From Screens to Streets: Decoding Bangladesh’s Gen Z July Uprising

Executive Summary

While revolutionary movements’ association with youth and students has long been a global phenomenon, the frequency and impact of Gen Z movements has been remarkable, particularly in Global South countries. They are characterised by novel patterns, innovative strategies, solidarity dynamics, and transnational digital networks, revealing a unique transformation in resistance politics in both scale and scope. In this new wave of youth activism, collective assertions of agency against authoritarianism, exclusion, censorship, corruption, and crisis have sparked massive uprisings and resulted in the collapse of regimes in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Nepal.

Drawing on Bangladesh’s historic July Uprising in 2024, which ended Sheikh Hasina’s 15-year authoritarian rule, this article brings into focus the distinctive character of contemporary youth activism, comprising Gen Z’s creative and digital resistance and generational aspirations. During the weeks-long violent protests in Bangladesh, Gen Z created a political tsunami through graffiti, cartoons, posters, music, performances, and memes, blending political urgency with the distinctive wit, irony, and satire embedded in Bengali cultural expression. Even amid violent repression and state surveillance, these creative interventions sustained the movement, converting everyday public and virtual spaces into sites of collective resistance. This article unravels the changes in politics introduced by Gen Z movements as well as their overarching impact on the policies and practices shaping democracy in Bangladesh and beyond. Building from digital ethnography and secondary resources, this paper makes a case for understanding how young people experience, respond to, and live with a revolution. Highlighting the importance of understanding revolutions from below, this article engages in the debate of whether this political ‘youthquake’ signals a tectonic but sustainable shift in democratic transition and practice in Bangladesh.