and calling for Myanmar citizens and the international community to help restore democracy.3 A leaderless youth movement identified in Myanmar as “Gen Z” has since been shaping the anti-coup movement by amplifying a wide array of civil society and minority voices. Their youthful exuberance and refusal to accept military rule has encouraged resistance from all sectors of society and has united the Bamar majority and ethnic minorities in a common anti-regime movement. Gen Z’s protests have accomplished what has been elusive to prior generations of anti-regime movements and uprisings. They have severed the Bamar Buddhist nationalist narrative that has gripped state-society relations and facilitated the military’s ideological control over the political landscape. Gen Z has challenged attitudes and values that have restricted participation in national politics to a patriarchal, gerontocratic, and Bamar Buddhist majority. Emphasizing values that draw from global democratic ideals and imaginaries as well as universal Buddhist ethics, Gen Z has guided a movement of movements that is leaderless, emphasizes horizontal relations (rather than hierarchical ones), and accentuates a social justice orientation inclusive of all members of society. This paper charts descriptively and analytically the first two months of Myanmar’s 2021 anti-coup protests. Revolutionary movements are messy, processual, and dialectical; we aim to capture a moment in an evolving situation, infusing our inquiry with historical context and genealogical reasoning so as to draw out certain features of particular political and cultural salience. WHY LAUNCH A COUP D’ÉTAT NOW? Struggle between the civilian government and the military was built into the 2008 constitution. In overseeing the drafting of that charter, the The Republic of the Union of Myanmar Pyidaungsu Hluttaw, “Statement by the Representatives of the Pyidaungsu Hluttaw (National League for Democracy) (2/2021)”, Naypyitaw, 5 February 2021, https://www.facebook.com/crph.official. mm/photos/pcb.102804515178862/102804455178868 (accessed 17 March 2021). 3 2 21-J07648 01 Trends_2021-7.indd 2 28/4/21 9:34 AM