French Uprising of December 2018

[Heaven Swan]

Multiple evasions are being practiced here to trivialize the posting of racist lies about refugees in Europe. This cannot be trivialized by additional propaganda suggesting that concerns about racism are all made up by excitable white male "social justice warriors," which itself is a right-wing attack term and projection. Shifting the topic through non-sequiturs about various injustices around the world (some real, some not) is evasive. Factual or analytic discussion about the French yellow jacket uprising has been hijacked.

Elvis wrote:
No. Sounder posted the racist rightwing article because he agrees with it, and has been defending it for pages.

The objectors to racist writings—those meanie-pie party-poopers who make racists feel bad—are not going to be the bad guys here.

(Pardon me for even taking this post seriously.)

Are the woke sleeping? Sleepwalking? Sleep-posting? Dr Evil responded with a coherent rebuttal of the points in Sounder’s post. But Jack and our estimed moderator (thanks again for your service Elvis) don’t seem to get what we’re talking about.

This is a discussion board for heaven sakes. We should welcome conflicting viewpoints so we can hone our analytical and debating skills, not try to shut them out and accuse them of being ....fill in the blank...which sends the discussion into a spiral of condemnation and chaos.

We can do better!

[peartreed]

Thank you Heaven Swan for adding your calm voice of reason to the discussion.

President Trump best illustrates the self-satisfied arrogance and intolerance that turns on its critics with personal insult and denigration while dismissing the basis for their disagreement. It is no coincidence that his podium is called a bully pulpit.

Similarly, people here are unconsciously displaying exactly that kind of attitude and behavior towards opposing views despite an obvious difference from Trump in both their intelligence and politics. It’s the same cruel disregard and disrespect for others.

In the context of the topic, the yellow-vested protesters on the streets of Europe are also outraged by the arrogant, intolerant, bullying power moves by the elite in power who have also unleashed security forces, vicious propaganda and distorting characterizations of the rebels. Macron and Trump share that mad, myopic mirror.

This forum is a microcosm of the world that we had hoped would be more evolved. Sadly, some compose put-downs for sadistic glee.

[brainpanhandler]

Thank you Heaven Swan for adding your calm voice of reason to the discussion.

President Trump best illustrates the self-satisfied arrogance and intolerance that turns on its critics with personal insult and denigration while dismissing the basis for their disagreement. It is no coincidence that his podium is called a bully pulpit.

Similarly, people here are unconsciously displaying exactly that kind of attitude and behavior towards opposing views despite an obvious difference from Trump in both their intelligence and politics. It’s the same cruel disregard and disrespect for others.

In the context of the topic, the yellow-vested protesters on the streets of Europe are also outraged by the arrogant, intolerant, bullying power moves by the elite in power who have also unleashed security forces, vicious propaganda and distorting characterizations of the rebels. Macron and Trump share that mad, myopic mirror.

This forum is a microcosm of the world that we had hoped would be more evolved. Sadly, some compose put-downs for sadistic glee.

I call bullshitty. Enough already. Can you take your complaints and whining to another thread please.

[peartreed]

The anonymity of avatars encourages ignoramuses to take cheap shots from the sidelines.

Dr. Evil engaging Sounder in discussion of his perspectives here is admirable, civil participation.

Laissez les bon temps rouler.

[liminalOyster]

I call exhausting platitudinous sanctimony.

[DrEvil]

The anonymity of avatars encourages ignoramuses to take cheap shots from the sidelines.

Dr. Evil engaging Sounder in discussion of his perspectives here is admirable, civil participation.

Laissez les bon temps rouler.

Wasn't really an attempt at discussion as I had very little hope of a coherent answer, just my view on why the article he posted was garbage and shouldn't have been posted in the first place, unless as an example of how fucked up some people's worldview is so we could all point and laugh.

[JackRiddler]

peartreed's clumsy divisiveness fail.

i think DrEvil and I agree the text Sounder wants to defend/justify/distract from is racist propaganda and big lie.

[Sounder]

Funny thing. I have always liked Dr. Evil because he was the first person to approach me on a point by point basis. Well, to my mind, one of the few to break an informal no platforming situation. But there are other things that I will not be drawn into so the result produced will be less discussing (and more tags).

Uggg, I don't like this. OK, French uprising? Take Heaven Swans sig line seriously and ask; Who are the oppressors?

I would love to see several versions of commentary from genuine French folk and admit that I do not see much in the places I check out.

We see the 'We are Change' material, where is the, bound to be more informed, French perspective?

[DrEvil]

^^Probably in France, and in French. You can use Google Translate, but you still need to know where to start, as translating random pages until you find the good stuff is tedious.

To do it, just go to https://translate.google.com and paste the address of the offending article into the left box, then click the link in the right box, or if you're using Chrome, go to settings, scroll down and open the advanced settings, and under language there should be a toggle for translating webpages. When it's on you should get an automatic popup offering to translate when you go to a page in a different language.

Here's a random example (first hit for Gilets Jaunes in Google News in french):

https://translate.google.com/translate? ... la_1704492

[Jerky]

Well, I myself am a French speaker/reader (it's my mother tongue) and I do try and keep up with global French news (both here in Canada's French province of Quebec, in France/Belgium/Switzerland, and in the former colonies where French is still in widespread use... mostly Africa). And what I can tell you, from my perspective, boils down to...

It's complicated.

And things don't translate very well, politically, from France to North America... or even France to England. There are so many cultural differences, both subtle and significant, that it really does require something like an undergraduate half-credit course to get a real grip around things with anything like a fair and nuanced view that takes the unique French history and perspective into account.

The French are a very paradoxical people. They have a well-earned reputation for a simmering anti-Semitism among a significant minority of both conservatives and leftists... and yet they have more laws than any country in the world (probably including Israel!) prohibiting public statements of anti-Semitism or Holocaust denial... AND they enforce those laws. They have historically been very welcoming of new citizens... but they expect these new arrivals to fully embrace the French language and the French style of living as soon as humanly possible, to such an extent that it makes them seem xenophobic sometimes. They're some of the most hardcore atheists on the planet... and some of the most hardcore old-school Catholics, too. The list goes on.

As for the yellow jackets, when viewed within the broader historical context of French public demonstrations, it shouldn't be so surprising. The French love to complain, and they love to stage public demonstrations to do so. Usually, these demonstrations have a clear focus and/or objective. However, occasionally, like in 1968 (and, some would argue, current demonstrations), they seem to be somewhat of a multi-cause/multi-purpose venting of built up social steam.

So, is the Yellow Vest movement a racist or anti-immigrant one? I don't think you can say that. Have some racist individuals and organizations taken advantage of the Yellow Vest movement by latching onto it in order to make themselves look more influential than they really are? Have outside forces (my dreaded New Fascist International(e) conspiracy!) taken it upon themselves to do whatever they can to turn up the heat on these demonstrations in order to fuck with the West, mess with the stability of NATO, and reduce global desire/respect for liberal democracy in general? Personally, I think that's a given, in that they would be foolish NOT to do so.

Anyway, that's my 2 cents.

Cheers!
yer old pal Jerky

[JackRiddler]

Kevin Ovenden, in response to an FT article on Macron's latest maneuver.

https://www.ft.com/content/3e2bce58-1e57-11e9-b126-46fc3ad87c65?fbclid=IwAR21dwRRRkOIofNBcNlbPpXsX3WZWvAFvRdu8XahdguV-72K389ftTTuUOc

Paris vows to extend labour reforms despite ‘gilets jaunes’
Macron aides say protests have spurred government to redouble liberalisation efforts

Muriel Pénicaud says the gilets jaunes protests are both 'a danger and an opportunity' ©

Victor Mallet in Paris JANUARY 23, 2019 81

Emmanuel Macron’s government is to put the sclerotic French labour market at the heart of its plans this year, after months of gilets jaunes protests that have heaped pressure on the president to deliver tangible improvements to living standards.

It is not just hubris on a grand scale

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

This is a cunning political attempt by the Macron government to roll with the blows inflected by the gilets jaunes movement (by abandoning some regressive tax moves), but to frame it and dominate it ideologically as being at least compatible with liberalisation of the labour market and a smaller - or rather, more neoliberal - state.

Through its strategy of holding a "national debate" about the crisis brought to a head by the gilets jaunes the government is casting the 11 week movement as simply an amorphous "tax revolt".

A cry of pain from the "small people" of France against accumulated hardship, to which the government offers labour market deregulation and essentially Thatcherite solutions. That is a form of so-called populism in its own right.

The movement has gone beyond in all sorts of ways the initial revolt at regressive taxation masquerading as an environmental measure.

That said, Macron's gambit should not be discounted.

It is a demonstration of the threefold response of embattled elites and their political extensions: repression, limited concession, and political intervention to divide movements, usurp sentiment and find new bases of support. They adapt and intervene on the political plane.

The French government aims to exploit ambiguities, unevenness and confusions in the revolt. The FT here points to the strand of thinking among the gilets jaunes that is antagonistic to "the trade unions", seeing them as just another vested interest that looks after only their own and not the millions not in a union or covered by collective bargaining.

That strand is there. It is reinforced every time union officials refuse to find points of convergence with the gilets jaunes or even, as some have, denounce the movement for violence or somehow being a plaything of the right.

But that is just one side of the picture. The other is efforts, particularly by radical left activists and forces, to bring trade unionists into the protests, bring the protests into the organised working class and workplaces, and to fuse the revolt with the weapon of strike action.

Both features are present. So it is by no means easy for the government to pull off this redirection of popular working class anger against established union organisation and its expression over recent time in labour laws that the bosses want to rip up.

But there is going to be a battle on this - not just over the continuation of the movement's actions, but a national political battle over their meaning and direction, and about the direction of France as a whole, its society, economy, politics and relations between the classes. A battle about national political alternatives.

The gilets jaunes started in provincial France, non-centralised and at the point of atomised suffering over the cost of living.

That was a source of great strength and vitality. And they continue.

It also led some anti-capitalists to take that initial snapshot and force the movement under a theory that spurns the formation of a generalised political response and construction of democratic means of centralisation of the struggle.

There's an element of paradox, because this general theory - Toni Negri is one of its best known and most sophisticated advocates - says it is eternally open and doesn't bring eruptions of revolt under general strategies.

The idea of an ever morphing multitude evading the questions of the state and therefore of politics also entails counterposing such multitudinous revolts to any strategic focus upon the workplace and the means of production as an especially critical site of struggle and of overthrowing the system.

In making that counterposition it also dismisses the "old communistic left" as less than radical in our time of neoliberalism permeating all areas of life. The left is seen as as systemic as the right by being trapped in a never ending and contained game of domination.

The historic left is accused of being fixated on an outdated "productivism" that falsely privileges the working class and its capacity to organise at the point of production, as against the more general field of varied and autonomous resistance in the reproduction of everyday life dominated by market and oppressive relations of all kinds.

It is true that institutions of the working class and their bureaucracies can and do have a sectional conservatism that rests upon worker organisation merely to ameliorate the terms of exploitation and domination, not to overturn them fundamentally.

But it is not true that the anti-capitalist and radical left that places strategic centrality upon the potential of the organised working class does so out of either dismissal of other sites of struggle or a supposed "productivist" obsession with the "traditional worker" that no longer fits in this time of capitalism.

It does so because of the strategic centrality of wage labour to the system. Because of the potential power that can be brought to all movements of resistance by militant organisation at the point of production - the point of profit making - and if activated, its potential to form a counter-power that can confront successfully and democratically the centralised force of the state and its political strategies.

It is a perspective that draws not only on the Paris Commune of 1871. It is also from the development of, say, the Iranian revolution of 40 years ago. The multitudinous, massive street protests and clashes with the repressive state extended into the oil fields. There it created the level of disruption and organised power that both fused with the general upsurge and tipped the balance, forcing the end of the shah's brutal regime.

In a sense, Macron and his advisers are backhandedly acknowledging this truth. They are prepared to duck and dive over indirect taxation and the cost of living experienced by most of France as atomised individuals.

But that is in order to carry through the central strategic aim - and the one that has defied French presidents for 25 years - of ruthlessly and decisively shifting the balance of power between wage labour and capital, at the point of production, in the office and on the shop floor. It is to weaken class organisation and to destroy its achievements in the legal system governing employee rights.

He and the multimillionaires he gathered in Versailles today are clear about this strategic imperative.

His government is also clear about politically aiming to exploit the weaknesses (despite all its strengths) of the gilets jaunes movement to achieve this.

The strategic centrality of working class organisation that can disrupt and exert control of the means of production is not posed by tired old Marxists. It is posed in the political counter-attack by the French state against a militant revolt that at points has raised insurrectionary questions.

Artificially and poetically turning those weaknesses into strengths in order to fit a theoretical doctrine of decentred and autonomous struggles provides no answer.

It is not just about the debates in the movement these last 20 years. It is now and concrete. It is about how practically to respond to the French state's gambit that relies precisely on seizing upon absences of overall political strategy and disjunctions between militant revolts and critical centres of working class power.

You may not be interested in grand strategy or may see politics as de-radicalising of the beauty of autonomous revolt.

But strategy and politics are interested in you, especially if you refuse and revolt - joyously.

Macron and the French state understand this.

The movement, through its democratic engagement with itself, will have to do so also.

[Heaven Swan]

Good point about getting news directly from the source. My French is rusty but Italian is so close to Spanish that with the bit of study I’ve done I understand it.

And I finally have a day off and am watching this video filmed in Rome a couple of weeks ago. Italian Yellow Vest sympathizers are meeting with French Yellow Vests and translating into Italian, so if you understand French or Italian you can understand.

Wow!!! I haven’t been this inspired in a long time. Something is definitely moving... Oh how lucky we are to be alive in this time of change and revolt.





Point of interest—The group sponsoring this meeting is called 101. The event was filmed and broadcast by ByoBlu. I looked into them. They are an Italian News blog that was demonetized by Google and accused of spreading fake news around the time of the censoring of blowhard Alex Jones. I watched a few ByoBlu news programs, which apart from the usual sexism found on both left and right, (they blamed Globalism on Hillary, Merkel and Boldrini, ha ha) I quite liked.

[Heaven Swan]

^^^

For those who don’t understand French or Italian, here are a few things the French Yellow Vests said in the above video. This Jan 12, 2019 Rome Meeting was the first public encounter with French Yellow Vests outside of France.

They said:

That they leave all political labels (parties, unions...) behind when they put on the yellow vest.

That the Yellow Vests are completely autonomous, locally organized and have no official structure or spokespersons.

That they are the “People vs the Oligarchs” and the descendants of the “Sans Culottes” of the French Revolution of 1789.

That the fuel tax was the last straw, but that they have other demands. They began On Nov 25th, 2018. (Act 1).

That, from the beginning, the mass media accused the movement of being manipulated by the extreme right, but that they have been and are a horizontal organization encompassing all types of common people: apoliticals, non voters, left and right.

Non-violent demonstrations are called every Saturday.

They have been attacked by police with:

Night sticks
Water cannons
Flash ball guns
Teargas
Grenades that provoke momentary deafness

13 people have been killed and hundreds injured, some very seriously.

Mass media continually diffuses disinformation aimed at discrediting them.

Who are the Gilets Jaunes?

— They are people insulted by Macron when he suggested that the unemployed should cross over to the other side of the street to find work. The people who can no longer live dignified lives based on their work. The people who are no longer stuck in their homes where their salaries no longer allow them to reach the end of the month. They meet in the streets and parking lots, they eat together and discuss ways to create a future for their children. They are workers, pensioners and unemployed. They carry the French flag and sing the Marseillaise. If they, who meet in parking lots in the freezing cold can come together to articulate their future then anything is possible.

—-

There’s more and it’s very inspiring. I have no more time now but hope to add more later.

[JackRiddler]

Thanks for that HS. There is such a thing as overanalyzing something that for the most part actually is as simple as it appears on the surface, although there are always layers of complexity underneath. We live in simpler times than we think, and working class people who can't make ends meet rising up to protest against oligarchy and its imminent abuses is compelling in itself. It does not need anyone's master plan or an additional ideology to come together. It will be forced to define itself further through the struggle and the pushback, and the people doing it will soon enough choose which of the visions for a future arising among them and advanced to them from existing organized forces are the most compelling and seem most practicable.

[Heaven Swan]

Part II
Continuation of the translation of some of the things said by the French Yellow Vests at the meeting in Rome on Jan 12th, 2019
----


In France 9 million people live below the poverty line and 6 million are unemployed.

What do the Gilet Jaunes do?

They march on the streets, the highways and the peripheral roads to protest.
They block the toll booths on the highways, and let the motorists pass without paying the toll.
They protest in front of the headquarters of the television networks, in front of the multinational chain stores, and block semi truck's access to gasoline

They build temporary shelters from the rain because they know that this movement will not finish soon. They spent their Christmas there discussing and sharing a holiday meal together, no longer alone with the problems of un and under-employment.


------
The tornado that has shook up France in the past two months is a genuine popular uprising against the president of the republic, the man who wants to run France like a start-up and reform France following the recommendations of the European Union to reduce the budget deficit. But this president, sustained by neoliberals and international financial powers, underestimated the French people when it comes to defending equality.

Macron who promoted European sovereignty now is faced with a popular movement that aspires to the sovereignty of the French people.

What are the demands of the Yellow Vests?
(these are the original demands, which are being revised and added to)

Raising of buying power i.e.raising salaries and pensions
An end to homelessness
Re-nationalization of the services of gas and electricity, that they once again become public services
A ban on profiting from the care of elderly people
Universal Health care
Providing adequate mental health care and services for the disabled
Pension reform
Raising of benefits for the disabled and family and housing subsidies
Reform of the financial system which is the source of the inequality
Tax and sales tax reform
Recalibrating the taxation of the big multinational companies and small and medium businesses and artisans
Reform the management of territory to favor small business and block construction of big shopping centers in the urban periphery
An immediate stop to the closing of small train lines, Post Offices, schools, nurseries and local hospitals
Give priority to train transport of merchandise
Put in place a grand plan to insulate homes in order to move towards a green future and lower fuel costs for families
Tax maritime and airplane fuel
Preserve the manufacturing industry and the jobs of the people who work in it, stopping the outsourcing and moving to other countries
End CICE, a treaty of Hollande, a failed policy
Stop the policy of austerity and refuse to pay the illegitimate interest charged on the public debt
Stop the fiscal fraud of almost 100 billion
Prohibit the sale of public resources such as dams and airports

But the Gilet Jaunes go further. They want to change the political institutions of the country. They want to establish a system of citizen referendums (called RIC) where they can express themselves on laws that concern them. They want to be able to propose laws snd change the French constitution. They have put the whole political and economic system that has dominated us till now is on the discussion table.

The Yellow Vests rebelled. They were hit by neoliberal globalization and by the European Union, a true war machine that takes away competition between countries and deprives the people of sovereignty. The Gilet Jaunes are reinventing democracy in peoples assemblies. And now the fear is switching sides.

What will tomorrow bring?
....
Who will win who will lose? The future is not yet written.
But the determination of the Gilets Jaunes remains strong.

More than ever, international solidarity makes sense. In 22 countries, Yellow Vests have appeared, who make their governments quake, reject social injustice and reexamine privilege.

This reminds us of the night of August 4th, 1789--The Night of the Abolition of Privileges
Now more than ever the aspiration to Liberty, Brotherhood and Equality strikes fear in the hearts of the powerful.