Morocco is experiencing a wave of popular protests
10/10/2025
As the autumn of 2025 approaches Morocco is experiencing a wave of popular protests that have brought fundamental questions about social justice, basic rights, deteriorating public services and the political legitimacy of the regime back into the political arena. This movement, which adopted the name “Gen Z 212″*, after the country’s codename for international relations, did not arise in a vacuum. It emerged from the chronic accumulation of marginalization, poverty, lack of basic services in health and education, widespread unemployment and corruption. The movement was spontaneously started after a tragic incident at Hasan II Hospital in Agadir where women die during childbirth due to lack of care. That spark became a social uprising that quickly spread to major cities like Rabat, Casablanca, Fez, Marrakech, Taroudan, Sala and Oujda and quickly caused a universal expression that a whole generation of young Moroccans, especially the working class and poor, suffered from.
What mattered about this movement was not just its breadth and geographical spread, but its reliance on new mechanisms of organization and mobility that began in the digital sphere and reverberated on the ground. Here, the connection between the Moroccan experience and the concept of “electronic left and electronic struggle” is revealed, in which a tangible social dimension meets a techno-organizational one, producing a new mode of political action. The main strength of this model is that it takes politics away from the old elites and brings it back to the streets and the youth. He constantly emphasizes that technology is not neutral. It is a tool of domination in the hands of capitalism and dictatorial regimes, but at the same time it can be a tool of freedom if used in a progressive, leftist and organized way. What happened in Morocco reflects this possibility: young people, with a simple tool, established a free and alternative digital public sphere in which they expressed their rejection of the dictatorship, corruption, injustice and marginalization of their daily lives. Short videos, memes, and online debate became veritable tools for political movement, organizing, and producing a critical mass consciousness—far from the official media that sought to tarnish the movement and limit it to violence and disruption.
The digital organization of the Youth Network transcends traditional mechanisms and creates a new arena of leftist struggle What distinguishes this movement from its predecessors is not only its demands, but also its emphasis on improving health and education, providing jobs, holding corruption accountable and achieving social justice. It largely organized itself outside the traditional framework of parties and unions that for many reasons had a weak relationship with the new generation and had become, in the eyes of many young women and men, a dry bureaucratic structure that could no longer represent people’s concerns. On the contrary, the digital sphere opened up the horizon for an entirely different way of organizing—based on flexibility, speed, and openness. Platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook became tools for publicity and meetings, while Discord servers became “people’s digital centers” for discussion, planning, and horizontal collective decision-making.