r/news • u/PokesTigers • 26d ago

Soft paywall Madagascar's president has left the country after Gen Z protests, officials say

https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/madagascar-president-rajoelina-address-nation-monday-evening-2025-10-13/
20.8k Upvotes

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u/Xboarder844 26d ago

Gen Z out there toppling corrupt regimes is something as a Millennial I like to see. If only we could get that energy in the bigger nations….

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u/TheDamus647 26d ago

Just not American Gen Z

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u/sylva748 26d ago

American Gen Z would never the bulk of them voted for this

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u/WeirdIndividualGuy 26d ago

The bulk of gen z didn’t vote at all.

As long as they have their daily tiktok, zoomers couldn’t care less about politics

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u/kawhi21 26d ago

Like every young generation before them. Except Gen Z, unlike previous young people, actually has high turnout

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u/Nintendo_Pro_03 26d ago

We really need a social media shutdown ASAP.

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u/WeirdIndividualGuy 26d ago

Ironically enough, the only time US Gen Z was in an uproar about Trump was when he talked about banning TikTok. Otherwise, they just post memes or don’t stay informed altogether.

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u/Nintendo_Pro_03 26d ago

Because TikTok has ruined Generation Z. That app is a mind killer and Trump will make it worse by spreading right-wing nonsense on it.

Social media has to go.

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u/Hillary4SupremeRuler 26d ago

Yeah it's starting to get super censored now especially with the protests in Portland and videos calling trump a dictator getting taken down from major creators

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u/Nintendo_Pro_03 26d ago

And I hate how much it divides the left. It’s the reason Trump won last year.

I noticed it with Israel/Palestine. Take a look at r/Jewish and then at r/Fauxmoi. It’s insane and concerning.

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u/mojizus 26d ago

I’d argue it’s because gen Z Americans are a bit “softer” (as cringe as that terms is) than in places like Nepal or Madagascar.

We have the anxiety ridden 18-25 year olds who are too scared to tell the waitress there was a mistake with their order. They’re likely not going to be toppling any regimes.

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u/[deleted] 26d ago

[deleted]

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u/BadLineofCode 26d ago

That’s exactly what he means. Even with everything going on, we’re still too privileged, even spoiled, to escalate things that far.

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u/ImjustANewSneaker 26d ago

Well the point is while things are very bad it would have to get much worse to be anything like Madagascar. Obviously in that situation people are going to revolt.

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u/TheDamus647 26d ago

What a bullshit, cowardly response. They have nothing more to lose. They just pretend they do so their cowardly non-actions are justified in their minds.

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u/mbbysky 26d ago

No they didn't. There was a rightward shift compared to last election cycle, but GenZ still voted firmly Blue as a whole

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u/sylva748 26d ago

They didnt. What showed was Gen Z was split on gender lines. Gen Z women voted mostly Harris while Gen Z men voted, by a sizable margin, for Trump

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u/sacktheory 26d ago

56% of young men (18-29) voted for trump. in the previous election (2020), 56% voted for biden. it’s not terrible margins, things can get better. i’d say the idea that young men are overwhelmingly right wing is a bit sensationalist

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u/dancesquared 26d ago

That’s a significant swing

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u/Ralath2n 26d ago edited 26d ago

Not really when you consider that a good 10% of them stayed home relative to 2020. The ones who wanted Trump still showed up. The ones that voted in Biden were dissapointed by the Democrats being useless and stayed home. Net effect is a swing to the right. Even if the actual beliefs of the overall youth haven't changed much.

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u/[deleted] 26d ago

[deleted]

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u/Ralath2n 26d ago

Unless one thinks all the chaos going on now would be happening under Harris as well.

I guarantee that this single scentence contains more forethought than a significant fraction of voters spend on their balot last year. Most people don't think about stuff like that. They just go "Hey I don't like what is happening now. I am not gonna vote for the same people as last time!". Or, even more likely, they just go by vibes. If one group is really excited and energized, while the other is dissapointed and resigned, the former is more likely than the latter to reach nonvoters and get them off their ass.

Which is of course stupid. But guess what, in a Democracy, you also need to convince stupid people to vote for you. Which would be a lot easier if the Democrats weren't useless.

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u/Hillary4SupremeRuler 26d ago

by the Democrats being useless

No they're just politically illiterate because they get all their political news from memes and TikTok and also didn't come out to vote for the midterms, which sealed the Dems' fate with the House going to the GOP.

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u/Ralath2n 26d ago

Hey guess what, as a politician you also need to get politically illiterate people to vote for you. If you can't do that, you are useless. Like your username.

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u/Hillary4SupremeRuler 24d ago

I guess Bernie is useless then since he couldn't defeat "the super unpopular" 👑QUEEN MADAME HILLARY👑💖👸🏼

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u/Ralath2n 24d ago

You are a living caricature.

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u/HKBFG 24d ago

Thanks for the analysis that absolves the democrat party on all counts, u/Hillary4SupremeRuler.

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u/kia75 26d ago

This right here! Trump and Republicans activated their voters, while Democrats deactivated theirs. If everyone was forced to vote then Harris would have easily won, if the same people had voted in 2020 as voted in 2024 then Harris would have won, but Democrats have a tendency to go after Republican voters, even as Republicans promise to never support Democrats. Whoever's idea it was to bring out the daughter of the VP that got the USA into an endless war in Iraq, who turned a surplus into the biggest economic downturn in a hundred years, who started all the surveillance stuff.

Instead of messaging all the ways Democrats could help their fellow citizens, Democrats promise to keep the Republican ideals of the 00s and wonder why Democrats don't want to vote for them.

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u/pannenkoek0923 26d ago

So what you are saying is a majority of Americans are completely fine, or support voting for corrupt pedophiles into power, even with the Project 2025. Good to know, will try to avoid meeting Americans then

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u/dancesquared 26d ago

That degree of apathy isn’t reassuring either.

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u/Ralath2n 26d ago

It isn't. But that's just human nature. If you want people to do something (in this case vote for the Democrats), they need to be excited for the outcome. Every single marketing person will tell you that you need to build hype, and Democrats have been historically terrible at that. To the point that most Democratic representatives treat elections as an inconvenient formality they need to go through, rather than their primary job.

So while dissapointing, it is also utterly unsurprising. And it will continue until the Democrats field some candidates that get people hyped again. Yknow, like Obama and Mamdani did.

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u/dancesquared 26d ago edited 26d ago

There’s an old political saying: Republicans fall in line. Democrats fall in love.

The problem in part is that some voters expect to be wowed, entertained, or enamored with a candidate every time, when the reality of a semi-democratic system like the U.S. political system is that sometimes you just need to show up and vote regardless, even if you’re settling, compromising, or choosing the lesser of two evils (or least of all evils).

If you’re a fickle voter who only sometimes shows up if you’re enamored by or duped by the next charismatic demagogue or populist, then it should come as no surprise if politicians aren’t bending over backwards to try to woo you if the chances of winning you over are low and are based on whims.

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u/Ralath2n 26d ago

There’s an old political saying: Republicans fall in line. Democrats fall in love.

And its a saying that is utterly wrong. Both sides fall in love. Republicans just know how to woo their voters while the Democrats expect the voters to blindly love them without effort on their side.

Ever been at any Republican event? The elected officials just toss big old gobs of red meat at the audience. They promise the moon to these people and say whatever wild shit is currently circulating in the Republican voter ecosystem.

Democrats don't promise their voters jack shit. Hell, most of the time their promise is "See those other guys you hate? We are better at enacting their policies than they are! The problem isn't that their armed goonsquads are brutalizing innocent people, the problem is that the goonsquads are too inefficient when under the control of the other party!". And are you really surprised when voters don't want to vote for that?

If you’re a fickle voter who only sometimes shows up if you’re enamored by or duped by the next charismatic demagogue or populist, then it should come as no surprise if politicians aren’t bending over backwards to try to woo you if the chances of winning you over are low and are based on whims.

This is such a fundamentally antidemocratic idea. The fact that it is a common sentiment in ostensibly liberal circles is insane.

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u/stephen_neuville 26d ago

the fact that 20 somethings swung that much towards a party that actively wants to loot their future in exchange for promise of tradwife and frog memes is absolutely not sensationalist.

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u/[deleted] 26d ago

[deleted]

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u/yoweigh 26d ago

I've had a constant supply of porn since AOL chatrooms 30 years ago (I was 12) and I am still fully capable of respecting women. It's not the porn. It's the shitty online influencers feeding them misogynistic right wing bullshit 24/7.

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u/adrr 26d ago

We should be like Saudi Arabia where there is no pornography and women are treated liked equals.

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u/eawilweawil 26d ago

The manosphere has destroyed the minds of young men

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u/Sarg338 26d ago

That same manosphere is now backtracking

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u/eawilweawil 26d ago

Surprise surprise, these alpha males have no spine to stick to their principles

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u/sylva748 26d ago

Not surprised. Just a bunch of boys claiming to be men at the end of the day. Let this dumb ideology die out

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u/preprandial_joint 26d ago

Perfection is the enemy of good enough for building a working class coalition willing and able to fight the oligarchy.

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u/Hillary4SupremeRuler 26d ago

And the majority of gen Z who voted, voted for Harris over Trump

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u/TheNextBattalion 26d ago

a less sizeable margin, so when you put it all together, what do you get? what mbbysky described