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Why Gen-Z focuses on collective justice over individual legacies

In a world where digital connections amplify causes across borders, young people today are reshaping activism to focus on social movements that outlive their leaders

This week, in light of recent events, I wanted to talk about symbols and how they evolve.

Freedom fighters everywhere have been immortalised for what they did for the cause, how they suffered and died. In some cases, they are lucky enough to come out the other side, that despite the blood, their cause was righteous and they deserve any laurels they receive after liberation comes.

In other cases, in too many, the leader holds on to power too long, and the movement passes them by. The cause is forgotten for the vision of one, and the revolution ends.

But sometimes, rarely, a symbol will persist. We all know that image of Che Guevara that has decorated many a flag and T-shirt of a politically active college student. For my generation though, there is much more investigation or criticism towards the figure, and instead the belief that the movement should always be centred, members of marginalised groups platformed rather than used as political cudgels.

This is the case with Palestine, specifically Palestinian liberation, and the death of Yahya Sinwar.

In spite of so much of what he did in his life, his hopes for a free Palestinian people with a nation to call their own was legitimate. Sinwar’s death — how, where, and why — is not the end of the movement, but rather a sign that it will march on.

Literally broken and missing a piece of himself, and still finding the will to fight an enemy so much more powerful, insidious, and technologically advanced than himself, and then to have his death touted as some sort of great and final victory? So politicians in the West may signal the merits of slaughter?

When was the last time a movement died with a leader?

That is what lies at the heart of my generation’s digital nativity, connection and ideas that exist forever, on the internet, regardless of the life of one person. We all know what’s happening, we all talk to each other and see what we go through around the world regardless of race, religion, or anything else they could use to divide us. We know what Sinwar did, and who he was, but we also know why, which means we will always question those people who try to control the narrative.

The movement marches on. I loathe how the elections of one country may determine the fates of so many, and when Palestinian voices have been deplatformed now more than ever. Maybe there is no poetic justice either. What’s more likely is that those who can make these decisions don’t care. But we know, and we saw, and we did something.

What will I say to my children in 30 years, if we have not destroyed the world through anthropogenic climate change, when asked ‘what did you do to stop the genocide?’

Will I say, ‘It was hard, you don’t understand,’ or ‘Times were different, I couldn't speak out.’

So the idea that proliferating the footage of Sinwar’s final moments would do anything but activate most everyone who has even a shred of empathy towards a ceasefire in Gaza, the freeing of the West Bank from occupation, and the liberation of south Lebanon and the security of UN peacekeepers, must be the absolute minimum now if there is to be justice and liberation for the Palestinian people.

wknd@khaleejtimes.com