David Lockwood looks at the brave Gen Z protestors in the Global South and urges us all to recognise we need a program and a party that can win.
In these somewhat gloomy times, it is heartening to realise that over the past 10 years, there have been an increasing number of mass protest movements, mainly by the young, for democratic demands particularly in the Global South. Some of them – in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal and Madagascar, for example – have succeeded in overthrowing governments.
The mainstream media has noted the youth of the protesters and the fact that many of them carry and organise using mobile phones. Ever on the lookout for a slick headline, they have been dubbed these social movements as ‘Gen Z revolutions’.[1]
The Marxist left has been similarly enthusiastic. On the Nepali events, Solidarity declared “Nepal’s Gen Z rises up in rebellion against the rich”.
“For the first time in decades,” wrote Jordi Pardoel, “young Nepalese believe in their power to shake governments.”[2]
Socialist Alternative’s Red Flag joined the chorus. “Mass youth protests, dubbed the ‘Gen Z revolution’ exploded on the streets of Nepal, forcing a political crisis and the resignation of the Prime Minister … just one day after the youth protest began,”[3] wrote Shovan Bhattarai.
The Communist Party of Australia’s Guardian was slightly less breathless on “Nepal’s Gen Z uprising”, spending a little more time on the material causes behind it and (importantly) the problems in front.[4]
The participants in these uprisings have been supremely brave and determined in the face of fierce state repression, often occasioning deaths. They have done what none of the established opposition forces have been able to do because of either weak policies or authoritarian control.
But the fact is that none of these movements has achieved what their more far-sighted elements wanted – a change in the system that has brought their societies to their present state of poverty, corruption and inequality.
Of the 11 Gen Z revolts starting in 2022, seven stopped at mass protest demonstrations and minor governmental changes. A huge amount of physical and mental effort (and sacrifice) for only partial results and, arguably, defeat. Ony four (Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal and Madagascar) brought about a change of government. In each of those, that change has yet to bring about what the protesters wanted.
Why Gen Z and why now?
At its simplest, there are large numbers of Gen Z in the Global South, where the median age is 25. Gen Z is generally reckoned to be those people born from about 1997 to about 2012.
Since many of these societies are chronically affected by IMF dictated debt and austerity policies, climate catastrophe and war, Gen Z is squarely in the firing line. Unemployment is particularly rampant amongst youth. In Nepal, youth unemployment spiked at more than 24 percent when COVID hit and has not dropped down to pre-COVID levels, remaining above 20 percent
Weakening state capacity (a result of neoliberal policies) leaves few tools to remedy the problem. The expansion of universities (for those who can afford them) has created large numbers of educated youth who cannot find work. Some of these are pushed into jobs offshore, which they are beginning to resist.
Many more can only find work in the informal sector – the ‘gig economy’. Meanwhile, the expansion of agribusiness and the destruction of small farms pushes youth into the cities, where they join the ranks of the potentially insurgent unemployed.
The university educated youth of the Global South and those pushed into manual jobs labouring in the Middle East or elsewhere as guest workers, makes this generation a truly international grouping, with experiences across the globe.
Phones and horizontal organising
The resulting alienation, together with the demonstrated incapacity of existing political organisations (both in and out of power) encourages the use of the internet as the main method for the transmission of ideas. As traditional forms of direct human contact is pushed aside, the internet supplants older forms of political organisation.
Mobile phones and social platforms may appear to be a new, exciting and, above all, instant form of political organisation. Beyond the reach of the state (except when the state switches it off), they can call together large masses of people in a central space to demonstrate.
But that is where problems can begin. Once gathered, a large mass of people does not necessarily know or agree on what to do next, or how to prevent the ‘what next?’ question being taken out of their hands by those with the most social media followers, the loudest megaphones, the most spectacular tactics. How, in fact, is the question to be decided? By a vote? By everyone doing what they want?
These are some of the issues raised by Vincent Bevins in his book If We Burn, which covers the mass mobilisations in 10 countries outside Western Europe and North America from 2010 to 2020. He points out in an interview with Jacobin that social media can produce “big protests that come together very quickly – so quickly, perhaps, that no one knows each other, people are trying to realise contradictory goals, and after the initial energy fades, nothing remains”.
One of the problems that he identifies is ‘horizontalism’ – the idea that the best way forward for the mass is full consensus. This may be appropriate for demonstration tactics. But as Bevins points out “a protest is very poorly equipped to take advantage of a revolutionary situation”.
Simply getting people together – the ‘techno-optimism’ that characterises Gen Z – isn’t enough. A mass protest – even days of mass protests – is, says Bevins, “so fundamentally illegible that it relies on some outside force to impose meaning on it”.[5] This has been the case for many of the Gen Z uprisings.
Nepal
One of the most recent Gen Z uprisings, the one in Nepal from 9 to 13 September this year was a case in point. For years there have been protests against Nepal’s supposedly leftist governments (often containing elements of the three communist parties) for their corruption and ostentatious displays of wealth by their rich supporters and their children. The youth of Nepal suffered from the poverty and unemployment described above – and they turned to social media in the absence of an organised political opposition. Forty-eight percent of the total population has a social media account, with the young having a much higher concentration.
On 4 September, the Government decided to shut down 26 social media platforms (including Facebook, X, YouTube, Reddit, Signal and Snapchat). Ostensibly, this was because they had not registered themselves properly – but it was widely believed that it was aimed at curbing dissent. No measure could have been more carefully crafted to goad Gen Z onto the streets. And goaded they were.
Four days later mass demonstrations erupted in the capital, Kathmandu, organised through whatever social media was left. The demonstrations were against the shutdown – and, beyond that, generally aimed at corruption and the rich – but they had no definitive aim. The UK Guardian reported later that “many of the young people who took to the streets on 8 September say they simply wanted to raise their voice against corruption and never intended to bring about wholesale regime change”.[6]
The demonstrators moved against the parliament building and were attacked with teargas, water cannon, rubber bullets and eventually live ammunition. At that point, they started to demand the dissolution of parliament – and a change of government.
That evening (8 September), the social media ban was lifted. But the next day, the protestors, either still in the streets or reinforced from outside Kathmandu, came back for more. Again, no leadership or organisation was visible – only the invisible emanations of social media. Further violence against important buildings and individuals ensued. The government’s administrative headquarters, supreme court, the houses of the president and prime minister, the headquarters of one of the communist parties and parliament itself were all set alight. The demonstrators also attacked three former prime ministers, the foreign minister, local politicians and the houses of the deputy prime minister and the former president. The prime minister resigned, taking the government with him.
That night, the Nepali armed forces said they were taking charge. The attacks on government buildings and politicians’ homes continued overnight but came to an end the next day.
If we burn … ?
What was the outcome? The armed forces were desperate to find a new head of government who could calm the situation down. But in the absence of any constitutional provisions covering these events – and in fear of the protests starting again – how to nominate one? Enter, once again, social media – or at least one of its well-placed actors.
Hami Nepal is a non-profit Nepalese NGO, originally set up to support communities and individuals in need through emergencies or crises. It had also set up a site called ‘Youths against Corruption’. Either by accident or design, it helped to facilitate the original demonstrations (although its feet got rather cold as they went on). Hami Nepal was in no way a democratic mass organisation that represented the protesters. Even if it had represented some of them, there was no way to determine who they were.
But the army chiefs picked Hami Nepal as their preferred channel of negotiation. They asked their preferred Gen Zers who they wanted as prime minister. Hami Nepal obligingly organised a poll (participants are estimated at anywhere between one and 10 thousand) to make their suggestion. Eventually (but not, it seems, as a result of this poll), Sushila Karki, a former Chief Justice was selected and was sworn in as prime minister. Hardly an earthquake for Nepal’s rulers.
Once the sugar-hit of removing the government had passed (and fair enough, demonstrating that this could be done), not very much seems to have been achieved. Karki – without a political movement behind her – is hemmed in by the armed forces, the bureaucracy, the rich and the major political parties. There has been no visible crackdown on corruption or ill-gotten wealth and certainly no high-profile arrests. The remnants of the Gen Z groups have no representation in the new government. In early October, Prakash Bohara (an unemployed health assistant) told the UK Guardian: “It’s been a month since the movement began, yet many of our demands remain unmet.”[7]
So, a waste of time?
Only if no lessons are learned – in Nepal as well as here. Bevins told his Jacobin interviewer:
I would argue that the type of organisation you need is one that is capable of careful and constant analysis of the concrete configurations of power, that undertakes serious intellectual work at all times as to what is possible and what can be achieved and the best way to achieve it, but that is also capable of shifting tactics very quickly as circumstances change.
Which is, of course, exactly the sort of paragraph with which you would expect us to finish an article like this.
But I would add two things. The first is that the ‘careful and constant analysis’ has to produce a political program which indicates what we will accept as a condition of forming or accepting a government and what we ultimately aim for. The second is that neither a program nor such an organisation – which we call a communist party – will emerge spontaneously on the streets in moments of social protest – no matter how militant, prolonged or egalitarian they are. They have to be built before things reach that point. And a start should be made on that by the Marxist left in Australia.
[1] See ‘Asia’s Gen Z rises up against entrenched political elites,’ Le Monde 29 September 2025; ‘Gen Z: how young people are changing activism,’ BBC News 8 August 2022.
[2] Solidarity, 1 October 2025.
[3] Socialist Alternative, 14 September 2025.
[4] Guardian, 22 September 2025. The relative sobriety of their account may be explained by the fact that much of it was attributed to Tricontinental, the periodical of the Institute for Social Research.
[5] Interview with Jacobin, 25 January 2024.
[6] ‘Unease at slow pace of change in Nepal,’ Guardian 11 October 2025.
[7] Guardian, 11 October 2025.