If we give all Eurosceptics/Conservatives/Right Wingers a free pass and count them as part of this big win for the Right then they have ~171 out of 751 seats – a tiny minority that can be absolutely crushed by pro-system block votes. Furthermore, in our current political system(s) that we live in, we are all at the mercy of the insanity of party-based systems that lack mechanisms to force members of a given party to behave according to their advertised principles. Meaning, that none of these seats that have been won by so the so-called “Right” are guaranteed to vote for those principles, so the actual amount of true Eurosceptics and Patriots is probably vastly lower than ~171. (This number could be counted a few ways but it is always a small minority)

Despite the way the Mainstream Media makes elections results look, changes in party balances and people’s voting habits are generally incremental and not radical. There are exceptions, but most shifts in voting results are best measured in single digit percentages. So from a long-term standpoint, a few more election cycles of this nature could actually yield a real change in EU Parliament dynamics. The question is whether Europe can survive 20+ years till it gets a Parliament against the bizarre and self-destructive economic/migration/military policies that have been forced upon it.

These electoral results (plus events like the Yellow Vest protests in/around France) should be used politically not for the future opportunity to have more Eurosceptics sit in a big room watching their countries be murdered bureaucratically, but to make a strong case for the total and obvious legitimacy of Eurosceptic/Traditionalist views in mainstream political discourse.

Legitimacy is very important. Only “legitimate” viewpoints get to go on TV, get discussed by hundreds of politicians in ugly blue chairs in a big room, and have the chance to become law. This is the historical moment when the sceptics can push the Overton window in the EU far in their own direction so they can finally get a piece of its territory. Using this newfound legitimacy to attain media exposure is critical if they want to have any hope of winning over the Euro-normies.

These Right forces need to work out all their talking points to answer the now boring and ridiculous (although firmly mainstream) views that migration control is racist, that loving your culture is hateful and that taxing the middle-class to death builds wealth. The Liberal elite that rules today was very good at establishing the right talking points and propaganda strategies to intellectually annihilate traditional Christian Europe. Now it is their turn to play defense as their way of doing things has proved to have its own very different set of blatant failings.

One small but important measure towards legitimacy is starting to do away with the term Eurosceptic, because more often than not scepticism can be portrayed as irrational. Sceptics stand against what is an accepted reasonable norm and this is generally a weak and scary (for normies) position to promote. Furthermore, the position of “against” is always weaker than presenting a clear and exciting positive vision of one’s ideology. Counteroffers are stronger than just saying the word “no” to everything.

The second logical step would be to attack the mainstream EU political position with justified allegations of racism and bigotry. In many ways it is the European mainstream who sees the world entirely through race, presenting Non-Europeans as inherently helpless victims. The Right needs to reject this 21^st century “White Man’s Burden” and offer up a worldview were Europeans respect themselves and have respect for others, seeing people in Africa and the Middle-East as equally competent and responsible for developing their own society themselves without Euro-interference. The Right’s offer needs to be clear – mutual respect between the world’s cultures and human dignity instead of cultural masochism, forced tolerance and open borders.

To put it bluntly now is the time for them to sell their recently electorally legitimized Euro-vision that doesn’t look anything like the current suicidal “Eurovision”, because their gained Parliament seats will not yield any major policy gains. Their opponents’ (the status quo’s) job is to make sure that perception of the Right continues to show them as cooky irrational marginal “sceptics” whose backward hateful beliefs are intellectually from the Dark Ages, that have no place whatsoever in serious public discourse.

Thanks to the media we have become accustomed to video of protestors getting sprayed by water or having their ranks dispersed thanks to tear gas, leaving everyone wet or coughing respectively but otherwise unharmed. However this humane picture does not meet up with the realities of this civilian vs. cop style warfare.

If we are to take the Yellow Vest protestors at their word then at least 22 of them have lost an eye (from “less-lethal” Flash-ball guns) and 5 have had their hands blown off with 154 being “seriously injured”. Obviously the protestors will want to maximize their statistics but there are plenty of videos from the various actions/demonstrations showing horrible injuries which are too numerous to all be fakes. So the numbers may be off but the overall general tendencies of these injuries do occur from the French authorities in the Human Rights defending EU is a proven fact. The simple reality is that despite a nice marketing phrase non-lethal weapons cripple and on occasion kill.

In order to understand the tactical advantage that non-lethal weapons offer the government (not the individual police but the state itself) we need to put aside our emotional response to seeing French people having their limbs blown off. We have to not jump into ranting about the flagrant hypocrisy of the EU when it comes to human rights and rationally break down how the conflicts between Yellow and Blue vests could look if the arms situation were different.

Scenario A: What if the Yellow Vests were armed?

If the organizers of the Yellow Vests (all movements are organized by someone regardless of what the media tells you) were able to arm their masses with rifles this would indeed lead to horrific short-term violence that would leave a permanent stain on French history. Often hundreds or thousands of protestors are met by dozens of police and handfuls of soldiers, if the protestors were on par with their adversaries in terms of guns, then their numerical advantage would shatter the police’s will to fight.

No policemen are going to fight to the last man against a force 20 times their number, which they may partially agree with dying for nothing, nor will they open fire with tanks in the centers of their own cities. Human psychology would allow them to kill foreigners in some distant country in this manner but not at home.

In this instance of near certain death from pure numbers the police would either “stay home” or possibly switch sides overtly or covertly.

Obviously a full civil war could start from this situation, but in a street warfare sense, escalating from protest to actual hot war is technically a winning scenario as it advances them closer to attaining/changing power.

Scenario B: What if the police fought like an army?

One key component of many Color Revolutions is getting the “bad leader” to be blamed for some sort of direct use of lethal bloody media-friendly massacre. If the French police actually used assault rifles against the protestors this would demonize them to the point of justifying a Revolution. This would not just cause a civil conflict but be a national call to arms to join it, which would be a bad move on the state’s part.

Furthermore, only sociopaths can fire rifles into unarmed crowds (who are not posing a direct threat) of people who speak their own language (i.e. their own “kind”). If the French police just decided to give the order to shoot them all, then in this instance many of the French police would find rifle and bayonet worthless as they would have no desire to shoot.

The result would be a handful of deaths from each protest but the utter collapse of legitimacy of the state and possible “retreats” of police forces unwilling to fire on “their own”.

Scenario C: The “non-lethal” reality we see today.

Psychologically it is much easier for the French police to use non-lethal (in their minds) weapons against the protestors. In the subconscious mind of the policeman he can justify shooting into masses much easier with this type of weapon because in theory it “shouldn’t” kill anyone and if it does it was an “accident”. This is much easier on our psyche and morals than shooting someone in the chest with a Lebel Rifle.

Research by the University of Cambridge supports this tendency. They found that police are far more likely to use force when it is supposedly from non-lethal weapons. This non-lethal status of weapons like tasers (which can and do kill people all the time) makes them so much easier to apply on the populace especially when the subconscious of the police officer tells him that, the guy he fried the other day with a taser died as an accident, one in every so many thousand people just has a weak heart.

So looking at non-lethal weapons tactically they offer the massive psychological advantage of being able to attack without an attack registering in their conscience of the user. As stated above they are also very media and propaganda friendly when anyone who dies from them is just “an accident” giving the government the ability to retain legitimacy while gouging out they eyes of its own populace. Real guns fail at both of these points completely.

Conclusion:

One bizarre irony in our strange postmodern times is that if the Yellow Vests were actually being shot at by real guns and being killed they would be far closer to achieving some sort of systemic change. Being mutilated by all sorts of gadgets and devices of one sort or another makes it easy for the police to do their job psychologically without generating the levels of sympathy and horror from live rounds hitting the innocent that the protestors need to shatter or change the system.

The French Flash-Ball gun should be made the symbol for the EU for it provides crushing repression of the masses with great PR spin to make it seem humane and caring. It is for our safety after all that they use these right?

The images of the inferno atop the Notre-Dame de Paris, have exploded all over social media and left many looking for meaning be it spiritual or political. Christianity (except certain forms of Protestantism) tells man that he has free will, and with that free will comes much diversity of opinion, which we can see in how people interpret a fire burning as a symbol of one of the great pillars of Western Civilization turning to cinder. So let’s take a look at some common interpretations of this event that has shocked the world.

Europe’s 9/11

As of this moment there is no official indication that the fire at the cathedral was arson, however tossing a cigarette onto scaffolding or a wooden roof doesn’t start fires like these. Try lighting a log with a cigarette some time, it won’t go well, which makes it hard to believe that there is no human factor involved be it negligence or malice. Since vandalism at “hundreds of French churches” has been occurring recently there is certainly precedent to be suspicious of this as an act of extreme vandalism or terrorism.

However, even if it were proven to be terrorism France is unlikely to go on some sort Bush 2.0 quest to kill people who sort of look like the guilty parties on 9/11. In the wake of the end of the Cold War the US had to find a purpose as the sole hyperpower. The horrific deaths of 3000+ people in the Twin Towers oriented the missionless US towards a War on Terrorism. It is unlikely that France has the ability or desire to go on a crusade abroad as a means to justify itself as something valuable, especially in its current vassal status within the framework of the EU. It seems very unlikely that mostly passive France will follow in America’s gigantic footsteps.

False Flag Yellow Vest Removal Service

Some online theories point to this public tragedy as a way to get French protestors to take off their yellow vests, feel both very French and very sad, to make them go home and shut up as the country and culture continue to be trampled upon by the ruling elite. When we talk about False Flags we get into the area of wild conspiracy theories which can be very dangerous. The main thing that needs to be said is that even if this were some sort of False Flag then it will not work. This tragedy is far more likely to get the yellow vesters riled up with patriotic fury caused by the destruction of their sacred symbol rather than make them want to sing Kumbaya together in the streets with immigrants who despise them.

This event will play a role in the narrative of the Yellow Vest protests but it will not somehow magically cause them to spontaneously disperse and go home.

A Museum of Cultural Masochism or a Swimming Pool

There is supposedly a deleted Tweet going around from France 24 English saying that Macron wants to rebuild Notre Dame “in a way consistent with our modern diverse nation”, which even if completely fabricated seems like something that could be on the table given the EU elite’s stern consensus that Cultural Masochism is the greatest joy in life. It is very possible that the Cathedral will be rebuilt to service a function not related to Christianity, or be done in a way to spite Christianity as it is the #1 enemy of anyone who is down with the Postmodern world we are entering (or have already entered into). Seeing the cathedral rebuilt as a mosque would be very diverse, tolerant and sensitive and fall inline perfectly with an SJW set of sensibilities.

A less scandalous and more practical possibility is the “swimming pool” option which is what happened to the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow when it was detonated in the 1930’s to make way for a massive construction plan that never happened. The flooded hole that was left of it was turned into a swimming pool out of convenience. A similar fate of being transformed into pointless some mall or art gallery could befall Notre-Dame de Paris. This is most likely event to occur as throughout the hardcore Liberal “Heartland” of the EU, churches are often being converted into anything at all that could be dreamed up by local bureaucrats.

God is Buried or is He?

Nietzsche was right when he said that “God is dead” in the context of his times in Western Europe and after two World Wars and a Sexual Revolution, there is really nothing left of Catholic France. Especially with a Pope who seems to be more like a Progressive activist than the Vicar of Christ on Earth. Thus, some on the internet see the burning of the Church like some sort of Viking funeral signalling the end of Christian France reacting both with glee and sorrow.

Although this could be true and it is very possible that Christianity in the West will die out within a few generations given current trends, more and more Europeans are coming to the consensus that “Only Christianity can save Europe”. You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone, and Europe can clearly see that losing the faith that held it together and allowed it to prosper over century upon century isn’t going so well. Watching Christianity directly go up in flames could become the symbol necessary for Europe’s well fed pacified Christians to get uppity. Without doubt this event will be used in their political propaganda as “proof” of something.

In Conclusion

As the Internet explodes over this issue we can see many different things in a burning Notre Dame. Some see the death of Christianity, others see its coming resurrection. Some see a False Flag or a repeat of the fall of Christ the Savior in Moscow (which was later rebuilt by a now unbelievably thriving Orthodox Russia). Many even see a French 9/11 where all the hopeless millions could do was watch while it burned and the roof caved in, which will lead to a call for action.

The key thing to understand from a philosophical perspective is that we can view this event from any angle that we wish, and from a political perspective we can use this event to push any narrative that we desire and the fire at the Notre-Dame de Paris will be used to push narratives for years to come this is the one thing we can be absolutely certain of.

There are few people in this world more odious than French President Emmanuel Macron after his behavior this week. I’m sure there are child molesters who are worse. But as a man who is pivotal in the future of hundreds of millions of people, his decision to order the French military to quell the Yellow Vests protests with live ammunition is simply vile.

Macron outed himself as the very symbol of what animates the globalist elite he represents.

Disdain.

The disdain he holds for the people he leads is palpable. It’s as palpable for his disdain for the British who voted for Brexit. To him the EU is all, the EU is inevitable and when faced with the choice of serving France or serving the EU, he chooses the EU every time.

That is what led him to this disastrous decision to deploy the French military to the streets for the first time since 1948 with orders to shoot protestors.

And that disdain is so complete that he doesn’t realize what happens if even one of those men goes too far and takes the President at his word. Thankfully, that did not happen.

But if it did, he would have lost complete control of his country, if he hasn’t already.

The estimates for Act XIX of the Gilets Jaunes this weekend were over 125,000 across France. That many people taking to the streets risking getting shot is not something you dismiss with a wave of your hand.

It is something as a leader you need to take very seriously.

Because the real fear for Macron is not a violent demonstration that ends with protestors shot and killed. No, the real fear is the protests that are peaceful.

Because what happens, Mr. Macron, if the soldiers you deployed to suppress attendance to these demonstrations see first-hand just how much the violence reported has been overblown?

Or worse, the lack of it confirms their suspicions that the violence was committed by agent provocateurs who now didn’t show up because it’s no longer worth the €25/hour they are being paid to sow discontent?

They’ll see exactly what Macron doesn’t want them to see: angry, dispirited, desperate people with legitimate grievances expressing those feelings the only way they know how.

If Macron wasn’t courting civil war before this weekend, he is now.

Because an uprising against a corrupt and unresponsive government by some people is one thing. It starts with the most angry but it can spread over time only if the government doesn’t hear them.

Macron’s reactions have only made things worse at every turn.

So, while the people started this fight for the future of France it will be the military that ends it. And woe to Macron and the French political elite if the military on the ground sides with the people they were sent to shoot.

There is nothing more cowardly than a supposedly liberal, tolerant democracy sending in the military to shut down and order violence against is own people for taking to the streets. It is simply the order of tin-pot dictator with delusions of adequacy.

Prudent leadership stems from having weapons and knowing when and how to use them. The images coming from France have been horrific and no better than those captured during Mariano Rajoy’s crackdown on Catalonia during its independence referendum in 2017.

That response cost him his job. So too will it be for Macron now that he has crossed that line.

Macron is under the orders of his paymasters in The Davos Crowd to get control over France. He will not be removed from office as long as he acts in accordance with their wishes. By now they would have replaced him with someone more acceptable to defuse the situation.

There is only one problem with that. There is no one else.

Macron’s approval rating is abysmal. He’s polling behind Marine Le Pen’s National Rally who will send more members to the European Parliament than his En Marche will in May.

He was already the bait and switch candidate in 2017’s election. The globalist-in-reformer’s clothing. And now that he’s the focal point of the Gilets Jaunes’ anger nothing short of a violent put-down of their rebellion will save Macron at this point.

Because they know this and they know that he hates them.

But a violent put-down is only winning the battle to lose the war.

With the EU locked in mortal combat with Brexiteers and Italy pushing the envelope in the European Council, there’s no room to maneuver here.

So, this continues until it can’t. At which point Macron’s legitimacy will evaporate and political change will occur. But the globalists behind Macron and in French political circles will put that off for as long as possible.

That’s why the lack of violence at ACT XIX’s marches this weekend was so important. Macron’s bluff was called. And that means we’re nearing the end of his story. And it couldn’t happen to a more deserving weasel.

Merkel, you’re on deck.

Some had hoped the two marches in Paris last Saturday— one focused on global warming and the other representing the 18^th straight weekend of Yellow Vest protests  — would join forces and help unite environmental activism with social equity. 

On March 8, Cyril Dion, a well-known documentary film maker and environmental writer, gave a joint interview to Le Parisien with Priscillia Ludosky, considered one of the founders of the Yellow Vest movement, in which they  both encouraged protesters to march together.

To an extent that happened. Yellow vests were a common sight in the climate demonstrations on Saturday. And nongovernmental groups — Greenpeace France, the Nicolas Hulot Foundation, SOS Racisme, Friends of the Earth, 350.org and Alternatiba — voiced a fusion of environmental and economic demands. “Time to change industrial, political and economic systems, to protect the environment, society and individuals,” was a typical message expressed on one banner.

The climate march included a “Revolutionary Grandmother” at left. (Lea Bouchoucha)

The contrasts between the two demonstrations, however, wound up drawing the main press attention. Coverage by outlets such as Reuters and the Associated Press emphasized how the march on climate change — which drew around 45,000 in Paris, according to media estimates — was peaceful and included movie stars. The smaller Yellow Vest demonstration in the capital, estimated at around 10,000, was marked by rioting and vandalism.

Some Yellow Vests disagree with violence in demonstrations. But plenty of images have spread on social media that show a few protesters posing proudly in front of vandalized, expensive restaurants and luxury shops along the Champs-Elysées Avenue.

A strong majority of French — 84 percent of those polled — condemned the violence in a survey released March 20 by Elabe, an independent consultancy.

‘Part of the Game’

Stephanie Albinet, who wore a yellow vest to Saturday’s climate demonstration, would have been in the minority of that polling group. She was sanguine about the looting and police confrontations she’d personally witnessed at another point that day along Champs-Elysées. “That’s part of the game I would say. At some point we should stop treating the people like fools.”

Consortium News asked Albinet about another criticism of Yellow Vests: that they are too tolerant of xenophobia and bigotry.

“Yellow vests are not all anti-Semitic, racist, violent people,” Albinet responded. “They are people like me who for the past four months have finally found hope in seeing the population wake up. For the past 25 years I did not give a crap about France, but now I feel like a patriot for the first time.”

Francois Amadieu, a professor at Pantheon Sorbonne University who studies social movements, noted in a phone interview from his Paris office that protest violence can achieve results. “It’s classical and always an issue in France,” he told Consortium News. “In terms of timing. French executive power has often made concessions under pressure. It was for instance the case on Dec. 10 when the government announced some measures after two very violent Saturday protests.”

Black Bloc Attention 

France24 reports that the government has attributed the violence to extreme elements – so-called casseurs – who have infiltrated the movement from both the left and right. The episode is drawing public attention to “black bloc” anarchists who have been associated with the most extreme violence.

Amadieu said that black bloc militants aren’t acting out of spontaneous emotions. “They have long theorized that violence and vandalism will launch a state reaction by the police. This repression, in the form of tear gas and so on will gradually cause protestors to become more radicalized and understand this violence. Black bloc theory also assumes that people become bored in authorized protests and when there is spillover [into criminal behavior] people stop being bored and become motivated to reclaim the streets, and so forth.”

The government is planning to militarize its response to Yellow Vest demonstrations and  deploy French soldiers to prevent further violence by Yellow Vest demonstrators, media outlets are reporting.

Despite some mingling of climate and Yellow Vest protesters, Amadieu said it was significant that a core of Yellow Vests refrained from joining the climate march. “Usually, this convergence does not work out as it is not the same sociology,” he said.

Hoping to Unite

Corentin Durand, a 26-year-old physics post-graduate student who wore a yellow vest to the climate march, hopes the two movements are merging. “We should fight a battle on two fronts,” he said Saturday as the climate protest moved through the city’s Grands Boulevard neighborhood. “I can’t deal with the fact that our society is fully dependent on people who work very hard every day to make ends meet. It’s intolerable,” Durand said. ‘I hope that fighting climate change will bring social justice for everybody.”

Corentin Durand: A battle on two fronts. (Lea Bouchoucha)

Durand said his apprehensions about global warming affect his everyday routine. “All day long, in each of my actions; when I turned on the light or the tap, I’m wondering how it would impact the environment. I never ride in elevators, always take public transit and bike and never get on a plane.”

Public transit, however, is patchy in rural France. And when President Emanuel Macron tried to initiate his climate-protection agenda by raising fuel prices, he notoriously ignited the Yellow Vest movement, which sent a loud message not to expect low-income people, already struggling to pay their bills, to pay a disproportionate price for climate mitigation.

In response to Yellow Vest pressure, Macron on Jan. 15. launched a two-month-long “big debate” of listening tours and town halls and citizen input via booklets of complaints.  Some thought the process had been lulling the Yellow Vests into complacency, but Saturday’s protests countered that impression.

66 Proposals

Attempts to make climate policy more socially equitable are coinciding with  Yellow Vest pressures on the Macron government.  On March 5 in the context of the “big debate,” 19 nongovernmental organizations presented the government with 66 proposals as part of a new ecology and social compact to ensure the country’s environmental transition program is done more equitably.

One champion of this effort is Nicolas Hulot, a former environment minister and longtime campaigner who resigned on live radio on Aug. 28 out of impatience with the government’s foot dragging on climate and other goals.

Laurent Berger, a prominent unionist, is also aligned with the effort. “There is no contradiction between social consciousness and the respect of the environment,” Berger told Le Monde. “In our pact, we find environmental organizations, unions, anti-poverty, housing, youth associations and popular education movements.”

In the same article, Hulot promoted “big bang” reform of a tax system skewed in favor of the affluent. “The current system is unfair, and the burden is not equally shared,” Hulot is quoted as saying.

Stéphane Cuttaïa lives in rural France, the stronghold of the anti-system Yellow Vest movement that generally regards the Macron government as indifferent to its concerns and preoccupied with European Union affairs and urban centers of wealth.

“We’re very interested in revitalizing the local economy,” Cuttaïa said by phone this week from his home in the Île-de-France region. “The Yellow Vests speak to this. What we see today in France is that there are large cities —Paris, Lyon, Bordeaux, Marseille — and then there are many rural and semi-rural territories where public services and trade have disappeared. Residents here are forced to go long distances to shop, see a doctor. It is generating many energy costs.”

Sign at left: "Macron. Action ! Because, we don't want to explain what was a polar bear." At right: "Not happy, not happy, not happy!" (Lea Bouchoucha) 

Sign at left: “Macron. Action ! Because, we don’t want to explain what was a polar bear.” At right: “Not happy, not happy, not happy!” (Lea Bouchoucha)

‘Green Vests’

Cuttaïa runs C’est déjà ça — a café that he describes as providing a community center in the small town of Saâcy-sur-Marne, around 75 kilometers from Paris. In November, he used social media networks to launch Green Vests, a largely citizen initiative that hopes to mix Yellow-Vest and “green” environmental issues. The Green Vests are now circulating an online petition with 30 proposals. One of those proposals is free public transportation in rural areas; a more equitable approach to reducing emissions than Macron’s attempt to raise fuel prices.

“We recognize our social concerns in the Yellow Vest movement, but we think that measures regarding ecological emergency are very limited,” Cuttaïa said. “We want to create a bridge between the different organizations mobilized on behalf of climate deregulations, biological exterminations and social claims.”

Bernard Guericolas, a 75-year-old retiree who joined the environment protests in Paris on Saturday, regrets the years that have been lost to inattention and inaction on global warming. “When I was young, I was happy to take a plane ride,” Guericolas said. “I wouId have loved to own a big car had I been able to afford one. But I had it all wrong. We were not aware of what we did. In my mind, it’s the role of politicians to anticipate and it is what they are paid to do. At the end, we (our generation) are guilty, but we are not accountable.”

Bernard Guericolas: “My generation guilty, but not accountable.” (Lea Bouchoucha)

Along with 2 million other French people so far, Guericolas signed an online petition in support of the lawsuit that several nongovernmental groups filed on March 14 against the government for climate inaction.

The lawsuit, which is similar to litigation confronting several other governments around the world, is probably more important politically than legally, says Arnaud Gossement, a professor at Sorbonne University in Paris who specializes in environmental law and spoke by phone. “The lawsuit helped to stir the mass mobilization we saw this weekend, but from a legal point of view, it’s more complicated.” For one thing, Gossement said, a judge could dismiss the case. And if the case goes forward, it could take several years. “And we do not have time to wait.”

That sense of urgency — long pent up among climate activists — is motivating young people worldwide to follow the lead of the 16-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, who last year began cutting school, holding solitary demonstrations outside the Swedish parliament and questioning the point of schoolwork when the future of humanity looked so uncertain.

In a scathing speech at a UN climate conference — during which she told participants “our civilization is being sacrificed so a very small number of people can continue making enormous amounts of money”—she became an international sensation and role model.

About three months ago, some French high school students began cutting school on Fridays to join climate demonstrations. 

On Friday, March 15, Eponine Bob was one of them as she joined the Global Student Strike march in Paris. “I’m here because our generation is going to live with the effects of global warming, ” the teenager told Consortium News. “People are afraid.”

Bob said she tries to do her best to consider her personal effect on the environment in everyday life. “But in the end, it’s not families that pollute the most. It’s [corporate] lobbies and big companies,” she said. “I don’t think that there is enough regulation and it’s become a real issue.”

consortiumnews.com

The wildly diverse and bloody yellow vest protests are continuing throughout France with no sign of stopping anytime soon. It is important to note that all protest movements including those with yellow vests are organized by “someone”. There has never been a time where 10,000 people randomly all chose to simultaneously go clean their local park. But with talented organizers and some marketing 10,000 can be swayed to show up and clean said park no problem.

The driving force(s) behind the yellow vest protestors seems to be either unknown to the public or so radically diverse (there are many different groups with very different beliefs who are all on the “yellow” side) that there is no single actor driving this movement across the country.

Of course, by default there have been accusations that Russia is behind the chaos. When in doubt (and in the West) always blame Russia and never your own anti-populist policies bringing ruin to one of the most prosperous nations on Earth.

At this point there is now an official boogeyman for France to blame and surprisingly it is not Russia, but Italy as Italian Deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio has met and openly been photographed with key players inside the yellow vest movement.

This is threatening to the EU establishment because it fully legitimizes and gives support from within the EU family itself to the protestors who theoretically want to overthrow the French government. Furthermore, busy politicians do not just like to meet up with protestors for the selfies, but to achieve goals. From the French perspective it seems as though the Italians (through their pow-wow) have been able to reach some sort of agreement with the yellow vests for something in return for the “support” necessary to keep the protests going or push them to victory.

This is all very similar to when the murderer’s row of Western politicians and bureaucrats descended on the Maidan protests happening in Kiev in 2013-2014. People like the late John McCain directly sent their message that they “are here to support your just cause”. Not only did this embolden the protestors to have the EU and US on their side but there was also direct coordination of a post-Maidan Ukraine going on behind the scenes. The zenith of this covert coordination being like the famous Nuland-Pyatt (“F the EU”) phone call where Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and the US Ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt basically laid out what the power structure of things was going to look like after the revolution and not surprisingly reality matched up with this phone call rather nicely.

This is why Italian “support” is a very worrying event for France and the EU status quo in general, because without backing from Washington and $5 billion for “democracy” the Maidan would have never have succeeded. Human beings require food and shelter, this is why many protest movements die. The government can simply outlast any protestors who just passively stand around with signs. Eventually they will get tired and hungry and just give up like the #OccupyWallStreet protests which swept across America but eventually fizzled out. Sleeping outside for months with no hope of victory is not a strategy for success.

When protesting becomes professional with funding from various NGOs and grants it is possible to keep the protest going on indefinitely as the organizers are essentially “going to work” every day.

Italy as an epicenter for EU skepticism may actually be willing to do whatever it takes to break apart the system while “there’s still time” for Italy to remain both Italian and relevant in any sort of fashion. One anti-EU color revolution could be enough to break the Lisbon Treaty nightmare that Italy is under. But then again the media is firmly in the hands of the pro-Brussels side so achieving a definitive color revolution may be impossible.

Since the populist Italian political forces don’t particularly hate Russia this means that for hardcore EU adherents that makes them obviously Kremlin trolls. No matter what actions the Italians make and no matter how independent those actions may (or may not) be, it is clear that Russia will get the blame again at some point later down the road.

For those in favor of the yellow vests this is your lucky day as official recognition and support gives them a much better chance of actually achieving something of value. For Russia, it is yet another crime to be accused of currently without any evidence.

As the “Yellow Vest,” or Gilet Jaunes, protest in France continues to perplex and concern the French government and European elites, a new “counter-protest” has emerged in response to the popular protest movement now entering its 12^th week.

Protesters branding themselves as the “Red Scarves,” or Foulards Rouge, descended on Paris this past Sunday in order to protest the “violence” of some Gilet Jaunes protesters and a desire to see the country return to “normalcy.” The French government, which has sought to weaken and disperse the Yellow Vests movement since its inception, stated that the Red Scarves numbered around 10,500 in Paris, while other reports claimed that the demonstration was significantly smaller than the government-supplied figure.

The group has been described as “diverse” — much like the Yellow Vests, who have drawn support from across the French political spectrum — and “apolitical,” as its leadership have stated that the Red Scarves are not necessarily supportive of French President Emmanuel Macron, whose ouster is being sought by Yellow Vests demonstrators. Some participants who were interviewed on Sunday stated that they were not protesting against the Yellow Vests but instead in favor of protecting the integrity of France’s political institutions. This has led the Red Scarves themselves, as well as subsequent media reports, to portray the group as representing France’s “silent majority” that – until now – had refrained from demonstrating.

According to reports from mainstream outlets, the Red Scarves movement – which was joined by another pro-government counter-protest group, the “Blue Vests” — was a direct response to violence from some members of the large Yellow Vests protest movement that has resulted in the destruction of property and clashes with police. Yellow Vest organizers have disavowed the use of violence and have blamed “black bloc” groups for using the movement as a pretext for committing violent acts.

Notably, reports of such clashes largely declined to mention the role of French police in causing and fomenting violence, despite the abundance of video evidence documenting hundreds of instances of police brutality against unarmed and even prone protesters, as well as innocent bystanders. The Red Scarves themselves have also overlooked this aspect, both by “urging respect for French authorities” and by chanting pro-police slogans, as well as by asserting that French policemen have acted responsibly in response to the Yellow Vests despite the fact that the vast majority of injuries suffered since the protests first began last November were caused by the actions of militarized riot police. Over 2,000 have been injured and 10 have been killed since the protests began.

Given their relatively sudden appearance and sympathetic media coverage within France and throughout the Western world, the Red Scarves have drawn skeptical scrutiny from Yellow Vest members, some of whom have described them as “pro-Macron stooges.” While it is difficult to know if the origins of the Red Scarves are as organic as has been portrayed in mainstream reports, there are certain aspects of the movement that have raised suspicion among journalists reporting from France and other observers.

For instance, evidence reported on by French media and journalists who have been closely covering the protests has shown thatat least half of the Red Scarves who participated in Sunday’s demonstrations had been bused into Paris for the demonstration. This has led to speculation about the movement’s actual extent of popular support, both in Paris and nationwide, as well as speculation that some Red Scarves had been paid to travel to Paris to participate in the demonstration.

There is also the fact that the Red Scarves is a formal, state-recognized association, as opposed to the Yellow Vest movement, which is a grassroots entity. According to investigative journalist Vanessa Beeley, who lives in France, the fact that the Red Scarves is a formal association shows that it was planned long before the Yellow Vest movement was accused of fomenting violence. Beeley told MintPress News that, because of the length of the process needed to navigate French bureaucracy, in order for the Red Scarves to have been created on December 21st, the three directors of the group would have had to have initiated the process soon after the Yellow Vests protests began in mid-November.

A red scarf protester stands next to a police van in Paris, France, Jan. 27, 2019. Kamil Zihnioglu | AP

If this is the case, it greatly undercuts the prevailing narrative that the Red Scarves movement is a response to recent acts of violence associated with the Yellow Vests protests. Indeed, even the founder of the Red Scarves – Fabien Homenor, a computer scientist – told French media that he would have “donned a Yellow Vest” during the first weeks of the protest because he agreed with their initial concerns — i.e., the controversial fuel tax that Macron’s government has since scrapped following the success of the protests. This raises the question, why would Homenor create an association to counter the Yellow Vests at a time when he claims he supported their efforts?

Playing up, playing down, the numbers

An examination of mainstream reports on Sunday’s demonstration suggests an effort to inflate the Red Scarves’ importance and to build their image as “non-violent” and diminish the comparative significance of the Yellow Vests movement. For instance, the Washington Post stated that “Approximately 10,500 people marched in Paris [as part of the Red Scarves demonstration] on Sunday, according to police figures. That was more than twice the number that donned yellow vests in the capital the day before, when about 4,000 marched in Paris and 69,000 marched nationwide, according to the Interior Ministry.”

Thus, while the Post notes the available statistics, it claims that the Red Scarves demonstrations, which occurred only in Paris, were larger than Yellow Vests protests a day prior in the same city — but conflates Saturday’s Paris protest with the nationwide Yellow Vests protest in which a combined 73,000 people participated. A more accurate portrayal of the situation may have noted that, when both are examined from the national perspective, the Yellow Vests in their 11th week saw nearly seven times more participation than the Red Scarves in their first demonstration. The Post also failed to mention that the Red Scarves protesters were largely bused into Paris from other French cities.

The Post also called the demonstration “the long-awaited intervention in a story line that, until now, had featured just one side of a national conversation on social inequality,” even though the Red Scarves were not explicitly protesting against the Yellow Vests’ demands relating to inequality, but instead focusing on the alleged methods of some of their members.

Notably, the Post’s article barely mentions the horrific wounding of Jerome Rodrigues, a key figure in the Yellow Vest movement, whom witnesses have said was deliberately targeted by French police with a flashball grenade launcher at close range. As a consequence, Rodrigues suffered a horrific injury to his right eye and will now be disabled for the rest of his life, according to his lawyer. Other mainstream reports similarly focused on the Red Scarves movement and relegated mention of Rodriques’ injuries to the final paragraphs.

Exploiting, or manufacturing, the backlash

Whether or not the Red Scarves movement is an establishment-backed effort to divide the highly successful Yellow Vest protests remains to be seen. However, it ultimately matters little if the Red Scarves’ motives are genuine or not, as the French government and a sympathetic international press have already shown they are all too eager to push to divide the Yellow Vests movement, or at least weaken it, by playing the two groups off of each other.

While the French government and well-known media outlets had already been busy demonizing the group despite strong popular support across France, with a new group having emerged as its apparent antithesis, the pressure will now grow to disperse the Yellow Vest movement while also attempting to use the Red Scarves to manufacture support for draconian government policies and police crackdowns aimed at finally ending the establishment-threatening protests.

mintpressnews.com

Far from dying down after the holidays, France’s yellow vest movement is continuing to blaze throughout the country. Every Saturday for eleven weeks, protesters have been disrupting or blocking roads, traffic circles and freeway toll plazas, gathering in the squares of villages, taking to the streets of towns, marching in massive numbers through city boulevards, and confronting violent police repression. Ten people have died in the protests, mainly due to accidents at road blocks, and over 2000 have been injured by the police, around 100 seriously. 17 people have lost an eye due to rubber bullets, according to an independent association and an investigative journalist, while the interior minister recently said there were 4. Thousands have been arrested.

Old and young, workers, retirees, artisans, some small business owners, farmers, students, self-employed and unemployed people are converging to protest not only Macron’s gloves-off reforms in favor of capital, finance and the ultra rich, but especially their own decline in living standards. Increasingly aggressive capitalism, the dismantling of the welfare state, and deindustrialization have eroded standards of living for forty years, and have stepped up pace with the crisis of 2008 and Macron’s “neoliberal” reforms dictated by the European Union.

Yellow vested demonstrators are fed up with running out of money before the end of the month, job insecurity, rising taxes on the working class, insufficient and decreasing pensions, falling social benefits, and working multiple jobs or extra long hours to make ends meet. France’s broad middle class is downwardly mobile. People are also protesting rising energy costs, job losses due to offshoring, deteriorating working conditions, homelessness on the rise, increasing numbers of undernourished children and people scavenging for food, underfunded public services such as hospitals, schools, post offices and transportation, especially in rural areas, and a host of other issues.

At the same time, fueling the fire, Macron has enacted a series of measures friendly to finance, capitalists and the rich, such as annulling the wealth tax (a tax of 0.5 to 1.5% on personal wealth above 800,000 euros), lowering the corporate tax rate, offering extra tax credits to companies, and gutting the work code, the law that has long provided strong labor protections to France’s working class.

The aggressive form of capitalism known as neoliberalism and austerity, as well as the declining situation of the working class, are not at all unique to France. Things are much worse in Spain, Greece, Italy and elsewhere. The French people, however, have a long and cherished tradition of rising up and gaining social advances, starting in 1789, which inspires the world over. 1789, 1830, 1848, 1871, 1945, 1968… today, a revolt is overdue. France is in its fifth republic, and the constitution is not a bible. The French know from historical experience that no institutions are set in stone, and that popular protest is necessary to abolish the present state of things.

67% of the population sympathize with or support the movement, while 25% are against it, according to a January 14 poll. The movement has spread so deeply and widely in French culture that young children in schoolyards throughout France are playing games of “yellow vests vs. cops” and shouting “Macron, resignation!” Elderly women and men in yellow vests are chanting alongside the crowd “Macron, we’ll come find you at your house!” and “Castaner, nique ta mère!” Many yellow jackets are newcomers to social protests, which is part of the force of the movement. Others, seasoned demonstrators, say that they have been waiting for this popular revolt to spark for years, even decades, as they watched living standards sink. Many protesters are among the 50% of the population who abstain in legislative elections. Both left and right are represented, and there seems to be a slide toward the left since the beginning of the protests especially as the trade unions get more involved. Apart from the occasional sticker or trade union flag, there is a tacit understanding (broken occasionally by Trotskyite groups) that no partisan affiliation will be shown – people have come together in their revolt against the current state of things, and not to represent a particular party. The rallies are “organized” by a number of nonpartisan facebook pages.

This leaderless quality means that the demands of the movement are extremely heterogeneous, often naïve and sometimes contradictory, and that the political future of the movement is unpredictable. But it also means that the uprising is very hard for Macron’s administration to pinpoint, target and shut down. There is no union or party to slander or recuperate, there is no entity to negotiate with, pressurize or buy out, there is no figurehead to decapitate. There is only a formless mass of angry people largely disillusioned by traditional politics, united in a new and unknown color, yellow.

Asked about his view of the movement’s lack of leadership, a protester who revealed that he was a CGT union member, said that it’s excellent, for now. For years, the unions have had one discouraging failure after another as they followed the traditional protest march formulas. Older tactics weren’t going anywhere. This kind of uprising has never happened before, it’s shaking things up, it’s the best we can ask for at this point. It’s nationwide, truly popular, strong in both rural areas and cities, and supported by the vast majority of the French people. Its unpredictability is, for now, an advantage. And it’s providing an important “street education” in activism for young people. Later we’ll see how things evolve, but for now this should be embraced.

Another protester, an oyster farmer who owns his own business, works long hours 7 days a week and says he doesn’t earn a decent living, drew a darker picture. He said that he thinks the movement will degenerate into more violence as the government will refuse to change anything, and people will get sick of marching in the streets, getting sprayed with teargas and not being heard.

One bearded older man in a yellow vest and colorful beret had been to every protest since the beginning. “Our goal,” he said, “is to exhaust the police.” He looked at the group of young men in riot gear who had gotten out of a police van, and taken up positions to block a street from a group of protesters arriving at the intersection. “In order to make them come over to our side.” An unknown but reputedly significant number of riot cops have taken sick leave. Attempting to exhaust the police is one tactic, but one shouldn’t have illusions about bringing them over to our side. As Marx wrote, the current State [and its police] are “nothing more than the form of organisation which the bourgeois necessarily adopt… for the mutual guarantee of their property and interests” (The German Ideology). Tired or unwilling individuals can easily be replaced, like other workers.

In order to try to absorb, clean up and neutralize the odor of this rebellious energy expanding like spilled oil, the government has instituted a “big debate,” inviting people to give their opinions on 35 preselected questions about 4 issues (not including the wealth tax), in local assemblies, on an online platform, by regular mail, and at stands in public places. After a month of this process, in each region 100 people picked by chance will debate on the topics and attempt to give concrete suggestions. Apparently a desperate and hasty measure, denounced as a masquerade and smokescreen by the yellow vests, the big debate could easily backfire on Macron. As an unwieldy process that will necessarily exclude more than it includes, it will likely give another clear proof of Macron’s insincerity and theatricality. It will also provide the media the opportunity to chastise yellow vested protesters for continuing to protest despite the invitation to be heard through institutional channels. But alternative in-person forums for debate are also springing up.

Whether or not the government is hearing the protesters in the streets, it is certainly hearing the protests of business owners who are losing money due to the weekly events. Two billion euros worth of business was lost in December in the retail sector due to the protests, two billion in transport and distribution, and the agri-food sector estimates a potential loss of 13 billion since mid-November largely due to blockages of highways and intersections. Tourism has dropped 10%, 4000 cars and 2000 businesses have been vandalized for a total of 100 to 200 million euros in damages, and financial groups which are thinking about moving to Paris after leaving London due to Brexit are now hesitating, “wondering about the consequences and the longevity of the movement.” Already, Macron is seen as a lame duck by his European counterparts, having lost the support of the population and possibly unable to enact the rest of his ambitious program of capital-friendly reforms.

But even if he wanted to, Macron would have a hard time bringing back the French social model as it existed during the 30 “glorious” years between 1945 and 1975. The yellow vest movement is essentially calling for a return to the welfare state, and their movement is born of the crisis of the European welfare state in its last strong bastion, France. But the welfare state is (was) an attempt to stabilize capitalism in the highly developed countries, and rather than trying to save it or bring it back, we should call for a new form of socialism.

Deficit spending and the redistributive system, on which the welfare state is based, are stretched to their limits, producing the crisis that sparked the protests. Keynesian deficit spending attempts to stabilize capitalism by providing shock absorbers during its inevitable crises, and is impossible in the context of chronically high debt. French public debt is at 99% of GDP, up from 67% in 2008. Lowering the debt and reinvigorating redistribution mechanisms would depend on tax revenue, but taxing the wealthy and the corporations, in the globalized economy, just makes them flee the country. The only way to keep companies, factories, and their profits in the country is to nationalize them so they can’t leave. To create a durable “redistribution,” that is, true economic equality, the means of production have to be collectively – that is, publicly – owned.

The protesters are calling on the state to “tax big the big ones, and tax little the little ones.”  The 40 biggest corporations in France (CAC40) made record profits in 2017 and 2018, and the people know it. But French corporate tax is among the highest in the world (33.3%, though it will gradually drop to 25% by 2022), and the large companies, which already use every loophole they can, could move their headquarters elsewhere, for example to Ireland where corporate tax rates are nominally 12.5% but effectively 2-4%. Companies are taxed based on the location of their headquarters, not where they extract, manufacture or sell their products. The small and medium-sized companies which can’t leave are already overstretched, and some of these business owners are wearing yellow vests on Saturdays. Increasing corporate tax on companies which already have one foot out the door will not save the welfare state.

The yellow vests are particularly angry at the fact that Macron killed the wealth tax on the ultra-rich, as their own taxes rise, their wages and pensions fall, and public services suffer. But the wealth tax only brought in 1.4% of tax revenues in 2017, its last year of existence, and it was more symbolic than significant for the budget. Reinstating or even raising it would not bring back the conditions necessary for the welfare state, and the money of the rich would simply continue to leave. In our current globalized and deindustrialized economies, taxation can’t provide the revenue necessary for the social programs associated with the welfare state. Private wealth necessarily slips away. Only public ownership of the sources of wealth can finance the social programs that the French are used to, and more.

Socialism is the only answer to this situation, the crisis of the welfare state. The only way to keep the results of economic activity inside the country and available for social services is to nationalize the industries, so that they become public goods, owned collectively and not by private individuals and stockholders. The only way to maintain and pay for the public programs that the population cherishes, is to finance them through state ownership of the means of production and distribution. The welfare state is played out, and the yellow vest protests are symptomatic of this. Rather than looking backward and wishing it to return, we should embrace the future by building the conditions for socialism.

The Figaro, the French conservative daily newspaper, recently published an ultraliberal article arguing that the yellow vest movement is “the fruit of the death-throes of the welfare state.” In this, the analysis is correct (though the mixed metaphor is ugly). But the solution proposed is inhuman: to overcome the crisis we need more “liberalism,” or liberation of capitalism from the last grip of the nanny state; we need “to organize the gradual but thorough withdrawal of the public power” from the economy. To hell with the people who don’t fit into the Silicon Valley economy, except (maybe!) as end-user consumers. The ideologues of the elite are delighted with the sufferings of the welfare state, waiting for the kill. “Liberated” (barbaric) capitalism is one possible path, socialism is the other, and there is no other way.

What is the welfare state? It is a series of concessions made by the Western capitalist elite, under pressure from workers’ struggles, to make capitalism a bit less inhuman in the Western countries and thus to prevent socialist revolutions there. It is not only the result of generations of workers’ struggles for social gains, but also a defensive, counterrevolutionary creation around the middle of the 20thcentury to impede the expansion of socialist movements in the West. In the first half of the twentieth century, the movements fighting for socialism were very strong in the West, despite the repression. Advanced capitalism was producing deep economic crises, massive unemployment and wars, and it was clear to all at the time that the Soviet planned economy was much more successful than Western ones in the 30s (whatever else one may think of the USSR). It grew so much that in 25 years it brought the USSR from a backwards and destroyed nation to being capable of victory over the strongest military in the world. Clearly a planned economy was more efficient than the chaos and waste under capitalism. To prevent socialist views from spreading, the Western capitalist elite adopted a two-pronged attack: repression and concessions. The new deal and welfare state were essentially counterrevolutionary measures, concessions intended to stop the spread of socialist movements in capitalist countries. They were part of the strategy adopted by the bourgeois elite from the 30s to the 60s to stabilize capitalism in the West.

Whatever we may think of the reality of the Soviet and Chinese systems, their effect in the West in the 20thcentury was to contribute to the adjustment and softening of Western capitalism, which put on the mask of a human face. Then in the 1990s when there seemed to be no more threat, no more alternative system to compete against ideologically, the capitalists stopped providing, and the mask dropped. The yellow jackets are confronting its real face.

Furthermore, the welfare state is inseparable from Western imperialism, which has largely contributed to financing it through siphoning off resources from neocolonies. The rise of standards of living in the West has gone hand in hand with the overexploitation of the peoples of the Global South, who have been kept in underdevelopment and debt. Their raw materials and agricultural products have been practically stolen, their workers severely overworked and underpaid, their local industrial development stunted by forced importation, their governments kept submissive to Western powers and business interests. Objectively profiting from the exploitation of their counterparts in the Global South, large parts of the Western working class (and even more so, the middle class) have been won over to the idea that capitalism can provide. With the crisis of the welfare state, they are being confronted with the truth. This is not to say that socialist states, not guilty of imperialist exploitation, will not be able to provide a high standard of living. Our current level of development is high enough to provide a good living for all with shorter working hours, if we don’t have the rich absorbing all the wealth.

One of the measures of the standard of living of a country is the gross national income (GNI: total income received from sources both domestic and abroad) divided by the number of inhabitants. But if instead we take the GNI and divide it by the domestic population plus the number of people in foreign countries who contribute directly to this income – for example the exploited workers making Apple products, picking Chiquita bananas, mining copper for Freeport McMoRan, etc. – the “standard of living” of the country would fall dramatically. In addition, capitalism, including its form called the welfare state, has always been dependent on the exploitation of resident undocumented workers.

The welfare state has always only brought its benefits to a small, privileged part of the world population, and has created the illusion among them that capitalism can be humanized. It’s essentially reactionary, unsustainable and not worth fighting for. Socialism is what we should fight for. In abandoning the aspiration toward the welfare state model, we’re certainly not abandoning the struggle for workers’ rights, social services, and all the other advantages associated with the welfare state. We’re fighting for these with a clearer vision of the goal: socialism.

The yellow jacket movement’s weakness is the vagueness of its demands, calling for the return of the welfare state. But its force is its dynamism, its determination, its size, and its deep-set, justified feeling of anger at economic injustice and inequality. To win, we should stop looking backward, and start looking forward, toward the construction of socialism.

counterpunch.org

A truth about movements is, they move. They morph, evolve and move around a country or even around the globe. This occurs over months and often over years.

The US Occupy encampment era occurred ten months after the Arab Spring and six months after the Spanish Indignado movement – early versions of occupy. It started in New York and then spread across the United States and to other countries. It was a global revolt against the 1% that changed politics in the United States and continues to have impacts today.

The Yellow Vest (Gilets Jaunes) movement in France is having a major impact and gaining international attention, already spreading to other nations, with some nations like Egypt banning the sale of yellow vests to prevent the protest from spreading there. The movement is showing that disrupting business-as-usual gets results. Will it come to the United States? What form would it take here? What could spark the equivalent of the Yellow Vests in the US?

The ‘gilet jaune’ (‘yellow vest’) wave from France reached the centre of Brussels on Friday. Yves Herman/Reuters

Social Movements Create Global Waves Of Protest

It is common for a protest to develop in one part of the world and move to another country. This is even more common in modern times as the economy has become globalized and communication across different countries has become easier.

The US revolution against Great Britain was part of the Age of Enlightenment, which questioned traditional authority and emphasized natural rights of life, liberty, and equality as well as sought self-government and religious freedom. The French Revolution followed 13 years after the US in 1789. It led to political changes in the UK, Germany and across Europe. This coincided with the Great Liberator, Simon Bolivar, freeing colonies from the Spanish Empire including Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, Ecuador, and Peru. They became independent and briefly united as a single nation.

The democratic revolutions of 1848, known as the Springtime of Peoples, were part of a widespread revolutionary period that impacted 50 nations in Europe, beginning in France and spreading without any evident coordination. The issues were about democratic and worker rights, as well as human rights and freedom of the press. It led to the abolition of serfdom in some nations and ended monarchy in Denmark. The French monarchy was replaced by a republic, constitutions were created, and empires were threatened by countries seeking sovereignty.

In the era of Decolonization of Africa and Asia, 1945 and 1960, three dozen new states achieved autonomy or outright independence from their European colonial rulers. In Africa, a Pan-African Congress in 1945 demanded an end to colonization. There were widespread unrest and organized revolts in both Northern and sub-Saharan colonies. Protests, revolutions and sometimes peaceful transition ended the era of colonization.

The 1960s were an era of protest that peaked in 1968 around the world. Multiple issues came to the forefront including for labor rights and socialism, the feminist movement, protests against war and militarism, and against racism and environmental degradation. Protests occurred in the United States, Europe, the Soviet Bloc, Asia, and Latin America.

More recently, economic globalization and the Internet have accelerated global protests. An example of this is the anti-globalization movement itself. As corporations took control of trade agreements and began to write trade for transnational corporate profits, people around the world saw how this impacted their communities and fought back.

The Zapatista Uprising in Chiapas, Mexico on January 1, 1994, was an uprising that coincided with the beginning of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The Zapatista Army of National Liberation was an uprising by the indigenous, local population against being exploited by global trade. Their action was an inspiration to others and an anti-NAFTA movement developed in the United States, growing into an anti-globalization movement.

The 1997 financial crisis in Southeast Asia, followed by the International Monetary Fund restructuring the debt in ways that brought austerity, led to protests across the region in Korea, Indonesia, and Thailand against economic globalization and the undue influence of transnational capital.

These combined into the Battle for Seattle in 1999 at the World Trade Organization meetings where 50,000 people from the US and around the world protested on the streets of Seattle for four days shutting down the meetings. This was a movement of movements moment that united many single-issue groups into a force too powerful for the elites to overcome. WTO meetings since then have been met with mass protests as have IMF and other economic meetings. This evolved into making it very difficult to pass corporate trade agreements in the United States, e.g. the people stopped the Trans-Pacific Partnership and Trump will have difficulty getting NAFTA-2 approved. Join the campaign to stop Trump Trade’s NAFTA-2.

“The Yellow Vests will win” written on L’Arc de Triomphe in Paris. AFP

The Yellow Vest Movement

The French Yellow Vest movement is made up of working people who are protesting the unfair economy every Saturday.  The 8th “Act,” held this Saturday, was larger than expected as the government and media were claiming the movement was dying down over the holidays, despite the movement saying they were not over and were just getting started.

The movement began as a protest against a gasoline tax, but it quickly became evident that this was just the final straw against a series of policies that have made people economically insecure.  President Macron has aggressively pursued a neoliberal agenda on behalf of the wealthy, lowering their taxes while cutting social services.

Macron has responded with the elimination of the fuel tax, raising the minimum wage, and cutting taxes on pensioners, but they continue to call for the “president of the rich” to step down. Macron’s popularity is down into the twenties in polls, while a majority of French people want the Yellow Vest protests to continue. The movement is exposing contradictions in France that cannot be solved by the current economic and political systems.

Macron, while making concessions, has also called the protesters thugs and agitators. Police tactics have been aggressive and violent, in the face of mostly nonviolent protests. They arrested a Yellow Vest participant, Eric Drouet, who the media has labeled a “leader,” on flimsy charges of protesting without a permit, stoking more outrage. The media calls him a leader while saying the leaderless movement will fail because it lacks a leader. This reminds us of similar treatment during Occupy.

The movement has blown up political divides because there are people from the extreme left, extreme right and everywhere in-between participating. It includes young and old, male and female. It shows people uniting in a revolt over the unfair economic system and its impact on workers.  They are also calling for participatory democracy by demanding citizen initiatives where people can vote on legislation, firing political appointees or even changing the constitution if they gather enough signatures. The Yellow Vests are showing system-wide problems that require both the economic and political systems to change.

Will ‘Yellow Vest’ Protests Come to the United States?

Many of the problems the French people suffer are also felt in the United States. The US economy has been designed for the wealthy for decades and billionaire President Trump-era policies have made that reality worse. People never fully recovered from the 2008 economic collapse when millions lost houses and jobs, got lower income and higher debt.

The globalized economy that has been designed for transnational corporations has not served the people in the United States well.  The fly-over states of the Midwest have been left hollowed out. Rural hospitals are closing as the economy disappears. In urban areas across the country, decades of neglect and lack of investment have created impoverished conditions. Racist and violent policing have been used to prevent rebellion and contain the unrest. People are struggling. Addiction and suicide rates are up. There is vast hopelessness and despair.

An economic collapse is on the horizon. As Alan Woods writes in New Year, New Crisis, “The question is not if it will happen, only when.” The US economy is dominated by Wall Street, which ended the year in crisis. Citigroup’s share price declined 30 percent from where it started the year, Goldman Sachs declined 35 percent, Morgan Stanley 24 percent, Bank of America 18 percent and JPMorgan had a 10% loss. Woods points to China’s economy slowing as is Germany’s and problems in other European nations all point to a global slow down, which those in power do not have tools to respond to as interest rates are already low and government debt is already high.

When the recession hits, the economic insecurity of the people will worsen. Like the people in France, the rich are getting obscenely richer and avoiding taxes by hiding billions offshore. And, the government is doing the opposite of what is needed, e.g. reducing taxes on the wealthy when there should be a millionaire’s tax of 70%, and blocking the Green New Deal.

And, when the economic crisis hits, people will blame Trump. Many voters supported him because he promised to break from a system that is designed to favor the wealthy. They will know from their own experience that he did the opposite. Stop Trumpism! will become an even louder rallying cry and a president whose popularity always hovered around 40% will find himself in polls at 30% or lower, as a presidential campaign kicks into high gear.

The economy is often the trigger event, as it was for Occupy, and we already know there are going to be mass teacher strikes in 2019, indeed plans to strike in LA are expected to escalate more broadly. The 40,000 people who lose their jobs as a result of four US General Motors factories closing could face losing their homes and have other economic stresses causing them to revolt. Congress refusing to take National Improved Medicare for All seriously when tens of thousands of people are dying every year simply because they are uninsured could light the spark.

People in the US might not be wearing yellow vests, but we know from other recent protest movements, people are willing to shut down streets and highways and stop business as usual. More may participate if a radicalizing moment ensues now that they have seen the model work in France.

There are many triggers that are likely to spark aggressive mass protests in 2019. Get ready.

popularresistance.org