Reviews Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary? Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting

Getting Hooked on Quitting

Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary?

Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous

Is College Necessary?

Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear

Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters

‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Reviews Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary? Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting

Getting Hooked on Quitting

Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary?

Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous

Is College Necessary?

Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear

Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters

‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Why are young people so angry? Why isn’t everyone?

Youth protests in Europe and India signal a deepening crisis. For most people, democracy hasn't delivered

Published October 26, 2026 9:00AM (EDT)

A specter is haunting Europe, and plenty of other places too. Nobody knows quite what to call it. It isn’t the specter of communism this time around, or at least not under that name — although something approaching class warfare, redefined in 21st-century terms, is on the agenda for the first time in decades. 

Student protests that began at secondary schools in the northern suburbs of Paris about a month ago have sparked a wave of demonstrations and street battles— occasionally tipping over into rioting, looting, and organized property destruction — that has now spread to at least six or seven countries, with new outbreaks happening nearly every day. But there is no single unifying issue that has brought students, labor unions, left-wing activists, anarchist rebels and hundreds of thousands of ordinary people into the streets of Paris, Lisbon, Madrid, Brussels, Milan, Belgrade, Athens and Tirana, among many other cities. 

While the protests in Belgium and Italy are direct outgrowths of the French student movement, the proximate causes of unrest are local and distinct in every case. Protests in Spain and Portugal reflect years of simmering discontent over the soaring cost of living, especially a housing crisis made worse by the explosion of Airbnb-style tourist rentals. In Greece the protests were initially about workplace safety and public sector wages. In Albania and Serbia, where protest movements were well underway before the French students made headlines, the main issues involve deeply entrenched government corruption. 

Thousands of miles away in the world’s largest self-described democracy, India’s youth-driven Cockroach Janta Party (“Voice of the Lazy & Unemployed”) isn’t connected to the French protests at all, except by the kind of historical coincidence that isn’t really a coincidence. The CJP was launched earlier this year, about halfway between........

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