About

One Piece Pirate Flags at Gen Z Protests refers to a trend of the Straw Hat Pirates' skull-and-bones Jolly Roger flag from the anime and manga One Piece being flown at several youth-led protest movements in 2025, including the August 2025 Indonesian protests, as well as the 2025 Nepal protests that led to regime change in the country. In the fictional world of the One Piece media franchise, the Straw Hat Pirates' flag represents a pirate crew led by protagonist Monkey D. Luffy. The pirates are depicted in opposition to the corrupt World Government in the series and shown liberating the oppressed and fighting against tyranny. The popularity of One Piece and the symbolic meaning of the flag led to the iconography being used in a wave of protests, reported as largely being propagated by Gen Z youth, in 2025.

Origin

One Piece is a long-running popular Japanese media franchise created by Eiichiro Oda about a pirate crew that travels the world in search of a mythical treasure known as the "One Piece." In Volume 5, Chapter 42 of the manga,^[1] the main protagonist of the series, Monkey D. Luffy, draws up a crude straw-hat version of the classic Jolly Roger pirate flag that is then redesigned by his crewmate Usopp.

The pirate flag features a skull-and-bones Jolly Roger emblem wearing a straw hat, meant to represent Monkey D. Luffy's crew, the Straw Hat Pirates, who are presented as a group that opposes the manga's fictional corrupt world government and fight for the oppressed.

According to a September 25th, 2025, article in CNN,^[2] "the flag symbolises Luffy’s quest to chase his dreams, liberate oppressed people, and fight the autocratic World Government."

The CNN article also features a number of photos taken at protests in Indonesia, Paris and Nepal, showing the Strawhat Pirate's Jolly Roger being invoked as a symbol of resistance (shown below).

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August 2025 Indonesia Protests

In August 2025, the Indonesian government began reportedly "cracking down" on the use of the Strawhat Pirates Jolly Roger flag from One Piece, as per an August 8th, 2025, article by AFP News.^[5]

On August 2nd, the X^[6] account @AnimexTwts tweeted, "Raising the One Piece Straw Hats Flag is now Considered a 'Crime of Treason' and an attempt to divide the nation in Indonesia."

On August 7th, 2025, the official Amnesty International X / Twitter^[7] page tweeted, "The Indonesian government should stop repressing freedom of expression and instead focus on the root causes of public unrest that have prompted people to fly the One Piece flag," gathering over 15,000 likes in three months.

November 2025 Mexico Protests

The One Piece pirate flag also came to be used as a symbol for protests that erupted in Mexico in November 2025, with X^[3] user Crazy Ass Moments in LatAm Politics posting a photo of "Former Mexican President Vicente Fox during the recent Gen-Z protests appeared wearing a strawhat pirate T-Shirt," on November 15th, 2025, gathering over 900,000 views and 2,000 likes in five days.

On November 14th, 2025, X^[4] user @defense_civil25 posted a banner promoting the protests in Mexico and seemingly impersonating an official U.S. Homeland Security news page. The post read, "🚨Alert: Tomorrow will be the largest protest in Mexican history! The Mexican people have had enough of the corruption and violence that the Cartels have brought on a once great country!"

Some internet users posted conspiracy theories about how the protests in Mexico may be CIA-funded and likened them to past destabilizing "color revolutions" that took place in Latin America in previous decades.

On November 17th, X^[10] user @MaxBlumenthal tweeted, "'Gen Z uprisings' in Mexico City and Nepal rally around the One Piece Jolly Roger Flag, much as the US govt-sponsored color revolutions of the 2000s did with the fist symbol."

A photo of a protestor dressed in a Nazi shirt while holding the pirate flag began making the rounds online after November 15th, as seen in a Facebook^[8] post by user Razon-es and a November 16th tweet by X^[9] user @DrewPavlou that gathered over 5,000 likes in four days.

Search Interest

External References