EU Le Gilets Jaune protests thread - Do you hear the people sing? Singing the songs of angry men?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-46233560

One protester has died and dozens were injured as almost a quarter of a million people took to the streets of France, angry at rising fuel prices.

The female protester who died was struck after a driver surrounded by demonstrators panicked and accelerated.

The "yellow vests", so-called after the high-visibility jackets they are required to carry in their cars, blocked motorways and roundabouts.

They accuse President Emmanuel Macron of abandoning "the little people".

Mr Macron has not so far commented on the protests, some of which have seen demonstrators call for him to resign.

But he admitted earlier in the week that he had not "really managed to reconcile the French people with their leaders".

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Nonetheless, he accused his political opponents of hijacking the movement in order to block his reform programme.

What has happened so far?
Some 244,000 people took part in protests across France, the interior ministry said in its latest update.

It said 106 people were injured during the day, five seriously, with 52 people arrested.

Most of the protests have been taking place without incident although several of the injuries came when drivers tried to force their way through protesters.

Image copyrightREUTERS
Image captionA driver forces a car through a group of protesters in Donges, western France
Chantal Mazet, 63, was killed in the south-eastern Savoy region when a driver who was taking her daughter to hospital panicked at being blocked by about 50 demonstrators, who were striking the roof of her vehicle, and drove into them.

The driver has been taken into police custody in a state of shock.

In Paris protesters approaching the Élysée Palace, the president's official residence, were repelled with tear gas.

Why are drivers on the warpath?
The price of diesel, the most commonly used fuel in French cars, has risen by around 23% over the past 12 months to an average of €1.51 (£1.32; $1.71) per litre, its highest point since the early 2000s, AFP news agency reports.

World oil prices did rise before falling back again but the Macron government raised its hydrocarbon tax this year by 7.6 cents per litre on diesel and 3.9 cents on petrol, as part of a campaign for cleaner cars and fuel.

Image copyrightEPA
Image captionTear gas was used to disperse protesters in Paris
The decision to impose a further increase of 6.5 cents on diesel and 2.9 cents on petrol on 1 January 2019 was seen as the final straw.

Speaking on Wednesday, the president blamed world oil prices for three-quarters of the price rise. He also said more tax on fossil fuels was needed to fund renewable energy investments.

How big is the movement?
It has broad support. Nearly three-quarters of respondents to a poll by the Elabe institute backed the Yellow Vests and 70% wanted the government to reverse the fuel tax hikes.

More than half of French people who voted for Mr Macron support the protests, Elabe's Vincent Thibault told AFP.

Image copyrightREUTERS
Image captionPolice attend as protesters block a motorway in Antibes
"The expectations and discontent over spending power are fairly broad, it's not just something that concerns rural France or the lower classes," he said.

The BBC's Lucy Williamson in Paris says the movement has grown via social media into a broad and public criticism of Mr Macron's economic policies.

Are opposition politicians involved?
They have certainly tried to tap into it. Far-right leader Marine Le Pen, who was defeated by Mr Macron in the second round of the presidential election, has been encouraging it on Twitter.

She said: "The government shouldn't be afraid of French people who come to express their revolt and do it in a peaceful fashion."

Image Copyright @MLP_officiel@MLP_OFFICIEL
Report

Laurent Wauquiez, leader of the centre-right Republicans, called on the Macron government to scrap the next planned increase in carbon tax on fossil fuels in January to offset rising vehicle fuel prices.

Mr Castaner has described Saturday's action as a "political protest with the Republicans behind it".

Olivier Faure, leader of the left-wing Socialist Party said the movement - which has no single leader and is not linked to any trade union - had been "born outside political parties".

"People want politicians to listen to them and respond. Their demand is to have purchasing power and financial justice," he said.

Image Copyright @faureolivier@FAUREOLIVIER
Report

Is there any room for compromise?
On Wednesday, the government announced action to help poor families pay their energy and transport bills.

Prime Minister Edouard Philippe announced that 5.6 million households would receive energy subsidies. Currently 3.6 million receive them.

A state scrappage bonus on polluting vehicles would also be doubled for France's poorest families, he said, and fuel tax credits would be brought in for people who depend on their cars for work.

Protesters have mocked the president relentlessly as "Micron" or "Macaron" (Macaroon) or simply Manu, the short form of Emmanuel, which he famously scolded a student for using.

Image Copyright @BBCWorld@BBCWORLD
Report

To be honest, I don't blame the driver at all.

 

[Ginger Piglet]

Ah, the granny fucking manlet gets bent out of shape again. Proves how out of touch he is.

According to this the disorder in Paris is the worst since 1968. Sixième Republique when?

 

[TowinKarz]

@Hackallier a common "doomsday" scenario growing up in the 80's was that the next ice age would cause crop failures and as soon as one superpower started starving, (China or USSR, take your pick) they'd invade for our crops, and if we resisted, they'd nuke everyone. WHy? the computer models said so.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

$6.53 a gallon

Calvin and Hobbes may have predicted the future (in France).

 

[RP 520]

Wasn't that coup literally a false flag, in the original Reichstag Fire sense? Erdogan sure didn't hesitate to purge opponents and fiddle with the constitution after it.

Pretty much. It's rumored the coup plan was a false flag to root out anti-Erdogan elements from positions of power and give Erdogan the excuse to go full dictator. The way it supposedly went was higher ups close to Erdogan planned a "coup" then spread the plan around, and when the time came all the generals, officers, and soldiers that participated along with politicians, intellectuals, colleges, etc. that came out and supported it were cast out into the open, arrested and imprisoned/executed.

Was the Reichstag fire ever confirmed as a false flag.

I mean it helped Hitler, but commies are pretty exceptional just look at antifa.
One of them could have easily decided to do that.

Officially it was never determined. There was so much misinformation on both sides (German Communists were as trustworthy as the Nazis), but usually it's assumed it was a false flag because of other stunts Germany pulled that made them suspect.

 

[Linako 2.0]

 

[Pope Negro Joe the XIIIth]

The responses from neoliberals and certain members of the commentariat have been some modern version of "let them eat cake" .

From the comments on a NYT article
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/02/...n-yellow-vest-protests.html#commentsContainer

>"Those who don't learn from the past are doomed to repeat it...Be careful what you wish for, French people."

 

[RichardMongler]

TIL Spurdo is a yellow jacket
View attachment 605926
http://archive.is/4IrGK

Rough translation, "Dignity ain't free. It's earned by working and fighting against fiscal racket. Manu "Macrouille" is not my president, he's a hateful Europeist citizen that hates the French working class. Diesel and PMU, not bike and Quotidien OK. Hail France."

First time I've seen that meme used in earnest without a trace of irony.

A French Bernd at nu-KC broke it down for those who're still wondering what's going on:

Since a lot of Bernds are asking for context, here's an explanation of what's happening. It ended up being a little long, but there's a few episodes to this story so this should help you catch up from the beginning.


What sparked this movement is a raise on petroleum tax decided by the government, supposedly for ecological reasons. One reason why this is so unnerving is the self-righteous hypocrisy of it. The tax obviously serves no ecological purpose. People who use a car and would be deterred by it have no other option but to keep using their car and pay more for petrol. They're working class people living in the countryside or outside large cities. They can't just switch to bikes or electrical scooters for going to work instead. Only Parisians and other metropolitans honestly believe this. The tax is only there to put money into the budget. Now, if the government had simply honestly said "we need to raise this tax because we need more money for the stuff the state pays", it's still a matter of debate, but I'm sure it would have gone over better. But instead they decided to turn it into a moral issue. "We must raise this tax in order to save the planet from global warming, and anyone who opposes it is worthless polluting piece of shit who doesn't care about the future". Incidentally this blatant misuse of environmental issues to justify an unrelated tax raise does enormous damage to environmental arguments.

Of course this is just the last straw. This comes after many previous tax raises which all affect the same people the most: the half of France that is working to lower middle class and lives outside the major city centres. This has been the case since before the election. Macron serves only his electorate: the quarter of France that is wealthy, cosmopolitan, well connected to globalisation. But the truth is he doesn't even serve those well. Those who voted for Macron thought "well he's going to fuck over the poor, but at least the economy will pick up again". And yet the economy is still as fucked as ever. This movement has been a long time coming, there were signs of something like this brewing in the province for months already.

The Gilets jaunes don't have any leaders or organisation of any sort. They're essentially an internet meme. "Put on the yellow safety vest that every car owner must have by law, and do blocking actions. Block streets, motorways, petroleum stocking facilities. Occupy toll booths to let cars through for free. Demonstrate in city centres. And leave the vest on your car's dashboard the rest of the time." The movement quickly became popular through social media, with demonstrations all over France. All of the demonstrations were peaceful, often cheerful, with police sent to control them often giving signs of support like putting on vests themselves. They bring and share food, they wave French flags, and they sing the Marseillaise. But the government's initial strategy was ignoring it, so a new meme appeared: let's all go to Paris on Saturday the 24th of November. Where in Paris? How about the Champs-Elysées. The government explicitly forbade that, because too close to the presidential palace, and oriented the protesters to the Champs de Mars instead, the park next to the Eiffel Tower known for New Years celebrations, football fan zones, and Revolutionary massacres.

On the 24th, there was nobody on the Champs de Mars, and some thousands of people not only on the Champs-Elysées, but all around the massive walled off security perimeter of police barricades that had been established in a six block radius around the presidential palace. When I went to the Champs-Elysées in the afternoon, it was completely out of the police's control. Barriers and other stuff from nearby construction work had been used to build barricades across the avenue, or to make big fires in the middle of it. Riot police was at the very end of it at Concorde, behind a huge cloud of teargas. But there was practically no violence. In fact I have never seen a demonstration or party on the Champs Elysées or elsewhere in Paris with so little violence and destruction. All the shops and restaurants were intact. Not one car was burning. Nobody was throwing cobblestones at police. The very worst was some minor vandalism from a handful of antifa. I had seen the destruction on the same avenue a few months earlier when France won the world cup, and before that when the PSG won: smashed windows, burning cars, real combat with police... and no mention of it whatsoever on the news. But this time, after the most peaceful demonstration I've ever seen, the government and affiliated media were talking about nothing but the "violence". All the ministers started talking about "scenes of war", caused by the "ultra-right" and the "brown plague", and blaming Marine Le Pen personally for all of it.

The strategy in this was twofold. First, exaggerate the violence in the hopes that the vast majority of Gilets jaunes, who the government knows very well are just regular people, would be horrified by it and no longer want to be associated with the movement. Second, brand the violence and by extension the entire movement as far right Nazis and associate it with Marine Le Pen. This was meant to recreate the conditions of the second round of the presidential election last year, when Macron was facing Marine Le Pen, and obscenely spent the two weeks before the election touring sites of Nazi massacres and Holocaust memorials, more or less telling people "if you don't vote for me you support the Holocaust". It backfired completely. A poll last week showed that 84% of French people now support the Gilets jaunes. And all the violence talked about in the media non-stop inspired two groups of people who, unlike the Gilets jaunes, are far more capable of violence: antifa who like to burn shit and smash bank windows and make anarchist graffiti, and racailles (immigrant delinquents) from the suburbs of Paris who saw an opportunity for some looting and car burning.

And so yesterday happened. There were some Gilets jaunes in Paris again, though fewer than last week. But this time there were a shitload of antifa and racailles. Hundreds of cars were burned, even buildings were set on fire. Shops were systematically smashed and looted clean. 130 people injured including police. With the police able to do nothing but protect the government palaces. All of this caused by a few hundred, a few thousand people at most. By the evening half the metro system was closed, snipers had been set up on the roofs around strategic buildings, and the prime minister made an appearance wringing his hands and on the verge of tears, with the interior minister next to him silently looking down to the ground like a beaten dog. The lesson was clear: violence absolutely works, and the government, even the entire system itself, is incredibly fragile. I expect this lesson has been learned by the Gilets jaunes as well.

 

[Corbin Dallas Multipass]

One thing overlooked here is how these environmental "encouragements" to make people stop driving was paraded around as being good for the lower classes. Because all of their lobbyists and "models" predict that global warming will be disastrous for the poor!

I also present this without context.

Hahahahahaha global warming it totes real guys don't you remember when we lost those continents to the great flooding when the ice caps melted in 2000?

So... I didn't realize that people around the world were this fed up with the left. Symbolic guillotines for now...

Now someone correct me if I'm remembering incorrectly, but during the french revolution, was it the "right" or "wrong" side of history that had the guillotines? I seem to remember the history being written by the wielders of the guillotines, not the targets.

 

[CWCissey]

The French need to start voting for someone instead of voting against someone. That's twice now they've voted a random cuck into office purely because they hated the incumbent's guts. Very few people bought into Macaroni's bullshit, most just wanted his predecessor to fuck off already. Of course approval ratings are going to be low when you're elected out of spite.

They were going to, but the Froggy government rigged the polls using selective candidacy to ensure Le Pen wouldn't win.

 

[SiccDicc]

One thing overlooked here is how these environmental "encouragements" to make people stop driving was paraded around as being good for the lower classes. Because all of their lobbyists and "models" predict that global warming will be disastrous for the poor!

I also present this without context.

Which turned out to be a load of bullshit and actually harming the environment. Particularly the push for biofuel, the cultivation and harvesting of the required materials - preferred being palm oil - causing a drastic increase in carbon emission. The US has actually decreased in carbon emission even after telling Europe to fuck off with their bullshit. Fracking makes it much cheaper, burns cleaner than coal and is far less damaging to the environment than whatever Indonesia has been doing in their quest for palm oil and to satisfy their biofuel overlords.

 

[BR55]

The responses from neoliberals and certain members of the commentariat have been some modern version of "let them eat cake" .

From the comments on a NYT article
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/02/...n-yellow-vest-protests.html#commentsContainer







Macron good, French people bad #ClimateChangeReal!

Can none of these people understand that a $1200 a year tax out of nowhere is going to piss off at least a 1/3 of a population? They probably can't figure out why anyone (but a RACIST) would protest against a leader of the perfect globalist technocrat mold like Macron.

I would bet you literally anything that the people writing those comments are trust fund brats in California, or NYC, or the D.C Metro Area.

 

[ICametoLurk]

This happened during the Tunisian Revolution of 2011. There were mass unorganized protests, than a few weeks later there was a general strike, than a fed days after that the government was toppled.

also

Pornstar led revolution, I want this now.

 

[BScCollateral]

I am agreeing with Pamela Anderson. Damn you, world, for doing this.

 

[RodgerDodger]

Things are getting worse. The French Police managed to kill an 80 year woman in her 4th floor apartment by shooting a teargas canister into her face while she was trying to close her shutters.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-46429930

Not to mention tons of Rodney King style footage of the Gendarme’s running down and brutally shit kicking people on the street. The Police are now demanding that the Army be sent into the streets to help them. I’m thinking the citizenry will not take well to that request.

 

[TowinKarz]

Boy, imagine how bad it would be if those violent right-wing populists had been elected instead !

 

[Zaryiu]

It does make me think about how I hear about every tiny protest for whatever Leftist ideal, such as LGBT rights (which they've already gained) from MSM.
But then this massive weeks long protest which is bigger than any in France in decades... And MSM is whisper silent. I've seen nothing online in my country.
Today I picked up one of those free newspapers that cover current topic, and they finally mentioned the French situation. However. It was covered in the following manner;



Completely fair and objective as always.

Almost like the MSM are shills for globalists And anti-not rich
(I'd like a smaller version of this emoticon as that would be a bit more prestical btw)

 

[Varg Did Nothing Wrong]

All arctic ice will be gone by: 2012, 2014, 2015, 2018?,

Wait, oops. It actually increased last year
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddar...ns-of-antarctic-ice-sheet-greater-than-losses

The arctic ice sheet (at the North Pole) is different from the Antarctic ice sheet (at the South Pole). One has a land mass under it, the other doesn't. If you're going to own the libs epic style at least pick sources that confirm what you're claiming.

 

[Zaryiu]

Hahahahahaha global warming it totes real guys don't you remember when we lost those continents to the great flooding when the ice caps melted in 2000?

So... I didn't realize that people around the world were this fed up with the left. Symbolic guillotines for now...

Now someone correct me if I'm remembering incorrectly, but during the french revolution, was it the "right" or "wrong" side of history that had the guillotines? I seem to remember the history being written by the wielders of the guillotines, not the targets.

fftopic: (I don't take sides in that debate because I already have other things I worry about so the question is asked 100 percent neutral) So how do you explain when the weather multiple times a years goes completely out of whack?

 

[TowinKarz]

Define "out of whack", I overheard someone the other day blaming a totally normal passing thunderstorm on "climate change" apparently unaware that such things happen all the time.

 

[Zaryiu]

Define "out of whack", I overheard someone the other day blaming a totally normal passing thunderstorm on "climate change" apparently unaware that such things happen all the time.

Completely out of norms over extended periods of time? (Just so you guys know I know almost nothing of how climate works outside of the basics)