Liberté, égalité, fraternité

[Felicity, I guess so]

From memory:

Devacquet, si tu savais
Ton projet, où on le met
Au cul! Au cul! Aucune hésitation!
Non, non, non!
A la réforme bidon
Oui, oui, oui!
A nos revendications!

1st 2 lines to tune of Banana Splits

[Pérou Flaquettes]

Pam has a point...

https://twitter.com/pamfoundation/status/1069559265713668096

[ursus arctos]

Radicalised by Adil Rami?

[Pérou Flaquettes]

Nah, she reads Le Monde : http://www.slate.fr/story/170763/pam...jaunes-sexisme

I didn't know but she's been a PETA supporter for 20-odd years apparently. I do hope she doesn't end up like Brigitte Bardot though (who is now thinking of turning communist, after being Front National for 2 decades and then apolitical. She is, of course, very pro Gilet Jaunes).

[Pérou Flaquettes]

BuzzFeed thinks that there is an important Facebook angle to this.

Facebook has indeed been central to the emergence of the Gilets Jaunes movement, especially as Fb has been quite hot on groups for a few yrs I understand. L’Obs has produced this short explanatory clip with semiologist & lecturer in communication Laurence Allard as analyst (interesting décryptage):

Comment Facebook est devenu la télé des "gilets jaunes"

[ursus arctos]

Quite interesting.

Their not so new name still bothers this old man.

[Pérou Flaquettes]

Ah, I think I know who you're thinking about (the Poujadists maybe...).

I see that the flics have been a tad heavy-handed in Mantes-La-Jolie yesterday with a group of about 140 high school kids:

Context is important here but still, when you know the full details it’s pretty disgraceful.

[ursus arctos]

Heh.

I was referring to le Nouvel Obs . . .

But I have been thinking about the Poujadistes a lot as well. The parallels are there, but there are also important differences.

[Pérou Flaquettes]

Ha, OK. Yes, both similarities and differences with the Poujadists.

Re the Mantes-La-Jolie incidents (clip in post #1008), as I was saying context is important here naturally but still, maybe not the best course of action from the police (especially the comments on the video by a police officer – and 4 hrs kneeling down or sitting down seems OTT, details here. It’ll make these kids and their siblings, and plenty of people, hate the police even more, very counter-productive from that group of police officers, it could backfire and fuel the lycéens protest elsewhere, 300 lycées affected today, plenty of incidents in Nice, Toulouse, Marseille etc., https://www.lci.fr/social/gilets-jau...s-2106666.html.

The police do a tough job in difficult conditions and most of them are fine I'm sure, individually. On a personal level, I'm very grateful to a few police officers in France when I got into trouble with the law in my youth and early 20s. Thanks to 2 of them in particular, I didn’t end up with a police record which would have fucked me. But Christ, the minority of cops who isn’t "fine" really isn’t fit to practice.

Mantes-La-Jolie is where this happened yesterday, not Greater Paris’ most glamorous town it has to be said and one cannot help wondering if those cops would have dared do sthg like that in the "beaux quartiers". It started on Tuesday when high school pupils blocked the access to the lycées Saint-Exupéry and Jean Rostand, both located near the notorious Val Fourré estate.

It happened after 2 days of incidents and quasi rioting there. Tense situation, population scared etc. Most of the police in Greater Paris/Ile de France are protecting Paris & area atm, as well as other hotspots in France, so there's a shortage of police in towns like Mantes, 35 miles away from Central Paris.

It started on Tuesday. A few lycéens were blocking one of the 2 lycées when some local Val Fourré casseurs started to set bins on fire nearby (most probably to lure the police & fire brigade into a trap, a common pastime in those areas). French lycéens have been protesting for a while (since 2016 I think) on and off against reforms to the Baccalauréat system and the new university admissions platform, Parcoursup (both sets of measures voted under Hollande).

When the police arrived, they were met by a group of 200 rioters from the estates who attacked them and threw missiles. Police replied with tear gas and the youths dispersed after a bit of a street battle.

The day after, same thing, but this time the lycéens started it. 300 pupils gathered outside of one of the lycées and set fire to barricades they'd made. Police turned up and again were attacked with stones and missiles. A more radical group, probably high on YouTube clips on urban guerrilla and what have you, went round a residential estate to nick big gas canisters in people’s gardens and sheds, cue reports of terrified locals. After finding what they wanted, they went back to the protest HQ outside of the lycée, set bins on fire and threw about 25 gas canisters onto the fire and burning barricades, with the gas canisters' taps open, supposedly to blow the whole thing up (which didn't happen). In a nutshell, the situation was getting out of control there.

The police arrived, cornered that large group of about 150 lycéens and forced them to kneel (apparently, they were allowed to sit down after a while, according to 2 journalists present there, see Libération link above) and put their hands on their heads. The police insist that they did things by the book given the difficult circumstances. They say that they only had 15 officers present at one point there to stay with the kids until the fleet of police vans arrived, that to safely contain this large group of pupils swelled by "armed protesters" according to them (very possible) they had to be very strict, that they didn’t have nowhere near enough handcuffs sets/Serflex handcuffs (zip ties) etc. so that’s why they made them kneel down, for over 4 hours for some of them (Police say that because of the size of the group it took a while to take everyone away in police vans).

Not sure the police officer heard saying in a clip "Now there's a well-behaved class… We’ll send a photo to their teachers that mustn’t happen very often" is in the procedure guidelines. Not the crime of the century but what a crass comment. FFS, teachers do as best as they can in those very tough areas.

[Pérou Flaquettes]

I like the spontaneity, the raw energy and anger of the Gilets Jaunes movement but past the initial stages (so, now really) this anger needs to quickly become productive otherwise it begets frustration and the whole thing descends into farce and anarchy.

There are undoubtedly many good points made by the Gilets Jaunes (eg a substantial increase of the SMIC, the monthly minimum wage increase, to ~€1,750 gross instead of the current €1,500, this SMIC really needs a good boost; less taxation for the 5 or 6 million self-employed people in France and a reform to the much-decried RSI, their Social security system; a real tax on wealth/capital etc. – although the GJ lists of grievances I’ve seen are a gallimaufry of unrealistic demands and a mass of contradictions, and we’re not even sure where these lists emanate from). However, the movement looks like a mob atm. I’m sure that there are plenty of level-headed Gilets Jaunes but the more strident voices we hear in the media basically want to do away with the French democratic model and abolish neoliberalism. They're not sure what to replace them with though, what to do, what models to adopt etc. it's all a big mystery. Protectionism? No, even the most hardline Gilets Jaunes admit it would be economic suicide. Full on socialism? No, too much tax and too restrictive. A hybrid system? No, too centrist. And so on.

Whenever journalists ask the GJ what they would ideally do after getting rid of the prime minister, of Macron etc. they just don’t know, they can’t articulate anything coherent. When asked by a journalist what practical solutions the GJ had come up with to implement their many demands, one of the Gilets Jaunes leaders said this in a clip I watched yesterday: "La solution c’est le peuple". I mean, if that’s their main solution and the extent of their "strategy", good luck with that.

The incoherence of the movement is concerning. It’s a young movement but it should be far more structured by now and have a recognised leader or a board of leaders, it’s too cacophonic. I also hate the Trumpian, anti-Republican aspect of the GJ movement, the uber-Facebookisation (reminiscent of Trump's "fake news" obsession), the mindless violence, the entropy, the sliding towards far right ideology, that mob mentality that advocates bypassing parliament and instead use a "referendum-based" system of governance. The current political praxis seems to be imbued with anti-parliamentarism and in that respect the GJ movement echoes Brexit and the yearning of millions of "let’s get out now" Brexiters for hyper simplistic, crass ideas.

I've heard GJs in Eastern France say that France should copy the referendum-based Swiss model. I didn't like hearing that because I dislike referenda ("Referenda have too often been the instrument of Nazism and fascism" Clement Attlee famously said, way before Thatcher’s "it’s the device of dictators and demagogues" – Attlee referred to Hitler and Mussolini who used referenda to oil the wheels of their fascist plans). I’m sure the Swiss system is fine for Switzerland but I can’t see it working in a vastly different country like France.

However, there might be something to do with this referendum idea after all. While I firmly believe that the referendum tool should only be used extremely parsimoniously (like, every 20 yrs), for very specific issues and come with a long explanatory notice and plenty of debate, public meetings etc. (as per the Swiss model I believe) and non-legally binding caveats, I can also see the flaws and limits of the French (or British) parliamentary system, it’s distant (1 MP for 120,000 people in France), wooden and unwieldy (and the Lords, WTF… The French Senate is a bit better but not by much, French senators are at least elected – not directly but by a panel of grands électeurs, elected officials, by indirect universal suffrage – but it’s frankly hard to see what real use both Upper houses have). In truth, I know very little about how the referendum system functions in Switzerland but maybe it’s something to consider after all now, to introduce more direct "grassroots" consultation, more citizens’ participation, and try to weave this into the parliamentary system. Not tons of it, but in little doses, why not. I don’t know, I’m not terribly happy with the current legislative system and it needs to be tweaked or mobs will be on the rampage every time they’re not happy with something.

[ursus arctos]

Whenever journalists ask the GJ what they would ideally do after getting rid of the prime minister, of Macron etc. they just don’t know, they can’t articulate anything coherent. When asked by a journalist what practical solutions the GJ had come up with to implement their many demands, one of the Gilets Jaunes leaders said this in a clip I watched yesterday: "La solution c’est le peuple". I mean, if that’s their main solution and the extent of their "strategy", good luck with that.

I've been struck by this as well, in large part because it was very much the case with the Five Star Movement's rise in Italian politics and has also been at the core of their failure in government (first on the local level, and increasingly on the national level). M5S was (and is) also very big on Facebook and other forms of social media.

Two big differences, of course, are the absence of anyone like Grillo (which, given how M5S has developed, may well not be a bad thing at all) and the absence of any real belief in technological utopianism (peoples' votes via the Internet, etc), which were largely due to the fact that Grillo's right hand man was a web evangelist.

[anton pulisov]

Loving the crazy ass rumour mill on Twitter

Apparently the gillets jaunes are being egged on by the CIA as a response to Macron's EU army suggestions.

[Pérou Flaquettes]

Ha ha, good one Anton.

(from the Le Monde interactive live thread on today's events in France):

https://twitter.com/ArianeChemin/status/1071342398461087744

What’s this "300" film? Is it recognised as a cult film for far right cranks in general, internationally I mean, does anyone know?

It's what Le Monde journalist Ariane Chemin (who broke the Benalla scandal) claims, that it’s a cult film for the far right Les Identitaires or "identitaires" people in general at any rate, those who sympathise with the views of this Les Identitaires group.

I have no idea, I've never heard of this film. Part of the film’s wiki supports that but it’s counter-balanced by reviewers who don’t.

Outside the current political parallels, some critics have raised more general questions about the film's ideological orientation. The New York Post's Kyle Smith wrote that the film would have pleased "Adolf's boys,"[101] and Slate's Dana Stevens compares the film to The Eternal Jew, "as a textbook example of how race-baiting fantasy and nationalist myth can serve as an incitement to total war."[102] Roger Moore, a critic for the Orlando Sentinel, relates 300 to Susan Sontag's definition of "fascist art."[103] Alleanza Nazionale, an Italian conservative political party formed from the collapse of the neo-fascist party MSI, has used imagery from the work within candidate propaganda posters titled: "Defend your values, your civilization, your district".

[…]

Newsday critic Gene Seymour, on the other hand, stated that such reactions are misguided, writing that "the movie's just too darned silly to withstand any ideological theorizing."[104] Snyder himself dismissed ideological readings, suggesting that reviewers who critique "a graphic novel movie about a bunch of guys…stomping the snot out of each other" using words like "'neocon,' 'homophobic,' 'homoerotic' or 'racist'" are "missing the point."[105] Snyder, however, also admitted to fashioning an effeminate villain specifically to play into the homophobia of young straight males.[106] Slovenian critic Slavoj Žižek pointed out that the story represents "a poor, small country (Greece) invaded by the army of a much large[r] state (Persia)," suggesting that the identification of the Spartans with a modern superpower is flawed.[107]

[Pérou Flaquettes]

New list of demands from the Gilets Jaunes doing the rounds on Facebook. Ah, I knew that good old Frexit would feature somewhere in their demands one day (#9), well there it is:

https://twitter.com/vincentglad/status/1070992642618613760

[sw2borshch]

This 300?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/300_(film)

[Pérou Flaquettes]

This 300?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/300_(film)

Yes (I put the film's wiki in my post). Have you seen it and if so, what's your take on it in relation to my Q?

I've been struck by this as well, in large part because it was very much the case with the Five Star Movement's rise in Italian politics and has also been at the core of their failure in government (first on the local level, and increasingly on the national level). M5S was (and is) also very big on Facebook and other forms of social media.

Two big differences, of course, are the absence of anyone like Grillo (which, given how M5S has developed, may well not be a bad thing at all) and the absence of any real belief in technological utopianism (peoples' votes via the Internet, etc), which were largely due to the fact that Grillo's right hand man was a web evangelist.

Another thing that’s striking IMO is that while many Gilets Jaunes are struggling because they’re on the minimum wage or thereabouts with a family, a mortgage/rent etc. (incidentally, the spiralling accommodation costs is the Number 1 problem to me) and have genuine grievances, a substantial number of GJ I’ve heard in the French media cannot objectively be put in that category. For instance below, people interviewed by Le Monde today in Paris (in their interactive live thread):

#1. Notre journaliste présent sur place nous signale à l'instant qu'une centaine de manifestants sont actuellement rassemblés au niveau de la gare maritime à Nantes. "L'essentiel, c'est d'être présent, que les gens se montrent et soient pacifiques, dit Florian Thin, 33 ans, entrepreneur dans le domaine du sport, qui participe à son premier rassemblement, faute de disponibilité les week-ends précédents. Il gagne 2000 euros par mois.

[…]

#2. Quelques manifestants à Bastille qui "n'arrivent plus à tout payer".

Sur la place de la Bastille, en surplomb du bassin de l'Arsenal, notre journaliste a rencontré un petit groupe d'hommes et de femmes venus de Brive, en voiture. Certains ont revêtu le gilet jaune. "C'est ici, la Bastille ?" lance un des manifestants, aide-soignant la nuit dans un hôpital. Il dit gagner 2000 euros nets par mois. Les mesures annoncées par le PM mardi ne suffisent pas, dit-il : "Il a décidé d'annuler des taxes dont la hausse n'était prévue que l'an prochain. Il faut augmenter les salaires."

So, #1 is a Nantes man who works in sports and earns €2,000 a month (probably net, after tax, people usually give their take-home salary in France, before income tax but it wouldn’t be much on that salary). And #2 is a hospital care assistant from Brive also on €2,000/month net.

This care assistant lives in Brive, where property prices are very reasonable, and earns €2,000 a month after tax (not including income tax but he wouldn’t pay much income tax on that, especially if he’s married/pacsé – civil partnership, same-sex and opposite-sex couples in France; a "fiscal household" system applies in France: you pay less if you’re in a couple, even less if you have children). His particular circumstances are not known and he may well be struggling but that’s a decent wage, especially in a cheap area, it’s difficult to feel too sorry for him, especially as a worker in the French system (welfare benefits, free or cheap access to a lot of things, subsidised transport etc. – for instance, your employer has the legal obligation to pay half of your railway/public transport season-ticket, on top of a transport system already heavily subsidised. This explains why the French equivalent of a London-Brighton season-ticket in the Greater Paris region (Île-de-France), the all-zones Navigo Pass, so about 40+ miles from central Paris in any direction, would only cost any employee £500 a year as opposed to up to 10 times more in Greater London/the South East. I know that the Gilets Jaunes movement is mainly rural, that most don't use public transport, that the catalyst was fuel prices etc. but it's just to illustrate the extent of the subsidies and welfare system in France, one way or another, they do benefit from it).

[ursus arctos]

Yes, the one whose Wiki PF quoted above.

As the Wiki mentions, it has been adopted by some hard right nutters in Italy, but I don’t believe that it is particularly meaningful for the far right across the board. I am more inclined to read this as yet another sign of the GYs’ inherent heterogeneity.

[ursus arctos]

Reportedly the first time these armoured vehicles have been deployed in Paris

https://twitter.com/bfmtv/status/1071390084396711936?s=21

[Pérou Flaquettes]

OK thanks ursus (post #1018), it's a fringe thing then.

Another similar example (to my previous post) in this special programme on the Gilets Jaunes (Youtube clip below). This Burgundy couple (at 23’10) live in a nice and spacious farmhouse that they’ve done it up (mortgage €600/month) and earn €3,000 a month after tax with very secure jobs. The woman is a hospital nurse (so a public sector employee – unsackable in France – and the man is an ambulance driver with a CDI (= permanent) contract. They don’t say in the clip but they will also receive family benefits for their 2 children (you get them for kids up to 20 year-old, their older child is 21 so his allowance will have stopped but only recently), about €300 a month in their particular case + various other benefits such as the (non means-tested) "back-to-school allowance" every September, €400 per child. They may also receive other benefits and professional-related allowances (primes et indemnités), it’s fairly common in France.
Of course, there are other factors that explain their anger about the way they feel about paying too much tax, and it’s to do with their rural or exurban location. The main factor is probably the fact that many of these rural Gilets Jaunes pay the same taxes as everybody else (although their council tax would be far less than in towns/cities) but feel that they do not benefit from the product of that taxation as they live in villages/small towns with dwindling amenities, although they're not too bad in France. They therefore get the impression that the taxes they pay are diverted to be spent in the Paris area and other urban centres and directly benefit urban population and "the elite-supporting public".

What’s disturbing and echoes what we’ve been talking about in the last few days (impractical and populist "solutions") is the Trumpian tenure of this short dialogue below between TF1 journalist Harry Roselmack and the couple about the possible solutions to this crisis, from 32’10:

Journalist Harry Roselmack: "People are fed up and in fear of the way things are evolving generally in the world but concretely speaking, what solutions to you advocate to get out of this situation, to re-establish a dialogue between governments and citizens? The solutions the Gilets Jaunes are putting forward are not clear, so what do you suggest?"

The man: "[the solution is] A referendum"

[his wife agrees]

Harry Roselmack: "A referendum on what?"

The man: "Well, a referendum on Macron and his government resigning for instance"

[his older child chips in: "And then what?", he asks]

The man: "If we hold a referendum we can start afresh, a referendum involving grassroots people who may offer other ideas. We listen to these people, we implement their ideas and if it doesn’t work, well, we change."

Harry Roselmack: "The type of changes you are suggesting is anti-democratic, voters have democratically elected a president [Macron] for 5 years"

Man and his wife (interrupt him): "We’re not in a democracy anymore in France."

Very quickly in the conversation the limits of the movement are laid bare, at least for a good proportion of the Gilets Jaunes, maybe not the majority but still a substantial number of them. It’s basically motivated by a populist "let’s shake things up" reflex so dear to the likes of Le Pen’s voters (not particular this couple, they say they’re apolitical and generally abstain in elections). The shit they want would bring us an autocracy, at best, a démocrature. They have a point about many things, but they really need to get organised very quickly and come up with more than "let's just have referenda with ideas from the peuple and when we don't agree we change things."

I’ve heard the same sort of tune from pensioners (in the media and among my relatives or acquaintances in France), retired people with good income (higher than that couple, without a mortgage, children etc.) and who support the Gilets Jaunes "because Macron has increased the CSG (solidarity tax) by 1.7% for (most) pensioners", something which I totally support. If I had my way I’d have gradually increased it by 10% for the more well-off pensioners, earning over €40,000 per fiscal household or €25,000 individually, I think he’s been very soft with them on this one (he set the threshold increase for the pensioners’ CSG a little too low though, but the whingeing pensioners I’m referring too, relatives and acquaintances, are very comfortable, yet some of them still whinge about paying too much tax. What these pensioners don’t say is that Macron has also scrapped one of the 2 property (council-type) taxes, the taxe d’habitation, it’s being phased in, so many people will save at least €1,000 a year from now on. A bit shit for communes as they’ll have less revenue to spend on a number of things but the pensioners who moan about having to pay more CSG should factor this in too.

[ursus arctos]

Finger on the pulse as always

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1071382401954267136?s=21

[ursus arctos]

And speaking of weird heterogeneous impulses on the far right, from today’s Lega-sponsored “Italy First” rally in Rome

[Lang Spoon]

The fuck?

[ursus arctos]

And here you thought that you knew some eccentric Italians.

[Etienne]

People aren't actually chanting "we want Trump" are they?

[Pérou Flaquettes]

John "by my reckoning" Lichfield ("Veteran on all things French and European" as per his modest Twitter handle) still hasn’t got it:

https://twitter.com/john_lichfield/status/1071408088081686528

Large group of urban guerrilla types try to march up to arc de Triomphe. Once again they don't look to me like the amateur provincial Gilets Jaunes guerrillas who wreaked destruction last week.

They weren’t "amateur provincial Gilets Jaunes guerrillas" John, they really weren’t.