While America and its imperial allies seethe in the grips of aimless political violence, stagnation, and economic uncertainty in the wake of Trumpist economic nationalism and while Israel (aided and abetted by the Western imperial core) drags the Middle East at large into a vortex of inchoate violence, Nepal has been changing from within. Western media for days depicted the protests as brought on only by their trigger: the suppression of all social media in Nepal by the Sharma Oli government. Indeed, the protests were relegated to mid-scroll fodder until they became impossible to ignore. By that point, the youth revolution and the displacement of the clearly outmatched and unfit-for-purpose government of Nepal were a foregone conclusion. While the limited media analysis has in recent days shifted towards the real reasons for the revolution in Nepal, it has not grasped the simple lesson that the “Gen-Z Protests” demonstrate on the possibilities of a youth-led revolutionary movement and the perils of ossified nominally leftist politics. If the left as a whole is to coherently respond to the demands of the current moment and the growing strength of global fascism, it must understand the revolutions of the current moment.

This is not the place for a history of Nepali politics. What is immediately relevant to the events leading up to the September revolution is the government of K.P. Oli, the CPN UML (Communist Party of Nepal, United Marxist-Leninist), and what Oli’s fourth term quickly came to represent. The Oli government of Nepal emerged in 2024 from a profound electoral and social crisis. Since 2008, Nepal had cycled through 14 governments, 10 of which claimed to be communist and none of which were able to make any lasting economic change stick.[1] To characterize with some degree of brutal simplicity, leftist parties have cyclically gained power and squandered their opportunity to restructure the conditions on the ground for the Nepali working class through economic revolution instead personally enriching themselves while engaging in the most cynical impulses of electoralism. This is all while Nepal has consistently been among the poorest countries in the world, with a shockingly low $1,400 GDP per capita[2] and a massive unemployment rate. High domestic unemployment and a poorly managed domestic economy have forced Nepali workers to migrate in search of subsistence. This has two consequences: first, that labor is Nepal’s chief export onto the international capitalist markets, and second, that the Nepali economy is largely dependent on the remittances of exported labor.[3] This is all while the richest 10% in Nepal own 26 times more than the bottom 40%.[4]

While the K.P. Oli government pursued closer ties with the right-wing governments of Narendra Modi in India and Vladimir Putin in Russia, Nepali discontent was rapidly fomenting. In a little under a year, with little concrete change made and an exacerbating global economic crunch, the Nepali government found itself on thin ice. On September 4^th and 5^th, the Oli administration cracked down on a series of largely peaceful youth-led demonstrations against the corrupt and nepotistic Nepali political system. The reaction was swift and massive, and by September 8^th, huge swaths of Nepali society were in the streets denouncing their government. It was these protests that would spark the bloodiest days of the revolution, per The Nation’s retrospective reporting: “The police guarding Parliament fired live ammunition into the crowd, killing at least 20 protesters. Who precisely gave the orders to fire on the protesters is now under investigation.”[5] Nepal erupted in revolutionary fury the next day, September 9^th. The parliament building, the homes of high government officials, and (perhaps most gallingly for Nepali elites) “hotels—including the Kathmandu Hilton—and corporate offices, media companies, even retail chains and EV showrooms”[6] were set on fire. By the 13^th of September,  four days later, despite the best efforts of the military (and reactionaries with fanciful ideas of restoring the discredited monarchy), the government of Nepal had fallen, and the youth movement had elected Sushila Karki as the first female prime minister in the history of Nepal via a Discord poll.[7] 72 protestors were dead, and thousands were injured, highlighting the immense violence and brutal repression faced by the youth movement.[8]

What remains to be seen is what type of government will emerge from the Nepali popular movement of September 2025. The particular and long-term consequences for Nepali society are difficult to predict. Hindutava and Monarchist elements have, for now, been stymied.[9] This does not mean that the right-wing in Nepali society and globally, at a peak of organization and power, is not at this moment preparing to fill the void.[10] There are, however, lessons from mass action to consider in the immediate term – lessons beyond what Kunda Dixit can offer when he says that the protests were a “social media magnification of the anger against elected leaders” in a “functioning but flawed democracy.”[11]

1: The old tactics and politics of the left have reached a critical point of discredit. The youth movement found itself aligned against the CPN-UML because of its stagnant politics of privatization and commercialization, which have only served to enrich the ruling class in Nepal and impoverish its youth workers. Kunal Chattopadhyay is completely correct to point towards the ruling Communist party’s adherence to discredited Stalinist theories of “two-stage revolution” and inflexible Maoist “united front” theories as a major political cause of their abandonment of any genuine revolutionary politics and absorption in cynical liberal politics. The September 2025 revolution is, in fact, a repudiation of both of these tendencies in Nepali communist politics.

2: At an abstract level, the events of September 2025 demonstrate the true importance of information technology as a lever for mass revolutionary movements. Of course, this comes with the caveat that Nepal is one of the most social media-saturated nations in the world, and indeed, that a good portion of Nepal’s remittance money comes through social media. However, it is foolish to ignore the role that social media played in planning, distributing, coordinating, and unifying the demonstrations. A coordinated informational strategy was crucial in the large-scale success of the demonstrators.

3: Finally, in concert with (2), it is crucial to note that while the September 2025 movement was a broad social movement and included huge segments of Nepali society, it was most publicly headed up by the youth. The fact that the September 2025 Nepali revolution was deeply connected to the struggles of the youth and other economically and socially marginalized Nepali people cannot be ignored. It is here that the case of Nepal’s political economy, culture of corruption, and uninspiring leadership becomes universalizable in a concrete way. Youth movements across the world have faced crackdowns and repression in their agitation for Palestine and against Israeli and American genocide, in America against the ICE gestapo and Trump’s terror campaign against immigrants, and across the world against weapons manufacturers and fossil fuel corporations hell-bent on rapaciously destroying the earth and accelerating a climate crisis that now tops polls[12] as a leading driver of hopelessness, anxiety, and fear among the young. In Nepal (a nation, incidentally, set to be viciously impacted by climate change), the revolutionary impulses of society clearly emerged against the exploitation of an obviously corrupt ruling class, which found itself chased from its parliament and its high-end retail stores when the masses found that they had had enough.

What the future holds for Nepal is uncertain. For now, it is crucial that the left offer its support to the youth movement as it negotiates its newfound political power and avoids interdiction by the forces of global reaction. As the organized and ascendant forces of global reaction and fascism loom, the left must put aside its differences to marshal what resources it can to support this moment of revolutionary opportunity in Nepal.

Notes

[1] For a more detailed historical account, see “Nepal: The Failure of Refurbished Stalinism and Maoism, The Attempts by Hindutava and Imperialism” by Kunal Chattopadhyay in Historical Materialism: https://www.historicalmaterialism.org/article/nepal-the-failure-of-refurbished-stalinism-and-maoism-the-attempts-by-hindutva-and-imperialism/

[2] World Bank, 2019, quoted in “Nepal: The Failure of Refurbished Stalinism and Maoism, The Attempts by Hindutava and Imperialism” by Kunal Chattopadhyay in Historical Materialism

[3] While the historical situation is different, there is an eerie resonance here with the situation Marx described in Ireland. See, Marx, Karl, and Ernest Mandel. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1. Translated by Ben Fowkes, Reprint edition, Penguin Classics, 1992. Page 854 to 870.

[4] Mahotsav Pradhan, Examining the Dynamics of Wealth and Income Inequality in Nepal, January 31, 2024 https://nepaleconomicforum.org/examining-the-dynamics-of-wealth-and-income-inequality-in-nepal/. Also quoted in Chattopadhyay’s article.

[5] Stephenson, Wen. Did Nepal Just Have a Revolution? 16 Sep. 2025. The Nation, https://www.thenation.com/article/world/nepal-revolution-kunda-dixit-interview/.

[6] ibid

[7] “Nepal Ex-Chief Justice Karki Becomes next PM after Protests.” France 24, 12 Sep. 2025, https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20250912-nepal-seeks-new-leader-as-army-reclaims-streets-after-protest-violence.

[8] Sharma, Gopal. “Death Toll from Nepal’s Anti-Corruption Protests Raised to 72.” Reuters, 14 Sep. 2025. Asia Pacific. Reuters, https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/death-toll-nepals-anti-corruption-protests-raised-72-2025-09-14/.

[9] “Nepal: The Failure of Refurbished Stalinism and Maoism, The Attempts by Hindutava and Imperialism” by Kunal Chattopadhyay in Historical Materialism: https://www.historicalmaterialism.org/article/nepal-the-failure-of-refurbished-stalinism-and-maoism-the-attempts-by-hindutva-and-imperialism/

[10] It should be noted that in the months leading up to his displacement K.P. Oli had failed to normalize relations with the Modi government, see Oli Hints His Bangkok Meeting with Modi Did Not Go Well. https://kathmandupost.com/politics/2025/04/08/oli-hints-his-bangkok-meeting-with-modi-did-not-go-well.

[11] Stephenson, Wen. Did Nepal Just Have a Revolution? 16 Sep. 2025. www.thenation.com, https://www.thenation.com/article/world/nepal-revolution-kunda-dixit-interview/.

[12] Climate anxiety in children and young people and their beliefs about government responses to climate change: a global survey

Hickman, Caroline et al.

The Lancet Planetary Health, Volume 5, Issue 12, e863 – e873