Ramin Mazaheri: Champs-Élysées war zone reporting & the coming Yellow Vest crackdown
ABOVE: Gilets, Act 18. March 16-17, 2019. Demonstrators fill the center of Paris, including some of the fanciest districts. Many concentrate their fury on symbols of the "haute bourgeoisie", like the high-end restaurant on Champs Elysees, Fouquet's, which is set on fire. Even a Metro lamp is seen burning. The people have had enough of government lies, repression, and prevarications. Other cities show similar determination.
What war zone?
Because if Saturday March 16 was a “war zone”, then France has been at war since 2010 - I didn’t see a single thing out of the norm for France.
A young woman who freaked out after getting tear gassed and lying on the ground quivering? Seen it. Me taking a breath which contained zero grams of oxygen and only tear gas – seen it. Cops hitting protesters, cops firing shock grenades at people, cops using water cannons – seen it, seen it, seen it.
Think I’m exaggerating? Check out the Wikipedia page for the 2016 labor code protests. Somehow there were twice as many trials (3,626) as arrests (1,800), even though one would have to be arrested before they can get tried, no? “More than 1,000 people hurt according to Amnesty National,” says Wikipedia, but read the fine print: that was in Paris alone. Obviously, there is mass amnesia – and mass bad/under reporting – regarding French state repression during the Age of Austerity.
So you should trust me when I say I didn’t see anything Saturday I haven’t seen hundreds of times since 2010. I thought it was a good day – I only got gassed thrice.
What was totally different was this: there was organized and determined civil disobedience from protesters. Now that was a rare sight. The French, you see, don’t storm the American embassy and take hostages – they get beat up, arrested and lose politically, and try to make losing into a victory.
On Saturday, just like a couple weekends in December, the Yellow Vests won. Decisively.
Want proof? They got a reaction. That’s what victory looks like in the age of austerity – victory is: lawmakers not ignoring you anymore. That was exactly the goal of the Yellow Vests on Saturday – force recognition from the French government that democracy must include incorporating public opinion into public policy.
The reaction in December was minor concessions, including the so-called “National Debate”, which ended March 15. This is why March 16 was billed as “Ultimatum”. The reaction on March 18, however, is not concession but maximum repression.
It’s going to get bad now
France’s 1% gave a few tiny crumbs in December, but they are determined not to give any more.
Macron fired the Paris police chief and, astoundingly, the reason publicly given was that he did not use enough rubber bullets – I kid you not! He was fired for giving “inappropriate orders” which “reduced the usage” of so-called “flash balls”, which are most definitely plain-old rubber bullets. That should tell you all you need to know about the state repression which has obviously been ordered by Macron.
And it will be implemented by a new chief, one who “is considered a man ‘of steel’ who should ‘restore order where it is necessary,’” according to France’s top cop, the Interior Minister. This is the language of fascism, not democracy. [Mediapart, a French news service also reports that, "After the clashes on the Champs-Elysees, the prime minister announced the departure of the police chief of Paris and the creation of units of 'anticasseurs'." In other words they are strengthening their anti-riot squad formations.—Ed]
Demonstrations will be banned (including at the Champs-Élysées) cops are being openly given more license to attack and arrest, as well as drones and a UV spray that marks the skin for 4 weeks, and a new and more concentrated tear gas, while penalties for protesting will increase. All of this is obviously designed to intimidate citizens from even attending protests.
“Birthplace of human rights” y’all.
(Whatever… give that back to the Indians.)
LOL, I’d point out what the response of Paris would be if the FLN party in Algeria or the Chavistas in Venezuela did any of this… but that is so, so old for me. It’s certainly news to some young people, but if I pointed that out all the time I’d be a broken record.
Revolution - real change for the 99% - means choosing sides
What’s far more interesting for readers is to check out journalism such as this interview I did on March 16 (thanks to the beauty of smartphone journalism) from the bank off the Champs-Élysées which was firebombed.
Cops hadn’t cordoned off the area, and I had full access to the gutted building. I imagine I was the only journalist in any language to note and decipher the only things not melted, and which had been clearly left behind on purpose: two stickers on the bank’s fancy engraved sign. One discussed police brutality and the 20+ people who have been blinded by rubber bullets just for protesting government policies, and the other talked about the amazing innovation of Apple Computers… in tax evasion.
It’s quite simple: The average Westerner, and even possibly the average reader of this article, views those who firebombed the bank (which caused no injuries) as being worse criminals – much worse, even - than cops who abuse their power and executives who steal untold billions from the public coffers.
Such a view is obviously considered anti-social by many, because it means siding with forces which are far, far more more detrimental to society than the bloodless loss of one bank. In some countries - China, Iran, etc. - the theft of billions leads to capital punishment due to this political rationale. In other countries, like America, capital punishment is used solely on the lower classes.
Disagree with that political rationale of China’s and Iran’s? Fine. But the reality is that this political view is never, ever broached in the Mainstream Media… even though it is heard in every café across France. In 1789, 1917, 1949 and 1979 there were honest political discussions in France, Russia, China and Iran - is France going to have honest political discussions in 2019?
In recent years France has preferred to - not just waste time but to - cause suffering and death via false, reactionary discourses (which are used to justify neo-imperialist wars). For several years France has preferred to defend the idea that it is politically justifiable to draw Prophet Mohammad bent over with his buttcheeks spread and a star for an anus, as Charlie Hebdo did. What’s worse, that Islamophobic, reactionary piece of intellectual trash will be paraded like a courageous, unifying hero for years and years.
France has no problem discussing rebelling against a government - and even sending arms to help - but only if that government is not Liberal Democratic/West European bourgeois.
But on March 16 what I saw was a temporary ascension of the humane, liberating idea that people are actually more important than property, which is a radical concept for the Liberal Democratic, jingoistic, resolutely anti-international French. The cover of Aujourd’hui en France on March 18 showed property burning on the Champs-Élysées alongside the caption “How to stop this?” It did not show that woman on the ground shaking, nor anyone blinded, killed or in a coma, nor a person sped through the justice system and stuck in prison – it cares for the rights of property. In a very anti-human fashion (or to hit them where they live, “In a very anti-humanist fashion”), they merely asked: “How can we stop the injuries to the property of the richest?”
The bank firebombing - if it was reportedly correctly and objectively, as I sought to do - should force people to take sides; the Mainstream Media does not speak honestly about one of those sides. Protecting property, ignoring human suffering, insulting Muslims - these are the very real, pathetic priorities of a France, and of a West which is fundamentally anti-solidarity, pro-sectarian, pro-jingoist, pro-war and pro-economic inequality.
Governments can take care of the 1%, or the victims
Ah, but that bank is just an innocent victim, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah… and cops spend more time chasing after financial crimes than 17-year old Colored men.
Just 5 meters from the bank I met what could be considered an innocent victim: A hunched over 60-something man, who quietly confided to me and my cameraman that it was his Porsche over there which had been totally incinerated.
I felt bad for the guy - mainly because he looked terrified that the small, crowing crowd was going to lynch him - but I think he’ll be all right: he drives a Porsche, after all. I asked him a question he will hear, aggravatingly, for the rest of his life: “Why did you drive your Porsche into this part of town today?” He explained he was there to see friends, and he saw lots of cops around, so….
The cops couldn’t protect your 1%er property, mon ami, because Yellow Vesters were being politically disobedient. It’s a rare occurrence, but today was one of those very rare days. Read a newspaper….
If he thought I was going to interview him and share his story sympathetically, he didn’t realize that I’m not there to protect his 1%er property. People who drive Porsches… defending them is not the job of real journalists, because they are already doing pretty well and can obviously pay for their own defense.
Now if they had torched my car – a car I bought entirely with 1- and 2-euro coins – that would be a different story, because it would have likely led to an improvement!
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Calling it “a different story” is not at all hypocrisy – that is equality. This is exactly the political difference between moral absolutists – those Kantian types who would open the door to a murderer rather than lie about their victim not being at home – and people who don’t live for pure individualism. These politically Kantian types are those who saw civil disobedience on Saturday and screamed, “How dare they? Send in the tanks!”
I saw nonstop civil disobedience – or as you say, violence – on Saturday, but I did not see apolitical berserker rage, which is the resolute and false narrative of the Mainstream Media. Indeed, it is their job to not understand the narrative believed by those engaged in civil disobedience.
I saw mostly young people breaking open stores and older Yellow Vests bravely stepping in to stop looting – I have the video footage. Once it happened at a handbag shop right next door to the Iran Air store. “No! What did Iran do to France,” I shouted! But the Vesters were actually breaking down the door next door, because they know that fancy handbags have done far more damage to France than Iran ever has.
I saw political slogans – propaganda – which were absolutely intelligent and reflected a major concern with societal well-being… most of the time. Accusing Disney of “ruining children’s dreams”… sorry your Prince Charming didn’t arrive, lady graffiti artist, but it’s just a cartoon. I am listing an exception to the rule. Others saw cops stealing football jerseys. LOL, classic. One thing is certain: definitely no political motive to dig out there….
Pacifism has gotten the French 99% nowhere since the very minor governmental concessions of December – this reality is not lost on protesters. Therefore, all the blame for the violence is on the government.
Look at who are you defending when you blame the protesters
Similarly, all the blame for the violence goes on the cops. At every single demonstration it’s the cops who set the tone.
From the moment I set foot on the Arc de Triomphe I was gassed. Protesters never even had a chance to show they wanted to be peaceful – cops had obviously gotten the order to respond to any provocation with full force. Cops get paid expressly to stand up to any Black Bloc provocateurs, and to arrest them… but they don’t arrest them.
In the interests of accuracy - my watchword - I can explain:
I was at the Arc de Triomphe an hour late, at 11:45 am, which is a rare tardiness. I had a good reason though: I had to do a live interview regarding France’s 2018 Islamophobia report. I asked him, and the director of France’s Islamophobia watchdog expressly denied any link between an increase in Islamophobic acts and the Yellow Vest movement, which has already been falsely accused of anti-Semitism. The director said there has been no increase in Islamophobic acts in the past four months. So… we cannot even try to tarnish the Vesters with the Islamophobic brush, and I’m glad I can pass this on to readers.
But that made me late, and apparently there was major violence I missed at 10:45. If you listen to the mainstream media it was all Black Bloc’s fault. However, if you were a journalist who was actually on the Champs-Élysées talking to people afterwards, you heard things like “The cops never do what they are supposed to do or arrest the people they are supposed to arrest, like Black Bloc.”
That seems surprising, but there are constant accusations that such alleged far-leftists are in league with the cops.
I have seen Black Bloc and Antifa many times, and they are quite often genuinely disliked, unwelcome, wayward souls… mainly because so many of those souls act so very incorrectly, detrimentally and bewilderingly that the masked figures cannot possibly be honest leftists, but instead police who have infiltrated the movement.
So, instead of arresting Black Bloc, I was told the cops did what they usually do: let them go, pick on the weak and arrest the inexperienced. I’m reporting what I was told and know….
Bottom line: cops knew they were going to be provoked on the biggest protest day in months, and their response was not to quell disorder – which is what the Yellow Vests want - but to let it fester.
I can see why the Interior Minister would give such orders: Last Saturday night this father of two was filmed kissing another woman while drinking and dancing. He sent scores to jail that afternoon, and that night he was celebrating with a woman who is not his wife. They are calling for his resignation.
Where was Macron? Just as he has been on seemingly every other major day of planned protests - I’ve noted this time after time - he was not in Paris. Here he was – on the ski slopes.
King Macron on the slopes. "Let them eat tear gas!"
An incredible decision, given that everyone knew March 16 was going to be the biggest demonstration in Paris since December.
Macron… that guy… he’s just too different from us.
It’s not his 24-years older wife, nor the Benalla scandal (and his “incomprehensible indulgence” of 27-year old Benalla – to quote the Senate report on the Benalla scandal), nor his statutory rapist wife’s chocolate money, nor his Rothschild banker money – Macron is simply not one of the People. He has clearly lived in isolation from the People his whole life. Because nobody with an ounce of respect for the common man, the common Yellow Vester, would have gone skiing that day and even published photos of it! A king would have.
It’s not just bad politics or arrogance – it's anti-social thinking for the job with the most societal responsibility.
Poor Mack the Knife had to cut short his vacation because of the civil disobedience. On March 18, trying to look as manly as possible, Macron angrily announced that he was giving cops more ammo and free reign.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, as unfortunate as this is: Marine Le Pen would have been better, because she would not have gotten away with all this! But Macron’s victory allowed the West’s fake-leftists to remain smugly complacent.
Conservatives understand Vesters, but oppose and would crush them. Fake-leftists just hate Vesters and want them not to exist
[dropcap]M[/dropcap]arch 16 was a huge day of protests: you had Algerians marching, a protest against state racism & police brutality, and the “march of the century” for climate change. All were supposed to converge at Élysée Palace, home of the (skiing) president – thus, “Acte 18: Ultimatum”.
I work near the Palace – tons and tons of cops were there, so that was never going to happen.
Know what else never happened? The 100,000 fake leftists peacefully marching for dirt and feeling sorriest about the feelings of rocks never joined the Vesters! They left them twisting in the tear gas-filled wind, because they prefer to live in their tiny world of bizarre fears and self-congratulation. [Co-opted] climate change activists are really just about the worst… take out everything human from politics and what are you left with? The environment. There are no more global problems, like class; the problem is the globe itself. The problem is not unequal consumption; it is “incorrect” consumption. Of course they don’t support the Yellow Vests - the Yellow Vests are against the status quo.
Fancy restaurant Fouquet's, on Champs Elysees, symbol of elite privilege, is put to the torch and destroyed by the Gilets Jaunes. The message is clear. The people know who their enemy is.
But you better believe the Algerians showed up! Of course they did – they have pride: there would have been no revolution in Iran without the inspiration of the Algerian War for Independence. And thank God they did show up, because they were the only ones with good music. French music is totally unexportable to non-Francophone countries, of course.
Who else didn’t show up Saturday? The mainstream media.
Surely I just missed some of them, but I realized later that I didn’t recall seeing any other journalists doing interviews or live interviews with their logo? RT was always there, but it was clear that reporters (not cameramen and photographers) largely stayed away from what was sure to be a rough day. Or, even worse, they actually preferred to cover climate change march #4,236.
Their absence can be proven by watching this week’s media coverage in France: French media like the detested BFM were too scared to use their logo on top of their microphones. Contrarily I make sure to use the PressTV logo because, as I tell the occasional questioning Yellow Vester: “We’re Iranian media – you can’t possibly blame us for France’s problems!”
Somebody is getting blamed in France… but not those who are the actual problem.
Changing horses midstream – in this case the police chief – and openly demanding that cops be even more bloody shows just how desperate the Macron administration has been rendered by the Yellow Vests.
If the Yellow Vests revert back to pacifism, which means getting violently rousted by cops every Saturday sundown… I suppose that buys them time for this desperation to do more damage; maybe some cops will get so disgusted they finally change their ways and stop being part of the 1%, but that’s essentially hoping for a miraculous mass conversion: cops are not all secret Serpicos – it is most definitely the exact opposite.
If the Yellow Vests continue violent civil disobedience, that is the state’s fault: it is the only time the state has listened, so why shouldn’t the Yellow Vests do what works? They are suffering now, and have suffered since the Great Recession began.
Iranian media is not about to blame the protesters. Nor will we say, “They got what they deserved,” when France’s looming crackdown imprisons, maims and quite likely kills.
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Special video (unfortunately, only in French.)
A policeman speaks about the shocking methods used by the police to repress the Yellow Vests.
Published on Mar 17, 2019
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European Parliament backs US-led coup in Venezuela
[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he European Parliament has voted a resolution supporting the brazen US-led coup to topple Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, endorsing the Trump administration’s aggressive policy.
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Yellow Vests, Class Struggle and Spontaneous Revolution
by Gaither Stewart
This is a crosspost with Dandelion Salad, a fraternal site
Wherein the author reminds us (and cautions) against the probable mirage of spontaneous revolution without a dedicated vanguard party.
Image by Patrice Calatayu via Flickr
Rome, Italy
January 18, 2019
[dropcap]I[/dropcap]n What Is To Be Done of 1902 Lenin opposed revolutionary spontaneity because it “strips away the disciplined nature of the Marxists idea of revolution, leaving it arbitrary and ineffective.” True to himself, Lenin then returned to opposition to spontaneous revolution after WWI during the German Revolution of 1918-19 when in a spontaneous uprising against the post-WWI system Rosa Luxemburg and the Spartacist League failed in an attempt to overturn German capitalism.
Similarly, in November 1918, when Kurt Eisner, a politician of the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD), became Minister-President of a newly proclaimed People’s State of Bavaria—which Eisner considered a socialist republic—distanced himself from the Russian Bolsheviks and declared that his government would PROTECT property rights, he in effect declared his personal spontaneous revolt. Thus he had no external backing whatsoever and a faulty, and still capitalist program.
In the following January Eisner’s party lost heavily in the Bavarian Parliament elections and in February he was assassinated by a right-wing nationalist. As a result bedlam exploded—guns firing, people dying—in the Parliament palace overlooking the city of Munich. Movements for change and government broke down in Bavaria which has henceforth been dominated by Bavaria Catholic Christian Democrats. The Eisner People’s State thus vindicated Lenin and substantiated his fears of the devilish waste of spontaneous revolution. Things do after all go around and around but do not always return … a boomerang gone astray.
Revolutionary spontaneity is the belief that revolution should begin below, without the guidance of a revolutionary party, or a vanguard party as was said in Lenin’s times. Lenin’s fear, borne out by German events, was that a spontaneous movement could be infiltrated and taken over by reactionary forces. The Yellow Vests in France face similar issues today.
The dedication and tenacity of the people wearing the Yellow Vests (Gilets Jaunes- GJ) are wonderful. Their initial goals of lowering taxes on working people in general and bringing down the capitalist exploiter, French President Emmanuel Macron, are meritorious and revolutionary: Even their boasts of having no leadership may at first seem convincing.
Revolutionary spontaneity is the belief that revolution should begin below, without the guidance of a revolutionary party, or a vanguard party as was said in Lenin’s times. Lenin’s fear, borne out by German events, was that a spontaneous movement could be infiltrated and taken over by reactionary forces. The Yellow Vests in France face similar issues today.However, there are many howevers. For as Lenin wrote, “Revolution is (always) brewing and is bound to flare up.” Because revolutionary threat is frequently brewing, Capitalism is always as fearfully afraid as it is vigilantly alert to threats to its existence. For Capitalism’s ultimate fear is the people. The Yellow Vests are the personification and manifestation of the people.
To me personally the real “people” in command implies the ultimate arrival of some form of Communism, the specter of which haunts not only Europe of today, as Marx warned, but the entire western world. For the fundamental struggle today, as it was yesterday for Marx, is class struggle. And class struggle is what the Yellow Vests movement is thus far apparently and hopefully all about. The only identity of the Yellow Vests we can be relatively sure of for now is that it is representative of the people. Which people is to be yet determined. But I believe in the French case, in the cause of the real people.
At this point in time the Gilets Jaunes claim to have no leaders. True? Maybe. Maybe not completely. Who decides today, this Saturday, what is to be done? When yellow vested marchers-protesters reach the Arc de Triomphe, they can’t just mill around the arch all day. They have to do something. They have to go somewhere. Twelve avenues depart like spokes from the Arc de Triomphe on Place Charles de Gaulle, the Etoile. Shall they take Avenue Hoche or Avenue Foch, Victor Hugo or Avenue de la Grande Armée? Someone will shout over a megaphone “Let’s head for the Trocadero!” And off they go. Someone is leading. At the very start, now over two months ago, someone suggested that protesters meet at Place de la Concorde and march up the Champs Elysées carrying placards against President Macron’s gasoline tax “And hey, let’s all wear yellow vests, you know, like those in our car trunks in case you’re standing on a road at night changing a tire.”
So at that point certain persons step forward from the masses. First they are urban guides. Yes, take Avenue Foch. Prompters. Then they act as spokesmen of the movement to provide answers to petty-bourgeois journalists’ questions as to what it’s all about … or perhaps to a government arbiter who wants to propose unacceptable offers.
But simultaneously the legitimate question arises: Are those first spokesmen really representative? Are they elected. Or selected? That is often where the problem lies. Not always, maybe not even often, do the best step forward. Ambitious persons do. Well, it takes a bit of ambitious leadership too. For as Lenin and Marx always insisted: leadership is necessary. As the New York Occupy Wall Street Movement that began in September 2011 showed: without leadership popular movements wither away.
The anti-bourgeois, anti-capitalist movement of 1968 that swept across the world confirmed Lenin and Marx’s warnings that the threatened bourgeois reactionary class always lies in ambush, always trying to infiltrate such movements and to deviate them from revolutionary goals and vitiate them of their anti-capitalist nature. Secret services work that way. That’s their job. After all they work under cover.
Do rabid protesters-hooligans undermine their own movements by devastating shops and burning cars? Or do undercover agents do the dirty work to sully the name of the protest movement? For secret services of the world know how to use the “strategy of tension” and false flag operations: secret agents burn ten cars and blame it on protesters and then crack down on the whole movement. Secret agents were at work in Berlin in 1933: “Burn the Reichstag in Berlin, blame it on a Communist and establish the Nazi dictatorship.”
Infiltrators come from all sides, government agents on the one hand, political opposition on the other, support and join protest movements, and attempt to take them over from the inside and deviate them from their original goals. Example: Italy’s two government rightist parties, the Fascist Lega and Liberal Five Star Movement have tried to gain a foothold in the Yellow Vests in France. Wisely the Yellow Vests have thus far rejected such offers.
Is the Gilets Jaunes Movement spontaneous? Is that possible considering the national spread of the movement? If the movement is spontaneous I want to believe that it is developing a leadership internally, and that it can remain true to its goal of bringing about the collapse of the French government. In that sense it is a positive sign if certain members step forward as guides and spokesmen so as not to display the inherent weaknesses of just another fly-by-night movement without leadership.
Still, as always, the question is complex. Who will become the leaders? And will these leaders move in the direction indicated by the demands of the base of the movement: “Down with the government and the system it represents.” If the emergent leaders are true leaders then the revolutionary demands by necessity will be anti-system, i.e, anti-capitalist, not just for another variant of capitalism: free market capitalism, finance capitalism, state capitalism, welfare capitalism, democratic capitalism, corporatism or fascism, each and every one of which is ultimately based on capitalist exploitation of labor.
Therefore the necessity of anti-bourgeois, anti-capitalist leaders for any movement aimed at the overthrow of the system which ultimately means the overthrow of capitalism and its replacement by something else. Therefore the necessity of a leadership—vanguard or revolutionary specialists—to guarantee the original goals of the anti-systemic, anti-capitalist movement. Hopeful emergents from the underworld of the unrepresented protesters of forgotten classes with their besieged hopes, observers of class relations, journalists and writers, and political leaders must keep in the front of their minds: class struggle, working class, class struggle, capitalism, working class.
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Revolutionary wisdom
Words from an Irish patriot—
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[dropcap]L[/dropcap]et’s predict the likely trajectory of France’s Yellow Vest movement: What seems certain is that the only-on-Saturday protests will soon change into massive, permanent encampments in Paris, along the Champs-Elysées and Eiffel Tower. Other camps will be set up around the country, also at symbols of state power: the local city halls and tourist/historic attractions. This will make international news, because they will make for pretty pictures, but it’s the camps at road roundabouts and highway tollbooths which will make the necessary impact – an economic impact. The primary call will be for the resignation of President Emmanuel Macron and new elections, because there is no other apparent socio-political solution to France’s problems: The strain of repeated clashes already has France’s detested police force “at the breaking point”, so they will use a shock-and-awe violence to disperse the camps quickly. Cops on horseback will ride roughshod over the protesters as though they were Black & Muslim refugees in France and not actual people. However, this won’t last long - the French People, habituated to constant police brutality at political protests, will continue to endure and fight back. This will encourage the international press to book long-term rooms in France, and the crucial moment will come when the cops breaks ranks and go over to the People. Macron will then be faced with calling in the army, which in France is - as the French are - an extremely cliquish and walled-off group. Even though they are drawn from the People, their military’s extreme re-socialisation makes their commitment to the French People - as opposed to non-human French institutions - tough to gauge. I predict they will remain aloof - i.e., the French fall-back pose of social superiority - and will not save Macron, whom they never liked. Abruptly, Macron will be forced to step down, surprising everybody. Nobody will know what to do next, and the economy will tank. The European Union, slowed additionally by Brexit, will grind to a halt. The Eurozone, the world’s largest macro-economy and still the global economy’s weakest major link, will enter a crisis even worse than in 2012…but France will be focused on themselves (another popular fall-back pose). Several years of Cultural Revolution will ensue, creating entirely new institutions on both a national and pan-European level. I will be elected to a very high post despite not being a citizen of France, which will prove how “comrade-friendly” and socialist-inspired the Yellow Vest Revolution truly is. Since we are dreaming, I will also win the lottery, despite never buying a ticket. I will finally marry a nice, brown-eyed girl – she is also a supermodel who holds multiple doctorates in diverse fields, was a recent winner of the TV show “Top Chef”, hails from a family without problems of any sort to annoy me, and she will also never make me do housework or change a diaper. Ok, the last paragraph is obviously absurd, but everything up to “Cultural Revolution” is very possible. After all, I pretty much described the situation in Egypt in 2011 – human history repeats itself, whether in Muslim or Christian/atheist lands. [dropcap]I[/dropcap]’ve been reporting in France for 10 years come February, and I was also at Tahrir Square when Mubarak fell, so I know how it happened. I arrived just after the cop-mounted camels (not horses) charged, and I was there the night when news of Mubarak’s departure provoked firstly a short wave of an unexplained cry, and then an ocean of celebration. Thirty years of Mubarak versus 10 years of high Brussels and high-finance-imposed austerity - lotta difficult times for the average person. I certainly have grounds for such comparisons. In my blueprint for a Yellow Vest Revolution the only real difference with Egypt is when I imagined that French cops would switch sides: In Egypt it was the army which stepped in to save the People, revoking the power of the hated, black-vested police forces. I have heard and read from top rightish-but-leftish French sources, like Alain Soral, that the French police will save the Gilet Jaunes…which is nonsense. The West’s hysterical post 9/11 love affair with “First Responders” (excepting journalists, of course) is all a media concoction to hide this fact: the police are drawn from the most reactionary elements of society - they never go over to the crowd. In fact, they took their job in order to fight and manipulate the crowd. Admirers of French riot police fail to realize that cops are always selected from among the most class-illiterate, most intellectual brutal members of a society. The Egyptian army, by contrast, was broadly drawn from the mass of the People, and that is why the protesters at Tahrir repeatedly told me that they would never open fire. Of course the Egyptian Army - in collusion with the sabotaging Egyptian 1% and foreign powers in Tel Aviv, Washington and the West – would later turn against the Egyptian People. The reason? The Egyptian People installed Mohamed Morsi and a Muslim democratic party via long-withheld Muslim democracy, and that will always threaten the Zionist project, the Egyptian 1% and regional Muslim monarchies. But in 2011 hopes were high, and rightly so. Reactionary hopes that the Yellow Vests are done shows ignorance of modern French history [dropcap]S[/dropcap]o is this the start of a French Spring? Will it spread to the Eurozone? To turn a 2011 cliche on its ear: Is the European World finally “ready for democracy”? In my humble opinion: France is not there yet. What preceded victory in Egypt was not anger, testosterone or the desire for fighting: the endlessly repeated word at citizen checkpoints was “ehsan” - which colloquially means “easy” or “calm”, but which is actually an Islamic concept meaning “act as correctly as if God were seeing you and you were also seeing God”. Indeed: who is going to commit a crime when they see God right in front of them? Makes it hard to get away with anything…. The Yellow Vesters do not act with such faith and peace, but that is not a condemnation of their spraying graffiti on the Arc de Triomphe - that was awesome, and incredibly effective in grabbing attention. But until we see even one permanent camp, let’s scrap my Egypt model for France. But if France is not “ready for democracy”, I think that they are indeed ready to try. This is what many pundits likely can’t tell you, because they don’t actually cover protests (unless they are about gay marriage, or against the Catholic Church, or other fake-leftist nonsense): we should be very, very stunned that the always-undercounting Interior Ministry said 34,000 French protested as late as December 15 and that 50,000 people protested on January 5 - that is totally unprecedented in the Age of Austerity. I’ve never seen anything close to that over the Christmas holidays, and the same goes for August – both are traditional times of vacation. In a more-extensive article I wrote last month which explained the Yellow Vest movement in the correct context - as part of a “continuum” (8 years of (cumulative) state austerity) instead of the Mainstream Media’s isolated “vacuum” (“It’s just the diesel gas tax hike, we swear!”) - I predicted the movement would take Christmas off…and they did, but only relatively speaking – the first few Yellow Vest protests had 2-300,000 people. But if we are looking at this like social scientists or experienced journalists, then we have to realize that our needle has actually jacked into the red because such political turnout from December 15 – January 5 is totally unprecedented over this time period. France has had 8 years of huge, constant anti-government protests (galvanizing 10 times more people than the biggest Yellow Vest protest), but we have never, ever seen such political activity during Christmas (or August) in the last decade. France has always traded vacations for political momentum…but not the Yellow Vests. A lot of people in the media and in France are asking: Has the Yellow Vest movement died out? If you accept the logic of the above paragraph, the answer is: not at all, and we should get ready for something big. However, the Mainstream Media wants to fool us because they over-emphasize the (obviously capitalist-influenced) statistics of overall turnout and “protest growth rate”. Their foolishness is ignorant and lacks context, but they do (sadly) set the tone of discussion. Ignore their foolishness – expect hundreds of thousands of Yellow Vesters back in the streets by the end of the month. The Yellow Vests can’t die, because they have nowhere else to go [dropcap]A[/dropcap] lot of people have indeed put politics aside for Christmas, if only to get along with their family, but everyone in France will soon remember three crucial things: nobody has listened to the will of the French People in years; the French People have smashed/are smashing the mainstream political parties (Socialists, conservatives, Macron’s party); and, consequently, a new party simply must be formed due to this very real, very undeniable vacuum of undemocracy which is French politics in January 2019 (and which hit high gear in 2012 with Hollande’s backtracking on ending austerity). (Macron, par DonkeyHotey, 2018) Here is the crux of the biscuit, politically: Macron’s party was created and elected to destroy the two mainstream parties. It did. But Macron’s party is still an undeniable failure in the eyes of the French people - this is mainly because it was always a fabrication of the 1% and not a genuine “populist” movement. Y’all were crazy to vote for a neoliberal, EU-loving Rothschild banker who married his statutory rapist (because I’m a classy guy I did not detail Macron’s obvious similarities with rock-and-roll co-founder Ike Turner until after the 2017 election), but Macron was fabricated because Marine Le Pen imperiled the fortunes and Quantitative Easing of France’s pro-globalisation 1%. But when the destroyer of the destroying is destroyed, what is left? Answer: not much. As I wrote in last month’s article, a Red-Brown alliance (the true left of the Communist-inspired, meaning people like Jean-Luc Melenchon and his party; the often-fascist National Front of the Le Pens) is not at all likely in France. After all, they foolishly elected a Rothschild banker expressly because they could not make this temporary partnership of necessity. Not even a shotgun could get this wedding consummated. As I wrote last month: Melenchon and Le Pen are simply too polarizing and have too much negative history to ever unite the two groups. So, all five of France’s major political pathways - Socialists, Les Républicains of Sarkozy, Macron’s new Party, National Front (now Rassemblement Nationale) and France Insoumise (Melenchon’s party) - are unacceptable to and unwanted by the Yellow Vests. That’s why I think the future of the Yellow Vests is to become a French version of Italy’s Five Star movement, but that’s a whole ‘nother article. 2019 prediction: A Yellow Vest standoff with Macron is certain [dropcap]M[/dropcap]acron’s first cabinet meeting of 2019 revealed that, sadly, he was not visited by ghosts on Christmas Eve like Ebenezer Scrooge telling “ministers they should be more radical in their attempt to reform the country and law and order must be restored” is proof of that. Translation: Macron is not going to slow down his pace of radical social “reforms” (unemployment insurance and social security are next on the docket) no matter how unpopular he gets, or how many protesters get in his way. And why should he? I can’t stress this enough: yeah, over 1,000 protester arrests on December 8 was a record in my time, but I have seen countless days of hundreds of protester arrests over the past 10 years in France. Macron has truly grown up with this being considered “normal” governance, so why would he deviate from it and call off the police dogs? (We can blame this “normalized” state brutality on the UN, Amnesty International and other top NGOs, as they must have used up all their condemnatory breaths for when an anti-government protester was overcharged for coffee in Venezuela, Iran and China.) And why should he part 2? Macron has an absolute majority in Parliament, and this is a bourgeois/West European democracy, so he doesn’t have to. France’s liberal democratic system sucks and is based on the 19th century model, and they have to eat what they sow, which is bourgeois self-interest & contempt for public opinion instead of some tasty socialist-democracy cake. The best France can hope for in 2019 is that Macron’s job title has changed: [dropcap]A[/dropcap]t first, he was the 1%’s Golden Boy charged with implementing as many neoliberal reforms as fast as possible in order to roll back decades of advancements for workers - he succeeded. Now, given that his popularity is half that of Trump’s, he has a new charge: prevent total revolution/instability by giving back as few morsels as possible, which he has already done. But of course Macron’s 13-minute address on December 10 was unlucky - his main offer, 100 euros more to the monthly minimum wage, implicitly showed that he incorrectly views the Yellow Vests as merely the poorest of the poor - he doesn’t get it that 75% of France supports the movement because the Yellow Vests are middle class too. Austerity has accumulated to the point where a middle-class person in France has zero stability (what is this, the United States?!) I detailed last month how austerity has made what was once a comfortable salary in solid social safety net France - 2,000 euros - now quite precarious. His other three offers also failed to even come close to appeasing the class-based anger against the 1%: no taxes on overtime (gee, thanks massa!); encouraging bosses to give Christmas bonuses out of the kindness of their hearts (so far I’ve counted a whopping total of two French media stories of bosses who have acquiesced, but the law gives them until March 31 to give a bonus or not); the cancellation of a tax on grandma and grandpa’s (already repeatedly frozen) pension (designed to win back the approval of France’s 16 million pensioners). All of that was doomed from the start, if the goal was to placate the movement; undoing 8 years of accumulated austerity measures will truly require something like a Cultural Revolution. Given that Macron will not learn and desist, and given that trickle-down/austerity economics & social policies can only continue to their 40-year record of failing and creating misery - more intense confrontations are certain in 2019. That’s bad news for the former Golden Boy. From a human standpoint, Macron can only fail if his task is not to inspire but to intimidate: Small, notably balding, waifish Macron can never look like a tough leader you wouldn’t dare defy, such as a father figure, a general, a tribal leader, or the grandfather of the nation (although Macron is a grandfather at 41). Macron’s appeal was based on his claim to be a bold technocrat, and one who would sweep away the old order. Nineteen months later France’s economy is in the same stagnant shambles, and his “new order” is the old order at least 3/4ths of the country didn’t want and also on steroids. Can Macron really push his public opinion-defying agenda for three more years and get away with it? Just getting through 2019 looks difficult. But “Impeach!”, as the US proves with their similar calls, is simply scapegoating, media sensationalism, and not any remedy whatsoever to a Western nation’s deep structural problems caused by a rejection of socialist democracy. So what is coming in France in 2019? I am not a journalist who makes doomsday predictions to sell papers, but my answer is: major, major unrest. A protest during France’s vacation period: c’est pas possible! But it happened for the first time this century - it’s a little thing but it’s a big thing. Bigger things appear certain when all the Yellow Vesters come back from vacation, and they will be joining a hardcore group of protesters for whom we have no recent parallel. [premium_newsticker id=”211406″] [dropcap]T[/dropcap]he capable Max Blumenthal and partner James Kleinfeld produced this unusual video that deserves a wide audience. We are reposting it here because it packs a great deal of interesting detail and insight about French and European society and politics, state philosemitism and submerged anti-semitism; loud zionism, and Islamophobia, and many other uncomfortable questions and realities, but above all it is a window into the often confusing and complex political currents and undercurrents defining life in modern Europe, especially the gradual drift toward de facto fascism. Unless something is done to disable the chief engine of much of this social turmoil. Je ne suis pas Charlie - by Max Blumenthal and James Kleinfeld from James Kleinfeld on Vimeo. Donate to the filmmakers at paypal.me/jenesuispascharlie Le Pen rally. |
