March of the Millennials

The children of neoliberalism are in revolt. Millennials, as pundits and pollsters prefer to call them, are no longer behaving like good neoliberal subjects: disengaged, individualistic, model consumers with little time for the demands of democratic citizenship and life in the public sphere. In the wake of the global financial crisis, the world has witnessed a resurgence of youth activism; millennials, it appears, are finding their political voice.

While in parts of the world, including English Canada, pockets of political quiescence endure, in continental Europe, young people back upstart anti-austerity parties such as Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain. In the United Kingdom, they rally to a 60-something socialist who draws the ire of the political establishment. Across the Arab world and in Hong Kong, millennials have called for freedom and democracy. In the United States, they have occupied public spaces to denounce corporate greed and rising inequality, and...