GenZ vs the far-right: roots and reactions

It’s no surprise that youth around the world are at the forefront of protests challenging broken and corrupt systems of governance. Black Panther co-founder Huey Newton said, revolution is in the hands of the young. What is more alarming is the emerging divide in youth responses in the Global Majority for justice and possibility and a far-right surge in the West feeding on anger, grievance and nostalgia.

The gap between Gen Z protest in the Global Majority and far-right youth mobilisation in the West reflects a crisis not just of politics but of shared meaning. Both movements are expressing pain about the loss of the futures they were promised. While one finds hope through collective demand for justice, the other seeks revenge, status or security in tribalism and demagoguery.

A generation refusing a broken future

The Gen Z protests aren’t just about youth challenging authority, upheaval or even about revolution. Their resistance is raw and their vision is practical. They want clean water and electricity, education and jobs, dignity, transparency and accountability. They want to have a voice in their future. They are mostly unconnected from existing civil society organisations and have toppled governments, sent presidents into exile and as a result of some of these protests they have been invited to have a seat at the table to discuss the future. While these outcomes have captured headlines around the world, the real story is about a generation refusing to accept a broken future and insisting the political system must put people first.

• Tanzania: Youth faced deadly repression after implausible election results that reek of authoritarian tactics to hold on to power. The movement is demanding change in governance, accountability for disappearances, the release of political prisoners and constitutional reform. Protests planned for December are a clear sign that youth have not been deterred and intend to reclaim their future from authoritarian rule.​​
• Madagascar: Angry about chronic water and electricity shortages, and the corruption that led to the massive inequality in access to these services, youth led a three-week nationwide digital and street protest that forced the President into exile. They quickly gained support across society, from workers’ unions, teachers and civil servants, even among the military.
• Morocco: The prime minister has said he is ready for “dialogue and discussion” after youth led the largest mobilisation since 2011 demanding better education, healthcare, jobs and real action against corruption. They frame their struggle as a fight for dignity and a future in their own country instead of having to flee for a better life.
• Peru: Protests that ousted the president continue, uniting students, rural workers and artists in a fight not only for immediate relief, but for dignity, accountability and to participate in the decisions about what happens next.
• Indonesia: Protests driven by rising unemployment and government cuts to education and health, often coordinated through social media, escalated when police became violent providing further evidence of the government’s preference for authoritarianism.
• Nepal: Following a government ban on social media that was widely seen as a cover for silencing dissent, the youth-led protests quickly escalated into a movement against generational injustice, corruption and state repression. At least 72 people died, the Prime Minister resigned within days and youth were invited to help choose the interim leadership.

It is worth remembering who gets to tell these stories, and how they shape perceptions. When youth protest topples a government in Asia or Africa, it feeds a familiar Western media narrative that these countries are in perpetual crisis, reinforcing its own claims to order.

The roots of Gen Z’s rebellion run deeper than corruption or isolation. They’re tangled in decades of neoliberal and imperialist maneuvering. For too long, global powers and financial institutions have treated the Global Majority as a market, not a community. Pushing growth through privatisation, austerity and extractive deals that are hollowing out resources. Little of which benefits local people, and has left Global Majority countries with debt instead of dignity.

At the same time protests and resistance in the West are often downplayed, repressed or met with silence despite vibrant student and youth-led movements. They just receive far less mainstream media attention and face deliberate efforts to stifle it. In Serbia, the ongoing and decentralised student protests have been met by government crackdowns. Six activists from Palestine Action will go on trial next week after more than a year in jail for allegedly damaging Israeli weapons on a UK military base. Georgia’s new laws now restrict freedom of protest and academic autonomy at universities. These movements struggle for visibility in an environment where dissent is policed and coverage of youth action outside the far-right is marginalised. The status quo is sustained not just through institutions, but through stories and the decisions in news rooms about what gets highlighted and what gets hidden.

The battle for belonging

The very same hunger for meaning, belonging and agency is reshaping western politics in a starkly different direction. In the US, the UK and parts of Europe youth energy is surging. Not toward movements for dignity, but into the arms of far-right populism. It’s not always about hate. Often it’s about a craving to matter in an era of collapsing certainty, fraying community and algorithm-driven isolation. The far right knows how to turn frustration and alienation into fuel for reaction. As nostalgia and grievance become currency, young men especially (but not only men) are recruited into a kind of belonging that is oppositional, combative and exclusionary. 

Turning Point USA and its European analogs have mobilised disillusioned youth into well-financed, highly visible far-right populist organisations. 

TPUSA, the grassroots right-wing political organisation founded by Charlie Kirk, reached thousands of campuses, spending nearly $400 million in a decade and directly boosting youth support for Trump.​ TPUSA built a digital media empire that brought in social media influencers to reshape political identities and appeal to young people. Instead of relying on traditional conservative values or overt political messaging, they actively occupy spaces like TikTok, influencer podcasts and use hip hop to rebrand their ideology as relevant, aspirational and cool. They created onramps into right-wing politics through content about wellness and beauty: organic beauty and home products, and reducing pharmaceutical drugs and processed food.

As Micah English writes, pop culture is not just a battleground for image-making but a central tool for the far-right to build new coalitions and influence young people’s identities, values and political choices. They are targeting youth who are searching for belonging, meaning and agency.

While in the UK, the Netherlands, France and Germany, far-right engagement often focuses on anti-immigration and “traditional values”. They are creating a different kind of belonging that is not defined by pop culture but nativist ideology. Germany’s AfD youth wing has normalised radical rhetoric and grown its social media presence well beyond establishment parties. Violent far-right protests in the UK, some led by young men and boys and co-opted by extremist organisations, have led to serious disorder and widespread arrests in the past year.

The far right’s dominance is not simply because of ideas, but investment. In the West, big tech platforms, often owned or influenced by powerful conservatives, amplify right-wing content,  block or demonetise dissent and provide the infrastructure for far-right organising. Progressive and left-leaning youth movements face algorithmic bias, frequent content bans and lack the massive financial backing and connections to media conglomerates. This imbalance shapes visibility, scale and is locking out alternative voices and making it harder to mobilise as effectively.

The pattern is clear: the far right is out spending and out manoeuvring progressive groups in the West when it comes to digital organising and influencing. As far-right and authoritarian parties increase their following, so do social media posts about their narratives focusing everyone’s attention on their politics.

Culture and belonging  is not solely a tool of the far right. Youth uprisings across the Global Majority have leveraged creative resistance: music, dance, sports, and digital art as expressions of dissent. From Brazilian funk used as a humanitarian tool, to meme culture and street art in Serbia, young organisers build momentum and solidarity through shared aesthetics and subcultural codes.

The Jolly Roger flag that Luffy and his pirate crew flies has been seen in protest movements in Nepal, Thailand, Myanmar, Madagascar, Peru and Indonesia. The creators of the symbol, One Piece, is one of the longest running and most popular anime shows and young people in the Global Majority are using it as a symbol of resistance, and as a signal that the values of their movement are about liberating people from authoritarian leadership. 

What are the global connective tissues?

• Material grievance meets existential anger: Gen Z activists across the Global Majority often cite corruption, unemployment, cost-of-living crises and police repression as triggers. Yet their rhetoric quickly becomes existential, focusing on dignity and stolen futures. A refrain echoed among populist right movements in the West, manifested not as hope but as reactionary nostalgia and anti-elite rage.​
• Decentralisation and horizontalism: Across regions, the most viral protests are deliberately leaderless, making them harder to suppress but also more vulnerable to authoritarian counterattack and co-optation. This same suspicion of old hierarchies drives young Westerners away from mainstream left politics into the arms of charismatic far-right influencers who promise authenticity and meaning.​
• Anxiety, alienation and identity: Gen Z is navigating profound uncertainty: climate doom, economic stagnation, the lack of basic services and the loss of collective narratives. The result is a scramble for purpose, sometimes manifesting in community autonomy and radical inclusivity (as in Kenyan or Bangladeshi protests), or in the West through exclusionary nationalism, conspiracism and manipulated grievances.​
• Digital Nativism: Gen Z lives online and knows its danger and potential. Protest movements are fluid, memetic and uncontainable. So too are far-right reactionary communities who weaponise speed, spectacle and myth.​

What accounts for the difference in direction of youth-led activism?

Part of the answer lies in how digital platforms function. In the Global Majority, social media and messaging apps are still tools for decentralised action, collective power and radical hope, even where they’re surveilled and targeted. Youth in the Global Majority are grounded by the urgency of survival, bonded by shared experience, and propelled by the memory of struggle and community solidarity. Their closest peers are one another, not distant influencers or algorithmic feeds. It is a solidarity forged in hunger and crisis, but also in the stubborn refusal to let go of collective dreams.

Meanwhile, in the West, those same digital tools have been far more successfully hijacked and weaponised by far-right populist forces. Instead of building bridges, they amplify outrage and isolation. The new belonging is built on exclusion and finding someone to blame. Where structural community has evaporated, the right fills the gap with identity, grievance and a powerful fantasy of restoration. Right-wing populism has manipulated the loneliness and fragmentation of modern life, turning valid needs for connection and affirmation sideways against scapegoats, and towards reactionary ideas wrapped in the appealing aesthetics of pop culture, wellness and “tradition.”

Youth-led activism outside the far right in the West persists. From campus-led climate strikes and pro-democracy campaigns to resistance against anti-protest laws, students and young activists continue organising, often with fewer resources and at greater risk. 

This divergence is not simply a cultural curiosity. It’s a warning. As digital organising evolves in the Global Majority, so too will the backlash. Governments will learn and adapt. Sometimes with dialogue, sometimes with violence and digital repression, as we’ve seen this past month in Tanzania when the government shut down the internet on election day. Movements for justice and equality will continue to mutate, shifting tactics, symbols and strategies faster than their adversaries. But the terrain ahead will be more polarised, marked by movements and countermovements, meaning-making and myth, hope and despair.

One vital lesson emerges: protest alone is not enough. As Elizabeth McKenna from Civic Power Lab recently argued in a Boston Globe opinion piece, progressive movements have masterfully mobilised crowds, but this isn’t the same as shifting political power. The right has quietly spent years building leadership teams, deep networks and real capacity. The energy of a march is fuel for strategy, not a substitute for it.

If there’s one message to take forward, it’s that we must move from mobilisation to enduring movement-building. Protests spark courage and point to what’s possible, but real transformation requires deeper roots, broader coalitions and a commitment to organising that outlasts news cycles.

Our challenge and our hope lies in matching the moral force of youth protest with the slow, essential work of organising: transforming crowds into communities, outrage into shared strategy and fleeting attention into lasting power. More than ever, where we place our attention, and how we expand our communities and care for one another will decide what comes next.