The young are defending democracy, not burning it down

Conventional wisdom states that we now live in a cultural crisis in which support for democracy and its institutions is fading across the world. That is said to be particularly noticeable among young people who resent the wealth and power of the ageing generation.

The riots in France, discussed in this column last week, were seen to support this view. Elections held in recent weeks, and others scheduled for later this month, were expected to provide further evidence of this gloomy prognostication. They included those in Brazil, Serbia, Israel, the United States, Victoria and New Zealand.

Against earlier expectations, however, the authoritarian parties in Brazil and Serbia were defeated. In both cases young people, and especially students, played a major part in defending democratic institutions.

This should also lead critics to reassess the participation of young people in the French riots. Although the results of their actions remain ambiguous, the initiatives of students and of other young people may be seen as a sign of light amid the encircling gloom.

Where the young defended democracy

In Serbia, President Aleksandar Vucic had led a long-standing authoritarian regime with control over the civil service, legal and other institutions.

In the election his party was decisively defeated by the Student List, which won more than 52 per cent of the vote. This movement had its origin in student participation in the street protests that formed the background for the current election.

The protests began after the collapse of a railway station canopy in Novi Sad in November 2024, which killed 16 people. The candidates on the list, who were chosen by the students, included no current students and few people with previous senior political involvement.

They included many university teachers and mostly middle-of-the-road candidates who were united in their revulsion at corruption.

In Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the incumbent president, defeated Flávio Bolsonaro, the son of a former president who had been convicted and imprisoned. Bolsonaro promised an authoritarian government that would place economic growth above meeting social needs and the environment.

Like his father, he had faced allegations of corruption, which he denied. In the first round of the election Bolsonaro won a plurality of 47.03 per cent of the vote, ahead of Lula’s 45.16 per cent. He was expected to win the second round.

Students, however, immediately organized demonstrations throughout Brazil and helped animate Lula’s campaign. Lula won the second round with 51.79 per cent of the vote against Bolsonaro’s 48.21 per cent.

In the election in Israel, the contribution of young people does not appear to have affected the result decisively. It was notable mainly for the sharp increase in the number of seats won by Palestinian Israeli parties, from 10 to 19.

Nor is it clear how significantly young people shaped the election result in the United States, where Democrats won control of both houses of Congress.

Apart from their role in elections, however, young people have also played a significant part in Indian politics. Their demonstrations against irregularities in examinations and their calls for educational reform followed remarks by India’s Chief Justice, Surya Kant, who compared unemployed young people to cockroaches.

The students seized the name in forming the unregistered Cockroach Janta Party, which organized protests over examination irregularities and education reform. Its campaign helped force the resignation of India’s education minister in July 2026. Its satirical style attracts students and offers an alternative to an increasingly distant government.

Nurturing the green shoots

These events are significant because they raise questions about the current commonly shared assessment of the pressure on democracy and on the role of young people in political life. The currently received view is that democracy is under threat and that its enemies hold the key to the future.

It portrays the political state of the world as like an uncut grass field in a hot and windy summer, and the action of politicised young people as a match to light an inferno.

Recent events, particularly in Serbia and Brazil, however, suggest that although we do live in a hot season, within the grass there are many green shoots that promise growth and rebirth if properly watered.

Among those green shoots, young people are particularly important. The proper business both of society at large and of governments is to nurture that growth.

Much needs to be done. The young demonstrators have understandably and correctly focused on education. They want an education that is shaped primarily not by the ever-changing needs of industry and the interests of the wealthy but by the formation of principled human beings who are encouraged to develop their gifts for their own and for the common good.

The task of governments is to encourage and provide the means for such an education.

In all societies governments need to focus on the needs of the most disadvantaged young people.

Many have grown up in violent homes, faced discrimination in schools, been introduced to drugs, had little access to education and lacked access to treatment for physical and mental illness. Some will have been hired by criminals to steal cars and kill their rivals. Some, too, have been politicized by extremist groups.

The current policies of expanding the justice system to remove more children from their homes and to imprison them in increasingly brutal conditions risk ensuring that they will graduate to adult gaols. These will be increasingly focused on punishment rather than on changing lives. The resources of society will then be expended on the expansion of a social desert and not on nurturing green growth.

The neglect of disadvantaged children is only one example of the way in which the gross inequality in wealth and power between the wealthy and the poor plays out.

Governments abet the imbalance in power and security between owners and investors on one hand and employees and the unemployed on the other. They conspire to make young people see their lives as a dry and waterless land in which there is no hope of future green growth.

The most spirited among them will organise to demand a fertile world in which they will flourish as human beings. The less articulate may settle for burning it down. We should encourage the young who struggle for a fairer world.

This column first appeared in Eureka Street and is republished by Global Catholic with permission.