https://www.globalresearch.ca/from-london-to-paris-young-people-no-longer-putting-up-it/5943673
Global Research, 15 octobre 2026
While governments allocate billions to armaments, young people are told that there is no money for education, affordable housing, or climate policies. From London to Paris and Brussels, they are no longer putting up with it and are questioning the foundations of our society.
From London to Paris
A spectre is haunting the world, a spectre that has already brought down several governments and is driven by the so-called Generation Z[1], young people born between 1997 and 2012.
Young people are putting elites to the test all over the world. In a short period of time, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Madagascar saw their governments fall, while massive youth protests continued to grow in Morocco, Indonesia, the Philippines, Kenya, and Peru.
Young people are also taking to the streets en masse in Western Europe. In Spain, Germany, Great Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Italy, young people are filling streets, squares, and universities. They organise demonstrations, occupations, solidarity actions, and student protests.
The reasons vary from country to country. Sometimes it is about Palestine, sometimes about education, climate, racism, austerity measures, unaffordable housing, rising living costs, or corruption scandals. But beneath these separate issues, the same question is increasingly emerging: what kind of society do we want to live in?
Jordan Devlin, arrested following a direct action against the Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit Systems near Bristol, testifies: “I am taking action against Elbit, because the risk of months in prison pales in comparison to the despair suffered from witnessing the horrors they facilitate. The sense of wrong and right is black and white in this instance, so I am honoured to take this opportunity to craft a world I want to live in, to destroy completely the blatant evils in society we’ve all been lulled into ignoring.”
During the secondary school student protests of 5 October, Mohammed Boufous, a final-year secondary school student at the Athénée Charles Janssens in Brussels, expressed the frustration of many young people:
“We are young secondary school pupils and students. We come to demonstrate peacefully to get our message across. All we ask is to be listened to. We want them to stop making decisions about us without us.”
Nowhere has resistance been as visible in recent years as during the massive solidarity movement with Palestine. Young people who had previously barely been politically active took to the streets. They organised actions at universities, set up protest encampments, and demanded that institutions sever their ties with Israeli companies and universities.
They did so despite an often hostile environment. Students were accused of extremism, university administrations sent police onto campuses, and political leaders tried to restrict protests or discredit them. In Great Britain, thousands of pro-Palestinian activists have been arrested under anti-terrorism legislation since 2025. Jordan Devlin, whom we quoted above, served 547 days in prison without being convicted of anything. He was fully acquitted of all charges.
Police violence remains a recurring issue. During the recent secondary school student protests in France and Belgium, there were also confrontations with the police. Salomé, one of the French students who took part in a school blockade, testifies:
“The blockade was proceeding peacefully. Then the riot police came charging in. They started running and spraying everyone with tear gas. They chased us as if they were enjoying it.”
Sixteen-year-old Lola, also from France, was not deterred by the police intervention on 2 October. “It only makes us angrier,” she said. “The police have no right to beat us or use tear gas against us.” In France, a 15-year-old secondary school student lost a hand when a police grenade exploded.
Nevertheless, young people continue to take to the streets. This generation is discovering that politics is much more than ticking a box on a ballot paper once every few years. Politics also means coming together, organising, building pressure, and refusing to accept what is presented as inevitable.
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Banner at a protest: “Sorry to bother you, we just want a future” (CC BY 4.0)
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An Apathetic Generation?
Young people are often described as individualistic, addicted to social media, or politically apathetic. That image is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain. Through the youth protests, we see, on the contrary, a generation deeply concerned about the world around it. This generation talks about war and climate, but also about rents, precarious contracts, mental pressure, discrimination, and the commercialisation of education.
Many young people are growing up with permanent uncertainty. Owning a home is becoming unattainable for many. Studying is becoming more expensive. Stable jobs are becoming less of a given. Public services are under pressure. At the same time, they see billions being allocated to armaments, while governments say there is insufficient money for social protection, culture, or education.
The weight of this uncertainty is evident from the recent housing protests in Spain. Victoria Nájera, a 27-year-old from Madrid, has been living independently for several months but spends more than 40 percent of her salary on rent. The hopelessness of the housing crisis regularly makes her cry at home. “I don’t see a future in which I can own a home,” she said on 3 October.
And it is not only young people who suffer from this. In Las Palmas, 36-year-old Aisha demonstrated together with her four-year-old daughter. Both she and her partner work, but even with two incomes they barely make ends meet. “We pay 1,000 euros in rent and often don’t make it to the end of the month,” she says.
Young people are told that they will have to make sacrifices. But more and more of them are asking a simple question: sacrifices for what, and for whom?
On top of that comes the climate crisis. Young people see how heatwaves are becoming increasingly extreme, floods are destroying entire villages, and forest fires are reducing large areas to ashes. For them, these are no longer distant threats, but warnings about their own future, which is becoming increasingly uncertain. While the need for far-reaching measures grows, they see above all hesitation and a lack of ambition among political leaders.
War is also coming closer. European governments are drastically increasing their military budgets, and more and more voices are calling for (compulsory) military service. In France, the chief of staff of the armed forces said that the country “must be ready to lose its children.” But for this generation, that is not an option: as the German school student strikes demonstrate, young people refuse to serve as cannon fodder for decisions they never chose.
Political Awareness
What makes these protests interesting is that different issues are increasingly becoming interconnected. Those who protest against the war in Gaza also speak about colonialism and racism. Those who take to the streets for climate justice speak about companies making profits while the social costs are passed on to the population.
Students protesting against higher tuition fees draw the connection with cuts to public services. Young workers campaigning for better wages encounter the same economic logic that also puts pressure on housing, healthcare, and mobility.
That does not mean that every young person has the same analysis. Nor does it mean that there is one large, coherent movement. But there is a growing awareness that the problems people face are not entirely separate from one another.
Discrimination is not an individual problem when entire groups systematically have fewer opportunities. Poverty is not a personal failure when wages fail to keep up with the costs of housing and living. The climate crisis cannot be solved by telling people to use different straws or shopping bags while large companies continue to expand their production and emissions.
And peace can hardly be credibly defended when governments are simultaneously investing record amounts in armaments. Through these kinds of connections, political awareness is growing.
Fundamental Questions
What is also striking is the way many young activists speak. Their message is often less slogan-driven than their opponents make it seem. Those who listen to interviews with students, climate activists, or young trade union activists usually do not hear empty slogans. They calmly explain why they are protesting.
They talk about family members in Gaza. About fellow students who can no longer afford their education. About friends who cannot find housing. About fear of climate change. About racism they experience themselves or witness. The tone is sober, but their demands are no less fundamental for that; quite the contrary.
They are not satisfied with a few small adjustments to existing policies, but ask questions about the way power and wealth are distributed. Why do shareholders have more influence than workers? Why are multinationals allowed to make ever greater profits while governments impose cuts? Why can people without housing barely count on protection, while real estate has become an investment product?
Why is military violence so quickly presented as a solution, while diplomacy and social investments are constantly dismissed as naive or too expensive? Why does the West talk so much about democracy and human rights while continuing to support Israel unconditionally? Why do governments still provide billions in subsidies to fossil fuels while the climate crisis continues to worsen?
These questions are not about marginal phenomena but touch upon the foundations of how our society is organised.
Together Strong
In the past, social progress never came about on its own. Labour rights, women’s rights, voting rights, anti-racist legislation, and social security came about because people organised themselves. They simply refused to believe that the existing order was unchangeable and demanded their rights.
Today, too, change often starts small. University students stand up against their university administrations, school students hold climate strikes, or young people join a trade union. Solidarity committees for Palestine or local residents protesting against unaffordable housing also show that same desire for change.
Separately, such initiatives sometimes seem vulnerable. But when different movements come together, their significance changes. Thus, a student protest becomes part of a broader struggle for public services. Climate action becomes linked to social justice, while anti-racist organisations, trade unions, feminist movements, and peace activists strengthen one another.
That is where the real strength of this generation lies, and this can serve as an example for older generations. An important question in this regard is how much space they are given to shape their own future and to what extent they can count on the support of teachers, workers, and other sections of the population.
Those who refuse to remain silent can change a great deal. This is certainly the case when young people realise that they are not alone.
Marc Vandepitte is a member of the Network of Intellectuals and Artists in Defense of Humanity and was an observer during the presidential elections in Venezuela. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
Note
[1] The term ‘Gen Z’ comes from a tradition in which marketers divide the population into target groups (consumers) with supposedly shared characteristics. But young people themselves do not form a homogeneous group. What brings them onto the streets today cannot simply be explained by their year of birth. Their protests are above all a reaction to the social conditions in which they are growing up and the uncertainty about their future.
Featured image: Police in Perpignan, 2 October (CC BY 4.0
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