Week signals: The young and the leftward
Plus: watch points for Cambodia, Syria, Iraq, India, Kazakhstan, and Russia.
Hello,
In this week’s edition of Week Signals:
IN REVIEW. Counterculture in the 21st century, the world according to Gen Z, dynasty vs destiny, moral rotation.
UP AHEAD. Southeast Asian borders, Mesopotamian intrigue, Bihar’s election, and Silk Road hedging.
And don’t forget to connect with me on LinkedIn.
Week Signals is the Saturday note for clients of Geopolitical Strategy, also available to GD Professional subscribers on Geopolitical Dispatch.
The Week in Review: Talkin’ ‘bout their generation
The week began with Donald Trump threatening to invade Nigeria. It ended with an offer to exempt Hungary from Russian sanctions. In between this bait-and-switch, however, a more consequential trend took another step: the global Gen Z revolt arrived in New York with the election of Zohran Mamdani as mayor.
From Cameroon to the US, the world is run by old men (and a few old women). Most are from the senior end of the Baby Boomer demographic (1946-1964). These older boomers, who came of age during an unprecedented economic flourishing (at least in the West), styled themselves as a generation that would break from its past. And they did. Not only were they a particularly large cohort — the consequence of pent-up household formation in the wake of World War II — but they emerged in a completely different technological, political, and social order than their parents (another consequence of the war). Thus while the world of 1968 – this generation’s cultural apex – saw the election of arch-conservative Richard Nixon in the US and the Invasion of Czechoslovakia under Leonid Brezhnev in the USSR, it is best remembered today for what it would later portend: the era of civil rights; the youth-led protests of Paris and Chicago; the culture-shifting impact of television media, particularly the Apollo 8 ‘Earthrise’ shot and the ‘And babies’ photo of the My Lai massacre; the music of Jimi Hendrix, the Doors, and Pink Floyd.
The year 2025 may be remembered similarly. While it began in a reactionary fashion – the end of pronouns and the return of Donald Trump – for much of the world, there’s been a 1968, if not 1848, energy. In the wake of Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, governments have fallen in Nepal, Madagascar and Peru, after youth-led protests. That cohort – Generation Z or Zoomer – like their boomer grandparents now in charge in the West, is the largest cohort in those countries. And like generations before them, it has been inculcated on new media (TikTok vs TV), new technological realities (AI vs automotive), and new economic and social anxieties that older leaders aren’t addressing and possibly don’t even understand.
Zoom out, as it were, to New York, and a similar trend is underway. Mamdani has been described in much of the press as a chancer (went to preppy Bowdoin College) and a flash in the pan (a mayor can’t do much anyway), but he appears authentic and, winning 78% of the 18-29 vote, he can’t easily be ignored. Like all politicians, he may not be able to implement all the policies he campaigned on, but he has injected a new energy and a new statist vision of what American government could be – a vision that hasn’t been this mainstream since perhaps the 1930s. While not discarding the identity concerns of the Biden-Harris Democratic Party, he has pivoted hard to a self-described socialist agenda, focused squarely on working-class voters, whom Trump has otherwise courted in increasing share until now. A heady combination of cost-of-living anxiety with youthful utopianism, it’s the kind of movement that could not just be competitive at next year’s midterms, but completely crush the GOP.
A fortnight ago, we wrote about the potential for a counter-counterrevolution in US politics as Trump transits the “J-curve“ of authoritarian governance. A few weeks earlier, we wrote about the clash of geopolitics and ‘demo-politics’ seen in the emerging world’s Gen Z protests. This week, it’s time to examine the potential effects of this dynamic in the developed world, which is much older, more boomer-centred, and more ideologically messy, insofar as the direction appears to be of political fragmentation, than the subaltern cohesion that leads to successful regime change. So is Mandami on the vanguard, or is he on the fringe? Will this year be a 1968 in terms of portending a generational shift, or an 1848 in terms of a failed revolutionary experiment? What should businesses and investors watch for as they try to gauge whether the US is heading ever rightward, or back to FDR-style democratic socialism?