Will Bunch: A Gen Z revolution is sweeping the globe. Is it coming to America?

[Nevilledog]

https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/gen-z-protests-nepal-madagascar-morocco-20251002.html

No paywall link
https://archive.ph/2025.10.02-152449/https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/gen-z-protests-nepal-madagascar-morocco-20251002.html

After the streets of Morocco burned for the fifth straight night on Wednesday, with mask-wearing protesters torching cars and smashing windows as overwhelmed police fired bullets at looters, the rebels issued a manifesto.

It came over Discord, the worldwide social platform created for young people to connect and play online games like Fortnite or League of Legends, and was issued by a group called GenZ 212 — Morocco’s international dialing code — which proclaims itself as “the voice of a generation forgotten by their leaders.”

The loosely organized and leaderless online collective has decried the more than $5 billion that the North African nation is investing on gleaming new stadiums to co-host soccer’s 2030 World Cup, when more than one-third of young people are unemployed and its public hospitals are in crisis. “The right to health, education and a dignified life is not an empty slogan but a serious demand,” GenZ 212 said in Wednesday’s statement, as it urged, unsuccessfully, for the protests to stay peaceful.

Morocco’s massive unrest — in the same corner of the world where a Tunisian street vendor’s self-immolation and nascent social media triggered 2011’s Arab Spring — should be a huge story if it were happening in isolation. But Morocco is hardly alone.

As the 2025 calendar flipped from summer into fall, the 20-somethings and teens collectively known as Gen Z, or “zoomers,” have taken to the streets in a series of mostly developing countries that are separated by oceans and thousands of miles, yet linked by sites like Discord and TikTok and a worldview defined by video games and anime.

*snip*

[OC375]

1. I Hope Not

Burn it all down doesn't seem like something I'd want to be a part of.

[Cheezoholic]

3. No but you may not be the dire circumstances many of them are, although I fear we're headed that way fast n/t

[Cheezoholic]

2. We need to support it and help prevent movements like this by young people from being exploited by nefarious actors

I used to play video games way back in the day (like the original Leisure Suit Larry or Doom lol). Since I've been disabled I've built a new PC and am learning to game again. The best way to learn is to get on these Discord servers and basically ask for help. There's a LOT going on within the Gen Z community not just over there but everywhere and most of it's good. They are looking for their way. A lot of us can help shine a light

[DavidDvorkin]

4. I was a young person in the Sixties, but now I'm a cynical old pessimist

The system gives up a bit of ground and waits for the youth rebellion to fade, and then it oozes back to where it was. In the long run, it seems hopeless.

[SamKnause]

5. I think it oozes back past where it was.

We keep losing ground.

We are losing our hard fought for rights.

The law is being twisted or totally ignored.

Every government entity and institution is infested with crooks, criminals, white supremacist, Christian nationalists,
and fascists.

I don't blame you for feeling hopeless.

I don't know how this mess can ever be straightened out.

[JI7]

6. Unlikely. And most of thess have been disasters

with certain greedy powers behind them.

And if they want change all they have to do is vote. And we saw there are many that are Maga types.