Yellow Jackets in France: A France man tells his story

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We received an interesting analysis of the Yellow Jackets movement in France:
The situation here in France is not very different from the situation in other european union countries. The major difference is our reactions. For the moment at leas,t we do not vote for extreme right wing parties as in Italy, Hungary, Poland, UK, and to a lesser extent Germany too.
About cars burnt etc… Keep in mind that most of it has been happening in the Champs Elysées, that is, in the richest part of Paris. (An “hôtel particulier” rue Kléber was set on fire as well).
People who are fighting in Paris and other places are of several kinds (sorted hereafter by increasing numbers)
- Far Right activists trying to take advantage of the on-going movement — not too many of them but yet some.
- Far Left wing activists called the Black Block most of them but certainly not all of them being radical anarchists. The black block too part in all the demonstration of the past 2 or 3 years against the destruction of the labor code laws. A part of them took part in the fights against the new airport in Nantes in the past years too.
- Yellow Jackets, that is ordinary people who came from the country side and smaller towns in order to get the Yellow Jackets movement requirements fulfilled.
There were also most probably some people from the suburbs who took advantage from the (mostly luxury) broken shop windows to plunder a bit.
Now… Why is this happening ?
Mainly because even people with a low education level have noticed that you may vote for the standard right (CDU equivalent), or for the standard left (Socialist Party) and you get exactly the same politics. You get RIGHT WING policy whatever your vote may be.
Most people now simply refuse to vote at all.
As a result MACRON was only elected by 25% of the people registered on the vote lists if I remember well. But anyway, the most important party in France was the non-voting party.To call this democracy is simply ridiculous.
Other angry people have long been voting for Marine Le Pen. Not that they are fascists but as Jean-Luc Mélanchon said, they are not fascists they are “fâchés”, that is, they are **angry**.
Lots of people have been voting for Mélanchon too.
And some of course for the CDU-CSU equivalent.
When Macron appeared, he appeared as a way to escape from the traditional Right-Left story, which was cealrly understood by most people as leading nowhere. He was young (even considered as beautiful 😃, he looked serious and active. He also looked as neither right wing nor left wing, but a bit of both – at least that’s what he said. Hence lots of people voted for him because they expected something NEW.
But… Lots of people (like myself) also voted for Macron for the second vote because only Macron and Le Pen were left in the list for the second vote and it was the ONLY way to avoid Le Pen…
Hence saying that Macron is a result of fair democracy is ridiculous.
While Mitterand, Sarkozy, Hollande have been ruling, we essentially had right wing politics. Everyone knows that socialists are traitors and educated people are quite aware that they have been traitors since World War I 😊But even uneducated french people have now noticed that too.
Hence after so many years of right wing cheaters ruling, people are now getting really poor and they don’t like that. They do not like it at all.
And since no political party seems to really care. They now do their politics by themselves and do not trust any party nor anyone but themselves.
Another important aspect is that people who live in small towns and in the country side have been feeling abandoned, left out, for about 15 to 20 years now. They were stolen their public services, hospitals, schools, state offices, well all, almost all they used to have. They are facing high unemployment, debts, low salaries or no salaries at all, small shop keepers had to close or lost most of their customers…
And these people are a major part if not THE core part of this Yellow Jackets movement.
So, the important thing to understand is that this movement is a spontaneous one. As all political parties are no longer trusted by the working and unemployed people in France, the first occasion that could be taken was seized(this call for a Yellow Jackets movement on the Internet) and here we are….Continue the article here