Trying to get a sense of what’s really happening in France…
…isn’t easy.
There are widespread riots. But exactly who is rioting and why they’re rioting isn’t completely clear, although they certainly seem to be anti-Macron. But there are plenty of reasons to be anti-Macron, some emanating from the left and some from the right or from some other impulse or belief system.
The MSM so far seems to be saying the riots are “anti-elitist,” and that they began with people angry at a fuel tax increase. This article purports to get to the bottom of things, but I don’t think it sheds all that much light:
The protests were initially described as a largely working-class, grass roots movement with many among the demonstrators saying their livelihoods will be threatened by higher fuel prices.
However, the protests have now morphed into wider discontent at the high cost of living in France and dissatisfaction with Macron, whose popularity continues to fall. A poll by Kantar Public in late October showed that 71 percent of 1,000 respondents in the poll had no confidence in Macron.
The higher fuel prices were “part of the government’s proposed carbon tax designed to improve its environmental credentials” with the Greens, prior to the next elections. But many demonstrators feel it’s a hardship that will hurt those who are already struggling (unemployment is around 10% in France).
It could spread:
The French protests seem to be inspiring others in Europe with copycat riots in Belgium this weekend. Famke Krumbmuller, partner and head of political risk at OpenCitiz, told CNBC that the disgruntlement of protesters in France could be felt elsewhere in Europe.
“I guess what’s specific to this movement is that it is relatively apolitical, so they (the protesters) are not from just one party on the left or right. They’re white, middle-class people that are squeezed by the welfare state. They pay a lot of taxes but they don’t get a lot of benefits in return,” she told CNBC’s Julianna Tatelbaum in Paris.
Although I certainly don’t generally trust the NY Times’ take on things, sometimes they write straight news and do it well. That article describes something that sounds a bit like a protest from what in this country would be called the Trump voters.
Finally I turned to a blog I used to read regularly. It’s by a Frenchman and is called No Pasaran. He writes:
There is nary a single media report about the Yellow Vest demonstrations in Paris and France that I’ve read or watched that has not been slanted by Fake News.
It has (usually) not been deliberate, I gather, and nobody has said anything factually wrong; what is the problem is the fact that (very) important stuff has been omitted.
Fancy that.
It is not wrong to say that the demonstrations were caused by the government’s decision to raise gas prices. What is missing is that this is just one of several draconian measures dating back half a year, i.e., ‘tis the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.
For the past four to five months, the French government has done nothing but double down on bringing more and more gratuitous oppression and more and more unwarranted persecution measures down on the necks the nation’s drivers and motorcycle riders.
In fact, the imposition of ever harsher rules has been going on for the past decade and a half or so — whether the government was on the right or on the left …/…
Well, that didn’t quite give me the information I wanted.
And this is curious—student rioting that seems to be piggy-backing on the other riots but as far as I can tell has different motivations:
At the moment, all high school students who pass their final exams have the right to study any course at their local public university, for a nominal tuition fee.
This has led to some popular courses being oversubscribed and some 60 per cent of French university students do not finish their first year.
President Macron’s government wants universities to be able to apply admissions criteria and select students on merits such as exam results or entrance exams for some oversubscribed degrees.
That’s what the students are rioting over—the imposition of some form of merit system in a situation in which taking all comers has overburdened the resources available. I suppose you could call that “anti-elitist” as well, but it’s an anti-elitism that seems to be coming from the left, whereas the other rioters seem (accent on the word “seem”) to be coming more from the right.
Meanwhile, the so-called “far right” in Spain has made gains in recent elections. What does this far-right party advocate? Well, here’s one description:
A far-right party won seats in a Spanish regional parliament for the first time since the country returned to democracy following the death of dictator Francisco Franco in 1975.
Vox, which opposes illegal immigration and Catalan independence, won 12 seats in the Andalusia parliamentary elections, bringing an end to three decades of socialist rule in the southern Spanish region.
Vox did better than predicted.
“The Andalusians have made history… and got rid of 36 years of socialist rule,” Vox leader Santiago Abascal said…
Spain’s Socialist Workers’ Party suffered their worst result in history, picking up 33 seats, while its potential left-wing ally Adelante Andalusia (Forward Andalusia) won 17 seats…
Next year Spain will have municipal, regional and European elections which could be an even tougher test for the ruling Socialists.
Indeed.
I wonder about the permanence and meaning of all these moves to the right, or to populism, or rejections of socialism, or however one might want to characterize them. To me they seem—much like the Trump movement here—to not be deeply rooted but to instead be frustrated reactions to something else. That “something else” is loosely called “elitism,” but I actually think it’s many things: a combination of not wanting Big Government to dictate so much and take so much money from people to do things most people really don’t want it to do, a rejection of illegal immigration and open borders (a rejection that used to be a mainstream position but is now considered to be a “far right” position), and a feeling that much of life has gotten out of control in a way that feels ominous and threatening.
The impulse could go right or left, as the recent midterms in the US seem to indicate. I sense that it may be an impulse away from rather than towards, a deep frustration with the status quo.
“I sense that it may be an impulse away from rather than towards, a deep frustration with the status quo.”
Not sure I agree. I feel that it is away from a status quo that wants to impose more and more rules and regulations from on high. I guess it depends on whose “status quo” is being gored.
“Far right” often means little in modern Europe. I agree with you, Neo, that it’s hard to tell how this will go in Europe. They do not have the long history of personal freedom and constitutional government that we have, or had. Our European friends accept restrictions and controls far more readily than Americans do.
I keep seeing reports that the current rioting is worse than the 1968 riots. Interesting, particularly since the 1968 riots started Roger Scruton on the road to conservatism. He’s spoken about the impacts of his being there in Paris during the ’68 riots, and how they deeply affected him.
LYNN HARGROVE:
But some of those rules and regulations from on high are ones the people have grown accustomed to and demand, such as low cost college for all regardless of merit, the short work week, and many other aspects of the welfare state. Those things cost money, but they don’t want the money taken from them, either.
Good post. Most accounts emphasize the fuel prices and ignore the rest.
I posted this a couple of days ago on Chicago boyz
A people, disconnected from reality… will elect leadership disconnected from reality.
But reality, however long delayed… will impose its consequence.
These are the first stirrings of protest by people who still willfully deny the results of their own prior support for the socialistic, multiculturalist policies that have led to this state of affairs.
France is “a dead man walking”. Cultural and political suicide… its penitential atonement for its ancestral ‘sins’.
A people can build upon the past, while learning from prior generation’s errors. But a people who reject their past have nothing upon which to build.
Our present is the result of the interactions between our prior circumstances and the decisions we’ve made.
Our future is “the undiscovered country” a rising staircase of present moments that arise out of our past.
Muslim “youts” have regularly boiled out of the French government constructed ghettos, the Banlieues that circle many cities in France, to do a little celebrating, and have, with some frequency, torched many hundreds of cars of an evening.
Do you mean to tell me that they aren’t getting in on the action? It would seem to be the perfect situation for them, just join in the destruction, with average French citizens providing them cover.
It would seem that Macron has to do something, and fast, otherwise, if this rebellion keeps up and grows, is it possible that this rebellion, violence, and destruction could be the beginning of what Marxists would call a “pre-revolutionary situation” in France?
Snow on Pine:
That was one of my early theories, as well, but I don’t think it’s the case because even bloggers like the guy at No Pasaran, who wouldn’t be inclined to cover that up if it were true, hasn’t described it that way.
Some of this is perhaps wrapped around diesel vs. gasoline vehicles in France. Diesel is can be much more efficient and have a lower carbon footprint compared to gas. I think France has traditionally taxed gasoline much more than diesel fuel in order to unburden diesel based freight transport and commerce, maybe when more passenger cars were gasoline. But perhaps partly because the taxes were lower & fuel costs high, people gravitated towards diesel passenger cars.
While diesel uses less fuel and puts out less carbon, it usually puts out more NOx which can lead to more smog. France had a weather related incident a year or two(?) ago when the smog got extremely bad, in Paris(?). People blamed all the diesel cars.
For some reason diesel fuel prices went up about 20% over the last couple years, but now Macron has added another 25 cent/gal tax on diesel? This tax is normalizing the tax differential between gas and diesel, but it’s adding insult to injury, and most people own diesel cars.
The other sick joke is that France has already passed a law to ban the sale of internal combustion cars by 2040. Pay attention Americans, because as the NOx emission spec. here drops (as it has for years), and fuel efficiency requirements go up, it becomes impossible to make IC engine cars that meet both those requirements, as they are in conflict. The big fuel efficiency boost that the Obama admin. had mandated for the near future, and Trump has delayed or canceled, was a push towards the elimination of IC engine cars, IMO.
We have long time friends in La Rochelle and Agen. Politically they are mildly to right, French equivalent to our RINOs. They see this as a reaction to the overbearing presence of the EU bureaucracy and the recent flood of ‘immigrants’ from the ME and Africa. Apparently, there is a feeling that glamour boy Macron is Merkel’s poodle.
The EU bureaucrats are herding cats. Mission impossible.
Breitbart states that the protests by three groups including Yellow Vests in Marseille are all about substandard housing. Fuel costs, housing costs, a herd of cats indeed.
A detailed discussion, some of it directly from Paris by Tom Vonk ( see comments).
https://motls.blogspot.com/2018/12/yellow-vest-revolution-shows-surrealism.html?m=1
It’s hard that know what to make of it since the French seem to have mass riots about once every decade. I guess that it is because government there is less responsive than government here, and much more centralized.
The French had a very good deal for a while, including the now-infamous 35-hour work week.
After the past 10 years of mediocre economic growth, everyone is aware that this cannot go on, that reforms are necessary, etc..
But nobody wants to have to pay for it.
Rich people are already quite heavily taxed, in spite of serious tax evasion. Professionals and small business owners work very hard, they aren’t necessarily enjoying a leisurely lifestyle.
Ordinary employees are also quite stressed, they are pressed to work longer hours by their employers.
Obviously, there’s also resentment over having to support a large number of unemployed and other idle people, who are mostly not ethnically French.
A large proportion of France’s population, ~20%, lives in and around Paris. It’s not easy for young people to buy a place to live inside the city, in a decent neighborhood. The city and the government are conspiring to make car ownership difficult, by raising gas prices, reserving some important streets to pedestrians only, eliminating parking spots, etc.. One cannot always depend on public transport, due to strikes and other incidents. Job commutes are growing longer.
People are apprehensive that things will become worse. They don’t see Macron’s reforms as potentially leading to some better future, but only as budgetary band-aids at best.
This is Macron’s fault for not sketching a convincing vision. He ran as a cypher, as an apolitical technocrat, on smiles, sunshine, and vague promises, willing to pursue the best ideas, whatever those may be, trying not to antagonize anyone too much. But it looks like the French disagree with the details, which they didn’t know in advance.
Nobody wants to make any more concessions. They’d like others to make the sacrifices now. This is the only thing that unites the protesters.
Neo, your response to me was so very true. Kind of “not in my backyard”. And so very evident in CA.
MB: ‘The city and the government are conspiring to make car ownership difficult, by raising gas prices, reserving some important streets to pedestrians only, eliminating parking spots, etc.. One cannot always depend on public transport, due to strikes and other incidents. Job commutes are growing longer.”
Sounds much like the People’s Republic of Puget Sound. There has been an intensive war on cars here since the 1990s. The latest attempt was an initiative to institute a carbon tax (tax on gasoline and natural gas) to discourage the use of fossil fuels. Fortunately it failed. (Barely!)
This is what Macron is trying to force on the French middle classes. I understand there have been other steps taken earlier and that this carbon tax is the straw that broke the camel’s back. The French are an emotional people. When they protest, the protests are not peaceful or lawful. Macron has two choices, IMO. He can use force to put down the protests Or he can rethink his Green energy policy, looking for ways to make it more palatable to middle class Frenchmen. I doubt he will choose wisely because he is, like so many of the global elite, convinced that he’s right and the stupid rabble need to learn a lesson.
If you haven’t studied Agenda 21, all this will not make sense to you. Read up on Agenda 21 and learn what we all are facing unless we can choose leaders who understand that our prosperity and high standards of living float on a sea of fossil fuels. Maybe technology will develop alternative energy that will replace fossil fuels, but we aren’t there yet – not by a long shot. The global elite don’t get that.
Every religion ultimately demands blood sacrifice. The favoured religions of the left: socialism, multiculturalism, green-munism, Islam…demand more & more.
Eventually, the lambs get jack of the slaughter.
We’ll see if the knife hand is stayed. Or…if there’s more blood to be shed. Gonna be a mighty cold winter in France…warmed only by burning cars perhaps.
“Apparently there is a feeling that glamour boy Macron is Merkel’s poodle.” parker
Why, what could lead anyone to suspect that?
http://www.europereloaded.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/macron-merkel-300×201.jpg 😉
When a government proves it can’t actually govern, people will riot and revolt over anything- the reasons are not important, the riots themselves are.
If you listen to Tucker Carlson’s analysis, the actual cause of these riots is a series of measures by Macron’s French government–a hike in gas prices just one of them–that are designed to fight “Climate Change”.
But, in reality, whatever the excuse has been–formerly bringing equality and peace to mankind through Communist ideology or, now, “saving the planet,” it has always really been about the Left seeking power and control, and who has it and who wields it.
“To me they seem—much like the Trump movement here—to not be deeply rooted but to instead be frustrated reactions to something else. ”
Do you really mean to say these movements – Trump in America, “yellow jackets” in France – are not “deeply rooted”? Later on you write “a deep frustration with the status quo” which I think is more accurate. It is true that these outpourings can seem unfocused. Some issues can crystallize or galvanize these sentiments, such as immigration for Trump voters or gas taxes for the French. But I think even these are reflective of something more profound that is causing the “deep frustration”.
I don’t claim to have the answer to that. But perhaps people are feeling they are losing control over their own lives, that they are not just being lectured to but outright controlled by others who think they know what is best for everyone else and that everything would be great if those dumb people out there would just shut up and get with the program.
FOAF:
“Deeply rooted” in terms of adhering to a certain ideology, either right or left. This group feels desperate, casting about for help, and will go whatever way seems best at the time. If that person doesn’t deliver, then on to the next person who might deliver—whether that person is of the left or right.
I’m physically much closer to these events then most people here, and none the wiser for that.
Like you Neo I feel these are centripetal rather than centrifugal forces at work, in spite of the contradiction that both of France’s bitterly opposed populist movements are in favour of highly centralised State.
Whatever elses is happening, it is undeniable that Macron is demonstrating genuine “patriotism”…. The real thing. (After all, if it’s anti-Trump, which is the currently accepted world standard, then it’s got to be true, genuine, right…. SMART!)
But, but the people—those fools!—are having none of it!
(Did I say “the people”? Big mistake. Should have said “deplorables” or “yellow vests” or “plebes” or “populists” or “the far right” or “fascists”. Or all of the above. See, that way, “ONE” need not have to pay any attention to ’em—not at all…can laugh at ’em…can demonize ’em!! Those scum….they don’t even know what’s good for ’em.)
Just as an aside, the French also require motorist to carry an extra pair of glasses if you wear glasses, warning triangle, set of spare bulbs, and yellow jackets for each person in the vehicle. At one time you even needed to carry a breathalyzer in the car. Here is a sample kit that you need: https://drive-france.com/products/all-one-kit/
The yellow jackets are joining the various factions in France to a united whole. Why have they all got yellow jackets? Some Macronite decided they should carry one in their car.
The French political culture is better than it once was. See, for example, the demise of the Communist Party as a consequential force in electoral politics. However, you have so many disagreeable elements: anarcho-tyranny, Eurotrash arrogance and gross inbreeding among the political elite (see l’Ecole Nationale d’Administration), borderline personality disorder among the public at large, the hypertrophy of the subsidy state, excess centralization, witlessly fragmented local government, &c &c.
The French are an emotional people.
No, they’re not. They’re contemptuous of authority, of rules and conventions of any kind (except in regard to language, where they’re sticklers 24/7). They’re also practical though and don’t get their backs up about it if doing so costs them money. When you have a critical mass of defiance, the authorities cannot make the fines stick, and you get what we see.
Rich people are already quite heavily taxed, in spite of serious tax evasion.
When Mitterand became president, there was a huge reaction as he nationalized banks and instituted a wealth tax. The result was a mass exodus of well off people, especially the “Knowledge Economy” which decamped to Britain. There was a saying, “France has a Silicon Valley but it is located in the Thames Estuary.” Friends of mine, with more money than I had, bought chateaus in France any that time for 1/4 of their value. Four anesthesiologists bought a chateau with olive groves that was large and they shared it as a vacation home.
I recently read, Julian Jackson’s biography of DeGaulle, and it is interesting that all these French politicians of the past 50 years, before Sarkozy, were in that story. It was pretty revealing.
Vote Vichey Macron, when your tired of voting for the lesser of two evils!!
While I would like to think the yellow vests want the government to leave them alone, I fear that all they really want is for the government to lower the work week and provide them with more entitlements . . .
Art Deco: “The French are an emotional people.
No, they’re not.”
You may be correct. My experience of the French has been from a few visits to the country and interaction with French Canadians in Canada. Maybe I was unlucky, but most of those experiences gave me the impression that the French are more emotionally driven than other northern Europeans.
The yellow jackets are in the vanguard of those protesting the Paris Climate Accords. Note the daily barrage in our MSM about how we must get on board – or else. It will eventually take mass protests in the U.S. to stop the madness of Agenda 21.
Maybe I was unlucky, but most of those experiences gave me the impression that the French are more emotionally driven than other northern Europeans.
Alaistair Horne though so, at least in reference to the pieds noirs. I don’t see it. What I see is inner-directedness. (Which can have an unpleasant aspect). If you took video of someone each time they lost their temper and made a pastiche of it, they’d look quite volatile. You’re looking at them now in the midst of an emotional spike. The Gallic shrug is the emotional baseline.
The French are an emotional people.
No, they’re not.
Some years ago I read one of those books describing the various European national cultures to Americans. It described the French as a mixture between excitable, emotional “Gauls” and dour, phlegmatic “Franks”, and not entirely just Mediterranean vs. Northern. So maybe you’re both right. 🙂