In many countries in the Southern Hemisphere, uprisings among the younger generation are occurring. What are the causes?
Countries as diverse as Peru, Indonesia, Morocco, Madagascar, Nepal, and Kenya appear peripheral to our perception. There, things are burning and crashing. Ministers are chased naked through the streets <1>. Security helicopters rain live ammunition down on protesting youths. Government buildings are set ablaze. The common denominator: these are young people, men and women, who are very angry and uncompromising.
They use the collective term “Generation Z”, created by the public relations industry, as a unifying self-designation <2>. They’ve had enough. They no longer want to be fobbed off with baseless promises. Their protests are often spontaneous and poorly thought out. There are no charismatic leaders. The collective intelligence of millions of cell phone users is at work here.
The reality is this: people barely have anything to eat. Hardly anything to wear. Rarely a decent place to live. But almost everyone in developing countries has a cell phone. The Chinese have deployed inexpensive 5G networks in poor countries via Huawei. And this actually has practical value in countries with poor roads. After walking 15 kilometers to the nearest market, you can just ask grandma if you should pick up a piece of meat for home. Cell phones are also good for sending emergency calls. Cell phones also enable young people to communicate over long distances for resistance actions against the government. In Morocco, new social media platforms sprang up like mushrooms when the uprisings began.
Of course, all we get are the videos of burning cars and houses. Truly competent interpretations of what happened are rare and limited to expert circles. There’s the theory of a “youth bulge” in those wild countries. This means that in all these countries with social unrest, the proportion of very young people is disproportionately high compared to the rest of the world. In the demographic diagram, right at the bottom there is a bulge for people aged zero to 35. Based on this choice of words, one could speak of a “senior citizen bulge” in Germany, Italy, China, and Japan. The theory that the disproportionate section of young people in the population almost automatically leads to revolts, wars, and murders is perfidious. The now deceased German sociologist Gunnar Heinsohn said that a surplus of unemployed young men must inevitably lead to violence <3>. With his youth bulge theory, the former NATO scientific advisor provides the empires of the Western community with the ideal excuse to evade their own responsibility for the mass misery in the Third World.
But even the almost reflexive assumption that this is yet another case of regime change theater misses the point. Let’s just take the case of Morocco. Morocco’s King Mohammed VI rules a pseudo-democracy with an iron fist. The king has ensured that Morocco remains an outpost of Western hegemony. Morocco has close ties to NATO and is also a party to the controversial Abraham Accords, in which Arab states entered into an alliance with Israel and the USA. Morocco is a state that is supposed to keep its more anti-imperialist neighboring state, Algeria, in check. In 2022, the then German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock visited the desert state. She strengthened Morocco’s ties to the Western “security” architecture and made a deal with Mohammed on the supply of hydrogen <4>.
My wife and I saw with our own eyes just this spring that Morocco is a police state. The police is present everywhere, even in the most remote villages. These policemen enjoy putting up portable triangular signs at intersections, indicating a complete stopp, and then waiting to see if drivers actually come to a complete stop right at the toy sign. If they don’t, they’re fined 30 Dollars, which will likely disappear straight into the officer’s own pocket. However, there is no disaster management whatsoever. As we drove through Morocco, there were torrential rains after seven years of drought. Streets and residential areas were submerged in floodwater. Nothing happened. No fire departments were called out. Instead, the policemen, in their action as relaxed as they were meaningless, continued to put up their silly triangular signs at intersections.
What we wealthy northerners have experienced only in a lesser way is bitter everyday life for young Moroccans. There is a rudimentary level of education, but what happens next? There are hardly any qualified job opportunities for young people. Those who are lucky find work in the tourism industry with low wages and excessively long working hours. Those who can’t find a job here have to try their luck as “Businessman.” In other words, they buy something cheap. Then they sit on the street all day long and try to sell these goods at some point for a profit. Time and again, we hear from young people: we want to go to America or Europe! We want to do something meaningful!
That’s the problem in those countries. Infant mortality has thankfully decreased significantly. But no one considered the foreseeable consequences: that these infants would eventually become employable young people. Forward-looking, socially minded politicians like Muammar al-Gaddafi or Ibrahim Traoré are thwarted or eliminated by the West. Instead, the West repeatedly installs ignorant satraps who don’t even know that forward-looking planning could exist. King Mohammed of Morocco hasn’t exactly made himself popular by owning one of the most valuable collections of luxury watches. A single Patek Philippe wristwatch studded with countless diamonds costs a million Dollars. Prestige projects like hosting the African Football Championships or even the World Cup do not receive unanimous approval from the population. The football events were the last straw.
When eight women died in quick succession in a hospital during Caesarean sections, people lost their temper. Youths stormed a police station in the province. Several young men were shot dead by the police, further escalating the spiral of violence. The king is actually ripe for replacement. But the Western community will do anything to keep its puppet in power.
Madagascar, Indonesia, Peru
In Morocco, the situation is still moderate. At least compared to Madagascar. The island nation in southeastern Africa is one of the poorest countries in the world <5>. At the same time, corruption there is extreme <6>. In Madagascar, too, popular anger is being fueled by the boastful behavior of President Andry Rajoelina’s family. Rajoelina himself came to power a few years earlier through a popular uprising. Rajoelina earns a lot of money with his media empire and is linked to the French control system for Africa. Rajoelina, too, quickly lost touch with reality and focused on glamorous prestige projects. For example, a tram network is to run through the capital, Antananarivo <7>. The project is expected to cost 152 million dollars. Spending such a large sum for just thirteen kilometers of track plus a fleet of vehicles is simply unacceptable. The money must be used for far more vital things. The same elite military unit that put Rajoelina in charge after mass protests has now shown solidarity with the protesting youth and chased the president away. What happens next is still completely unclear.
In Peru, the fighting is even tougher. A functioning government has long since vanished. In just ten years, eight presidents have been worn out. <8>. A bitter war is being waged against the indigenous peoples in Peru. The protests have been simmering for a long time, with protesters being shot by the military with live ammunition. The current interim president has just declared a state of emergency for another thirty days. This is intended to distract from the fact that there is simply no longer a functioning government in Peru. The only functioning infrastructure is provided by organized crime.
In Kenya, the current President, William Ruto, himself came to power through a revolt. He had distinguished himself as an advocate for the poor, only to now also live in luxury <9>. Here, too, the number of protesting youths murdered under Ruto is considerable.
In Indonesia, the protest is directed against a barely disguised land grab. People are to be deprived of their property through an increase in property and real estate taxes of a whopping 250 percent <10>. Furthermore, there are brutal resettlement programs (transmigration). The war against the indigenous peoples again plays a major role in this. Here, too, the President is squandering scarce taxpayer money on prestige projects such as the new capital city of Nusantara, which is being built out of the jungles of Borneo. The protest movement against the central government in Jakarta extends across the entire large archipelago that makes up the state of Indonesia.
There are valid reasons for the youth protests. Often, it’s more of a defensive struggle against global corporations. A global solution is needed to address the challenges. Simply continuing as before is no longer an option.
[1] https://apolut.net/der-nackte-finanzminister-von-nepal-von-hermann-ploppa/
[2] https://apolut.net/die-betrogene-generation-von-hermann-ploppa/
[3] https://www.pseudology.org/Gallup/Heinsohn.pdf
[5] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?most_recent_value_desc=false
[6] https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2024
[8] https://www.newsweek.com/peru-in-state-of-emergency-over-gen-z-led-protests-10918106
[9] https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/online-exclusive/why-kenyas-gen-z-has-taken-to-the-streets/
Source: Hermann Ploppa
Generation Z, the new rulers of the world? (Alfredo Jalife, 10.17.2025)