The great Gen Z revolt

0:00This is The Guardian.

0:09Today, the Gen Z protests that are toppling governments around the world.

0:23If you go online now and search Nepal Christmas tree, one of the first images you'll see is of a young man with slicked back hair in a red sweater. I think it's Ralph Lauren. It looks like Kashmir. Anyway, he's standing next to a pretty ostentatious tower of gifts, boxes from Louis Vuitton and Cartier, all piled up and decorated to look like a festive, blingy Christmas tree. This photo, of the son of a Nepali politician, seems to have been the final straw. The Nepoket trend was going on TikTok in Nepal. The children of the politicians were having, you know, latest life. But low-class and middle-class people were struggling, even for a male, and that made, you know, feel so angry and frustrated.

1:17Protests led by students, including children, erupted in Nepal.

1:27In September, they took down its government. And they haven't stopped there.

1:36An ocean away, a generation of young people inspired by Nepal took to the streets of Madagascar. It gave us this line of hope that we can speak up and fight against corrupt leaders and against the system that just benefit to the wealthy people.

1:575 ,000 miles north, protesters were out in Morocco too. The country is not a good place to live anymore, and the population is really, really upset.

2:19All around the world, young people are rising up. From Nepal to Madagascar, Morocco to Peru, Indonesia, Bangladesh, the Philippines, Gen Zers have had enough. What do they want? Well, everything. And when will they get it? Well, from The Guardian, I'm Nashi Nekbal. Today in Focus, how TikTok and a pirate flag inspired a generation to take to the streets.

2:51Dr. Niana Prakash, you specialise in politics, technology and the Global South at Chatham House. You've been closely following this wave of protests which has spread across the world. Can you pinpoint exactly where it started? Well, this year, some of the major protests in Nepal began on the 8th of September, and there have been other protests in subsequent weeks. But of course, over the last year, we've seen protests in Indonesia, we've seen protests in Kenya, we've seen protests in Bangladesh, so very close to Nepal. But this year, the Nepal protests have really earned and used the moniker Gen Z protests, and other protests that have come subsequently in Madagascar and Peru and Morocco have chosen to use this term as well.

3:31And how did the movement in Nepal start? What happened? So in Nepal, the government banned 25 social media apps because they failed to comply with the government's policy to register themselves by a certain date. And tech companies would have to pull content that wasn't very complementary or was inflammatory towards the Nepalese government. But they didn't give tech companies a very long time to register themselves And then when tech companies kind of declined to do so or just forgot about it because they only had a week, they were then banned. This is a really wide range of apps. Some we might expect, like obviously Facebook, Instagram.

4:06Some we might be quite surprised by, like LinkedIn or Pinterest. Yeah, so a very wide range of apps. And as a result of this, members of youth-led groups who labeled themselves Gen Z protesters, using two available apps that were still not banned, which were Discord, which is a kind of messaging platform traditionally used in gaming, but loads of other people use it as well. And TikTok took to the streets to protest. But I want to emphasize this was only the trigger point. The wider protest and what they're protesting about isn't really about social media. It's actually about corruption, unemployment in the country, inequality and what is perceived to be a two-tiered society in Nepal.

4:47And so is there any truth in my understanding, which is that there was a trend that was sort of flying in Nepal, which was showing the lives of the young, rich Nepo babies of Nepal, which kind of sparked a backlash. I mean, can you tell us a bit more about that? Absolutely. So there are lots of young people who are related to government officials and who themselves occupy a very elite, very affluent lifestyle. And in response to kind of seeing these posts, which have obviously been building up over time, a lot of people started commenting hashtag Nepo baby in reference to the fact that these are rich people who haven't necessarily built their own career, but are famous because their parents are famous.

5:26Like a classic Nepo baby. A classic Nepo baby, which has also become quite a big term in South Asia as a pejorative. And there are specifically a few posts, one posted by a member of government's son who posed in front of a Christmas tree made of luxury goods from Cartier and Louis Vuitton. The perception is that corruption is rampant. And, you know, there is this real kind of vitriol and anger towards the fact that some people have no jobs and some people have Christmas trees made of Cartier.

6:02The country was angry and frustrated by the work of the recent governments. This is Yuzhan Rajbandhari, a 23-year-old civil engineering student in Nepal. It was burning like a fuel. It would explode any time, any moment. It was just searching for a kind of triggering point. So when social media was banned, all these things accumulated.

6:36So there were no any official organizers of this protest. It was not organized by any individual or any political parties. This is a protest of one generation of the youth. It made everyone feel like this is my protest. I have to be involved in this. In the early stages of the protest, we saw tens of thousands turned up to the streets. There are young people in school uniform carrying flags, protesting for a change of government, an end to this government's corruption. We are going to stand together, every single one of them. Are you with me? We made clear that the protest was to be peaceful and it was, you know, traumatising.

7:22as the event went the other way.

7:35I was in the crowd. We were in the front line of the protest and the police were firing bullets towards the crowd. Me along with other protesters made a human chain and we tried to evacuate school children who were below 18. They were also involved in protests, so we thought their safety is must. So some of France made human chains and we tried to evacuate as much as we could.

8:06Protesters attempted to storm Nepal's parliament and the police began shooting.

8:14Some of France are injured and some of France have... and sacrificed their life in this protest. Around 19 children or youths were killed in a few hours, like two, three hours. You know, I could be one of those, but the bullet did not hit me. That's the difference. So that was how brutal the government was, how they tried to suppress the moment.

8:50Nayana, these protests were really intense. Government buildings were set on fire. The wife of one former prime minister actually suffered severe burns after her home was set on fire as well. How did it spiral so far out of control? So the protest groups are very clear to say that this isn't the act of the group themselves, the original kind of Gen Z group, but other people taking advantage, perhaps, of the situation, bad actors. And we see this a lot, actually, not just in Nepal, but in all the other protests that have happened since, which is that because, you know, they're kind of leaderless groups, they're not specifically tied to a person or to even a specific political organization.

9:29It can be very difficult to determine who's actually behind these protests. And when violence does happen, as it has happened in all these situations, who is responsible for it? Is it the government? Is it the police or the military intervention that's happened in a lot of these countries? Or is it protesters themselves? And of course, it does serve the government very well to say that it is the protesters who are causing this kind of damage. The Prime Minister of Nepal has resigned as deadly protests continue across the country. After the former Prime Minister of Nepal stepped down, the Gen Z protest group took to disgorge to elect a new caretaker Prime Minister for the next six months until Nepal has democratic elections.

10:09So a really interesting use of democracy in action for a younger generation. After several rounds of negotiations between the army chief and a delegation of young protesters and the president, the country's former chief justice, Sushila Karki, who's known for her anti-corruption stance, has been chosen to now lead the country in this difficult moment. Nepal's Gen Z is banking on her to usher in change. As the prime minister resigned, we thought now something better will happen because he did not deserve that post. And the JNJ movement in Nepal had been, you know, an example for the other JNJs around the world that the change is possible by youth.

10:55They've shown to the government that the youth vote is really significant and that young people can be mobilized very, very quickly and with quite limited tools. Even when you close down social media? Even when you close down 25 apps, people will use whatever is available to them, I think, to protest. So it's been a really significant month for Nepal. But of course, the story isn't really over yet, even if the media spotlight has now moved on to other protests around the world.

11:26The Gen Z protests have quickly spread, going from Nepal to Madagascar, Peru, Morocco, the Philippines. the list goes on. What do these countries even have in common? Well, they're all in the global south. And these are also all countries where the median age is quite young. So the median age in many of these countries, so in Kenya and Nepal, is about 19. And if we compare this with the kind of aging populations that we see in the West, we may understand a little bit more about why issues like youth unemployment are so significant to these countries because it does impact a really, really vast range of people.

12:02Like in Peru, you know, the country's been in a bit of a political crisis since 2016. There is an official unemployment rate of like 70%, which is incredibly high. And the former president had an approval rating of something like 2%. So it's a very, very unpopular government. But also in a lot of these cases, people are protesting against the fact that these political regimes haven't changed in a long time. And possibly in their lifetimes. Possibly in their entire lifetime. They've seen the same figures take office again and again and again, decade after decade, year after year. And they don't believe in the democratic system anymore because it seems like nothing changes.

12:42In the last few months, I think, as a result of seeing protests in other countries, protesters have just decided enough is enough. I didn't pay attention to it at first, But then when I heard that they kicked out the prime minister in Nepal, then I started giving some attention to it. This is Yassine, a protester from Morocco. He can't reveal his full name for his own safety. I found it very brave from the Gen Z or the whole population that they acted, I would say violently, but it was a necessary cause in order to have a new government. and it's something that I wish we had here in Morocco to kick out the government at the moment.

13:27I think a lot of these protests are tied to the fact that Gen Z has grown up in a time of austerity, in a time of limited funding. And in Morocco, some of these protests have been triggered by immediate events, like, for example, Morocco's hosting the Africa Cup of Nations in December and the World Cup in, I think, 2030. Big decade for Morocco. Big decade for Morocco, absolutely. And the perception in Morocco is that the government is sinking a lot of money into infrastructure for these events, but not putting money into things like hospitals. The Gen Z movement started when six pregnant women died in Agadez Hospital.

14:07It blew and people started trying to protest.

14:16In the beginning, they were a bit rough. There was a lot of oppression by the authorities, by the police. Just as in Nepal, the police response was severe. Three protesters were shot and killed as they tried to break into a police station near Agadir.

14:37Very lengthy prison sentences have been handed out to those accused of violence during the protest For Yassin, this has stalled the movement in Morocco People are even scared to speak out about what's happening Because the government is always trying to imprison those who speak out And if the protests will keep going peacefully like this But from my point of view, nothing will change.

15:12Liana, in terms of the spread, I'm thinking about my own use of social media and some of the most interesting and insightful coverage I've seen of this story and these protests has actually come from TikTok. Yeah. And not to, you know, reduce these movements to social media, but, you know, in a similar way that the Arab Spring was very closely connected to Twitter, Can you explain the role that TikTok is having and actually how key is it to the understanding of what we have today? I think we've seen over the last decade or so that TikTok and other social media platforms that are video first are really significant to protest movements.

15:49We saw that over the Black Lives Matter movement. We've also seen it over Palestine protests across the world and indeed kind of knowledge about these issues, which maybe previously people in the West didn't necessarily have a lot of information about. So TikTok is significant, obviously, because it is global. Smartphones have become cheaper worldwide. And many people, you know, have smartphones that are produced in their own country. You don't have to have an iPhone, right? And because it is also a platform that is video first, as I said. So it doesn't require high levels of literacy. So you can see a TikTok in Arabic or in a different language and not have to understand the caption of what's going on.

16:27But you can see the visual. There isn't a shared... cultural history, a shared language across these countries, that they're speaking literally quite different languages and they're speaking from quite different histories. When the Arab Spring protest happened over a decade ago, they were united by the fact that they were countries with similar histories that spoke Arabic. And when protesters were speaking to each other using Twitter, they were able to use this shared language. And now protesters are speaking to each other in very different ways across the world without any of those kind of similarities.

17:02There may be no shared language, but there is this shared symbol, and it's of a skull and crossbones wearing a straw hat from the anime show called One Piece, which, kind of gather, is about an anti-corruption, sort of defiant message. Can you tell us more about that? One Piece is an anime show that's very, very popular. It's in Japanese, but it's been translated to loads of languages now. And we've seen that flag all over protests. We've seen it in Nepal. We saw it in Indonesia. We're now seeing it in Madagascar. We're seeing it in Peru. We're seeing it in Kenya. We've seen it in Morocco. It's a very typical kind of pirate flag, but it's sort of become in some ways a beacon.

17:42And now every subsequent use of that flag is a response, perhaps, to previous iterations of it. And in carrying it, supporters showed that they are in solidarity with other protesters around the world and that they are conscious of the symbol that they are holding. And that what they're protesting about may be, you know, centered in Nepal or Madagascar or Morocco, but really it's speaking to a wider trend across the world, even with people they've never seen and will never meet.

18:14I think everything began with what happened in Nepal. When the protests in Nepal began, people in Madagascar knew that it was a high time for Madagascar to have the same. This is Shelley Andromiaja, a 26-year-old activist from Madagascar. Young people felt really desperate about the future. Two out of three Malagasy live with less than$2 a day. Every day people wake up with no electricity and no running water. There was no potential jobs. So I think it is the culmination of years of corruption, bad governance and neglect from the government. Across Madagascar, people took to the streets demanding the resignation of the president accused of widespread corruption.

19:12The process started on September 26th in Atanarivu and quickly spread out in all the big cities in Madagascar. It was one of the most exciting experiences of my whole life because it was the very first time in years that we could express ourselves fully, that we could go on the street and say what frustrated us.

19:45At the same time, we were so afraid and scared of getting injured, of getting arrested, and also just like the violence from the security forces.

20:03There was 20 deaths. There was hundreds of people that got injured, but it never stopped us from fighting. And we knew that we had to honour all the people that died for this cause.

20:24Madagascar's president has reportedly fled the country after a powerful military unit backed protesters, demanding his resignation. However, Andrew Aswell has addressed the nation from an unknown location, saying that although he is sheltering in a safe space, he was forced to flee to protect his life. It was an incredible moment and we could feel the happiness of the war people once we heard the news.