COPY LINK

YELLOW VESTS

French presidency fears ‘major violence’ at Saturday’s protests

The French presidency has revealed that it fears there will be "major violence" from an "extreme core of several thousand" at the 'yellow vest' protests set to take place across France, notably in Paris, on Saturday.

Published: 6 December 2018 12:10 CET

French presidency fears 'major violence' at Saturday's protests

A scene from the protests in Paris on December 1st. Photo: AFP

“We have reason to fear a great violence,” the presidential palace told AFP amid calls for renewed mobilization of 'yellow vests' across the country after last weekend's 'unprecedented violence' on the streets of the French capital.

The presidency told BFM TV it fears an “extreme core of several thousand people” who would come to Paris “to destroy”.

French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday urged politicians and union officials to launch a “call for calm.”

French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe echoed that call in parliament and urged politicians to be responsible.

“What is at stake is the safety of the French people and our institutions. I call here for responsibility, ” said Philippe.

“All the actors in this public debate, politicians, union leaders, editorialists and citizens, will be accountable for their statements in the coming days,” he added.

In a move they hoped would help appease protesters the government announced it was completely scrap the planned fuel tax hikes for 2019, yet it appears demonstrators are unsatisfied and are ready to push for more concessions that will help boost their spending power.

The anxiety of the French authorities is evident in view of the prospect of another day of violence in the heart of the capital which is still under the shock of last weekend's riots.

There have been dozens of calls to demonstrate in Paris on social media on Saturday, with many naming the Champs-Elysees — the scene of riots on December 1st — as the meeting point.

Several thousand people have already said they are ready to take part in more demonstrations.

And perhaps most worryingly for the French president and government, many of these events and those who are interested in going are calling for more disorder in the capital.

Protests planned for next weekend under the name Acte IV (Act 4) refer to the fact that this could be the fourth weekend of protests in France.

READ ALSO:

ANALYSIS: The yellow rebellion is threatening to engulf France - Macron must act Photo: AFP

A pinned post for one Facebook event planned for this Saturday, shows the yellow vest movement apparently “at the top of its game” in video footage of fights between protesters and police near the Arc du Triomphe filmed last weekend.

In the discussion for the event, Acte 4 – Vous avez carte blanche à Paris (Act 4: You have free reign in Paris), over 1,000 people have confirmed they will be attending and 6,000 have said they are interested, suggesting that protesters are gearing up for more violent conflict with the authorities this weekend.

“Stop telling us to be peaceful… why should we act like reasonable people when the government doesn't?” one wrote.

Another added, “in the event of Act 4 the police will have the army and security companies with them. They want nothing more or less than a war.”

Many yellow vest organisers are invoking France's revolutionary history as justification for more unrest in the streets this coming weekend.

Another Facebook event “Acte IV: Aux Armes Citoyens”, taking place at the Eiffel tower on Saturday morning, is named after the famous line from the national anthem encouraging citizens to take up arms. The event has more than 3,000 confirmed attendees and a further 21,000 interested in going.

Appropriately, one commenter plans “to bring Molotov cocktails to force the barricades!”

Anarchists, butchers and finance workers: A look at the Paris rioters

Photo: AFP

A total of 13,000 protesters have either confirmed or are thinking of attending the “Acte 4: Appel National” (Act 4: National Call) in the capital, with commenters in the event discussion drawing comparisons between today's yellow vest protests and the infamous period of civil unrest in France during May 1968.

“In '68 protesters weren't called hooligans! Stop being sheep and have some balls!” one commenter wrote under an image showing chaos and destruction in the streets of Paris during demonstrations in the 60s.

Another commenter urged others to share an image of a demonstrator from May '68 hurling objects at police barricades.

Printed on the image are list of changes the May '68 protests brought about followed by the caveat “incredible violence was unfortunately necessary to achieve all this.”

While protests are being planned at famous landmarks like the Eiffel Tower and Place de la Bastille, some yellow vests are also calling for more targeted action.

They have suggested taking the protests to wealthy areas of Paris and the headquarters of news outlets BFM TV and TF1, who they feel have “discredited the movement” with news coverage biased against the yellow vests.

Non-violent protests are also being planned in the capital on December 8th, but even among this group it seems there is support for the “hooligans” and all the media coverage they have received.

One yellow vest posted, “it's thanks to them that we are being heard.”

Member comments

Become a Member to leave a comment.

Is France's 'yellow vest' movement really on its way back?

Yellow vest protests in Paris in 2019. Photo: AFP

When Priscillia Ludosky put on a yellow vest for the first time and headed out to the Champs Elysées to protest, she had no idea that nearly 300,000 people would do the same.

It was November 17th, 2018, the first 'yellow vest' protest in the capital and the birth of a mass-movement so large that its vows to overthrow French President Emmanuel Macron’s government seemed, for a moment, credible.

Nearly two years later, Macron is still president – and aiming for reelection – while the ‘yellow vest’ movement has all but disappeared from the public eye.

“It’s been a long time since I wore the yellow vest,” Priscillia Ludosky, founder and leading figure of the movement, told The Local.

She had not left the movement, but said she was less active than she had been.

“I'm less on-the-ground than I used to. The pandemic put the brakes on most things,” she said.

Despite France's rising coronavirus rates, the 'yellow vests' have declared a comeback protest on September 12th, promising to “never give up”.

? Chaque #GiletJaune sait où il doit aller le #12Septembre .

????? – ???????? – ?????? – , ???…

Et si cela ne suffit pas !!!
On ne lâchera rien !!! ✊✊✊ pic.twitter.com/sRAsVQkPSC

— ??? ?????? ?????? ?? (@GiletsJaunesFr_) August 3, 2020

But with the protests before lockdown gathering only a fraction of the numbers they once rallied, how much is there really left of the 'yellow vests'?

“The movement is much smaller, much less active, and much more divided than it was at the outset,” historian Sylvain Boulouque told The Local.

Boulouque has followed the movement from the beginning and has written the book Mensonges en gilet jaune (Lies in yellow vests), about the role social media and fake news played in fuelling the 'yellow vests' anger.

When the ‘yellow vests’ first spiralled into a national mass-movement, their rallying cry “Macron demission !” (Macron resign) was the one ringing the loudest, and it was also one of the few demands that all of the ‘yellow vests’ could unite behind.

“The movement spans all the way from the extreme-left to the extreme-right. There is no unity on the fundamental political questions,” Boulouque said.

The more time passed, the more the movement's internal divisions became clear. Today, Boulouque said, there was “a little bit of everything” left, and just keeping track of the movement had become a challenge.

“It’s so local that the demographic changes from town to town and week to week,” he said.

Among the extreme right-wing were a number of conspiracy theory believers, he said, including anti-mask activists who opposed the French government's new rules on masks.

Pro- and anti-masks was just the newest fault line dividing the 'yellow vests', Boulouque said.

“The pandemic will split them rather than reunite them,” he said.

‘Covid proved our points’

Seizing on the pandemic to re-mobilise the masses is what the still-active 'yellow vests' hope to do on September 12th.

Leading 'yellow vest' figure Jérôme Rodrigues. Photo: AFP

Jérôme Rodrigues, another ‘yellow vest’ leading figure, told Slate that the pandemic was their “best ally”.

“Covid proved our points about the degrading of the health system and the limits of the capitalist system,” Rodrigues said.

When the French government imposed a nationwide, strict lockdown in March, it was to save the hospitals in hard-hit areas such as Paris from the mounting pressure of a rapidly increasing patient flow.

The lockdown, which lasted over two months, had a crippling impact on the economy and saw the government spend billions on emergency help schemes to prevent chain bankruptcies and mass layoffs.

Despite the government's efforts to kickstart the economy, France’s unemployment rate is set to increase by 10 percent by the end of the year. Young people will be the worst affected, according to France’s national institute for statistics, Insee. Rodrigues predicted that the looming downturn would reaffirm people's faith in the 'yellow vest' movement.

“With the coming crisis, people who were doing well financially and who have never had a hard time are going to fall flat on their faces,” Rodrigues said.

'Yellow vest' leading figure Priscillia Ludosky has been participating in protests against police violence and in support of France's hospital sector the past months. Photo: AFP

'Sensationalist media'

Rodrigues became a symbol of the ‘yellow vests’ after he was hit in the eye by what he claimed to be an LBD rubber bullet fired by police (the police refute his accusation, but the authority overseeing the police has launched an investigation into the matter).

Blinded in one eye, Rodrigues incorporated one of the most jarring features of the protests: their increasingly violent character. The recurring scenes of violence that dominated the protests contributed to the ‘yellow vests’ hogging headlines for months – not just in France, but across the world.

Images of burning cars, police armed with rubber-bullet guns, violent fist-fights and black-clad protesters smashing ATMs with baseball bats shocked the world.

But the violence also dominated the media coverage of the protests, which meant what the protesters were saying got less attention.

To Ludosky, this was a big problem.

“The media won’t cover anything unless it’s sensationalist,” she said.

Ludosky authored the online petition that became the catalyst for the ‘yellow vest’ protests. In it, she wrote that the government’s proposed carbon tax was both falsely branded a green policy and was harmful to the many people who depended on their cars to get around every day.

The document went viral and gathered more than one million signatures, and the fluorescent yellow vest that all vehicles in France must be equipped with became the symbol of the masses revolting against the elites.

Ludosky said her main point was lost in the coverage. She was not an angry car-enthusiast defending her right to drive, she was saying that the tax was unfair and would impact the most on the poorest.

“The longer we protested, the more they tried to tell everyone that we don't know what we want. That we were only out there to break things,” she said.

The early days of the movement saw hundreds of 'roundabout protests' in the French provinces. Photo: AFP

'They are there'

The violence also discouraged many of the 'yellow vests' who had little experience with protesting and were shocked by the use of force on both sides.

Danielle Tartakowsky, a professor at the Paris 8 University who specialises in social movements in contemporary France, said it was important to distinguish between the ‘yellow vest’ who still turned up to protests in Paris – often young, keen and ready to go head to head with police – and the ‘yellow vests’ mobilising in less urban areas.

“In the countryside the ‘yellow vest’ movement is the same as it was at the outset,” she said.

In her new book, On est là ! (We’re here), a main ‘yellow vest’ rallying cry, she concludes just that; the movement had changed, but the ‘yellow vests’ were still present.

“That does not mean that they are ready to rally in the same ways, but it would be dangerous and delusional to say that they have disappeared,” she said.

Tartakowsky said that, while the 'yellow vests' successes could seem limited from the outside, they had pushed through important change indirectly by showing that it was possible to force through change.

“Even if they did not win on all points they showed that it was possible to win something, to make the government backpedal,” she said, referring to the carbon tax.

The camp

When the protests started, the roundabout became the main stage for the protesters who did not travel to Paris to make their discontent heard and seen in the capital.

From June 2019 until March 2020, just before the pandemic hit with full force, Séverine spent most of her free time on a local roundabout where she and some 30 other ‘yellow vests’ had set up a camp.

A teacher in Amiens, a city a couple of hours north of Paris, Séverine was an early believer that the ‘yellow vests’ would be the movement that finally could radically change a system she saw as unjust, undemocratic and unsustainable.

“I passed all my evenings, all my weekends at the camp,” she said.

The camp was a microcosm of the world they hoped to create.

“We cooked together, discussed, we really had some great moments there together,” she said.

They were all kinds of people at the camp; a waiter, a metro driver, a nursery teacher, a few retirees. An Indian student who just needed somewhere to crash for free.

“It was a very open environment,” Séverine said.

But the problems soon surfaced. The camp, like the movement, swore to a leaderless management style where no one had a final say.

“It was a mess. Obviously, we didn’t manage to make any decisions,” Séverine said.

Violence at protests became a major problem. Photo: AFP

'People are exhausted'

They split themselves into two groups. Oddly enough, the division had little to do with politics.

“It was not about left or right. We actually agreed on the fundamental issues. It was more about strong personalities and people simply not getting along,” she said.

The atmosphere soured. They argued more, discussed less. They went from 30, to 20, to about 10. Then, after the local election in March, just before the pandemic made social distancing the norm, the mayor told them to clear the camp.

Critics have long said the ‘yellow vests’ lack of leadership was their major, perhaps the decisive, default. How could they push for change when they had no idea what they wanted?

Despite having become so disillusioned with the movement that she no longer knew if she wanted to call herself a ‘yellow vest’ at all, Séverine was not sure this was their main problem.

“Demonstrating every weekend is tiring. It requires a significant commitment. I think people are exhausted,” she said.

'I was fed up'

In the months that followed the movement’s heyday in early 2019, the protests followed the same pattern as Séverine's camp.

They were increasingly sparse in numbers and the atmosphere increasingly tense and bitter.

“You're walking in a state of complete stress, afraid that someone is aiming at you. You don't hear the messages anymore,” Séverine said.

Five people have lost a hand in the protests. Twenty-five were blinded in an eye. According to government numbers, 2,500 protesters were hurt in the protests by the end of 2019, along with 1,800 police officers.

“No one could imagine that a movement could last this long without losing momentum,” Ludosky said.

“Keeping on going cost a lot to the people who got involved. It's money, time, people lost limbs, couples separated.”

Like many others, she was put off by the violence. In the end, she left her yellow vest in her car.

“I was fed up,” she said. “Every time I wore it I worried about the police controlling me.”

She was not sure if she still believed in the movement.

“It’s complicated. The presidential elections are coming up soon, crying out for Macron’s resignation doesn’t make sense anymore.”

“But the 12th will be the moment to go out on the streets. Not necessarily in Paris, but we need to show something.”

SHOW COMMENTS

Url copied to clipboard!