Gen Z | Class struggles, not “Generation Z”

In Italy, the protesters were called “maranza” (anti-social) by the government. Photo: dpa/AP/Cecilia Fabiano The biggest events don't always make the biggest headlines. Perhaps the most notable news in the US midterms was the result for grassroots black socialist activist Angie Nixon in Florida. With 48 percent, she narrowly lost in the elections for the US Senate - although she had to run her campaign with virtually no support from the Democratic Party. The left-wing organizer received almost 4 million votes in the right-wing stronghold of Florida. That's about as much as Die Linke got in the last federal elections across Germany.

There are more such news stories going under these days. The general strike in Italy last Friday was hardly worth mentioning in the media here. Proclaimed by the small grassroots union USB, it brought one to two million people onto the streets. Our partner newspaper Il Manifesto rubbed their eyes in amazement: “A general call is enough to bring hundreds of thousands – mostly very young people – onto the streets. The organizers – if they can be recognized – are being overrun […] The places are now harder to empty than to fill.«

One to two million people took part in the general strike in Italy. But the initiative did not come from the large unions.

Or in France: Despite massive police violence, the wave of protests there is now in its eighth week. Since the end of the fall break, 500 high schools and 50 universities have been blocked again. Last Saturday, hundreds of thousands defied the ban on demonstrations imposed by the Macron government. And this Thursday, the unions have called for a general strike: for higher wages and better infrastructure, but also for real measures against climate change, which helped cause the devastating forest fires in France this summer.

In the media there is talk – rather depoliticizing – of “Gen Z protests”. As if the high cost of living, increasing military spending, climate change and arms deliveries were only a problem for people under 25... One has to disagree: the border does not run between generations, but between top and bottom.

The new wave of class struggles has taken different forms in different countries. In the USA, where social and union organizing has traditionally been difficult, left-wing grassroots groups have discovered election campaigns as a means of mobilization. Elsewhere, where social struggles are more firmly anchored in everyday life, movements rely on strikes and blockades. The momentum does not come from the large unions. In Italy, two general strikes paralyzed the country last fall - organized by Palestine Solidarity. And in France it was high school students and migrants who made the start.

This social unrest is sweeping away the established organizations. The Intersyndicale, the association of French trade unions, has announced that it will ignore the Macron government's instructions regarding the demonstration route in Paris.

No one can predict what these battles will ultimately achieve. The progressive electoral successes in the USA will ultimately be pushed back not only by Trump, but also by the Democratic Party establishment and corporate power. And of course the movements that are currently flooding the streets in several European countries will subside at some point. But for the moment one can say that the social struggles are back. And that they are stigmatized everywhere by the media and politicians as violent and criminal. A transparent game: The “moral panic”, the scaremongering against parts of the lower classes, has always been an instrument of bourgeois politics. The “migrant milieus” and “chaotics” are being attacked – meaning the fights for equality and social rights.

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