Beginning with the toppling of the president of Sri Lanka in 2022 and the 2024 uprising in Bangladesh, a new revolutionary ferment has begun to spread around the world, gaining momentum with the uprising in Indonesia in August 2025 and the insurrection in Nepal in September. Since then, fierce protests have broken out in Peru, the Philippines, Madagascar, Morocco, and elsewhere. For more insight into the different forms that this wave of activity is assuming in different parts of the world, we spoke with two participants in the Gen Z 212 movement in Morocco.

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First, who are we speaking with? Share whatever is safe to tell us about who you are, what you’re doing, and where you are positioned in Moroccan society and social movements.

We are Yousra and Qamar, feminist activists based in Casablanca. Qamar is also starting a university teaching job and Yousra works at an office job in Kénitra. We are both invested in a feminist and queer network that spans the entire country. The network mainly acts as a series of bases for material solidarity and collective help, a platform of politicization and mobilization as well as advocacy.

While Qamar was active during the 2011 uprising, Yousra was a little young for that. In addition to participating in the organizing platform and the demonstrations, we currently work on getting legal and medical help during this insurrection.

Before answering the rest of the questions, we want to make some disclaimers. This insurrection is very recent and anyone claiming to have a clear reading or analysis of what’s going on—even as close as we are to the events—is lying.

How do you understand what is happening in Morocco right now? Can you give us some background on the uprising?

What is happening right now is the natural consequence of a series of catastrophic political decisions made by a system that is fundamentally against the people. For context, Morocco is a country with very intense class violence and differences, a moribund public sector (hospitals, schools, and other such institutions) and an impoverished middle class. On top of this, the biggest age group of the county is young people, and more than a third of us are unemployed. When you do find a job as a young person, it’s often a non-registered job, which does not grant you access to the very thin welfare system. Yet this country, under deep stress and with no public services, is supposed to host the 2025 African Cup and 2030 World Cup.

As the chant goes, “You built stadiums and forgot the people of Al-Haouz.”

A few things triggered the movement. First of all, as has been said many times, eight women died in Agadir during C-section operations in the same hospital in just one month. This led to the first demonstrations against the World Cup, demanding better health services. Then, there was the opening and flaunting of a new high-tech football stadium on the two-year anniversary of the Al-Haouz earthquake near Marrakech, where a lot of the victims who lost their houses are still living in tents and camps. That’s how much they don’t care. This clearly showed the priority of the state and while the people were shocked by these politics, the propaganda machines were yapping about certain cultural objects that they managed to classify as Moroccan at UNESCO. As if we cared about it! So we coined a new term for this chauvinistic fascist and aesthetic nationalism that refuses to see what’s going on in our country: “Zlayji,” in reference to the Zellige that they cared so much about.

Finally, there was the temporary liberation of the leader of the Rif Hirak movement of 2017, Nasser Zefzafi. He is the leader of the pacifist Riffi movement (the Riffi are the Amazigh of the north region, named for the Rif mountains) that demanded less exclusion and a better access to hospitals, education, and jobs. Nasser Zefzafi is currently serving 20 years in prison and refuses to sign documents to accept the Royal Grace, which would grant him freedom in exchange for “public apologies for inciting a separatist movement.” He was temporarily freed for his father’s funeral and people were very moved by his speech. Those of us from Gen Z were really young when the Rif movement happened, so when dozens of videos of the 2017 movement circulated, we understood that they were fighting for the same cause as us and decided to take inspiration from this movement. Today, we scream for the liberation of Zefzafi and all the Riffi protesters from every city in Morocco.

And when all seemed dark here, our screens started to fill with images, videos, and articles of the Nepal revolution. It’s safe to say that without Nepal, the Moroccan youth would not have risen up like we did. So when the first protest from the medical corps in Agadir erupted, people started to organize. That was two weeks before the first demonstrations of September 27-28.

We started organizing mainly through Discord, which previously was used mostly for video games or to work on group projects for school or university. We also kept making videos and content on other platforms like TikTok and Instagram to get the people to join the Discord organizing platform. This offered anonymity and decentralization. I joined in the early days when the Discord was at just 1000 members; today, it’s more than 200,000. It was mostly started by disenfranchised young people, students, young adults who can’t find a job etc. to organize simultaneous demonstrations in all the cities and towns of the country. Before the demonstrations, we started talking in open debates about how to organize (centralized versus decentralized, pacifist versus “violent,” whether to create a quote-unquote organization or not) and inviting Moroccan journalists specialized in corruption as well as people who participated in 20 February (the name of the 2011 uprising in Morocco).

As for the key demands, they have always been clear: better hospitals and education, the end of corruption and of the 2030 World Cup, more jobs, and the fall of our government and rich elites. It is important to note that the current prime minister is one of the richest men in Morocco. He is a billionaire (in US dollars) and is responsible for escalating the water crisis in our country when he introduced a plan to… plant watermelon and avocados in the desert. Many rural areas do not have access to clean water, but the plan has not been reformed and readers in France or Spain can eat these watermelons and avocados whenever they please.

Although the demand for the fall of the government was always present, it became more and more important as the repression got more intense. From the first days, dozens and then hundreds of innocent and pacifist people were taken to preventive detention, including even parents with kids. We were beaten up with insane violence and hatred; some women had their hijabs forcibly removed. On the fourth day, the police ran over people in Oujda, leaving a young man in critical condition. The next day, in Agadir, people were shot with real bullets, including minors. There were three martyrs and a dozen wounded just from the bullets. In Marrakech, they came out with tanks and took almost half the young people in the city to preventive detention. Some were released, but some are still awaiting trial, facing the threat of up to 20 years in prison. All of this is justified by the state’s propaganda machines in the absence of a free press.

What are the different forces that contend within and against the movement?

The forces inside the movement are varied. It’s mostly disenfranchised young people, but also people who are disappointed not only in all the political parties but also all of the organizations and associations. The mobilization is mainly driven by informal networks. As it is a large-scale movement, these are competing in every context, regarding cultural conservatism, for instance, or collaboration with other organizations or parties, but everything is discussed in the Discord. The most conservative side is not winning, for now, though, due to the government’s ridiculous attempts to redirect attention to the “promotion of homosexuality,” which did not work.

We expected support from the ultras (the football fan groups who are often perceived as the voice of the people) in particular, but unfortunately, they did not turn out in large numbers. As for the political parties, several left-wing and Islamist parties attempted to ride the wave by giving tons of interviews and drawing a lot of attention to themselves during the demonstrations. This was very poorly received by the Genz212 group, who saw it as an attempt to hijack the movement—especially since afterwards, they all made a big deal out of a few burned cars and said very little about the victims on the demonstrators’ side. The young people of Adl w al ihsan (a peaceful Salafist group that is very active in support of Palestine) also started marching with us (especially in Marrakech and Tangier, for example), but again, this frightened many people, as they are in negotiations with the state to become an official party, and we were still afraid of being used. The recent national demonstrations on the two-year anniversary of the operation “Al-Aqsa Flood” took place with the people and collective leading the march; these were an opportunity to make our movement better understood by the other groups that mobilized.

A lot of people have asked about the role of the king of Morocco in these events. One reason for the immediate and blind violence of the state could be that the royal transition will take place soon and they intend to crown a prince who is not even 23 years old. This period is extremely scary and fragile for the regime.

The national motto of Morocco might be “Allah, the Country, the King,” but the importance of these terms in the eyes of the state is reversed. The biggest taboos in Morocco are 1) the king 2) the country (i.e., the issue of Western Sahara) 3) the religion. The organizing platform has offered a way to talk about all these issues without getting kicked out. The movement is not against the monarchy but allows itself to criticize and ridicule the king and his powers, which is unacceptable in the eyes of the state.

When our numbers exploded and we were faced with police repression, those structural questions were naturally relegated outside the main group chats. After the massive propaganda we faced justifying the actions of the police, people were quick to defend the movement and to remind the public that we went into the streets to demand basic rights, not regime change. Due to fear, our numbers dropped and some demonstrators asked for the king to intervene to get rid of the government and stop the madness. But at that time, people in the streets keep refusing to sing chants in his honor or pray for his healing as we have been asked to.

Last Friday, on October 10, the king made a speech but did not fire the government nor truly acknowledge the demonstrations. This is considered a temporary failure and we are currently regrouping to find other ways to be heard.

Can you describe how things stand with the Moroccan occupation of Western Sahara right now?

The majority of Sahrawi refugees live in Tindouf, in the Algerian Sahara, which is organized into camps according to the towns that the refugees are from. This is also the base of the Polisario Front. The Polisario Front is the principal political and military actor of the Sahrawi struggle; at the same time, it has received opposition and criticism from Sahrawi people since the beginning of the 2000s. It’s important to note that it did not grant security or a democratic framework in Tindouf.

The 1991 ceasefire that ended the previous war was declared broken by the Polisario Front in November 2020 following a Moroccan military operation near the town of Guerguerat. This ceasefire granted control to Morocco over 80% of the territory and 20% to the Polisario. Since 2020, the Polisario Front occasionally claims to target Moroccan positions along the Berm. The reality is that Moroccan military drones frequently target the other 20%. Though claiming to target Polisario fighters, these drones often strike civilians from the population that was forced to flee to Tindouf.

As far as this relates to our movement, one of the first subjects that we discussed was how the annexation of Sahara did not give us anything except more censorship and policing. The Moroccan side proposes an autonomy plan as part of the Constitution for the Sahara—but what law or Constitution are we talking about if police drive their cars over activists? We have also discussed the growing fear of a conflict. If they are beating us up now, will they really expect us to “defend the borders” if needed?

Demonstrations take place in the Sahara under intense police surveillance. This has been applauded by the Polisario Front without any real contact with the movement. Some media have also accused us of being in contact with them, which is obviously false.

Can you tell a story from your personal experience that captures the spirit of these protests?

The stories are not joyful. We mostly demonstrate in Casablanca, one or two times in Rabat or Kénitra.

The first days, it was mainly facing police brutality. I use the word police loosely; it includes all the repressive forces on the streets, such as the Royal Gendarmerie and the State Security Forces. I noticed that they have two main techniques: the first one is to charge to disperse any type of unity and then they come at us and start fighting us two on one or four on one, just like street fights but worse. We immediately started to think about friends and comrades being taken away. We knew that there would be repression, but not like this. Some comrades went in front of the Court of Justice to try to see the detainees and offer legal assistance—and they were detained as well.

Then there was the shock of seeing people being driven over or shot at and we started working to help out. After the three martyrs fell, they started reducing the police forces, except the ones dressed as civilians. Instead, they park the police in the rich neighborhoods and in front of the banks. People have used this opportunity to develop other tools, like boycotting and hacking.

We have read about the “Gen Z 212 collective” in news reports. Could you share what you know about their background? What has their role been in the protests?

Gen Z 212 is the platform and the name of our movement. It’s the name of the Discord. For protests, it acts as a catalyst, each city or town has chat rooms where we decide where the demonstrations should be. Recently, we have also been organizing to help the detainees and wounded. We vote on almost everything. And there are often check-ups on the admins.

How much do participants in the movement in Morocco understand yourselves as part of a global movement? What tactics, ways of organizing, and aspirations have people in Morocco drawn on from movements in other parts of the world?

The name Gen Z and the tactics (decentralized digital organizing, meme culture, decentralized calls to action, occupation and sit-in tactics) intentionally place Morocco’s movement in conversation with global youth uprisings (Indonesia, Peru, Nepal, Madagascar, etc.). Many times, we have referenced global solidarity and learned tactics such as rapid decentralized coordination, open-source secure communications, and symbolic direct action. What happened in Nepal enabled many young Moroccans to become conscious of what can be possible. To this day, we still make video clips connecting our demonstrations and the ones in Nepal. The global comparison helps with narrative framing and solidarity, but the movement’s lived demands are rooted in domestic social services, economic precarity, and accountability.

Before this movement (and still today), we have been a little hesitant about considering “young people” as a political actor, as this erases class differences—that’s probably why it’s so popular among NGOs. But it remains true that the living conditions have been getting worse globally, and that the freedom of information and speech offered by the internet—the anonymity and resources it makes available—are possibly the strongest weapon of the century. It’s not as if this was not present before, namely in 2011, but today the relationship we have with it and our ways of engaging with it are different.

Finally, regarding the Moroccan context—though this is something that echoes events in a lot of countries following decolonization—in the 1970s and ’80s, there were very powerful movements in the streets and radical leftist organizations, as well as riots due to famine. The response of the state under the previous king, Hassan II, was to put people in mass graves, large-scale secret prisons, and torture chambers. This left the previous generation in traumatic fear, so that the word “demonstrations” is worse than cursing Allah. We are the first generation that did not live under Hassan II or in the brutal period called “The Years of Lead.” It is vital to understand this in order to have a beginning of an analysis of what these demonstrations mean to the people of Morocco.

Morocco experienced protests in 2011 during the Arab Spring. Unlike in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, this did not lead to the fall of the regime. In 2018 and 2019, another wave of protests swept through the Arab world, beginning in Algeria and Sudan. How do the protests of 2011 and 2019 inform today’s events? What feels different about this wave?

The Genz212 movement sees and portrays itself as the continuation of the 2017 Rif Movement, the 2011 February 20 uprising, and even makes some references to the demonstrations and riots under Hassan II, as well as the unions and student organizations such as Ila al Amam (i.e., Marxism-Leninism). One of the main reasons is that nothing has really changed since 2011; the freedom that was gained was stripped away. Either the participants agreed to work for the state or they eventually went to jail or exile.

The Moroccan Arab Spring started by addressing the political issues of a repressive system while the Rif movement and our movement started by making demands regarding material conditions; now we are trying to formulate political criticism of the reasons we cannot have hospitals and schools. Some of the main differences are also the age of the participants and catalyzers of the movement, who are way younger in the Genz212 movement, not to mention a less moderated/regulated means of organizing.

What we always say is that, unlike the previous uprisings and previous generations, we won’t back down.

Earlier this year, there were mass protests in Morocco in response to the genocide taking place in Gaza. There were also protests in rural villages earlier this summer. Were these part of the buildup of momentum that led to this uprising? How do they shape the situation?

There were a lot of fragmented and localized protests in Morocco this year regarding working conditions, involving farmers, teachers, and doctors who were quickly repressed and dispersed. But these served as a build-up, a reason to mobilize, and a local mobilization force. As for the Gaza solidarity mobilizations and actions like the port blockades or boycotts earlier in 2025, these built organizational knowledge, networks of mobilizers, and trust between activists, students, and certain unions. For example, port workers were on strike for a few days during our mobilization. Those actions also normalized large gatherings, direct action, and people documenting large protests that were ignored by the official media, as well as strengthening the infrastructure of free legal support.

What would victory look like?

In the short term, victory would be the fall of our government, accountability for the criminal police/auxiliary forces/royal gendarmerie, cancelling the 2030 World Cup and allocating its budget for hospitals, schools and the salaries of the workers in those institutions, and finally, breaking the normalization ties with the Zionist State. These are our urgent demands.

In the long term, because we know it’s not that easy, it would mean dismantling the system that produced this situation and compelled more than a quarter of the population to flee the country even in the absence of an active war.

It would be the end of a monarchy that maintains the right of life and death over the people and a monopoly on dozens of sectors of our economy, while lavishing in the world’s most beautiful palaces.

It would be the self-determination of the people, starting with our brothers and sisters in the Sahara—and putting an end to the obviously fabricated rivalry with Algeria, which just serves as a means to control and oppress both peoples, who were always one.

It would be the end of a racist neocolonial system that grants everything to white foreigners and subjects the people of West Africa to racial profiling and marginalization. It would mean the end of collaboration with the West and other foreign empires in their crimes.

It would be the end of a surveillance system that knows everything about everybody and makes us live in fear.

It would be true and transparent accountability, justice, and compensation regarding the crimes against humanities committed under this rule and the previous king, Hassan II.

It would be the end of an economic system based on patronage and affinity among the elites, in which a few have huge monopolies on our economy while the rest of us work for them and reimburse them whenever we buy milk, sugar or gas.

It would be the end of this system that we call “makhzen.” It would be a place where people truly have dignity and freedom.

I guess it would be another country, the one we deserve.

What can people outside of Morocco do to support anti-authoritarian activists there?

For anyone in Europe, it’s important to know that historically, after all movements and insurrections in Morocco, there are huge waves of exile, no matter the outcome. The state opens the borders to get rid of those who are considers undesirable and people flee mostly to Europe. They did this after the 2017 Rif movement, for example. One way you can help is to fight fascism where you are and to organize with people who arrive without papers so that they can arrive safely.

Besides that:

BOYCOTT THE 2025 AFRICAN CUP
BOYCOTT THE 2030 WORLD CUP

These events have the blood of our comrades all over them.

BOYCOTT TOURISM IN MOROCCO

And empower the voices of the protesters here and of our allies in the diaspora who have more room to speak up.

Thank you! ✊

To conclude, can you recommend sources for people to learn more about the movement?

You can view the Gen Z 212 Discord here.

You can also consult the YouTube channel of the Discord to listen to some of our previous discussions and reviews of our actions, as well as conversations with independent journalists about corruption, past revolts in our country, and (more often than not) time in prison or exile. To begin, I recommend listening to our discussions without guests, and for the guests, start with Aboubakr AlJamai.

Here, you can listen to one of the rare independent podcasts on Moroccan activism, past revolts, autonomous and grassroots politics, and the like that doesn’t just repeat regime propaganda.

“Moroccan Youth” was a telegram group that wanted to start a movement a few weeks before Gen Z 212, but we were risking jail and did not pursue it. A lot of these young people were quick to join the movement. They have been a bit too strict on the issue of pacifism for my taste; ideologies aside, the riots can legitimately be considered self-defense, both in the current movement and in the history of Moroccan revolts as well. But they have been doing a great job covering the movement with some publications in English.

This is a page that mainly posts on water issues, one of the best sources on the topic. Recently, they have also been posting about the movement and the socio-economic roots of our demands. Very educational, and it’s in both Arabic and English. You can find another source on the same subject here.

This page posted the video and photos of the police shooting that killed three innocent young Moroccans. It usually focuses on the issue of Moroccans and others fleeing the country.

Finally, we recommend this documentary about a revolutionary Sahrawi singer.