparing the fight against Flávio Bolsonaro, but also Nikolas, Pavanato, Campopiano and company.

Lessons from Brazilian youth

At this moment, in France, in the Spanish State, in Italy, in Germany and now in Belgium, youth is on the front line of powerful processes against their imperialist governments, occupying schools, taking to the streets and demanding a general strike. Breezes of the French May of 1968 when the worker-student alliance found the banner of counter-culture, sexual liberation, and threatened to give birth to a new society. It is undeniable that this is an international generation that vibrates along with the class that moves the world. A generation marked by the horror of wars and genocides, by solidarity with the Palestinian people and with immigrants. If there is far right, there is a generation that rejects this system and the effects of the crisis. Never from within the order. Never in defense of what is there.

In Brazil, against Bolsonaroism, it is good news that tens of thousands of young people have placed themselves at the forefront to face him. But neither is it an unprecedented event in Brazilian history the intertwining between international breezes and left-wing phenomena here, even more so if youth places itself as a vanguard against disgusting enemies. In 2019, the Education Tsunami was the main counterpoint in the streets to Jair Bolsonaro's government and showed the popular appeal of those who fight for education against the far right, with the potential to unite the fight against cuts in universities with the fight against the Pension Reform. The policy of the directions prevented this confluence with the interests of the majority of the working people in Brazil, betting on division and, once again, emptying the streets.

But, even before that, facing the 1964 coup, we saw a first cycle of class struggle from 1964-68, in which again the student movement was the first sector to place itself against the dictatorship, with the potential to converge with important worker demonstrations, such as in Osasco and Contagem. The year 1968 was fundamental, not only in France. After large demonstrations in the streets and strikes, the combination of repression deepened by AI-5 combined with the strategic drift of resistance movements, in a context of enormous difficulty, caused that movement to recede. But it is reborn with strength and on new bases from 1977, with the student movement being the anteroom of the worker awakening, being the first to raise the banner "Down with the dictatorship", even though several wings of the movement found the slogan "too radicalized", which would trigger a violent response from the dictatorship, in the context of the promise of "opening, slow, gradual and safe". The student movement that dared to be "too radicalized" and propose itself to overthrow the regime paved the way for the greatest worker strike uprising in our history, later diverted by conciliation with the regime.

At this moment, it is clear that the political cycle born at that time is coming to an end and inaugurating a new historical moment. The lessons of the Brazilian student movement allow us to conclude that the combination of profound anti-imperialist hatred towards the flag of the United States, and alliance with the working class and its interests can make Brazilian youth an unstoppable force against the far right, converging with the best of what international youth does. This was shown in all those moments. But it also showed that it is necessary to overcome all forms of conciliation with dominant classes, whether the line of conciliation with the national bourgeoisie that Stalinism adopted under various guises in the 60s and 70s, or petismo in the 88 regime. Even against Jair Bolsonaro, conciliation in opposition has already shown that it is incapable of turning the will to fight into defeat for the far right. Thus, overcoming moderation and conciliation needs to assume a content, a program, a strategy and, therefore, an organization that can signify, in practice, a synthesis of the lessons of all these historical moments. This is the call placed before this generation: do not demoralize yourself, prepare future battles with the necessary tools.