"A vote for the gilets jaunes is a vote for Macron," declared Eric Drouet, a lorry driver who runs the most popular gilets jaunes Facebook group, "Angry France".
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For many gilets jaunes, however, something will never be enough.
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So, did Facebook cause the gilets jaunes uprising in France?
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The gilets jaunes have been tamed by President Emmanuel Macron.
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The gilets jaunes, having scented weakness, will surely press for more.
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The gilets jaunes in France show how hard that will be.
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About 80 people were there, ten of whom were gilets jaunes.
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Recently eclipsed as the face of protest by the gilets jaunes (yellow jackets), they are now flexing their own muscles and hoping to force Mr Macron to back down, just as the gilets jaunes managed last year.
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The gilets jaunes movement is tenacious, but is fading on the ground.
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This could partly meet the gilets jaunes demand for more direct democracy.
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First, the gilets jaunes have always been inseparable from far-right politics.
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This is particularly so given the broad public sympathy for the gilets jaunes.
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But then the emergence of the gilets jaunes, too, has been called miraculous.
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Macron's first response to the gilets jaunes was not to really have one.
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Fortunately, he is able to confirm all my theories about the gilets jaunes instantly.
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This week, a delegation of gilets jaunes met the environment minister, François de Rugy.
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Support for the gilets jaunes fell from 72% in December to 46% in March.
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His surrender to the gilets jaunes protesters will bust his budget, damaging his credibility.
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Gilets jaunes protesters in France set up not one but two new political parties.
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From iPhones to France's gilets jaunes, globalisation and its discontents have remade the world.
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Quilted puffa jackets came in an array of styles - belted, short and as gilets.
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One of them featured a crowd of gilets jaunes in front of Notre-Dame.
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Mais le gouvernement mesure-t-il réellement l'occasion unique créée par les Gilets jaunes ?
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The gilets jaunes protest will doubtless come to mark a turning-point for Mr Macron.
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The gilets jaunes (yellow jackets), motorists protesting against higher fuel taxes, blocked more French roads.
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But the gilets jaunes' lack of formal leadership makes them volatile and hard to handle.
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Will any of this be enough to satisfy the gilets jaunes and calm the protests?
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Political sympathies among the gilets jaunes reach from far-left anarchists to the ultra-right.
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Mr Macron launched his great debate in response to the gilets jaunes (yellow jackets) movement.
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Which is partly why opposition parties, and many gilets jaunes, have denounced the whole exercise.
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The biggest Facebook group, Compteur Officiel de Gilets Jaunes, says it has 1.86 million members.
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Analogizing the gilets to the Tea Party and Trump will only take you so far.
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After a surfeit of press early on, the gilets jaunes' abrupt decline has been conspicuous.
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The operator of French highway toll booths is a frequent target of "gilets jaunes" protestors.
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For some of the gilets jaunes, nothing the president can say or do will be enough.
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Many of even the moderate gilets jaunes are demanding Mr Macron's resignation, or a new parliament.
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His recent concessions to gilets jaunes protesters means that France will probably violate European fiscal rules.
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In the fourth quarter the populist gilets jaunes protests in France dealt growth another temporary blow.
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WHEN HISTORY comes to study the gilets jaunes (yellow jackets), two symbols will mark their cause.
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The gilets here were young, as racially diverse as metropolitan Paris, and mostly on the left.
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However, these basic inequities are not what you see and hear at a gilets jaunes rally.
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Yet the Gilets jaunes — and France as a whole, which largely backed them — deserve no less.
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The gilets jaunes are disrupters as much as Macron, at whom they direct intense personal hatred.
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France is offering its periodic re-enactment of its Revolution, with gilets jaunes replacing sans-culottes.
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"I am totally behind the 'Gilets Jaunes'," said George DuPont, a resident in Paris' upscale 16th arrondissement.
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At Alexander McQueen, a simple white shirt was the perfect foil to bold prints and ornate gilets.
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Few people made the connection between this story and the gilets jaunes protests that followed almost immediately.
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The great difficulty for the government is that the gilets jaunes movement is without structure or leaders.
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The numbers of gilets jaunes on the streets in recent weekends—around 130,000 country-wide—have dwindled.
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Two weeks ago the gilets jaunes emerged from nowhere via Facebook to block road junctions across France.
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Most of the gilets jaunes, who have been manning roundabouts and road junctions across France, are peaceful.
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When the gilets jaunes movement emerged last November, it was broadly a social protest and fiscal revolt.
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Facebook groups run by gilets jaunes call it "blabla", accusing Mr Macron of campaigning at taxpayers' expense.
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Yet there is no obvious parallel in Germany to the insecure, "peripheral" France of the gilets jaunes.
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Le flux a fait exploser les prix de hors-bords, moteurs, gilets de secours et systèmes GPS.
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The gilets jaunes, much written off, much misunderstood, have an appeal that is both mysterious and durable.
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The first is that this nationwide debate won't have allowed the Gilets jaunes to really express themselves.
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The gilets jaunes are a rejoinder to capitalism's emotional ravages as much as to its economic ones.
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This is politically convenient, because they can show empathy for the gilets jaunes while delegitimizing their marches.
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Rival PageGroup Plc said last week that the "gilets jaunes" protests in France had hurt candidate confidence.
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Le premier est que le grand débat n'aura pas apporté aux Gilets jaunes l'occasion de s'exprimer réellement.
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Reporters have noted that the "Yellow Vests" (Gilets Jaunes) are predominantly men in their 270s and 280s.
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The gilets jaunes are currently structureless and leaderless, which is both their strength but also a potential weakness.
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Many French people believe this, which is perhaps why around 75% say they support the gilets jaunes protesters.
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Mr Macron himself cancelled a rise in the carbon tax on motor fuel after mass gilets jaunes protests.
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In France the gilets jaunes smash shop windows on the Champs-Elysées because they cannot make ends meet.
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So is France's, which could be expanded further by concessions to the gilets jaunes protesters late last year.
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The gilets jaunes began in November of 2018 as a movement against President Emmanuel Macron's proposed fuel tax.
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Both sets of gilets jaunes would have been aware of the meaning of the song and the salute.
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One way or another, the gilets jaunes protest will doubtless come to mark a turning-point in his presidency.
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On one roundabout in southern France, gilets jaunes brought along a guillotine and a stuffed effigy of Mr Macron.
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One of the difficulties facing the police force is the largely structureless and leaderless nature of the gilets jaunes.
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He took part in the first gilets jaunes protest last year, and does not disguise his sympathy for them.
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France's gilets jaunes protesters are also fighting for a higher minimum—and Emmanuel Macron has acquiesced to their demands.
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Emmanuel Macron again bowed to the gilets jaunes protesters who have been thronging French streets for the past month.
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After the gilets jaunes have monopolised the airwaves for so long, unions are keen to make their voice heard.
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More so than any movement in the twenty-first century, the gilets jaunes embody the problems of outrage politics.
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Leaderless, they have gathered thanks to social media and they have pointedly called themselves Gilets Jaunes, or Yellow Vests.
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Le peuple qui a été invité à dialoguer avec le pouvoir n'est pas exactement le peuple des Gilets jaunes.
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Les Gilets jaunes — et la France dans son ensemble, qui les a largement soutenus — ne méritent pourtant pas moins.
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It is also in France that the latest challenge to the Greens has emerged: the gilets jaunes (yellow jackets) movement.
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Over in Evreux town centre, another group of gilets jaunes is blocking access to the prefecture, or departmental administrative building.
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Jean-Luc Mélenchon, on the far left, as well as Ms Le Pen have been furiously courting the gilets jaunes.
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On the streets, the numbers taking part in weekend gilets jaunes marches have dropped from 280,000 in November to 22,000.
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The day after Macron's February speech, a dozen gilets jaunes were canvassing motorists at a traffic circle outside of Clamecy.
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The stable element was Macron, who had been backed by only 5 percent of gilets in both November and December.
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The anti-government gilets jaunes (yellow jackets) protests, which began in late 2018, helped to push it down the rankings.
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Nor has the great debate spawned any real representatives among the Gilets jaunes — a vacuum that makes concrete negotiations difficult.
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The gilets jaunes had been evicted from a roundabout, but it was easy to figure out where to find them.
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Their work done, most of the gilets jaunes, named after the garb that's an obligatory staple of every French automobile, dispersed.
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The gilets jaunes plan to return to the streets of Paris on December 8th, a date the government awaits with horror.
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How long the gilets jaunes last depends partly on whether they can survive an attempted mutation into a more organised movement.
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Since the gilets jaunes protesters emerged three weeks ago, the numbers protesting countrywide have dropped: from 280,000 to 136,000 this weekend.
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President Emmanuel Macron of France, confronted with gilets jaunes at home, has not been eager to spring to Mr Ghosn's defence.
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For the gilets jaunes protesting on the handful of remaining ronds-points, gridlock may be the best they can hope for.
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On December 6th the government had cancelled the rise in fuel duty that had provoked the gilets jaunes (yellow jacket) protests.
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Marine Le Pen, on the far right, blames the "agitators, revolutionaries, anarchists" of the far left for the gilets jaunes violence.
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There are American parallels to almost everything that has gone on in the gilets jaunes drama, but there are differences, too.
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After six months, the once numerous gilets jaunes had been edged out by a different demonstration and a handful of gourmands.
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After 48 consecutive weeks of protests by the "yellow vest" (gilets jaunes) demonstrators, the protests show no signs of slowing down.
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But it's worth noting that the government hardly set up any meetings or direct exchanges with the Gilets jaunes as such.
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And it has benefited from the fiscal boost Mr Macron injected late last year in response to the gilets jaunes protests.
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With this sort of protest, and in contrast to the gilets jaunes, the government at least has organisations to talk to.
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After the Strasbourg attack, which led the government to raise the terrorism alert to its highest level, many gilets jaunes expressed horror.
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Emmanuel Macron, France's president, vowed to press on with reform despite the gilets jaunes protests that have paralysed much of the country.
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Nonetheless the town hall held an evening debate, attended by many local gilets jaunes, who see Mr Sanchez as "one of us".
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While unity in this area is hard to achieve even at European Union level, the gilets jaunes are in the WEF house.
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But if nothing is done, the festive atmosphere of the Madrid demo might turn into something closer to France's aggressive gilets jaunes.
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In Paris, 156 "gilets jaunes" (yellow vest) protesters were arrested, some for carrying objects that could be used as weapons, police said.
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Last Saturday proved to be less of a crescendo and more of a curtain call for France's gilets jaunes, or Yellow Vests.
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French President Emmanuel Macron was a central figure in the gilets jaunes, or yellow jacket, protests that broke out in November 2018.
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On February 16 in Paris, a group of protestors in the Yellow Vest ("gilets jaunes") movement cornered local Jewish intellectual, Alain Finkielkraut.
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Earlier this year anti-government gilets jaunes protesters surged then faded in part because disorganisation and public-relations mistakes took their toll.
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Fingertip-length parkas come in unusual hues like ocher, and leather gilets and poplin skirts are cinched lightly with plain leather belts.
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As The Guardian noted, anti-government protests courtesy of the gilets jaunes (or yellow vests) movement took place in Paris alongside the parade.
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Throughout the protests, polls have suggested that a majority of the French support the gilets jaunes; this has remained stable despite the violence.
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A snap poll suggests nevertheless that 66% of people still back the gilets jaunes, a figure that has been stable throughout the protests.
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But doubling down on Europe is a counter-intuitive response to his difficulties at home, where the gilets jaunes denounce remote, technocratic elites.
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The gilets jaunes, however, argue that they are unfairly squeezed by taxes to pay for all this while the rich are let off.
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If exasperation at high taxes was part of the trigger for the gilets jaunes, another was anger at the out-of-touch elite.
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The unpopular president already had his hands full dealing with the gilets jaunes (yellow jackets) protests, which have dragged on since last November.
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Many wore colourful vests in support of the anti-establishment gilets jaunes protests that swept French cities during the winter and early spring.
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"Gilets jaunes," the growing economic movement also known as the "yellow vests," got their start in the exurban areas outside of French cities.
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Battling police once more in front of the Arc de Triomphe, they wore black clothes, and half of them also wore gilets jaunes.
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The gilets jaunes, however, only see an immediate benefit for those who own and patronize the lavish Paris shops they have been pillaging.
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The day after he put up the A.F.P. poster, he and Kasenda sat at a bistro, as gilets jaunes clashed with gendarmes nearby.
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In France, the neon-yellow vests known as gilets jaunes are like proverbial opinions: Everyone has one, or at least every motorist does.
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In France the gilets jaunes (yellow jackets), who drew support from the radical right and left, were about to explode onto the streets.
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The gilets jaunes have come to represent a blazing, unfocussed rebuke of the inequalities created by the political class's negligent stewardship of globalization.
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Macron has said that he didn't see the gilets jaunes coming, but the roots of their dissatisfaction go back to at least 2005.
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The demographer Hervé Le Bras has shown that the gilets jaunes don't match up with any previous political constituency, either ideologically or geographically.
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La nature même du mouvement rendait cela peu probable, puisque les Gilets jaunes ont passé leur temps à détruire toute tentative de structuration.
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In late November, 42 percent of self-identified gilets told the pollster ELABE that they had supported Marine Le Pen in the first round of the 2017 elections—more than twice as many as the next nearest tendency, the leftist France Unbowed party (LFI), which attracts a lot of people who think like Yannis and accounted for 20 percent of the gilets.
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Unlike union-led demonstrations, the amorphous nature of the gilets jaunes protests also makes it more difficult for the government to negotiate with them.
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The gilets jaunes movement—named after the high-visibility jackets that all motorists must carry—began as a protest against higher taxes on fuel.
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On the roadside, a festive group of 30 or so gilets jaunes (yellow jackets) protesters has set up camp outside a yellow-painted shed.
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Christophe Chalençon, a gilets jaunes organiser, recently warned that "if they put a bullet in my head, Macron will end up on the guillotine".
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The gilets jaunes protest began in response to a planned gas tax hike, but it soon devolved into a more amorphous outpouring of rage.
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It was on ronds-points across France that the gilets jaunes first gathered to protest against a rise in green taxes on motor fuel.
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But there were also many gilets jaunes among the peaceful demonstrators at the climate march in the Place du Trocadéro a few blocks away.
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Rather than a traditional French confrontation between the right and left, the rise of the gilets jaunes represents a conflict between insiders and outsiders.
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In France the "gilets jaunes" protests have brought populist fury from France's peripheries into the heart of Paris and wrecked Macron's centrist-technocratic plans.
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"Gilets," he said, dragging deeply and referring to the down vests worn by many passers-by — and also, beneath his coat, by this reporter.
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Though riots like those of the "gilets jaunes" are a French tradition, they pose an immediate threat to Macron's ability to push through more reforms.
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Here the gilets jaunes have some common ground with the French Senate, which in February dealt a temporary setback to the government's ADP privatisation proposals.
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In late January, acclaimed chef Yannick Delpech criticized participants of the gilets jaunes (yellow vest) protests that have engulfed France for the past three months.
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Popular resistance to a tax which amounted to a 5 percent increase in the price of diesel helped to spur the "gilets jaunes" protest movement.
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Six months after the start of the gilets jaunes (yellow jackets) protests, the president's ratings have recovered to where they were before the movement began.
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A forceful remedy is being proposed this spring by narrower groups of activists and ideologues, also called gilets jaunes, who are converging on the cities.
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The gilets jaunes are both representing and critiquing the world of parking lots and superstores that Macron's patron Henry Hermand did so much to create.
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The protest drew support from groups including Friends of the Earth and the "Gilets Jaunes", who have mounted months of demonstrations against President Emmanuel Macron.
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Le grand débat n'aura pas non plus été l'occasion de voir apparaître des acteurs, politiques ou sociaux, représentant les Gilets jaunes, compliquant toute négociation concrète.
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IMAGES OF burning barricades, riot police and tear gas on the Champs-Elysées in Paris have brought France's gilets jaunes ("yellow vests") to the world's attention.
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The Yellow Vests, or Gilets Jaunes, began late last year as a grassroots populist movement that initially rallied around opposition to a new tax on gasoline.
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The gilets jaunes movement had been growing over the past few weeks and clashes with les flics had become a common occurrence across the Gallic republic.
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Perhaps most unexpectedly, the gilets jaunes seem to be the expression of a form of digitally enabled populism which prizes an uncontaminated connection with the people.
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It was the claim of unfair taxation—and a feeling among protesters that the money raised did them no good—that first mobilised the gilets jaunes.
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Not only were the gilets jaunes left behind, they felt scorned by the winners of globalisation, embodied by the haughty and remote figure of Emmanuel Macron.
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Days later, vandals graffitied "collabo" (slang for collaborator) and another slogan with the sign of "GJ", the acronym used for the Gilets Jaunes, or "yellow vests".
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The gilets jaunes are the French rallying point for those, left and right, old and young, peaceful and disruptive, who want to see this hope dashed.
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One has been to block the gilets jaunes from entering the Champs Elysées, the most famous street in Paris, forcing them to reroute to lesser locations.
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Another has been to delay and disrupt the metro on the day of protests, a deterrent for the many gilets jaunes who live outside the city.
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The Gilets Jaunes movement, named after the yellow high-visibility vests worn by its members, staged demonstrations in most major cities in France over the weekend.
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After protesters wearing gilets jaunes (yellow jackets) brought the country to a standstill last year, a chastened Mr Macron wants to be seen to be listening.
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Yet France remains fragile after the civil disorder of the gilets jaunes protests, and Mr Macron has already delayed the bill for fear of fresh unrest.
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The strike is the latest union attempt to tap into popular discontent over Macron's reform drive that has fueled the "yellow vests" ("gilets jaunes") protest movement.
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According to a chalkboard on the wall, the gilets jaunes of Saint-Macaire had a thousand and forty euros and eighty-eight centimes to their name.
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They praise a sea wall being built in Jakarta and note the political lessons to be drawn from French gilets jaunes protests against a proposed fuel tax.
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The gripes of the "gilets jaunes" should be familiar to attendees at the World Economic Forum, who have gabbed over income inequality regularly since the financial crisis.
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This week 80 Jewish graves were daubed with swastikas, and Alain Finkielkraut, a prominent philosopher, was heckled with anti-Semitic abuse by gilets jaunes (yellow vest) protesters.
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At other moments violence has been perpetrated—against symbols (a ministry, luxury cars) as well as people, usually in connection with the gilets jaunes (yellow jackets) protests.
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The point "is to show that France is not just the gilets jaunes," says Amélie de Montchalin, a deputy from Mr Macron's La République en Marche party.
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In France the revolt by gilets jaunes at first seemed to be about small-town grievances against the big cities in which economic opportunity has become concentrated.
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At one point, and after five months of unrest by gilets jaunes (yellow jackets), the fire seemed to be a ghastly symbol for the torment of France.
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When the powers-that-be invited the people for that great big consultation, it wasn't really the Gilets jaunes they were addressing or wanted to hear from.
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She was trying to close the shutters during a gilets jaunes demonstration when a tear-gas grenade came through the window and blew up in her face.
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Normally they would support a working-class movement against the mechanisms of power, but the gilets jaunes were protesting, at least initially, a policy liberals hold dear.
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Zemmour did not miss his chance to underscore this contradiction and skewer his opponents, remarking that the gilets jaunes were a French manifestation of a global phenomenon.
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Mouraud recently met with French Prime Minister Édouard Philippe, claiming she represented a group called "Les Gilets Jaunes Libres" ("The Free Yellow Vests"), who describe themselves as pacifists.
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On April 103th, in response to the gilets jaunes (yellow jackets) protesters and their rage against the out-of-touch elite, Mr Macron announced the abolition of ENA.
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But there was also a blurring of the lines between the organised and mobile groups of anarchists and neo-fascists, and some of the otherwise peaceful gilets jaunes.
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The recent government shutdown in America, Brexit-related confusion and gilets jaunes riots in France are all held up in China as examples of Western decadence and failure.
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That should appeal to France's gilets jaunes and similar protest groups in other countries whose support is needed if we are to adopt a saner climate-change policy.
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ABDULLAH GEELAHFellow of the WinstonChurchill Memorial TrustLondon The symbolism of the gilets jaunes protesting on French traffic roundabouts is deeper than you think ("To the roundabouts", December 22nd).
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Anti-establishment tactics, ideas and messages spread online, in pan-European movements like the gilets jaunes, the anti-Islam PEGIDA and the Identitarians and at multinational party summits.
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French President Emmanuel Macron has been under siege for months from "gilets jaunes" or "yellow vest" protests that were sparked by anger about rising gas prices and taxes.
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The "gilets jaunes," or yellow vest, protests began as a campaign against a gas tax hike, but have morphed into a broader rally against President Emmanuel Macron's government.
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If anything, the gilets jaunes protests showed that public policy cannot be decreed from on high, and Mr Macron claims that he has heard and understood this message.
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Indeed part of the point, says Stanislas Guerini, head of Mr Macron's party, La République en Marche, was "to put the voice of the gilets jaunes in perspective".
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In France, the gilets jaunes (yellow jackets), a populist grassroots movement, have blocked roads and staged some of the most violent demonstrations the country has seen since 268.
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A diagnosis was given last winter by a broad-based group of French people called gilets jaunes, who wave and smile at motorists in places like rural Burgundy.
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Many of the protesters -- known as "gilets jaunes" or "yellow vests" -- are angry with Macron for extending the environmental policies implemented under his predecessor, former President François Hollande.
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Now they have a model — gilets jaunes — they have encrypted phones to co-ordinate it, and it only takes a couple of nasty populist frontmen to inspire people.
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Now they have a model — gilets jaunes — they have encrypted phones to co-ordinate it, and it only takes a couple of nasty populist frontmen to inspire people.
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The protest movement — now known as gilets jaunes, or "yellow vests" — has blockaded streets and highways, burned cars, and brawled with police in response to the price hike.
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The movement's very nature contributed to this, of course, since time and again the Gilets jaunes themselves pushed back against any attempt to structure or formalize their efforts.
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You could see it in Junya Watanabe's meticulous effort to consider the trench: strapless trench gowns and trench corsets; trench schoolgirls skirts and trench gilets and trench redingotes.
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Data published earlier this week showed that anti-government 'Yellow Vest' (gilets jaunes) protests had resulted in French consumer confidence falling to its lowest levels since November 2014.
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Australia, Brazil and Canada have seen voters repudiate climate-centric strategies, and the question of "who pays" for climate action has sparked protests like France's "gilets jaunes" movement.
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In November and December French protest group the Yellow Vests ("Les Gilets Jaunes" in French) held Paris to ransom by burning cars, defacing monuments, and blocking roads across France.
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Over the weekend, violence broke out in France, with more than 280,000 protesters fanning out across the country in what is known as the Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vests) movement.
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Instead he has cleared his diary to criss-cross France, staging nearly a dozen town-hall meetings in a "great national debate" intended to counter the gilets jaunes protests.
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The crowd scenes have been continental, not national: refugees trudging along motorways, pro- and anti-migration demonstrations, the anti-establishment gilets jaunes protests and, most recently, environmentalist school strikes.
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But many gilets jaunes see Mr Mélenchon and Ms Le Pen, with their seats in the National Assembly, as part of the system and therefore part of the problem.
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And in Paris, Lemaire showed a more understated take on utilitarianism, with light cotton gilets and work shirts coupled with pants that were belted at the waist and ankle.
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Still, the impression that prevails today is that the government isn't listening enough to the Gilets jaunes' concerns, as though it still hadn't appreciated the seriousness of the crisis.
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Ministers fear the mighty car lobby, and look nervously to France, where a cut in the speed limit on rural roads last year helped spur the gilets jaunes uprising.
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Of course, other such Macron economic reforms — like a steep hike in gas taxes — are what sent the "gilets jaunes" (yellow vests) protestors into the streets a year ago.
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This is "in-between France", in the words of Raymond Depardon, a photographer whose stills depict derelict high streets and empty roundabouts—the very places now occupied by gilets jaunes.
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If the gilets jaunes elsewhere have mostly left the roundabouts, or been forcibly moved from them, pockets such as this corner of southern France and nearby Avignon are holding out.
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Three months after the gilets jaunes movement emerged, and with weekly protests continuing, Mr Macron is gambling that the national debate is a way to turn chaos into an opportunity.
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It also helped launch the gilets jaunes (yellow jackets) protest movement, which forced France's president, Emmanuel Macron, into his first political climb-down when he cancelled a fuel-tax increase.
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This week, buoyed by the popularity of the movement, Ms Mouraud decided to shift her protest from the streets to the ballot box, and launched a gilets jaunes political party.
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The government has already pushed its budget deficit back above the 3% of GDP Maastricht limit this year, partly because of income-support measures designed to calm the gilets jaunes.
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One is that there is no significant constituency in French public opinion, including in the gilets jaunes, that would quarrel with Macron on the nature and extent of climate change.
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Violent demonstrations by protesters, known as the "gilets jaunes" or "yellow vests," in Paris over the last few weeks has killed at least two people and injured more than 600.
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When protests in mid-March grew unruly, and culminated in smashed businesses on the Champs-Elysées, Macron mobilized the army, as if the gilets jaunes had themselves become an emergency.
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The L.R.E.M. politicians I talked to had a narrative about the gilets jaunes: their numbers are low, and the movement is an outgrowth of problems that began long before Macron.
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The protest movement — known as gilets jaunes, French for the "yellow vests" demonstrators wear — has blockaded streets and highways, burned cars, and brawled with police in response to the price hike.
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"Some in Paris have suggested all gilets jaunes are driven by fake-news and conspiracy theories on Facebook, & are somehow uneducated," Guardian Paris bureau chief Angelique Chrisafis tweeted on Friday morning.
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It was in car-dependent France profonde, after all, far from the bike-sharing quarters of Paris, that the government's planned raising of the carbon tax first provoked the gilets jaunes.
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He ruled out bringing back the wealth tax, a measure he had scrapped after taking office in line with a manifesto pledge, and which was one of the gilets jaunes' gripes.
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The protest movement — known as gilets jaunes, French for the "yellow vests" demonstrators wear — has blockaded streets and highways, burned cars, and skirmished with police in response to the price hike.
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Local gilets jaunes approve of Mr Sanchez's decision to abolish "substitute meals" in Beaucaire's schools, thus keeping pork on the menu, a tactic one commentator denounces as an "alibi for xenophobia".
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RIC also happens to be the French acronym for "citizen-led referendums", which have become a popular demand from the gilets jaunes movement since it widened out from fuel-tax revolt.
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The "gilets jaunes" (yellow vest) protesters - named after the high-visibility jackets French motorists must carry in their cars - launched their demonstration in mid-November to rally against fuel tax increases.
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Leavers are right that the EU is an increasingly unappealing place, with its Italian populists, French gilets jaunes, stuttering German economy (see article) and doddery, claret-swilling uber-bureaucrats in Brussels.
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As their momentum ends and their moment does too, the gilets jaunes will ultimately serve as little more than a case study in why a political movement needs more than outrage.
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"May's PMI results pointed to the strongest private sector activity growth since protests began last November, highlighting the dwindling impact of the 'gilets jaunes' movement," said IHS Markit economist Eliot Kerr.
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For two months, as he tried to defuse the gilets jaunes (yellow jackets) protests, the French president left Europe only once, shunned global gatherings and ceded the stage to Angela Merkel.
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Ellie: We stood out because I grew up in Essex so all around were party girls in stilettos with blonde hair extensions, all the cool girls wore those fluffy grey gilets.
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To this end, the president ruled out bringing back the wealth tax, a central demand of the gilets jaunes (yellow jackets) protesters, and announced further measures to cut primary-school class sizes.
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Mr Piñera wants to overcome such obstacles by convening town-hall meetings similar to those held by France's president, Emmanuel Macron, in response to the gilets jaunes (yellow jackets) protests this year.
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"We can't keep spending all our time on a roundabout," declared Jacline Mouraud, a founder of the gilets jaunes: "Because, in any case, that would only end up going round in circles."
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Maxime Nicolle and Éric Drouet, who administer some of the largest gilets jaunes Facebook groups and have been near nightly presences on French television, have repeatedly shared the most outrageous conspiracy theories.
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Brexit does not explain the rise of the Gilets Jaunes in France or the Five Star movement in Italy: both of them organizations which defy classification as far right or far left.
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The company is at least capable of knowing how a piece of content found its way from one user to thousands or how a gilets jaunes group functions on the social platform.
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It is a particular concern to President Emmanuel Macron of France, who is battling to restore his authority in the face of the protests of the gilets jaunes and the far right.
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Equally worrying for Macron are signs that public support for the "gilets jaunes" is wide and growing, with three-quarters of people backing the movement, according to an Elabe poll published on Wednesday.
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The "gilets jaunes" ("yellow vests") crisis started as a demonstration against a carbon tax policy and planned fuel tax increases, but have morphed into wider discontent at the leadership of President Emmanuel Macron.
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"(But) if final electricity prices rise too much and too fast, there is always the risk of a consumer back-lash, like we have seen with the gilets jaunes in France," he warned.
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The gilets jaunes angry at increases in French fuel taxes (see article) and the family which in 20 years will be forced from land in Mexico by drought know nothing of each other.
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French authorities are probing potential Russian interference during the "gilets jaunes," or yellow vest protests, and US Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats publicly acknowledged Russian efforts to interfere in our midterm elections.
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Supporters of Marine Le Pen have the most favorable views of the yellow vests, and a hypothetical gilets jaunes party would sap significant support from Le Pen in the upcoming European parliamentary elections.
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It is possible to watch an entire primetime lineup without mention of Brexit, of the gilets jaunes, of any Eurasian politics beyond the bogeyman Putin and some snarking at Trump's vague China tariffs.
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Last winter, the demographer Hervé Le Bras explained to the news site Konbini that the map of the gilets jaunes movement is a map of the parts of France that are losing population.
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Today, Jewish historians and advocacy groups say, the far-left, the far-right, and radical Muslims—groups with few shared interests, historically—are finding common ground in anti-Semitism and the gilets jaunes.
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"Although the 'gilets jaunes' protests are still ongoing and panelists have suggested that these are still causing disruption, the economy showed resilience in the latest survey period," IHS Markit economist Eliot Kerr said.
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Central to this is the situation in France, where people have taken to the streets in recent weeks wearing brightly colored "gilets jaunes" or "yellow vests", protesting against President Emmanuel Macron's economic policies.
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The gilets jaunes movement, which emerged through social media and embraces lots of dramatic revolutionary imagery, has tapped into anger at the perception that Mr Macron governs for the better-off, Paris-based elite.
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President Emmanuel Macron addressed the French public Tuesday night for the first time since the emergence of the "Yellow Vests" (Gilets Jaunes) movement and the violence that has struck Paris and other major cities.
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This time, she has criss-crossed France to visit the sort of small towns and villages—Chassors, Rocquigny, Villeblevin—where the gilets jaunes occupied roundabouts, jobs are scarce and anti-establishment feeling runs deep.
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In his high-visibility jacket, from which the gilets jaunes ("yellow vests") movement gets its name, he and a dozen others are manning a protest at a roundabout outside Evreux, in rural southern Normandy.
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It also allowed the president to take his town-hall road-show away from rural France, the natural habitat of the gilets jaunes protesters, and into the multi-ethnic outer-city districts, or banlieues.
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Now Mr Houellebecq's latest work, "Sérotonine", is being hailed in France as visionary, because it seems to anticipate the current street protests against President Emmanuel Macron led by activists wearing gilets jaunes (yellow jackets).
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Several months later, as the gilets jaunes continued to march, the president called for a series of town halls to be held across the country—a grand débat to talk out the remaining tension.
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A group of drunken gilets jaunes—"yellow vests"—on their way back from protests that have gripped France for the past two months, entered the train and began making the quenelle with their arms.
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Taking a leaf from the gilets jaunes in France, the protestors tend to express anger at the entire political system, rather than having a clear political agenda or even identifying with a political party.
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More notable is the specificity of his satire—he has a degree in agronomy—and the seriousness of his engagement with the economic asperities of provincial France in the era of the gilets jaunes .
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Last week marked the thirty-second consecutive Saturday that the gilets jaunes have occupied roundabouts and blocked roads and clashed with police all over France, answering Macron's project of individual mobility with collective obstruction.
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This is the third week the gilets jaunes (yellow vests) have taken to the streets of Paris, as part of a mobilization which began as a reaction against a hike in the country's gasoline tax.
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Despite 28 weeks of gilets jaunes (yellow jackets) protests, and Ms Le Pen's efforts to turn the election into a referendum on Mr Macron, she ended up with a slightly lower score than in 2014.
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The 'gilets jaunes' and the populism myth ($) Simon Kuper argues that the Yellow Vest protests aren't even really that interesting, in the grand scheme of things: Populist movements may be the past, not the future.
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Four months after the gilets jaunes protesters first emerged, what was originally a revolt against the rising tax on motor fuel has turned into a longer-running protest movement than the May 23 student uprising.
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The gilets jaunes know that, over in the 17th-century town hall, they have the implicit backing of the town's mayor, Julien Sanchez, who is from Marine Le Pen's populist National Rally (formerly National Front).
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Print and broadcast media mostly observe national borders, but social and digital media do not; from his Facebook page Mr Salvini has cheered France's gilets jaunes and urged French voters to vote against Mr Macron.
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Antigovernment protests have raged across France for four weeks now, effectively shutting down the nation's capital at times as rioters sporting yellow vests (gilets jaunes) wage massive public demonstrations, loot stores, and clash with police.
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In the first five months of protests, its police fired nearly 6,000 rounds of tear-gas—far fewer than were used in Paris in a single day last December against gilets jaunes (yellow-jacket) protesters.
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Ironically, the real roots of the gilets jaunes' ("yellow vests") frustrations are similar to those of many of the grassroots supporters of Donald Trump -- a powerful and growing sense of disenfranchisement and working class struggle.
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In March, tens of thousands of climate activists marched through Paris, although their protests were overshadowed by much larger and sometimes violent demonstrations by the Gilets Jaunes, a social movement opposed to President Emmanuel Macron.
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The Gilets Jaunes (yellow vest) protests, named after motorists' high-visibility jackets, began over fuel tax increases but morphed into a sometimes violent revolt against Macron and a government they see as out of touch.
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On a sunny Saturday morning in March, Geneviève Legay put on her yellow vest, grabbed a rainbow flag (" PEACE ," it read, in big white letters), and went to demonstrate in Nice with the gilets jaunes .
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Since November, the so-called Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vests) have demonstrated throughout the country against the rise in inequalities and the drop in living standards, claiming as well that French democracy is not representative enough.
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Dozens of men and women quickly donned the yellow vests, or gilets jaunes, that have become the uniform of a movement which has for 17 weeks galvanized the French Republic and defied President Emmanuel Macron's government.
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For more than two weeks, the "gilets jaunes" (yellow vests) have blocked roads in protests across France, posing one of the largest and most sustained challenges Emmanuel Macron has faced in his 18-month-old presidency.
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After the searing social unrest led by the gilets jaunes (yellow jackets) a year ago, his approval rating—still very low, at 34%—is at least back up to where it was before the protests began.
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Victims of the "fantasy of fluid capitalism", argues Jean-Pierre Denis, the gilets jaunes are not marching to a destination, nor even en marche (on the move), as in the name of Mr Macron's political party.
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The gilets wandered between the four tables, insisting that the participants were sticking too obediently to the themes Macron had dictated, and complaining that no one would listen to grievances they had gathered from local residents.
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Many have categorized it as a combination of a French gesture meaning "up yours" and the Nazi salute—with people performing it outside of Auschwitz and French synagogues (it is also popular among the gilets jaunes).
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As for himself, "I totally identify with the gilets jaunes," Mr. Bannon said, referring to the Yellow Vest protesters whose often violent demonstrations over low wages and diminished expectations rocked Mr. Macron's presidency for six months.
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Zemmour found new fodder for his battle with "leftist elites" in mid-November, when 280,000 French protesters calling themselves the gilets jaunes, or "yellow vests," demonstrated across the country against a tax increase on diesel fuel.
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Le risque, maintenant, est qu'un traitement insatisfaisant des demandes légitimes, ou au moins raisonnables, des Gilets jaunes ne les pousse eux, et d'autres aussi, vers ces écueils que la France avait pour l'instant réussi à éviter.
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The Yellow Vest protesters (or, the Gilets Jaunes), as they've come to be known, are an essentially decentralized movement, united only by wearing fluorescent yellow vests that French drivers are required to keep in their cars.
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Which is why, whatever emerges from Mr Macron's great debate, the politician standing to gain the most from the gilets jaunes there is Ms Le Pen—so long as a new party does not split her vote.
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And within European societies: criminals and economic shifts and transformative technological developments that threaten established players and ways of life (to which, for example, the gilets jaunes protests in France might be considered one particularly prominent reaction).
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With enfeebled Socialists (5%) and Republicans (11.5%), that leaves just one party that would widen its lead thanks to a gilets jaunes party: En Marche (22.5%), the party founded by Mr Macron, whom the movement so detests.
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The parallel with the gilets jaunes is inexact, not least because Mr Houellebecq's modest group of rural protesters are farmers, not employees, and their grievance is with the European Union's policy on milk quotas, not Mr Macron.
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On Saturday, four days after president Emmanuel Macron gave in to the group's original demands and suspended the tax increase, more than 125,000 gilets jaunes took to the streets in one of the most destructive riots yet.
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Fully half of them believed Macron - who has been facing months of social unrest every Saturday in Paris from the gilets jaunes, or yellow vests, movement - would be weakened by a poor showing of his En Marche!
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The experience of the developed world is that carbon pricing schemes look really good in theory, but tend to either get compromised toward inefficiency in practice or else inspire populist uprisings like the gilets jaunes in France.
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Sans aller jusque-là, et risquer de confondre peut-être effets et intentions, on notera qu'il n'y a guère eu d'échanges construits directement pour permettre aux Gilets jaunes, en tant que tels, de dialoguer avec le pouvoir.
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Macron will hold an emergency meeting with the prime minister and interior minister later on Sunday to discuss the riots and how to begin dialogue with the "gilets jaunes" (yellow vests), who have no real structure or leadership.
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By March, the polls told a more ambiguous story: a recovery for Macron, a wish among most people that the gilets jaunes stop their antics, but still a solid majority (20143 percent to 30) in sympathy with them.
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The attack on the prime minister's behaviour came after senior allies warned that Britain would face civil unrest on the scale of the gilets jaunes protests in France or the Los Angeles riots if Brexit was not delivered.
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Yet the coalition talks dragged on; then the young German government was plunged into a squabble about immigration; then the anti-establishment gilets jaunes (yellow jackets) protesters took to French streets and mired Mr Macron in domestic matters.
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But some analysts said the vote highlighted the scepticism at his pro-business economic agenda felt by a large chunk of voters and played out in the streets over the past six months during anti-government 'gilets jaunes' protests.
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As the protesters — dubbed the "Gilets Jaunes" or "Yellow Vests," for the reflective vests that France requires drivers to keep in their cars — have mobilized, they've done so mostly through Facebook, which has added proverbial fuel to their fire.
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Mr Macron's 2000-minute address, watched by a staggering 21m people, was the first time he had spoken publicly since violence engulfed parts of central Paris on December 1st, as part of the countrywide gilets jaunes ("yellow vests") movement.
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When President Macron addressed the country to respond to the gilets jaunes protesters, his appearance in front of a gilded wall and seated behind a priceless desk seemed to strike the wrong chord with many of his intended audience.
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When Emmanuel Macron, the French president, went on a nationwide listening tour this year in response to the gilets jaunes protests, officials in the banlieues, poor suburbs whose residents are mostly from ethnic minorities, denounced the areas' growing "ghettoisation".
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This is the potent mix that helped to mobilise the gilets jaunes (yellow jackets) protesters, who set up camps on the country's road junctions and roundabouts a year ago, initially to protest about a green tax on motor fuel.
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There have been months of demonstrations by the gilets jaunes , a leaderless and often violent movement of social fury, much of it explicitly directed toward his person—"We squeezed Macron like a lemon," protesters wrote on their yellow vests.
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Mais voici qu'après quatre mois de mobilisation, alors que le grand débat, lancé le 15 janvier, était censé se clore ce vendredi, les Gilets jaunes semblent être en perte de vitesse, autour des ronds-points et dans les sondages.
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The movement began earlier this month as a protest against the rising price of fuel, but has taken on a wider role, and the gilets jaunes are now seen as symbols of the growing popular discontent with President Emmanuel Macron.
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Reversing that is a central demand of many of the gilets jaunes, whose original complaint against a rise in green taxes on diesel and petrol at the pump has since broadened to anger at what they consider to be unfair taxation.
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AMONG THE gilets jaunes on French streets last month were students protesting against the way the government is changing the university admissions system from one that admits pretty much everybody to one in which there is a modicum of selectivity.
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The "yellow vests" ('gilets jaunes') movement - named after the fluorescent jackets all French motorists carry in their vehicles - started in mid-November as a protest against a fuel tax but has since grown into a broader backlash against the government.
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They have also explicitly called for an insurrection: Drouet, in the context of repeated affirmations that the movement wouldn't end until Macron had resigned, called on live television in December for the gilets jaunes to "enter inside" the Élysée Palace.
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VIENNA (Reuters) - Vienna has held off Melbourne to retain the top spot on the Economist Intelligence Unit's Global Liveability Index for 2019, further strengthening its reputation as the world's most pleasant city, while the 'gilets jaunes' protests hurt Paris' score.
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"Paris in France is the highest-ranked city to have seen a deterioration in its stability score, owing to the ongoing anti-government gilets jaunes protests that began in late 2018," the EIU said of the French anti-government movement.
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But if the French government doesn't adequately address the legitimate, or at least reasonable, concerns of the Gilets jaunes, it runs the risk of pushing them, as well as other French people, toward the pitfalls France has avoided so far.
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Matteo Salvini and Luigi Di Maio, both deputy prime ministers of Italy, had said that they gave their full support to the Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vests), who have been protesting throughout France for weeks, rattling the presidency of Emmanuel Macron.
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The report describes this "geographic sorting" as one factor behind economic stagnation and social breakdown; it's also clearly a factor driving the class-based polarization that's given us Donald Trump, and in European politics the Brexiteers and gilets jaunes and more.
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Having ignored the first rumblings over the fuel tariffs, the French leader was caught off guard not simply by the force of the protests every Saturday, but by high approval ratings for the gilets jaunes: as much as double his own lowly standings.
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Turnout for the 16th round of "yellow vests" ('gilets jaunes') protests in France last weekend was below the previous week's levels and marches were largely peaceful, a relief for President Emmanuel Macron who has struggled to find a response to the movement.
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Named after the yellow high-visibility vests French drivers are required to keep in their cars, the 'gilets jaunes' protests have snowballed into a broader anti-government movement against the high cost of living and President Emmanuel Macron's pro-business reform drive.
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But last weekend gilets jaunes marchers were caught on video yelling "dirty Zionist shit" and "go back to Tel Aviv" at Alain Finkielkraut, a French philosopher of Polish origin, who was walking in the street near his left-bank home in Paris.
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On their 18th Saturday of protests against President Emmanuel Macron and his policies, France's Gilets Jaunes ('yellow vest') movement targeted the tree-lined avenue that runs from the Arc de Triomphe, smashing banks, ransacking restaurants, burning newspaper kiosks and looting luxury stores.
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While the past six months have been a tough period for the president, with the Gilets Jaunes (yellow vest) protests against his economic policies causing regular disruption and his personal approval ratings hovering around 30 percent, he faces no serious political opposition.
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The demonstrators, wearing the trademark yellow vests that gave their movement its name -- the "gilets jaunes" -- were prying paving stones from the avenue to hurl at the riot police, clad in black from head to toe, with gas masks and tall plastic shields.
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When a movement becomes detached from politics and devoid of policies—as did the gilets jaunes, who boycotted the grand débat and failed to call for any legislation since the early days of the fuel tax—a slow slip into irrelevance becomes inevitable.
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"It's a bit of a mess," said Michael Bilaniuk, a tourist from Ontario, Canada who said he had come straight to the Champs Elysees to check out the scene after arriving in France, aware that the Gilets Jaunes had been on the rampage.
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Given its history, the space is a common beginning or end point for demonstrations; on a recent Saturday, it was where Gilets Jaunes ("Yellow Vests") protests converged, leading to the cancellation of a public dress rehearsal of "Rusalka" at the opera house.
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Daniela Ordonez of Oxford Economics, a consultancy, points out that it is the only country where such indicators were both above their historical average and strengthening in the second quarter, perhaps as business sentiment recovered from the worst of the gilets jaunes protests in 2018.
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Christophe Guilluy, a French geographer, agrees, arguing that votes for the nationalist Northern League in provincial Italy and the recent gilets jaunes (yellow jackets) protests in France are just the latest manifestations of the growing divide between Europe's metropolitan regions and its peripheral ones.
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"We see a key driver of the differential between Air France and KLM load factors as the 'gilets jaunes' protests in France, which have cost 15 million euros, or around 0.3 percent of unit revenue in the quarter," Credit Suisse said in a research note.
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In November of last year, the gilets jaunes or Yellow Vests movement spontaneously erupted throughout the country, with hundreds of thousands of men and women, many of them hailing from the rural provinces, blocking the roads and roundabouts leading into nearly every town in France.
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In the demonstrations that have now entered the daily rhythm of life in France, the eye-catching signs of ART ON STRIKE — bold, black letters on dazzling yellow backgrounds, recalling the symbolism of the gilets jaunes — visually represent the interprofessional solidarity that characterizes the movement.
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The social axis in Serotonin is, however, not Islam but the gilets jaunes movement, wounded individual white masculinity alloyed finally into wounded collective white masculinity instead of opposed to it, as in the earlier novels that pitted agonized Westerners against the unified virility of Islam.
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France spent much of the year casting about for ways to counter the threat of violent protest by the gilets jaunes (yellow jackets), and ended the year with a huge wave of strikes against President Emmanuel Macron's limited yet still deeply unpopular pension reforms.
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Nearly seven out of eight people told pollsters that the measures did not satisfy the movement's demands, according to an Elabe survey for BFM TV. The poll also found that although 82 percent were against the violence seen last Saturday, 72 percent supported the "gilets jaunes" movement.
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The highest concentration of gilets jaunes as a share of the population, according to Hervé Le Bras, a geographer, falls in a diagonale du vide (empty diagonal), running from the Ardennes in the north-east to the remoter parts of Nouvelle-Aquitaine in the south-west.
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Nearly seven out of eight people told pollsters that the measures did not satisfy the movement's demands, according to an Elabe survey for BFM TV. The poll also found that although 82 percent were against the violence seen last Saturday, 72 percent supported the "gilets jaunes" movement.
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And within minutes of a terrorist gunman killing three and wounding twelve at a Christmas market in Strasbourg, Facebook and Twitter lit up with speculation from gilets jaunes that it was an inside job by the French government in order to stall the momentum of their movement.
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But at bottom, the Gilets jaunes have steadily pointed out valid concerns and suggested reforms that deserve a full hearing — like raising the lowest incomes and the minimum wage, reinforcing state services in disaffected areas, adjusting retirement pensions to inflation and introducing some forms of popular referendum.
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Mr Di Maio this month offered his movement's support to the gilets jaunes, prompting an indignant response from Paris At least the two countries' shared cultural heritage should help, especially since this is the quincentenary of the death in France of the great Italian polymath, Leonardo da Vinci.
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They had just allowed France's president, Emmanuel Macron, to get away with promising up to €10bn ($11bn) in extra spending to quell the rebellion of the gilets jaunes (yellow jackets), threatening to push France's budget deficit next year well over the euro zone's limit of 3% of GDP.
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Alain de Benoist, the sage of the late-1970s "New Right," was correct to say, in an interview with Sputnik France, that these gilets jaunes protests had reacquainted people with an idea of the "common good" that can be found in the works of Livy, Machiavelli, and James Harrington.
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Even before the gilets jaunes, or yellow-vested demonstrators, first took to the streets of the French capital last November to protest higher fuel taxes against a backdrop of declining middle-class buying power, Paris was in the midst of a revival of its budget-priced dining scene.
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Mr Macron's address to the nation, watched by a staggering 23m people (more than watched France win the football World Cup in July), was the first time he had spoken publicly since violence engulfed central Paris on December 1st, as part of the country-wide gilets jaunes ("yellow jackets") movement.
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Suits with sweat-pant hems, nubby wools, drop-crotch trousers, quilted gilets, neatly barbered shearling, ski pants, hoodies and boiler suits in what looked to be old teddy-bear pelts (actually cashmere alpaca) were tinted the typically offbeat hues preferred by Mr. Sartori who, like Mr. Pilati, is a master colorist.
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What began weeks ago as Facebook-spurred opposition to a gas tax increase, the "Gilets Jaunes" or "Yellow Vests" protests have since ballooned into a much broader movement against economic inequality — especially in rural France — as well as the policies of President Emmanuel Macron, who is seen as too friendly to business.
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And climate change is just as divisive in the western EU. Green and greenish parties are rising and populist parties like the Alternative for Germany, as well as anti-establishment protesters like the gilets jaunes in France, are turning the environmental movement into their new enemy of choice in the culture war.
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"But despite the prime minister calling for calm, an unnamed Cabinet minister told the Timeson Friday that the country risked a "violent, popular uprising" if a second referendum result overturned the original vote to leave the EU.They added: "In this country we never had the gilets jaunes or the LA riots [in 1992].
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The protests in Brussels — the culmination of two weeks of civil unrest in Belgium's southernmost and French-speaking region — were inspired by the French grass-roots movement called the gilets jaunes or yellow vests, named after the fluorescent safety vests that the drivers are obliged to keep on board vehicles in most European countries.
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WHEN EMMANUEL MACRON launches his promised "great national debate" on January 15th, he hopes to show a willingness to listen to the popular rage behind the gilets jaunes (yellow jacket) protesters who have been occupying roundabouts and motorway toll booths in anger initially at fuel tax rises, but now with a much longer list of grievances.
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In fact, Macron was scheduled to record a televised address on Monday night, partly to discuss the concerns of the "gilets jaunes" -- the yellow vest demonstrators whose protests began months ago over fuel tax hike -- and the national debates that followed, and partly to launch what was dubbed Phase 2 of his presidency, a hopeful new start after some unstable months.
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For their politicians, charting these waters and sailing toward solutions has become impossible, and increasingly pointless: Over time, outrage politics—as seen in the dying moments of the gilets jaunes, the final pitch of Brexit, the hazy memory of Occupy Wall Street—tends to be far more about the outrage than about the politics, until, inevitably, it is about nothing at all.
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Mais sur le fond, les Gilets jaunes ont continué de souligner de vrais problèmes et de faire des propositions qui devraient être considérées par le pouvoir : la revalorisation des bas salaires et du salaire minimum, le retour des services publics dans les villes et régions sinistrées, l'indexation des retraites sur l'inflation, la mise en place d'un référendum d'initiative citoyenne, entre autres.
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But there is a challenge to the left in particular, in the nature of the gilets jaunes, in the violence that has been an undeniable reason for their success, and in the undesirable voices that have come to the fore: How to balance empathy for economic hardship and a genuine desire for social justice with a rejection of the worst impulses of a movement that finds its shape in organized chaos?
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There is nothing in Aymeric that captures the amorphous mix of the unemployed, semi-employed, caregivers, pensioners, youth, and small entrepreneurs who characterize the gilets jaunes movement, and whose loathing is directed not just at the bureaucracy but at a globalized, urban French elite, a capitalist-technocratic class exemplified for them by Bernard Arnault, billionaire owner of Louis Vuitton and assorted Veblen goods, as well as the smooth-talking banker-turned-president Emmanuel Macron.
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Backstage before the show, as models milled around poking fake fingernails tinted spun sugar sweet at their phones, Mr. Scott (nursing a broken elbow in a pink sling) was talking strikes in Chile, the gilets jaunes in France, socialism in the United States, "how stretched and tenuous the idea of democracy has become" and how that led, inescapably, to thoughts of the world before the French Revolution and Marie Antoinette, the woman who has become a symbol of all that decadence and blind frivolity.
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The 'gilets jaunes' movement is not a Facebook revolution Jen Schradie says that "populist movements that seem to arise out of nowhere are not new to the digital era" — and that Facebook's role in the Yellow Vest protests has been overstated: The problem with the pendulum swing of "Hooray, the Internet connects!" to "Boo, the Internet deceives!" is that neither explanation for protest takes into account the community ties before the protests began but more importantly, the broader structural crisis that brought people together in the first place.
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