After the Gen Z revolt, conspiracy theories have become popular in Nepal. Everyone now has their own version of what happened between September 8th and 13th—from political leaders, public intellectuals, professors, geopolitical experts, podcasters, social commentators to common people gathered in the teashop. It was such a massive political quake that its aftershocks have not yet settled down. In addition to toppling the country's federal government, the Gen Z protest has been successful in dispelling the false preconceptions that the political leaders, their expert advisors, political analysts, public intellectuals, and senior citizens had about the younger generation of Nepal.
Gen Z were assumed to be submissive, docile, politically inert, socially ignorant, consumer-focused, enmeshed in their small spheres of influence, at ease with middle-class comforts, and eagerly looking for a way out to a foreign country. In particular, our political elites had started cultivating a false perception that the young generation in a society already divided along religious, ethnic, caste, ideological, and regional lines are not competent enough to organize themselves around a common purpose and bring about political change that would put their political and social existence at risk.
However, when Gen Z’s protests shattered their clumsy assumptions with their revolutionary zeal, instead of critically reflecting on their flaws and failures, our politicians and their party members began hurling conspiracy theories to protect their self-image and delegitimize the Gen Z protests as a chaotic youth movement that has been staged by some foreign powers. Hence, they are still busy searching one picture after another; even AI-generated memes are trustable, as is some piece of news from any source, just to discredit Gen Z protests as a genuine revolt against the corrupt political system in Nepal.
Moreover, in an information market open to conspiracy theories, now we’re left with an entire ecosystem of podcasters, YouTubers, political analysts, politicians, and journalists all scrambling to concoct their own versions of conspiracy—preferably dark, deep, and spiced up. Esoteric? Astrological? Mysterious? Even better. And if anyone out there has something truly sinister and unknown, they beg: tell us. We are hungry for more. Furthermore, among intellectual opinion makers in Nepal, there has been a consistent tendency to generate conspiracy theories that attributes socio-economic and political challenges prevalent in Nepal to some external foreign power structures and portray the Nepali people as helpless victims. After all, they can’t directly blame their audience for the economic and political instability in Nepal.
Even the general public in Nepal apply conspiracy theories to cover up their tolerance for corruption, resistance to reform, ethical failings, short-term populist and trade-off decision-making at the ballot box. In addition, Nepali people have been observed by the world as consumers robbing their local businesses, neighbors setting fire to their neighbors' homes because they are somewhat politically connected and wealthy, students destroying their own college, people making reels and TikTok while smoke oozed from government buildings, people expecting law and order after breaking out of the prisons, and citizens who are illogical enough to expect the future governments to drastically transform the economic condition of Nepal after instigating so much damage to existing businesses and industries. Hence, surely it must be a conspiracy. After all, without some evil foreign influence, dark energy, or the Lucifer rising, how on earth could people from the land of Lord Buddha, Pashupatinath, and Sita Mata carry out such horrible and heinous deeds? As conspiracy theories depict us, we need to think critically ask, are we just guinea pigs without political agency for some geopolitical experiments?
Conspiracy theories as political excuse
Gen Z protest was fueled by deep structural problems such as nepotism, inequality, corruption, a sluggish bureaucratic system operating on the basis of political affiliations, unemployment, cronyism, and youth alienation. Even before the Gen Z protest, Nepal was facing a deep leadership crisis, marked by narcissism, incompetence, corruption, and a dangerous lack of political vision, with three large parties running a government on a musical chair basis for the purpose of protecting their leaders involved in corruption cases. We also had cluster of under-qualified leaders attempting to cosplay themselves as global leaders like Xi Jinping, Narendra Modi, or Donald Trump, without possessing an ounce of their stature, ideological clarity and nationalist ethos.
Moreover, this leadership crisis was utterly exposed when the government decided to ban social media platforms. For millions of Nepali youth, social media is not just a source of entertainment; it’s a lifeline. It is where they communicate, express, create, organize, earn, and dream. Cutting this lifeline was like pulling the plug on the ventilator machine for a generation that was already struggling for their social-political space and voice. Hence, the backlash was inevitable and this raw impulse would have been hijacked by any anti-government, fringe, radical, opportunistic and anti-social elements. Besides, no foreign power or international agency from Beijing, New Delhi, Moscow, London or Washington ever encouraged the government led by KP Sharma Oli to go on with their assault on digital freedom. It was a homegrown failure that reflected the authoritarian impulse, apathy and indifferent reasoning of political leaders.
However, instead of acknowledging their political and governance failures associated with issues such as systemic and rampant corruption, weak governance, human trafficking, underdeveloped infrastructure, abuse of authority, insubstantial foreign policy, economic dependency, politicization of academia and social inequality, political leaders in Nepal have started using conspiracy narratives as their easy escape routes for blaming foreign powers and international organizations for this political crisis.
Rather ironically, even different factions within Gen Z groups have started to come up with their versions of conspiracy theories to cover up their issues regarding ideological differences, vested influences, inter-group conflicts, exclusion during the formation of the interim government, and how their protest got hijacked by different interest groups. After all, for any political system it will not be easy to drive economic growth in a politically fragile nation like Nepal with policy inconsistency, regulatory uncertainty, public moral decay, consistence law and order crisis and weak investor confidence
Gap in critical thinking skills
The surge in the wave of conspiracy theories after the Gen Z protest has revealed that there is a gap in critical thinking skills among Nepali people when it comes to navigating misinformation and disinformation, recognizing emotional manipulation, evaluating evidence, analyzing the hidden agendas of the information sources, and questioning the information itself. Furthermore, it is crucial to realize that activism only becomes transformative when it combines critical awareness with a strong desire for social and political change. And, without the critical, analytical, creative, evidence-based, and intellectual thinking skills necessary to address systemic issues and their root causes, there is always a risk that any activism can become reactive, fragmented or misdirected.
Moreover, as citizens of Nepal, we must acknowledge that those in or aspiring to positions of political power will use conspiracy theories to further their own agendas, defend their illegal behavior, conceal their governance shortcomings, conceal their dubious institutional and geopolitical ties, and avoid the unsettling reality of Nepal's systemic ethical decline. However, the betrayal of democratic values will always be the real conspiracy against the people of the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, and it starts internally rather than externally.
(Ojha is a writer, researcher, and educator at different educational institutions)
