The Digger

The Yellow Vests movement has faced shocking police violence. And it’s not just from a few bad apples: it’s part of President Macron’s strategy to silence protest. Since November 17 the  gilets jaunes  movement has been spreading across France. Protesters from all around the country are demanding fairer taxes, wealth redistribution, and more direct democracy, with demonstrations in multiple cities every Saturday. According to polls, the movement is supported by a majority of the population. So far, the government’s response to all this has essentially been repressive,  More than  1,700 people have been injured , of which at least eighty-two are  seriously  hurt, and ten fatalities have been confirmed since the beginning of the movement. (A constantly updated list can be found  here ). The deaths mainly owed to road accidents, where angry drivers, blocked in their cars, drove over protesters. But one was caused by the use of po...

"Many on the Left have looked worryingly at Trump’s rise and have been speculating that he might represent something even more dangerous than the usual varieties of right-wing populism. Could Trump be a fascist? And does the answer to that question even matter from a strategic perspective? "We asked Jacobin contributors for their thoughts. Jennifer Roesch is an activist with the International Socialist Organization in New York City. Richard Steigmann-Gall is an associate professor of history at Kent State University and the author of The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity.  Daniel Lazare is the author of The Velvet Coup: The Constitution, the Supreme Court, and the Decline of American Democracy, among other titles. Dylan Riley is an associate professor of sociology at UC Berkeley and a member of the New Left Review editorial committee."" Continue reading:   Is Donald Trump a Fascist? • • • • • Also:    Leon Trotsky: Fascis...

"In Russia, Vladimir Putin’s evil genius matters less than pressures from the ultrarich, US foreign policy, and the ravages of the neoliberal Yeltsin years" Excerpt: "Wood’s Russia isn’t a reascendant superpower on the march. It’s a relatively weak, isolated nation teetering on the brink of instability and held together by a nationalism that has become newly powerful this decade. Its GDP per capita is around a sixth of the US’s and a quarter of the OECD average, with sluggish growth forecast for the future. Its mortality rate has long outpaced its fertility rate, with its population forecast to plunge in the coming decades. And far from a military threat, its 2015 military budget wasn’t even a tenth of that of NATO’s, let alone that of the US, while more and more of its neighboring states join the Western military alliance and China grows in power on its southern border (though Russia does still possess a huge stockpile of nuclear weapons). Moreover, it’...

Link:  Can the Yellow Vests Speak?  by Éduard Louis France's elites were quick to condemn the gilets jaunes protesters as stupid and backward. But as novelist Édouard Louis writes, they're just standing up for their rights. Excerpt: "The gilets jaunes speak of hunger, of precarity, of life and death. The “politicians” and part of the journalists reply: “the symbols of our Republic have been tarnished.” But what are these people talking about? How dare they? What planet are they from? The media also talk about racism and homophobia among the gilets jaunes. Who are they kidding? I do not want to talk about my books, here. But it is interesting to note that whenever I have published a novel I have been accused of stigmatizing poor and rural France precisely because I mentioned the homophobia and racism that existed in the village where I lived as a child. Journalists who had never done anything for the popular classes were enraged, and suddenly set themselves up to play...