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Journalism of Courage
The young have always protested. Fuelled by a sense of dissatisfaction or injustice, the youth have banded together to bring change throughout history. Think of Bhagat Singh or Chandra Shekhar Azad, who were just in their early twenties when they laid down their lives in the fight for Independence. In 1968, French students and young workers led one of the largest protests in Europe’s modern history. In 2011, youngsters who mobilised on social media were credited for instigating a wave of uprisings that spread through the Middle East and North Africa, which is now known as the Arab Spring.
This year, dissent around the world has got a new label: “Gen Z protests”. Like their predecessors, the youth today have taken up the fight against corruption, monopoly, and social inequality. Across borders, a symbol from a popular Japanese anime was ubiquitous at the protests: a skull and crossbones, wearing a straw hat.
This week, it reappeared in Madagascar, where the youth toppled President Andry Rajoelina’s regime over the lack of necessities like water and electricity.
The skull-and-crossbones black flag, also known as the Jolly Roger flag, was historically used by pirates to instil fear in approaching ships. In One Piece, a Japanese manga (or comic book) created by artist Eiichiro Oda, the skull wears a straw hat and a grin to represent the odd bunch of misfits, the Straw-Hat Pirates, led by the rubber-bodied Monkey D Luffy.
Oda, who first published One Piece in 1997 — coincidentally, the year that cuts off the Gen Z from Millennials — continues to create new volumes of work. The graphic novel series has now reached its final saga and is expected to end in a few years.
When it came out, One Piece changed the Japanese manga industry, adding structure and emotional depth to the graphic novel series. It was turned into an anime in 1999, at a time when there was a growing international audience for Japanese animation. This was a period that coincided with the massive popularity of Pokémon, which gave birth to an industry of toys and trading card collectibles. While One Piece was slow to gain significant attention outside of Japan, this changed in the 2000s when teenagers in the West began watching more and more Japanese anime. Netflix recently turned it into a live-action remake — its second season is expected to be released in 2026.
The main protagonist of the series, Luffy, has just one dream: to become the Pirate King. His goal stems from the innate desire for freedom. In this quest, he and his crew fend off repressive rulers and the corrupt ‘World Government’. United under the straw-hatted Jolly Roger flag, these ‘outlaws’ came to represent liberation and resilience. A generation that grew up watching them, and now finds itself disenchanted by the powers that be, resonated with the Straw-Hat Pirates, turning them into symbols of modern protests.
The flag first cropped up at pro-Palestinian demonstrations in Indonesia and New York in 2023. “Straw hats for Palestine,” read one social media post, sharing the video.
In August this year, mass protests erupted in Indonesia amid brewing discontent over lucrative perks for lawmakers. As students and workers stormed onto the streets, the government began cracking down on protesters, resulting in the death of a rideshare driver, fuelling more outrage. During this time, the One Piece flag was everywhere — fluttering above the crowds, graffiti-ed on walls, hanging outside homes, and waved at motorbike rallies. In the following month, similar scenes played out in the Philippines and Nepal.
Tens of thousands of Filipinos protested against corruption over flood relief funds. In Nepal, anti-corruption protests triggered by a social media ban forced the then-prime minister K P Sharma Oli to resign. The One Piece flag hung outside the gates of the Singha Durbar, the seat of Nepal’s power, after it was burnt down by protesters.
The flag was waved at protests in France, the United States, and Peru. The omnipresence of the One Piece flag is by no means coincidental. Gen Z, despite being divided by borders, have spent much of their lives online, where internet culture reigns supreme. The shared memes and hashtags blur the physical distance to create a sense of community. As Professor Nuurrianti Jalli notes in her piece for The Conversation: “A meme, gesture or flag can instantly carry meaning across divides of language, religion or geography. This form of connection is built on recognisable cultural codes that allow young people to identify with each other even when their political systems differ.”
She writes that social media gives this solidarity “speed and reach”. The power of social media to mobilise has been visible across Gen Z protests. Young protesters expressed solidarity through TikTok and Instagram, and made calls for action through Discord, a communication platform popular among gamers, and Signal, a secure-messaging app.
Take, for instance, the ongoing protests in Morocco against the lack of healthcare funding amid spending on expensive stadiums for the 2030 FIFA World Cup. They started from a Discord server called ‘GenZ 212’, which now has over two lakh subscribers. In Nepal, Gen Z groups famously gathered on Discord to discuss candidates for the next prime minister.
Pop culture at protests
Gen Z isn’t the first to turn pop cultural references into protest symbols. Literature and films have long inspired ‘real-world’ protests.
For instance, in The Hunger Games, the characters adopt a “three-finger salute” as a symbol of their revolution. The salute reappeared in protests in Thailand against the military coup in 2014, prompting authorities to issue a ban on raising the three fingers in a large gathering. In 2021, when a military coup ousted Aung San Suu Kyi’s government in Myanmar, protesters turned to the three-finger salute once again.
The Myanmar protests also saw a resurgence of ‘Pepe the Frog’, a popular Internet meme and cartoon character created by Matt Furie, to ridicule military leaders. This followed the adoption of Pepe by pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong in 2019.
Pepe, however, has a more notorious significance in American politics. In 2016, far-right activists appropriated the cartoon character to spread racist and anti-Semitic messaging online. Pepe was quickly deemed a hate symbol, prompting legal action by the creator for its misuse.
Doge and Cheems memes, which show a muscular dog bopping a meek companion with a baseball bat, were also used to speak against authorities.
Similarly, the Guy Fawkes mask from the graphic novel and movie, V for Vendetta, became a symbol of the online hacker group, Anonymous, known for targeting governments and corporations. Protesters also wore the mask during the 2011 Occupy Wall Street protests against economic inequality in the US.
This process of shared meaning-making, known as encoding and decoding in media theory, shows how creators and audiences collaborate in shaping significance. From frog-faced memes to skull-emblazoned flags, these symbols reveal the enduring human impulse to communicate, connect, and unite in the face of adversity.
