Christian Caryl
Remember the kids of Generation Z? You know—that notorious cohort of entitled, lazy, and apathetic people that Boomers so love to mock?
Over the past two years, members of Gen Z across Asia, Africa, and Latin America have been taking to the streets, covertly organizing revolutions and dethroning entrenched rulers. Quite a few of those involved in the uprisings have paid with their lives—another indicator that these events are worth taking seriously. On Oct. 14, Madagascar President Andry Rajoelina was ousted after weeks of protests and replaced by a military government, underlining the new power of the young and sometimes violent demonstrators who have been demanding change.
Some observers might dismiss this new wave of activism as irrelevant to the future of established democracies. But such complacency might be ill-advised. If this new revolutionary movement has demonstrated anything, it’s that no one should underestimate its infectiousness.
In 2022 and 2024, respectively, youth-led uprisings toppled the leaders of Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, two countries with a combined population of around 200 million. This year has seen similar upheavals in Indonesia (284 million), the Philippines (116 million), Kenya (56 million), Morocco (38 million), Nepal (30 million), Madagascar (32 million), and Peru (34 million). That adds up to some 790 million people—a not inconsiderable chunk of the global population and enough to make this the largest wave of revolt in human history. Madagascar is not the only country where leaders have fallen; Nepal and Peru have also discarded their rulers. Meanwhile, Ecuador, recently inspired by the unrest in neighboring Peru, is still working through its own chaotic version of Gen Z turmoil.
But are we really justified in lumping all of these cases together? An intelligent observer might concede that labels like “Gen Z” often end up obscuring more than they reveal. After all, we live in an age where political polarization, driven at least in part by the ubiquity of social media, has opened up fault lines even among people of the same age. In the United States, Western Europe, and South Korea, sociologists have discovered that coeval men and women are increasingly diverging in their political preferences—so one should proceed with caution when lumping enormously diverse groups of people into a single political category.
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