Despite attempts to revive protests by making them weekly and halting daily demonstrations, the Generation Z group failed to organize a large mobilization in Tangier on Saturday, October 18.
The protests this Saturday at the Al-Mikazin wall, attended by dozens, underscored the group’s decline in Tangier, with the “Progressive Youth Club,” led by the Attac movement against capitalist globalization, emerging in its place.
The majority of participants in the mobilization were organized by the Club, which issued a statement titled “We Return to the Streets” just hours prior.
The Club stated that “the movement has managed to organize itself and establish various forms of protest, whether sit-ins or marches, in a conscious and responsible manner, focusing efforts on the fundamental demands on which this movement was founded.”
It added, “This movement, along with us, the activists of the Progressive Youth Club, will continue our role in organizing and providing leadership in these protests, building on what we previously mentioned in our first publication regarding the coherence of demands, slogans, and forms of struggle of the protest youth today, and our two-decade experience in activism in Tangier, characterized by prioritizing the social and economic demands of the majority of our working and marginalized people in the struggle for change, and adopting a combative protest approach based on the streets as a means to adjust the flawed balance of power in favor of the oppressors, exploiters, and corrupt, to impose responses to popular demands.”
Impact on Protests
The Club noted several reasons for the decline in protests, including what it described as “malicious coverage that distorts the discussion from its true essence,” leading the media’s focus to shift to the destruction of public and private property, condemning it, and blaming the protesting youth, while exaggerating the need for repression and justifying its actions, all under the guise of stopping protests for the sake of the nation. This aims to influence youth participation by portraying protests as destructive and chaotic.
The Club claimed that a second blow to protests came from broadcasting “scenes of violent repressive interventions against demonstrators, aimed at instilling fear and psychological intimidation among Moroccan youth, driving them to abstain from participation in protests.”
Furthermore, the Club alleged that “paid agents were inserted into youth gatherings, both on the ground and on social media platforms like Discord, with the aim of sowing discord and division and amplifying any factors that could contribute to that, as well as casting doubt on principled activists, especially those playing a positive role in unifying, leading, and organizing, paving the way for an easier dismantling of the movement or steering it towards paths that serve the authorities.”
The same group accused the media of “turning youth against each other” with fabricated news about “the withdrawal of currents or individuals” or “internal disagreements and splits,” focusing on ideological and intellectual differences as a justification for dividing and fragmenting the youth movement and isolating parts of its youth from field activism.
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