Leaderless and online-born revolt is spreading to Europe, outpacing the unions and the left

France is at the forefront of a European wave of school and university-led insurrection with protests now spreading to Belgium, Italy, Ireland, Germany and Austria. Demands vary from country to country, but the shared grievances are the cost of living, access to decent housing and deteriorating school infrastructure, all of which deepen the chasm between privileged minorities and excluded majorities. State administrations are therefore no longer facing isolated protests over education, but a groundswell of youth-led unrest that brings students in generalised direct conflict with police forces—events that could once again gain momentum and set the agenda for political and social transformation.

In France, the youth uprising, now in its third week, began in Paris-suburb high schools and spread nationwide despite heavy police repression. The high school union says about two-thirds of public high schools were blockaded on 6 October, and nearly all mainland universities shut down. Meanwhile the mainstream political system tries to rise to the occasion, condemning or co-opting the movement depending on which side of the spectrum it sits, right or left respectively. The problem officials face is that this movement is on the offensive, going for victory. It has its own agenda—it did not simply erupt “against a reform” or “in reaction” to political events but is reportedly in revenge, echoing the Nahel uprising.

Working-class crews (bandes) are also reported to be the driving force, without demands or representatives, indifferent to the codes of the Left and to bourgeois politeness. High school actions are diverse and go beyond blockades to sabotage, barricades, wildcat strikes and the mockery of authority. The mainstream unions want to defuse the renewed call for 17 October, which recalls the Yellow Vests, while the left puts forward demands that help separate “good” protesters with demands from “bad” rioters.

In Belgium, the mobilisations have led to repeated clashes with the police and hundreds of arrests. The tension was such that local authorities banned public gatherings of more than three people until 16 October, citing the risk of further incidents. Hundreds of school and university students kept gathering regardless, protesting the cost of education, overcrowded classrooms and scarce resources, and showing that the state’s response is not enough to halt the momentum.

In Italy, the first school occupations in Turin and Rome took place under the slogan “Let’s do as they do in France”, over chronic underfunding, dilapidated school buildings and rising living costs, and a student delegation travelled to Paris in solidarity. Students in Ireland are demonstrating against high fees, higher education funding and the lack of affordable student housing. In Germany they are joined by teachers and parents, and in Austria university students have announced new mobilisations. In Spain, housing protests sparked by the eviction of 87-year-old Maricarmen Abascal have spread to dozens of cities, prompting a snap election and a general strike call.

The Gen Z movements in Europe follow those across the globe: widely leaderless, centreless insurrections led by tech-savvy youth who use social media to spread instantly and create real political shifts in their home countries. In Nepal, a mobilisation born online and on the streets toppled the government and led to a Discord-based nomination of an interim administration. In Madagascar, university students forced the president to flee the country. In Morocco, Discord-based organising extracted government promises of more spending on employment, health and education. 

In Peru, two presidents were removed within four months and new coalitions of youth collectives took shape. Protests in Indonesia, India and Timor-Leste forced reversals of unpopular policies. In Albania, decentralised Gen Z-style protests that began against a destructive luxury resort widened into demands for government resignation, and cost-of-living protests returned in Kenya and the Philippines. These movements largely form outside existing structures, have in some cases resisted co-optation by opposition parties, and build cross-border solidarity through symbolism and social media.

The horizontal, anti-hierarchical structures and the thoroughly anti-authoritarian ethos of this uprising of kids against police authority recall the youth insurrections of the late 2000s and early 2010s around the world. The current waves feel like they pick up the baton from those years, and from the break with vanguardist politics signalled in the mountains of Chiapas in the 1990s. The excluded rise up, loudly, in search of a response to the root problem of hegemony at the level of everyday life, while raising existential questions about humanity’s future on a declining planet. States, capitalists and all political forces, anarchists included!, have been scrambling ever since to catch up or respond. Governments of the left and of the authoritarian right alike, formed in the echo of those revolts, have proved at ease with a capital-backed far-right surge that the neoliberal centre props up to contain the cyclical waves of insurrection across the globe.

As illustrated in more detail in Gen Z Makes History, the youth-led uprisings have occurred in international resonance with each other, in places toppling governments and shaking others into changing in ways unimaginable only days before. It is not elections but militant street actions that strike fear into regimes and compel reforms in governments on three continents. The cost in lives and injuries is high (at least 76 dead in Nepal alone), but those once dismissed as “narcissistic babies of the Internet Age” and a “lost generation” are, through their sacrifices, changing the conversation globally and inspiring people to look to the future with new hope.