The next time someone tells you the youth aren’t engaged enough in politics, just point them to Nepal.
According to multiple reports, the youth of the South Asian nation managed to oust the existing government following an attempted ban of major social media platforms and took to Discord to hold an impromptu convention to elect an interim prime minister.
The organizing appears to have worked. On Friday, the military accepted the recommendation of the protest group and named Karki the interim prime minister. Karki, who accepted the role, is expected to pick a new cabinet and eventually hold elections. According to the Times, that is expected to happen within the next six months or so.
I still have this tab open from 5 days ago: Wife of Ex-Nepali PM Burned Alive, Gen Z Revolt Engulfs Country: Live Updates
I go back to it every day to check whether it’s still there because it feels so surreal that i think it’s somehow just a dream and i’m going to wake up every moment now and the news story will have disappeared.
On the other side of the same coin, a Nepali minister abandoned his wheelchair-bound wife to flee the mob. The mob extracted her from the building, carried her to safety, and got her to a local hospital… Then they resumed burning down the building.
And that’s the kind of strict laser focus that a revolution should have. You’re not revolting to hurt people or burn things down; you’re revolting because of what the people at the top have done. Destruction is a message, not the goal.