Jaron Rowan: Students Increasingly Drawn to Far-right Ideas and Conspiracy Theories

Reactionary ideas are proliferating. Common sense is eroding, the values we collectively took for granted, says Rowan, a writer and research director at the Barcelona Design and Arts University Center (BAU), who insists that, in the tradition of cultural studies, he does not want to judge these young people with disdain but rather understand the origin of their unease. In some sectors, he exemplifies, even women's right to vote is being questioned.

Another phenomenon Rowan observes is the difficulty of engaging in healthy debate in classrooms, because questioning another's position is experienced as an attack on personal integrity: disagreement understood as aggression. The most basic consensuses fall apart.