Roar Mag., Title: “The Gilets Jaunes have blown up the old political categories”
Link: ROAR Magazine — by Jerome Roos
Excerpts:
"Four weeks in, the uprising also continues to confound mainstream journalists and experts. “The gilets jaunes have blown up the old political categories,” one French media activist told ROAR on Saturday night, after a long day of riots in the capital. “They reject all political leaders, all political parties and any form of political mediation. No one really knows how to confront or deal with this movement — not the media, not the government, nor anyone else. What we are witnessing is unprecedented in French history.” While the outcome of these dramatic developments remains uncertain, it is clear that France is currently living through a rupture of historic proportions, taking the country onto uncharted terrain. For the left, the emerging scenario presents both exciting opportunities, but also a number of significant political risks. How are radical and autonomous social forces to insert themselves into this unfamiliar and uncertain situation without losing sight of the dangers that lie ahead?
[...]
Given its inherent complexity, the international media have so far largely failed to make sense of the puzzling yellow vest phenomenon, with many reports lapsing into an uncritical regurgitation of the disdaining moralism proffered by the French bourgeoisie. One columnist for The Guardian even wrote that they had “never seen the kind of wanton destruction that surrounded me on some of the smartest streets of Paris on Saturday — such random, hysterical hatred, directed not just towards the riot police but at shrines to the French republic itself such as the Arc de Triomphe.” For good measure, the author added that “an extreme wing of the gilets jaunes has turned towards the nihilist detestation of democratic institutions and symbols of success and wealth.”
[...]
For all his bourgeois hallucinations, however, it should be clear that Cohn-Bendit’s derision of the gilets jaunes is far from an isolated occurrence; indeed, it neatly reflects the intense contempt in which the French ruling class have historically held the uneducated jacques bonhommes, the insolent frondeurs, the ill-mannered sans-culottes — in short, all the uncultured peasants and lumpen who somehow mustered the conceit to insubordinate the divine authority of the king. The widespread use of the term casseurs is a testament to this, as is the statement by Interior Minister Christophe Castaner last week that “the movement has given birth to a monster.” It was a choice of words that would not have stood out among the litany of dehumanizing abuse the Versaillais once hurled at the communards, before proceeding to indiscriminately massacre over 20,000 working-class Parisians accused of having participated in the revolt of 1871. As the celebrated young French author Édouard Louis astutely put it, the gilets jaunes, just like their predecessors, “represent a sort of Rorschach test for a large part of the bourgeoisie, [forcing] them to express their class contempt and the violence that they usually only express in an indirect way.”
[...]
If the gilet jaune phenomenon remains confused and difficult to pin down politically, that probably has less to do with any supposed moral failing on the part of the French working class than it has with the thoroughly disorganized and depoliticized nature of the country’s post-democratic late-capitalist society — itself a consequence of four decades of neoliberal restructuring and political decomposition.
[...]
The emerging areas of confluence between these ongoing social struggles and the mass mobilizations of the gilets jaunes hint at the possibility that the yellow vest uprising, despite starting out as a tax revolt with conservative overtones, may nevertheless be headed in a more progressive direction. One exciting development in this respect is the recent call by the gilets jaunes of Commercy, in northeastern France, to propose the construction of “autonomous local committees, direct democracy, a sovereign general assembly, delegates with a precise mandate, revocable at any time, rotation of responsibilities.” On this basis, local groups would federate “to avoid political recovery, self-proclaimed leaders, or delegates without an imperative mandate from the grassroots.” As local organizer Pierre Bance puts it, “the time of the communes still rings out!”
[...]
In this light, the more immediate risk for the left would appear to lie in the coming state crackdown on some of the more radical tendencies within the movement. After a strategic reorientation in the wake of its disastrous handling of Acts II and III, the contours of the government’s new approach clearly began to emerge in Macron’s televised address to the nation on Monday night, in which the humiliated president — speaking from behind a gilded desk in the golden room of the Élysée Palace — declared his intent to take into account the grievances of ordinary citizens while simultaneously vowing “zero tolerance” for violent troublemakers. These statements are clearly part of a broader attempt to co-opt the “apolitical masses” within the yellow vest movement while simultaneously cracking down on its “extremist fringes”.
[...]
Last Saturday, one protester captured the general mood in France with a simple question written on the back of his yellow vest: et maintenant? What happens next is anyone’s guess — but it is now rapidly becoming clear that the centrist political establishment is in the process of imploding. Even if the consequences remain uncertain, perhaps it is precisely in this universal state of confusion that the left must now be looking for answers.""
"… the most beautiful of all doubts
Is when the downtrodden and despondent
raise their heads and
Stop believing in the strength
Of their oppressors." - Bertold Brecht
Excerpts:
"Four weeks in, the uprising also continues to confound mainstream journalists and experts. “The gilets jaunes have blown up the old political categories,” one French media activist told ROAR on Saturday night, after a long day of riots in the capital. “They reject all political leaders, all political parties and any form of political mediation. No one really knows how to confront or deal with this movement — not the media, not the government, nor anyone else. What we are witnessing is unprecedented in French history.” While the outcome of these dramatic developments remains uncertain, it is clear that France is currently living through a rupture of historic proportions, taking the country onto uncharted terrain. For the left, the emerging scenario presents both exciting opportunities, but also a number of significant political risks. How are radical and autonomous social forces to insert themselves into this unfamiliar and uncertain situation without losing sight of the dangers that lie ahead?
[...]
Given its inherent complexity, the international media have so far largely failed to make sense of the puzzling yellow vest phenomenon, with many reports lapsing into an uncritical regurgitation of the disdaining moralism proffered by the French bourgeoisie. One columnist for The Guardian even wrote that they had “never seen the kind of wanton destruction that surrounded me on some of the smartest streets of Paris on Saturday — such random, hysterical hatred, directed not just towards the riot police but at shrines to the French republic itself such as the Arc de Triomphe.” For good measure, the author added that “an extreme wing of the gilets jaunes has turned towards the nihilist detestation of democratic institutions and symbols of success and wealth.”
[...]
For all his bourgeois hallucinations, however, it should be clear that Cohn-Bendit’s derision of the gilets jaunes is far from an isolated occurrence; indeed, it neatly reflects the intense contempt in which the French ruling class have historically held the uneducated jacques bonhommes, the insolent frondeurs, the ill-mannered sans-culottes — in short, all the uncultured peasants and lumpen who somehow mustered the conceit to insubordinate the divine authority of the king. The widespread use of the term casseurs is a testament to this, as is the statement by Interior Minister Christophe Castaner last week that “the movement has given birth to a monster.” It was a choice of words that would not have stood out among the litany of dehumanizing abuse the Versaillais once hurled at the communards, before proceeding to indiscriminately massacre over 20,000 working-class Parisians accused of having participated in the revolt of 1871. As the celebrated young French author Édouard Louis astutely put it, the gilets jaunes, just like their predecessors, “represent a sort of Rorschach test for a large part of the bourgeoisie, [forcing] them to express their class contempt and the violence that they usually only express in an indirect way.”
[...]
If the gilet jaune phenomenon remains confused and difficult to pin down politically, that probably has less to do with any supposed moral failing on the part of the French working class than it has with the thoroughly disorganized and depoliticized nature of the country’s post-democratic late-capitalist society — itself a consequence of four decades of neoliberal restructuring and political decomposition.
[...]
The emerging areas of confluence between these ongoing social struggles and the mass mobilizations of the gilets jaunes hint at the possibility that the yellow vest uprising, despite starting out as a tax revolt with conservative overtones, may nevertheless be headed in a more progressive direction. One exciting development in this respect is the recent call by the gilets jaunes of Commercy, in northeastern France, to propose the construction of “autonomous local committees, direct democracy, a sovereign general assembly, delegates with a precise mandate, revocable at any time, rotation of responsibilities.” On this basis, local groups would federate “to avoid political recovery, self-proclaimed leaders, or delegates without an imperative mandate from the grassroots.” As local organizer Pierre Bance puts it, “the time of the communes still rings out!”
[...]
In this light, the more immediate risk for the left would appear to lie in the coming state crackdown on some of the more radical tendencies within the movement. After a strategic reorientation in the wake of its disastrous handling of Acts II and III, the contours of the government’s new approach clearly began to emerge in Macron’s televised address to the nation on Monday night, in which the humiliated president — speaking from behind a gilded desk in the golden room of the Élysée Palace — declared his intent to take into account the grievances of ordinary citizens while simultaneously vowing “zero tolerance” for violent troublemakers. These statements are clearly part of a broader attempt to co-opt the “apolitical masses” within the yellow vest movement while simultaneously cracking down on its “extremist fringes”.
[...]
Last Saturday, one protester captured the general mood in France with a simple question written on the back of his yellow vest: et maintenant? What happens next is anyone’s guess — but it is now rapidly becoming clear that the centrist political establishment is in the process of imploding. Even if the consequences remain uncertain, perhaps it is precisely in this universal state of confusion that the left must now be looking for answers.""
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