We often hear that Gen Z is disengaged, apathetic, and checked out of politics. The data from the streets tells a very different story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Following Bangladesh’s 2024 movement, widely considered the first successful “Gen Z revolution”, powerful youth-led movements have swept the world, from Africa to Latin America to South Asia. Although each movement has its own domestic causes, all have been triggered by deep public anger over perceived corruption, cost-of-living crises, and widespread economic discontent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anti-government protests flooded streets across the globe in 2025, with new demonstrations emerging in more than seventy countries. Of those catalogued in Carnegie’s Global Protest Tracker, the three main triggers were anger against government corruption, anti-democratic overreach, and economic hardship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The results have been stunning in their speed. Governments have fallen. Presidents have fled. And a generation once written off as politically passive has become the most disruptive political force on the planet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Specific corruption scandals or allegations sparked demonstrations in multiple regions. In Nepal, Gen Z protests were spurred by nepotism and corruption, eventually leading to Prime Minister K. P. Sharma Oli’s resignation. Around the same time, the Philippines saw Gen Z protests over a corruption scandal involving the country’s flood-control projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In Indonesia, Gen Z protests against parliament members’ high salaries were partially driven by longstanding anger toward perceived government corruption. Morocco’s Gen Z protests were similarly fuelled by anger over corruption, though they initially stemmed from frustration over inappropriate government spending and neglect of public services.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In Indonesia, students and pro-democracy activists protested revisions to the nation’s military law that permitted military officers to serve in civilian government posts, thereby widening the military’s role in civilian affairs. In Mali, protests erupted after the military junta extended its rule for another five years and dissolved all political parties. In Togo, the removal of presidential term limits triggered deadly protests, led by Gen Z and other activists angered by extended rule and concerned over the state of democracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Social media bans were another flashpoint. In Nepal, a government-imposed Facebook ban backfired spectacularly, driving protesters to TikTok, Viber, and VPNs to organise what became a government-toppling movement in under a week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Several countries experienced protests over unpopular austerity measures, including Belgium, Indonesia, France, Slovakia, Romania, and Argentina. Demonstrators argued that various reforms impacting pensions, education, and worker benefits would only worsen existing hardships. In Angola and Ecuador, increased fuel prices drove hundreds to thousands of protesters onto the streets. Spain’s high rent prices, exacerbated by the tourism boom, triggered massive protests from aggrieved residents demanding government action on affordable housing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The movement that started everything began not with a grand political cause but a job quota. Fewer than 50% of government positions were filled on merit, with the rest reserved under a system widely seen as deeply nepotistic. When the government responded to student protests with a violent crackdown, the anger transformed into something far larger. Over 300 people were killed. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina fled the country. It was the template every subsequent Gen Z movement would study.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In September, what began as demonstrations against Nepal’s social media ban quickly transformed into a mass mobilisation that toppled Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli. Nepalese demonstrators took to the streets for just five days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nepal’s new interim prime minister was notably elected on Discord, a messaging platform, shortly after the protests ousted her predecessor, with Discord becoming the space for an experimental and ultimately successful political convention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Protests ignited over water and electricity shortages before escalating into a broader indictment of corruption and poor governance. The movement took an unexpected turn when military officials joined the protesters in what analysts called a “coupvolution<\/strong>“.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Military officials in Madagascar joined the country’s youth protesters in a “coupvolution” that overthrew President Andry Rajoelina’s government. The challenge after such a moment is stark: “For citizens who mobilised against an unpopular leader and cheered his downfall at the hands of the military, the true test begins after victory: maintaining influence over the post-coup order without being sidelined by military officers consolidating power.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Young Bulgarians became a driving force behind anti-corruption protests that toppled the government after less than a year in office. The prime minister resigned on December 11, 2025, in a country that had seemed unlikely terrain for a Gen Z uprising, demonstrating that this wave has no geographic boundaries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Civil unrest in Peru contributed to President Dina Boluarte’s impeachment. Demonstrators accused her of representing the same political system they had long opposed, calling for the president’s resignation and the dissolution of Congress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gen Z protests against parliament members’ high salaries, partially driven by longstanding anger toward perceived government corruption, forced President Prabowo to revoke lawmakers’ perks, including a $3,000 housing subsidy. Political parties agreed to reverse state-funded politicians’ perks to quell the unrest, which left six dead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Three people were killed and over 500 were arrested. Activists called for fresh demonstrations anyway. Morocco’s Gen Z protests were fuelled by anger over corruption, inappropriate government spending, and the neglect of government services. The protest movement urged the King to dismiss the government and investigate elite corruption, rejecting reform offers as insufficient.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Kenya’s protests over tax hikes, femicide, and corruption drew a particularly alarming government response. Amnesty International documented authorities paying trolls to threaten and intimidate activists online, a sign that governments are learning to fight back in the digital spaces where these movements are born.<\/p>\n\n\n\n India’s chief justice of the Supreme Court, Surya Kant, said during an open court hearing that “parasites” were attacking the system and equated youngsters to cockroaches “who don’t get any employment and don’t have any place in a profession.” His exact words: “There are youngsters like cockroaches who don’t get any employment or have any place in the profession. Some of them become media, some of them become social media, RTI activists and other activists, and they start attacking everyone.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Kant later clarified that his comment related to people acquiring fraudulent degrees and did not target India’s youth. Yet his remarks drew considerable ire, mainly from Gen Z internet users as they battle large-scale unemployment, inflation, and bitter religious divides after 12 years of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Abhijeet Dipke, a 30-year-old recent graduate in public relations from Boston University, found himself leading a sweeping satirical political movement after a casual joke took an unexpected turn. As outrage escalated across social media, Dipke posted on X: “What if all cockroaches come together?” He followed up by setting up a website and social media accounts for the Cockroach Janata Party, a play on Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Cockroach Janata Party’s Instagram account crossed 3 million followers in three days, and more than 350,000 people signed up for the party’s membership via a Google form. Among those who signed up were political heavyweights, including Mahua Moitra, an opposition parliamentarian from West Bengal, and Kirti Azad from Bihar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While India’s economy has ballooned, income inequality, coupled with unemployment and the high cost of living, has reached historic highs. India produces more than eight million graduates a year, yet the unemployment rate among them stands at 29.1%, nine times higher than that of those who never attended school. More than a quarter of India’s population is Gen Z, also the biggest such cohort in the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The chief justice’s comments also came during a week that saw nationwide protests by young students over exam paper leaks, which forced the cancellation of a government-run medical entrance test.<\/p>\n\n\n\n YouTuber Meghnad S told Al Jazeera that “the joke has taken a life of its own”, with an “overwhelming sense that people are looking for alternative political formations, not necessarily political parties, but political experiments that are not traditional.” He put it plainly: “Cockroach Janata Party is a satirical, non-existent party, yet people believe that it is a better alternative to reality.” That’s kind of a giant commentary on Indian political parties in general.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Prominent Supreme Court lawyer Prashant Bhushan told Al Jazeera that the chief justice’s comments “reflected deep-rooted prejudice and antipathy towards activists and youth in general” and that India needs a youth uprising since its “economy and society are bleeding for the benefit of crony capitalists.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n For Dipke, the founder, the stakes are clear: “For too long, people have been quiet in India. There is a responsibility to take this moment and not laugh it off.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n These revolutions were startling in their power and speed. Nepalese demonstrators took to the streets for just five days before toppling the government. Gen Z’s native fluency with digital platforms means that what once took months of organising can now happen in hours. Discord, TikTok, Instagram, and even Google Forms have all become instruments of political mobilisation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The 2025 Gen Z protests have drawn inspiration from one another and united under common symbols, such as the pirate flag from the Japanese anime One Piece. A judge’s careless remark in New Delhi lands in the same week that a government falls in Kathmandu. The connections are real, visible, and deliberate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n India’s Cockroach Janata Party is perhaps the most vivid example of a broader trend: Gen Z not only marches but also mocks. Satire, absurdist humour, and viral social media content are as much a part of the toolkit as street protests. Dipke built his party online within 24 hours of first posting about it, leveraging AI tools to design its look and manifesto, in line with a long tradition of global countercultural political movements that use satire, absurdity, and performance to challenge mainstream politics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Not every observer is ready to declare a new global revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While it is noteworthy that the 2025 Gen Z protests have drawn inspiration from one another, it remains uncertain whether they will coalesce into a substantially interconnected wave of protests. Data from the Global Protest Tracker reveal that rates of youth-led protests between 2017 and 2019 were similar to or higher than in 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And toppling a government is not the same as transforming one. Madagascar’s experience is a cautionary tale of revolutions captured by the military. Kenya shows how states are learning to suppress digital organising. The question of what comes after the protest is, in many ways, harder than the protest itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Time in politics is always short. Coherent organising, as opposed to performative resistance, matters, but so does the patient, sometimes subversive, work of long-term transformation.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “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.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n From the streets of Dhaka to a Google Form in Delhi, a generation is demanding to be taken seriously. The governments that called them apathetic, parasitic, or worse are learning that lesson the hard way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Gen Z is toppling governments worldwide. Here’s what’s fuelling the wave and why no government should underestimate it<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8939,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[158],"tags":[2423,2421,2422],"class_list":["post-8937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-cockroach-janata-party","tag-gen-z-protests","tag-youth-political-movements"],"yoast_head":"\nBulgaria (December 2025): Eastern Europe Joins the Wave<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Peru (October 2025): Impeachment via the Streets<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Indonesia: A Partial Win<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Morocco: Defiance Despite the Crackdown<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Kenya: The Trolls and the Streets<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
India: The Cockroach Janata Party<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The Comment That Lit the Fire<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
The Joke That Became a Movement<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
The Numbers Behind the Anger<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Why It Matters Beyond the Joke<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
What Makes This Generation Different<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
They Organise at Speed<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
They Inspire Each Other Across Borders<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
They Use Satire as a Weapon<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
The Caution Note<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
References<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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