Gen Z 212 and Youth Protests in Morocco: From the Digital Sphere to the Street

Morocco is currently—Autumn 2025—witnessing a broad youth-led mass protest wave that has brought back to the political arena fundamental questions about social justice, basic rights, the deterioration of public services, and the political legitimacy of the regime. This movement, which took the name “Gen Z 212”*, after the country’s international dialing code, did not arise from a vacuum; it emerged from a long accumulation of marginalization, poverty, the absence of essential services in health and education, and the spread of unemployment and corruption. The movement erupted spontaneously after a tragic incident at Hassan II Hospital in the city of Agadir, where women died during childbirth due to a lack of care. That spark turned into a social uprising that quickly spread to major cities such as Rabat, Casablanca, Fez, Marrakesh, Taroudant, Salé, and Oujda, rapidly becoming an expression of a comprehensive crisis experienced by an entire generation of Moroccan youth, especially from the working and poor classes.
What distinguished this movement was not only its breadth and geographic spread, but also its reliance on new mechanisms of organization and mobilization that began in the digital sphere and reverberated on the ground. Here the relationship between the Moroccan experience and the concept of “the electronic left and electronic struggle” is manifest, where a tangible social dimension meets a technological-organizational one to produce a new form of political action. The core power of this model is that it reclaims politics from old elites and returns it to the street and to the youth. It constantly affirms that technology is not neutral; it is a tool of domination in the hands of capitalism and authoritarian regimes, yet it can at the same time become a tool of liberation if employed in a progressive, left-wing, organized manner. What happened in Morocco reflects this possibility: with simple means, young people built an alternative, free digital public sphere in which they voiced their rejection of authoritarianism, corruption, injustice, and the marginalization of their daily lives. Short videos, memes, and online debates turned into real tools for political mobilization, organization, and the production of a critical mass consciousness—away from official media that sought to smear the movement and confine it to acts of violence and vandalism.


1. Networked digital organization of youth transcends traditional mechanisms and creates a new left-wing arena of struggle

What sets this movement apart is not only it’s just demands—focused on improving health and education, providing jobs, holding corruption to account, and achieving social justice—but, more importantly, its electronic-digital organizational form and tools that precisely embody the ideas of the Electronic Left**. To a large extent it organized itself outside the traditional frameworks of parties and unions, which for many reasons had weak connections with the new generations and had, in the eyes of many young women and men, ossified into rigid bureaucratic structures no longer able to express people’s concerns. In contrast, the digital sphere opened up horizons for a wholly different way of organizing—based on flexibility, speed, and openness. Platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook became tools of mobilization and rallying, while Discord servers turned into something like “digital people’s centers” for debate, planning, and collective, horizontal decision-making.
This new organizational pattern represents a fundamental move beyond the concepts of individual leadership or strict hierarchical centralism. There is no longer a single leader or pyramid of leadership committees controlling events; rather, there are horizontal networked groups, each making its own field decisions within shared general goals. This decentralization was not a sign of weakness, but a source of strength, because it made it difficult for the authorities and security services to penetrate the movement or decapitate it by targeting a single leadership. Even when accounts were shut down or activists—women and men—were arrested, the movement remained able to reproduce itself and expand its organizational space. This capacity for survival and renewal reflects the true spirit of electronic-digital organizing and contention, where organization is not a rigid apparatus but a living network capable of expanding and transforming according to circumstances.
The networked architecture allowed the movement to spread quickly and easily across a wide geography—from major cities to peripheral areas—and enabled it to circumvent field repression and digital surveillance. Authorities repeatedly tried to shut accounts, block content, or target coordinators, but the decentralized nature of the movement limited the impact of those attempts. At the moment one account is closed, another opens; the moment an organizational link is broken, alternative channels emerge. This dynamic presents the authorities with a real dilemma: they face a “mass organizational process” in a new form that is hard to control, not a traditional organization that can be dismantled by arresting its leaders.
Networked digital organization is a new form of political culture and organizing common among today’s young women and men. Debates on Discord servers were not confined to slogans or field plans; they became a shared educational space where youth exchanged experiences, discussed strategies, and wove a common language of struggle. In this sense, the digital sphere was a means of communication that transformed into a “multi-platform collective left school” producing a new political consciousness that goes beyond the tutelage of traditional parties and elite intellectual discourse. What we witness here is a real birth of a new left space arising from below, from self-initiatives, from collective work—grounded in technology as a liberatory tool rather than remaining a tool of domination under the control of digital capitalist corporations and authoritarian states.
We can say that the networked digital organization created by Moroccan youth is the practical expression of the Electronic Left’s proposition that the digital sphere has become an important arena of class struggle today. Just as factories, farms, and offices are the primary arenas of confrontation between capital and labor, the internet has become the new complementary “factory” for producing consciousness and organizing resistance. The difference is that this new factory is not a material site enclosed by walls; it is an open, mobile space where circles of debate expand and initiatives emerge with great ease—granting it a global, international character because it breaks national borders and creates possibilities for communication and coordination among movements distant geographically but similar in essence.
If we compare the Moroccan movement with other experiences in the region, we find it has a distinctive character. In Tunisia, for example, digital platforms were used for mobilization since 2011, but in an initial way. In Lebanon in 2019, WhatsApp and Telegram became central tools for organizing demonstrations. In Morocco in 2025, however, we witnessed the entry of an entire generation that knows politics only through digitization and sees the digital sphere as a natural extension of its life. This is what makes the “Gen Z 212” movement the first almost fully digital uprising in the Arab world, and confirms that the future of left-wing struggle will not be possible without absorbing these transformations and using them effectively—by building digital left internationals and progressive technological alternatives that transcend national borders and coordinate and link experiences across the world.


2. The raised demands reflect the living core of the left—social justice and the needs of the masses
What draws attention in the Moroccan youth experience is that the demands they raised in the street and online, despite their direct simplicity, carry a deeply left substance even though most of them do not belong to any political organizations. These young people realized—consciously or through a collective political intuition—that the strength of any emancipatory movement lies in building common ground. They did not get absorbed in elite ideological skirmishes and disputes. Although such debates are important for the left’s intellectual development, they have for decades depleted and fragmented left forces among rival schools and theoretical details. These youth moved beyond that intellectual fatigue and reset the compass toward what actually concerns the working poor masses—starting from reality on the ground toward theory, not the reverse. Here the left is not measured by who raises Marxist slogans or merely writes or repeats socialist policies in theory, but by who contributes practically and theoretically, on the ground, to improving the lives of the working poor in health, education, work, dignity, rights, and justice, influencing the path of their daily struggle—even if in limited, gradual steps.
The demands they formulated revolve around improving public education, guaranteeing free and effective healthcare, providing jobs that ensure human dignity, fighting corruption, and achieving social justice in the distribution of resources. These demands represent the living core of left thought because they place injustice, class struggle, and people’s daily needs at the center—from which action proceeds.


3. Field and digital repression reveal modern control mechanisms—but they also strengthen awareness of digital resistance

The youth movement in Morocco was not a mere peaceful protest wave met with political discourse or promises of reform; from the first moment it was treated as an existential threat to the regime, reflected in the harsh field repression the youth faced. Security forces used live ammunition in some areas—especially in Lqliâa near Agadir where martyrs fell to gendarmerie bullets—along with tear gas, baton beatings, nighttime pursuits, and the arrest of hundreds, a high proportion of them minors. This repression was not an uncontrolled reaction but a calculated policy aimed at terrorizing an entire generation and breaking its will before its organizational consciousness could take root. Field repression was accompanied by a systematic method of isolating inflamed areas through security checkpoints, cordoning popular neighbourhoods, and blocking roads to prevent protesters from moving between cities. Mass arrest was used to empty the streets. Most importantly, the authorities focused on targeting youth and minors because they were the backbone of the movement—revealing an awareness that the real danger comes from this new generation that fears not the street and possesses digital organizing tools resistant to containment.
This crude face of field repression coincided with a soft digital face. Digital detention and digital assassination are parallel mechanisms targeting the movement’s online sphere. Accounts were deleted, content blocked, and access to group discussions restricted in an attempt to sever the street from the digital sphere that nourished it. Thus we saw the authorities practice “dual repression”—in the street with batons and bullets, and on the network through algorithms and platform throttling.
But what the authorities did not expect is that this repression, instead of stopping the movement, strengthened awareness of both digital and field resistance. On the street, youth invented new forms of gathering: mobile nighttime demonstrations, reliance on small groups instead of large marches, and using neighbourhoods as spaces for localized protest. This tactic made it difficult for police to crush the movement in one swoop and opened possibilities for grassroots local organizing. In the digital sphere, debate shifted quickly from blocked accounts to alternative ones and to more secure platforms, with widespread use of VPNs and encryption.
Field repression revealed the limits of the authoritarian system because it no longer faced just an angry crowd but a digital generation capable of adaptation. With each attempt at repression, youth reproduced their organization more flexibly and developed an awareness that the struggle with the state is not partial but comprehensive—targeting the body in the street and consciousness on the network. Here the essence of what the Electronic Left calls the “digital class battle” appears, where modern tools of repression meet classic ones.
It has become clear that control of the street cannot be separated from control of the digital sphere, and that when the state unleashes bullets on bodies, it simultaneously drops blocks on accounts. But resistance also develops along both vectors: in the street by expanding popular field tactics, and on the network by inventing protection tools and alternative organizing. This interaction between field and digital opens a real horizon for the Electronic Left to develop an internationalist project to liberate both humanity and technology. The capacity to transcend digital repression reflects a growing political awareness of the need to control the tools and build alternative progressive left technologies, rather than leaving them entirely in the hands of monopolistic capitalist companies and authoritarian states.


4. Transforming spontaneous youth energy into a radical, organized emancipatory project


Despite the strength of this model, the challenges remain significant. The absence of central coordination may become a weakness if a long-term strategic vision does not crystallize. More importantly, partial demands need to be tied to a comprehensive emancipatory horizon so the movement does not remain in the realm of mere reforms. Here emerges the necessity for a grounded–electronic left to be organized as an intellectual and organizational current working to convert spontaneous energy into a political emancipatory project that unites digital and on-the-ground struggle, links immediate demands to a radical socialist vision, and is based on broad, inclusive common ground that builds wide alliances to achieve transformative change.
This youth and mass movement clearly reflects the spirit of an open left that refuses self-isolation within elite circles and works to open multiple forums for debate and joint action. In the digital debate spaces there was neither an ideological custodian nor excessive hierarchy, but free discussions, multiple voices, and freedom to propose ideas. What was consolidated, sustained, and translated into political action were those points touching people’s lives. Here the true meaning of participatory grassroots democracy is realized: collective organization becomes a tool to unify efforts around what serves the masses—not what pleases elite intellectuals. This orientation opens a historic opportunity for the left to renew itself, on the condition that it abandons the tendency to monopolize thought and the culture of division that has paralyzed it for so long.

Young women and men sent a clear message: we will not wait for top-down solutions, nor will we be distracted by sterile disputes. We will build our work around issues that matter to people’s daily lives. This practical dialectical awareness gives the movement its power and enables it to spread and extend. Manual and mental workers are not primarily concerned with whether the canonical text is by Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Mao, or others—despite their great historical role in human thought—but with finding a properly equipped hospital, a respectable school, a job opportunity, equality, and dignity in daily life—far from corruption and authoritarianism. These are the common points that formed the meeting ground—and they can become the basis for the left to build a radical emancipatory project that transcends the current situation and reclaims its role as a tool of change toward socialist liberation.

5. From the network to the street… horizons of a renewed left

It is important to emphasize that the Electronic Left does not present itself as a substitute for the historical forces of the left or for organizational experiences that have accumulated enormous struggles across all fields over decades. Rather, it continues, develops, and complements them, adding a new dimension to the political, organizational, and intellectual tools used by the left in its long and complex battle against capitalism and authoritarianism. What distinguishes it is that it responds to a new reality shaped by the digital revolution, where tools of struggle have expanded to include the digital sphere, platforms, and networks that control mass consciousness and steer the trajectory of public debate.

Thus, it does not negate the role of left parties, unions, and existing social movements, but calls on them to innovate and renew, to integrate the digital dimension into their organizational and political strategies, and to overcome bureaucratic rigidity and ideological closure. The challenge the left faces today is not only confronting traditional capitalism and authoritarian regimes, but confronting digital capitalism, which has reproduced class control in softer, more hidden forms—through data, algorithms, and pervasive digital surveillance.

What youth created in Morocco is an explicit, urgent call to all forces of the left. Political organization is no longer a one-track option; it must be multi-platform, open, flexible, and transparent—dealing intelligently with the tools of the digital age. This complementary vision does not mean abandoning classic structures that have accumulated a history of class struggle; it requires rebuilding them horizontally and flexibly to be closer to the masses and capable of rapid response—especially with younger generations. The Moroccan youth experience is a living example through innovating effective networked digital formations—but this does not eliminate the urgent need for political, organizational, and trade union frameworks capable of protecting these energies, guiding protests, and turning them into lasting gains.

This requires achieving a dialectical integration between the old and the new: between field struggle and digital momentum; between the left’s historical experience and the boldness and flexibility the digital generation brings. This dialectic between continuity and renewal may grant today’s left the possibility to rise again, locally in the Global South and globally in general. Therefore, the Electronic Left is a call to renew the entire left project—by developing and updating its organizational, political, intellectual, digital, and technical tools, and more—alongside joint work and alliances based on essential meeting points. It also stresses the need to strengthen the leadership role of youth within left organizations, ensuring intellectual and organizational renewal and opening space for their creative, ever-renewing energies to be at the heart of decision-making and militant work.

And it strengthens the left’s relationship with the lives of the working poor and younger generations in a time of capitalist hegemony and authoritarianism. The future belongs to the left that understands the arena of class struggle today extends from the depths of the street to the farthest point in the digital sphere. The Gen Z 212 movement has proven that the relationship between left forces and younger generations can only develop and take root by integrating on-the-ground struggle with digital organizing tools and new forms of organization and political discourse. It is a lesson not only for dear comrades in the left and progressive forces in Morocco, but for the global left as a whole.


All solidarity with the young women, young men, and the toiling masses in Morocco who are facing repression and marginalization with awareness and courage, and who are struggling for a dignified life and genuine social justice. And all solidarity with the Moroccan leftist, progressive, trade union, and human rights forces that stand with the people, defending their rights, their freedom of organization and expression, and the values of justice and equality.


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Notes:
Gen Z: the generation born from the mid-1990s to the second decade of the twenty-first century; raised in a digital environment, uses technology and social media as an essential part of daily life, and blends the physical and virtual worlds—making it more capable of mobilization and organizing through the digital sphere.
** ”The Electronic Left” is a modern left current seeking to develop the tools, discourse, and organizational mechanisms of the traditional left by employing digital technology and the networked sphere in organization, debate, and mobilization. It does not present itself as a substitute for the historical forces of the left; rather, it complements and develops them, calling for integrating digital platforms and participatory democracy with field struggle in order to link theoretical questions to the daily needs of the working poor masses.
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Sources:
1. Le Monde Afrique – “Moroccan protesters call for prime minister’s resignation” (October 2, 2025)
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/le-monde-africa/article/2025/10/02/moroccan-protesters-call-for-prime-minister-s-resignation_6746020_124.html
2. AP News – “Moroccan youth protests erupt after deaths in Agadir hospital” (October 1, 2025)
https://apnews.com/article/912ca1a9dbc42e6d3d2f8a1067eb12f9
3. Reuters – “Morocco’s youth, police clash for fifth night of protests demanding education, health care” (October 1, 2025)
https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/moroccos-youth-police-clash-fifth-night-protests-demanding-education-health-care-2025-10-01
4. The Guardian – “First deaths in Morocco’s youth-led anti-government protests as police open fire” (October 2, 2025)
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/oct/02/first-deaths-in-moroccos-youth-led-anti-government-protests-as-police-open-fire
5. Al Jazeera – “7 questions that explain what is happening in Morocco’s Gen Z protests” (October 2, 2025)
https://www.aljazeera.net/news/2025/10/2/7-%D8%A3%D8%B3%D8%A6%D9%84%D8%A9-%D8%AA%D8%B4%D8%B1%D8%AD-%D9%85%D8%A7-%D9%8A%D8%AC%D8%B1%D9%8A-%D9%81%D9%8A-%D8%A7%D8%AD%D8%AA%D8%AC%D8%A7%D8%AC%D8%A7%D8%AA-%D8%AC%D9%8A%D9%84-%D8%B2%D8%AF
6. BBC – “First killings in Morocco since Gen Z protests erupted”
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgrqpekyxpvo
7. “The most prominent intellectual and organizational foundations of the electronic left”
https://libcom.org/article/most-prominent-intellectual-and-organizational-foundations-electronic-left-e-left

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Source:
https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/gen-z-212-and-youth-protests-in-morocco-from-the-digital-sphere-to-the-street/

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