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View all search resultsPop culture fuels youth-led protests against govt
From The Hunger Games to K-pop, Indonesian Gen Z protesters are turning familiar pop culture references into symbols of resistance.
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Protesters raise their hands in the three-finger salute, with their index, middle and ring fingers extended, symbolizing freedom, solidarity, equality and resistance to injustice and government policies, during a demonstration against economic hardship, corruption and the government’s handling of devastating wildfires that have blanketed the area in toxic haze and sickened thousands of people, along Jalan MH Thamrin in Central Jakarta on Oct. 28, 2026. (JP/Iqro Rinaldi)
A
large, red-lettered poster carried by university students during an October protest at the landmark Hotel Indonesia (HI) traffic circle in Central Jakarta sent a chilling message: “If we burn, you burn with us.”
The message was a rebuke to the government’s perceived failure to contain raging forest and peatland fires across the country, whose toxic haze has caused respiratory problems in Indonesia and neighboring countries.
The line was made famous by The Hunger Games, an American novel-turned-film franchise released in the 2010s about the youths’ struggle against an authoritarian government in the fictional nation of Panem.
The poster was among several recent examples of how youth-led protests, largely driven by Generation Z students, have drawn on the popular culture they grew up with, from comics and young adult novels, films and music into symbols of political dissent.
The trend was particularly visible during demonstrations marking Youth Pledge Day on Oct. 28, when thousands of students across the country raised three fingers in a salute popularized by The Hunger Games protagonist Katniss Everdeen.
Read also: Students return to streets as anger swells over wildfires, shrinking civic space
In the franchise, the gesture becomes a symbol of defiance against an oppressive regime. It has since been adopted by pro-democracy movements elsewhere, including youth protesters in Thailand and Hong Kong in 2014 and Myanmar in 2021.
