104

10 reasons the Gilets Jaunes are the real deal

David Studdert

Image source here.

We live in a world where democracy is a threat and freedom is a punishment, where you can’t tell a turd from a diamond, where 5G is trumpeted even as it threatens to kill us, where the prevailing ethos is buyer-beware and where anyone against warmongering and eternal war is smeared and painted as a monster.

Who do you believe? All the things you felt certain about Democracy, liberty, the right to free speech, television news, all these things are not only being undermined, in reality, they are being thrown in your face. Democracy in the Nazi-controlled Ukraine, moderate jihadi rebels, no democracy in Russia or Venezuela, despite the fingerprint tests on voters and the voting booth cameras, and this voice saying they’re fair elections and a dozen saying what about France isn’t that democracy and twenty other voices say they’re not and right-wing groups going off in the streets and chemicals in your food and forgetting to turn your wi-fi laden house on before you rush to another meeting or charge your phone, and, and…well…I got lost just writing it.

Keeping you busy, that’s what Neo-Liberalist empire does, and amidst it all, you’re meant to be an active citizen stuffed with social capital, capable of an opinion on any topic at the drop of the hat.

Ontological security, everybody needs it, but right now it’s in short supply especially in big metropolitan cities. No wonder people are confused and afraid, walking backwards into the future, stuck knee-deep in mud dreaming that somehow, through some miracle, everything will, “Please!”, return to normal.

So amidst this Tower of Babble, let’s resolve one conundrum for you.

Here are ten reasons the Gilets Jaunes (unlike US sponsored colour revolutions) are the real deal, by which I mean the direct expression of the people of France.

1. They don’t speak in Abstractions/idealisms: abstraction is the language of power, hierarchy and representation. Abstraction and its use in a political context are what unite all regimes be they communist, Nazi or neo-liberal.[1] The Gilets are not of this school. Their demands are simple, concrete: lower toll way charges, a ban on plastic bottles, a stop to compulsory withdrawals from personal bank accounts, an end to planned obsolescences in consumer goods just to name a few. What these demands enunciate is a world view grounded in people’s immediate lives. The Gilets Jaunes say things like:

I am in the mud of my life, I work 2 hours part day makes me a small salary of 240 month share with a supplement CAF!

And Macron says:

I have always assumed the dimension of verticality, of transcendence, but at the same time it must be anchored in full immanence, materiality.”
Macron 18/1/2019

2. The mainstream media blackout: It is only necessary to go onto Gilets websites to witness the violence being metered out to the yellow vests. Does any of this appear in the mainstream media? Rumour has it a D notice has been issued in Britain forbidding any positive mention of the Yellow Vests. In France, it’s the same. Huge crowds in almost every main city are barely reported, grievances are never discussed. Many colour revolutions are staged by the MSM especially for audiences in Western Europe and the ‘first world’, as the current case of Venezuela illustrates. Instead of this colour revolution simulacrum, what confronts the Gilets Jaunes is a black-out. Draw your own conclusion.

3. The Red Scarfs: in themselves they are of little import, their numbers were exaggerated and being entirely a rent a crowd they lack stamina. On a deeper level however, the appearance of the Red Scarfs represents a very dangerous game by Macron. French society has long been susceptible to right-wing movements of violence: The 6th February 1934 crisis[2] , the bloody war of the anti-Nazi resistance with Vichy militias, a conflict which many French view as a civil war[3] and finally, the OAS in the early 1960s are all examples of such maneuverers. Traces of these historical moments are present currently in the rogue cops, the ‘Spéciale Castaner’ the militia recruited by Macron to dispense their special violence towards protestors. These ‘Des flic hors-la-loi’ (rogue cops) have appeared at every recent demonstration. Again, draw your own conclusions. Their presence shows the state’s desperation, the authenticity of the Gilets and their growing social power.

4. The lack of celebrities or leaders. Even after 12 demonstrations and 3 months of agitation, there are still no spokesmen or leaders or celebrities, ‘speaking’ for the people. This by itself tells you it’s a genuine grassroots movement.

5. The manner in which the globalisers have no response but violence. What is occurring in France currently is a conflict between two world views that have nothing to say to each other. Something illustrated by the side-lining of both Maria La Pen and the official parliamentary opposition. Unlike colour revolutions, there is no clear officially endorsed alternative. No one in Washington nominated a Gilets for the presidency and if they had, no one would take any notice. Thus the ritualised nature of contemporary parliamentary politics has been starkly revealed; all the French deputies whatever their allegiance, are fully paid up globalising neo-liberals.

It is clear that Macron has no way of speaking to the Gilets. His recent declaration that he too wanted a raise in salary (note the word salary) and that made him a Gilets too, is verging, in its relation to reality, on the clinically insane. Neo-liberalism is the world view of the elite and the powerful; as some have noted it’s a class war against the poor. All they can offer the Gilets Jaunes is the same old, same old. The elite’s incomprehension and isolation from the French people are clear in every word they utter. The Power is trapped in its own symbolic universe rendering them incapable of grasping the demands of lived experience expressed by the Gilets Jaunes. In this, the Macron Government resemble the Syrian Jihadists whose demands were incomprehensible to the vast majority of the Syrian people and as such could only be implemented by violence.

6. The confusion among intellectuals. The western intellectual tradition, particularly the social disciplines, has no idea how to address the economic, political and cultural stagnation currently affecting western countries. The continued prestige of the academy is more down to habit, careerism and State support than any lived engagement. Intellectuals such as Henri-Levy have been co-opted repeatedly to provide a veil of respectability for murderous foreign adventures in Syria, Venezuela and Libya.

Simultaneously, academic opponents of these activities are being quietly silenced by purges and smears in universities in France, Australia and Britain.[4] Moreover the concentration of French ‘intellectuals’, particularly social commentators, in the Paris, mirrors exactly the centralisation of political power, indeed they are so entwined one struggles to tell them apart. This is why, like the politicians, French intellectuals are resorting to scatter-gun accusations, chosen as if from some play-book; racism, populism, fascism, anti-Semitism, Russian interference and so on. Anything in truth they can muster at short notice for a two-minute sound bite. Needless to say, the Gilets Jaunes aren’t listening.

There’s an old Sioux Lakota saying: a bird needs two wings to fly.[5] So in globalised 20th-century politics the right-wing argues for economics, the Left speak of morality and in the end we have simultaneously a compassionate-bloodthirsty-anti-racist-anti-sexist-neo-liberal-green- modern and dynamic, latest operational whatever. Articles on the Gilets from a Leftist perspective are invariably varied in prescription and analysis and equally, invariably miss the point. Something always likely when moribund ideologues and their high priest caste are confronted with lived experience.

7. The disappearance of right-wing groups from the street: it is my contention, utterly unsupported by any concrete evidence I might add, that UKIP, Tommy Robinson, the EDF in Britain as well as One Nation in Australia and even Macon himself, are all creations of, and funded by, deep-state elements among the elite. There are also question marks of this sort over Antifa. The ex-Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott admitted publicly that during his time as a Howard government minister he was literally the bag-man ferrying money back and forth to One Nation. Some of these groups listed above are violent; some are created with the intention of splitting the Labour vote. In any case, previously highly publicised right-wing groups have all but disappeared from weekly demonstrations, perhaps overwhelmed by the unfunded popular will.

8. The presence of many poor baby boomers and retirees: these sorts of people don’t usually attend demonstrations partially because they’re too busy, too old, don’t care or are driven away by the orchestrated police violence created expressly for that purpose. Yet they constitute the majority of people at the roundabouts, particularly outside Paris. Their presence tells you everything about the veracity of this movement.

9. The nightly MSM news is not crossing live to Washington for expert analysis. This is standard operational practice for colour revolutions in faraway places, mostly because the leaders of such coups often reside in DC on subsidies from the National Endowment for Democracy.[6]

10. There are neither left nor right. This is often commented on adversely as if it was a failing. Nothing answers this better than this Facebook post on a Gilets site:

Look at Jupiter’s face! He doesn’t know what to do. He tried racism, immigration, bludgeoning, thugs, injuries, police violence, prison, smoking, repression, lie and we’re still out there!!!!! So we drop nothing and keep going All together without leaving anyone on the side. It’s not easy. We’re all different with different ideas, but we have a common goal, We’re a lot then in a big family we fight but we meet every week, Saturday, Sunday, night, all when we can and forget our differences.”[7]

Diversity is one of neo-Liberalism’s keywords, yet in thinking about such terms we should also recall Nietzsche’s axiom that things are only spoken about when they are disappearing.[8] Here, however, in the Gilets, we have an example of true diversity, different in every way from the standard Neo-Liberal usage bombarding us every day.[9]

The fundamental reason the Gilets Jaunes differs from any colour revolution or indeed any major revolution of the 20th century is precisely the manner in which this alternative diversity functions. The Gilets are making their own meanings within their own spaces of appearance: ‘where they are seen by others as others are seen by them’ (Arendt 1958). And they are making it through discussion.

Furthermore, these meanings are under their control and are held in common by the Gilets whatever their other differences. As the writer says “We’re all different with different ideas, but we have a common goal, We’re a lot then in a big family we fight but we meet every week”. This sociality creates meanings as an outcome of communal being-ness in common[10] and these meanings remain under the control of the Gilets who made them. Differences, for instance over seeking election to the EU parliament, are simply tolerated.

Diversity of response and opinion is seen as a strength, not a weakness. There is no ideological template applicable to every context.[11] Instead, as an anonymous ex-French Intel guy said last week on Le Media, one roundabout is full of young people, another full of black bloc, another full of older people and they are all talking with each other. Through this sociality and commonality, meaning is produced and then held communally because participants inside varied and infinite contexts (spaces of appearance) and repeated actions of sociality act these meanings in common. Focus is centred on their common interest i.e. the impossibility of existing in today’s France. Everything else is fluff.

Every week these participant meanings are sustained, built upon and maintained through more actions of sociality, more discussion and more actions. Communal meanings held and actioned in this way produce social power; because actioned meaning in common is precisely what social power is!

Furthermore, this unity in diversity utterly splinters all the demonizing and pathologizing names invented by the media and globalisers over the last thirty years as a means of divide and rule. These devised names applied to groups in society: work-shy; dole-bludgers; terrorists; anti-Semite; Russian Bot; racist; sexist and any of the plethora of names applied by the state and the MSM towards elements threatening the façade of Neo-Liberalism, are simply bypassed. As in many other things the Gilets simply refuse to recognise them.

I don’t know what the future holds but I do know that all these reasons taken together prove the Gilets Jaunes are the real deal for genuine change; not only in France but also in how the rest of the world conceives and practices politics itself.

NOTES:-

  • [1] For a full understanding of how the liberal state is built upon a Cartesian separation of the interior and the exterior, how mechanistic thinking dominates our politics and the dangers inherent in all of this for ourselves as social creatures constructing our own meaning through our communal sociality, see Arendt 1958 and Studdert 2016. As far as abstractions go well, ‘the march of history’; ‘the dictatorship of the proletariat’; ‘the fatherland’ and the ‘The market’, all serve to illustrate the point, for all regimes.
  • [2] Three days of street demonstration in Paris organized by multiple far-right leagues that almost toppled the government.
  • [3] I’m not the only one drawing this comparison. From a Gilet web site: “In my country France there are 387 deputies petainistes who voted the anti-thugs law. Shame on them”. Petain was of course the president of the Vichy regime.
  • [4] The on-going case of Sydney University professor Tim Anderson suspended for supporting the Syrian and Palestinian people is the latest example.
  • [5] Thanks to Jean-Michel Wizenne for this gold nugget.
  • [6] Standard operational procedure for all empires. See the history of Byzantium for example.
  • [7] This seems like a Google translation to me. I have refrained from correcting anything. Jupiter is French sarcasm for Macron!
  • [8] There’s a lot more that can be said about the fantasy of normativism and its role in ensuring conformity from politicians and modern populations at large, but this is not the place. Again I point the reader towards Arendt 1958 and Studdert Palgrave 2006 and Studdert/ Walkerdine Palgrave 2016.
  • [9] For instance this: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/feb/08/how-baftas-are-rewarding-diversity
  • [10] Again a longer explanation of the inter-relational construction of meaning and subjectivity through communal sociality and communal action, is contained in Studdert/Walkerdine Palgrave 2016 where examples derived from field work in a Welsh market are examined.
  • [11] Which of course is precisely what the Marxists find so confusing – what is it they ask? As if somewhere, there had to be an ‘it’, an essence.

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DunGroanin
DunGroanin
Feb 13, 2019 4:31 PM

Lol Merkel serves it up cold to the usurpers.

‘What Macron, an ex-Rothschild banker, appears to be striving for is a replication of his pro-rich, anti-worker policies that he is imposing on France, and for these policies to be extended across the Eurozone. Berlin is not buying it, realizing such policies will further erode the social fabric. This could be the main reason why Macron tried to use the Nord Stream 2 project as leverage over Berlin.

In the end, Macron and Washington – albeit working for different objectives – were defeated in their attempts to sabotage the emerging energy trade between Germany, Europe and Russia. Nord Stream 2, as with Russia’s Turk Stream to the south of Europe, seems inevitable by sheer force of natural partnership. ‘
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/02/13/germany-pulls-rank-on-macron-and-american-energy-blackmail.html

Cane Toad
Cane Toad
Feb 13, 2019 11:57 AM

It is looking increasingly likely that this peace plan will be revealed to the world while Israel is still 70 years old, before the nation’s 71st birthday. Go figure—the deal that may trigger the 70th Week, unveiled while Israel is 70 years old by a modern day Cyrus who was born 700 days before Israel’s reestablishment during a blood moon, was 777 days old when Israel was 77 days old, was 70 years, 7 months, and 7 days old upon inauguration, and celebrated the two year anniversary of his inauguration in Israel’s 70th year during another blood moon.

mark
mark
Feb 13, 2019 3:59 PM
Reply to  Cane Toad

I knew a guy who put his money on the seventh horse in the seventh race on 7th July.
It came in seventh.

Kushner’s two point plan for peace:-
1. Ask Adelson what he wants.
2. Kiss Adelson’s a*se.

Cane Toad
Cane Toad
Feb 13, 2019 10:24 AM

https://sputniknews.com/world/201902131072373703-venezuela-maduro-interview-us-europe/

The Great Wen strikes again. Perfidious Albion. Now the world shall brand you thief.

Hello Dung beetle. How are we today? Any better Pet?

DunGroanin
DunGroanin
Feb 13, 2019 11:55 AM
Reply to  Cane Toad

Lols

Toad is as Toad does.

Guerilla hackers have released all your modus operandi:

https://www.cyberguerrilla.org/blog/__trashed-6/

https://www.cyberguerrilla.org/blog/operation-integrity-initiative-british-informational-war-against-all-part-6/

Yet even as you sizzle in the plain daylight of truth – your inane technocratic algorithm splurges random babble – are you afraid? Is your mind going?
Don’t worry it will soon be over.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=c8N72t7aScY

Toot toot Toady.

Jon Stern
Jon Stern
Feb 13, 2019 8:59 AM

This article is possibly the best and most accurate thing I have ever read

diteiland
diteiland
Feb 13, 2019 9:53 AM
Reply to  Jon Stern

It has substance indeed, and it evokes serious discussion too. Cane Toad made a very good point and although I agree it’s pre-planned and secretly managed, I also consider the fact that a movement like this can contribute to more awareness. Hopefully gets Perfect Pera’s heroic stance enough traction to turn the tide, or at least slow down the pace… because this is the city they have in mind for us to live in https://arxiv.org/pdf/1810.11665.pdf

Perfect Pera
Perfect Pera
Feb 13, 2019 10:30 AM
Reply to  diteiland

I think we’re on the same page.

Even if the movement wasn’t pre-planned or secretly managed, it makes sense to believe that is exactly what is being attempted.

As I’ve said already in this thread the danger for the movement is being enticed away from their goals by things which you think will hurt the elite.

diteiland
diteiland
Feb 13, 2019 12:46 PM
Reply to  Perfect Pera

Only one day after the Co-Prince of Andorra assumed office the GiletsJaunes got their own web domain https://ibb.co/VSQTcbT

Cane Toad
Cane Toad
Feb 13, 2019 7:32 AM

Dung oanin, you are without any doubt a troll. Your every effort speaks troll. Everyone reading your posts understands you are a troll. Were you birn a jerk or have you become one through practice.

https://journal-neo.org/2019/02/13/will-the-queen-of-england-be-evacuated-to-saudi-arabia/

Poor Dung oanin has made a spectacle of himself.

DunGroanin
DunGroanin
Feb 13, 2019 12:04 PM
Reply to  Cane Toad

That is called ‘projection’ you inffective and malign toad.

You guys are so easy. Lol.

Cane Toad
Cane Toad
Feb 12, 2019 12:27 PM

https://www.voltairenet.org/article205147.html

Europe follows Venuzuelan path to destruction

DunGroanin
DunGroanin
Feb 12, 2019 4:44 PM
Reply to  Cane Toad

Poop poop Toad – you play that insincere caricature role to a tee!

No badger you!

Cane Toad
Cane Toad
Feb 12, 2019 9:10 AM

Children children wake up. You are being flattered by the deep state. You are being conned. As for those who call me a troll for establishment wake up. I have suffered far worse than any one of you at their hands. Sdilly little cattle. Keep mooing to yourselvrs. Bask in their flatteries. Go to voltaire net and truly learn about global britian. Go and learn about recolonialisation. Go and learn that the deep state in UK brought about Brexit. Understand your monarch will pass her crown to her child and he will take youto war so the UK can be cleansed just like Nagasaki. You will be gone while they will sit it out in NZ or Australia. Bunch of halfwit limey dogs. Cant think. Led like sheep.

Perfect Pera
Perfect Pera
Feb 12, 2019 10:11 AM
Reply to  Cane Toad

I’ve been following these things for a while and I’ve had enormous suspicions about Brexit, for example, from the very beginning. I still don’t think a meaningful Brexit is going to happen. In fact, all the signs appear (to me at least) to show that Brexit has been a 3 year long smokescreen for greater European (not EU) integration, or at least defence/police integration in a federalised Europe.

I’m very sympathetic with your idea that what we’re seeing is organised chaos across Europe to break up the current EU. There’s political chaos in Britain over Brexit. Political chaos in France over les gilets jaunes. Societal chaos in Germany over immigration. We could go on to talk about Italy, Spain too. There’s Europe’s 5 biggest populations right there in chaos! Is that a coincidence? Probably not. Is it designed? Probably.

Where does that leave us with Les gilets jaunes then? Do we identify it as a deep state operation and let it die? I don’t think we should. It’s like being in a group which is infiltrated with agents provocateurs. You shouldn’t disband a good movement because another force is trying to corrupt it and take it in a different direction. No, we need to stay focused on the big picture and keep talking to each other and keep positive about our successes and carry on.

Each Gilet Jaune wants a number of things, but what they all want an end to enforced austerity and corruption and a truer democracy and self determination.

I’m definitely wary of the Hermit image on the Economist. But it’s clear to me that just about every gilet Jaunes is an authentic and peaceful protestor, so let’s ride this deep state creation (if it is one) and take it to where we need it to go rather than just dropping it because it might be co-opted. We should keep doing the things which are working and be cautious about morphing into something different which no longer meets our ultimate goals.

I live in Spain. We saw a similar movement with the 15M “indignados” movement a few years back. The problem for the elite was that these people were out of the political system where they couldn’t be managed. Along came Podemos which swept up most of the protestors. They won a few EU Parliaments seats over night and where are we now? The same party is in power as before with greater levels of austerity. Deep State 1:0 People.

I’m with les gilets jaunes for now, but I’m not getting carried away and I hope they keep their focus on their broader goals and not get obsessed with what they don’t want the elite to have.

Cane Toad
Cane Toad
Feb 11, 2019 8:24 PM

Dung Oanin

I believe i have demonstrated how one should deal with a cry baby child. I am sure now you understand.

As for the Yellow Vests they were conceived and are still led by the deep state.

Sorry if that upsets you or makes you want to cry like a baby.

Perfect Pera
Perfect Pera
Feb 11, 2019 10:35 PM
Reply to  Cane Toad

The thought that this is a deep state op has crossed my mind too, but it falls apart. If it was a successful deep state-run event, foreign media outlets would be reporting it in order to spread it to other states with the same aims, but they’re not. Nobody is. I think it’s genuine.

ViveLesGiletsJaunes

Some Random Passer-by
Some Random Passer-by
Feb 11, 2019 10:47 PM
Reply to  Cane Toad

Using the cover of one magazine as your argument isn’t the strongest evidence.

The protestors have more in common with brexit when looking at the signs they carry. There are no vests shown.

The only coincidence is their colour. And that’s easily explained by vast amount of yellow across the page. Colour printing costs money.

diteiland
diteiland
Feb 12, 2019 9:29 AM

I think, it’s not “just” a magazine cover, furthermore a Hermit is a person who lives in seclusion from society, the perfect metaphore for Macron… and Perfect Petra – could the absence of MSM coverage be orchestrated, just to enhanche the creditability? In a situation where media outlets are met with distrust, under-reporting is more or less an autenticity label. Do not underestimate the Order out of Chaos mantra, lets hope 5G comes too late for them!

Perfect Pera
Perfect Pera
Feb 12, 2019 10:35 AM
Reply to  diteiland

@ diteiland

“could the absence of MSM coverage be orchestrated, just to enhance the credibility?”

It might be. I certainly think that’s a possibility for the lack of MSM reporting of les gilets jaunes in France itself. The lack of quality reporting outside France is different I think. The governments of other countries have been hyping the “violence” of the protestors and avoiding the large peaceful protests. It’s not difficult for the British press to fan the flames of a bit of xenophobia and discredit the movement just because it’s French – that’s what they do all the time: divide and rule – so I think that’s the reason they’re reporting it as they are.

I think it’s within the elite’s ability (with the MSM) to develop a whole pan-European yellow vest movement to break the current system. The danger is that we and the elite want similar goals. The people want the end of corruption, austerity and weak democracy – in Europe, that means a restructuring of the EU political system. The elite also want a restructuring of the political system (in my opinion). They are moving to a federalised Europe. I want the power to remove my leaders through a democratic process. I want sovereignty, not nationalism. I’m European, but I don’t want a European superstate. I think they do.

I think this is just the start to greater chaos in Europe and the elite’s plan is for us to demand (and get) peace via the formation of a federalised EU superstate.

Perhaps the yellow vest movement has been created by the elite for that end. If it is, we have the strength in numbers to own the movement and use it for our own ends – but we mustn’t stop thinking about what our objectives really are.

Some Random Passer-by
Some Random Passer-by
Feb 13, 2019 9:01 AM
Reply to  diteiland

Or it’s simply a comic book cover (dedicated to those who make money) about the woes of Brexit (the hermit).

If it is a deep state operation (which I doubt due to the lack of coverage (us Brits are very close to similar action, again due to Brexit being the catalyst)) then kudos because it shows that everyone running the show is extremely clever, and ballsy enough to show their cards (why? Deep state seems to be various factions).

Yet I’m never left with that feeling, especially when looking at the recent crop of leaders (groomed background, more about compliance to their masters rather than charisma or ability).

I’ve seen the pictures of Rothschild poking Prince Charles like he’s his boss (he is…), and I’m aware of how far their tentacles reach but they’ve always preferred lies and obfuscation.

Why would they change a winning tactic?

Gary Weglarz
Gary Weglarz
Feb 12, 2019 6:46 AM
Reply to  Cane Toad

Cane Toad – I see we have a new troll! Welcome. You won’t understand much of what is said and discussed here given there isn’t much light where you’ve managed to insert your noggin. Contortionism aside, and that said, make a rational argument using evidence and reason and people will treat you according. Keep posting your troll-boy nonsense – and, well, people will eventually simply not bother with you.

From the government troll training manual – (see the Intercept articles from the Snowden documents) – here are the the very simple basics for trolling: (“The 4 D’s: Deny, Disrupt, Degrade, Deceive”) – right from the manual.

“Deny”-check; “Disrupt”-check; “Degrade”-check; “Deceive”-check = So far by my calculation you’re four for four, a perfect score, and I haven’t even bothered to read all of your posts. If I was your troll-boy boss I’d suggest a bit more subtlety I think. Just saying.

Antonym
Antonym
Feb 12, 2019 7:00 AM
Reply to  Cane Toad

Macron & co organizing their own worst opposition? Makes no sense.

As dumb as proclaiming that Trump organized his own Russiagate FBI/ CIA investigation.

Antonym
Antonym
Feb 12, 2019 7:10 AM
Reply to  Antonym

Deep state inserting ‘tools” to deflate popular pressure? Sure: just look Tony Blair or Nigel Farage.

Wtf r u on?
Wtf r u on?
Feb 12, 2019 4:47 PM
Reply to  Cane Toad

Did you bring your very own ‘like’ with you?

Steve of Maine
Steve of Maine
Feb 12, 2019 9:18 PM
Reply to  Cane Toad

I think you are trying to muck up the water with your diatribe. The article itself offers to dispel your notions. You are aiming to distract from it and offering nothing as evidence except your repetition that you can be trusted. If this is so, please offer something concrete. Offer a counter hypothesis and defend it with evidence. This is how we constructively argue.

bevin
bevin
Feb 14, 2019 1:45 AM
Reply to  Steve of Maine

He/she is not interested in constructive argument. Probably merely demented in effect he is ensuring that proper examination of the popular movement in France is diverted into idle conjecture, occasionally relieved by numerological nonsense, to the effect that the ‘all -powerful’ state is behind these attacks on its authority.
Not a jot of evidence is proffered. Nor is any needed to such people it is axiomatic that the state is all seeing and can never be challenged by mere people.
Together with those who see Rothschilds everywhere such trolls are rapidly doing, what The Establishment wants, and driving all but the most hardened commenters away.

Mikalina
Mikalina
Feb 11, 2019 5:51 PM

Contrived organisation or not, the bottom line for me is that a man went out on Saturday to protest over his government’s actions and said government blew his hand off.

So, if the ‘call to arms’ came in the UK, would I put on a yellow vest and join him?

https://www.rt.com/news/451055-yellow-vest-france-protests/?utm_source=browser&utm_medium=aplication_chrome&utm_campaign=chrome

Cane Toad
Cane Toad
Feb 11, 2019 1:45 PM

Dun Groanin

Such a meaningful reply. So clever.

Nah mate, its you who should do some thinking. Try it before you write again. For all of us just give it a go.

In the mean time fellow travellers consider whether Europeans have been taught to organise into colour movements and whether the Yellow Vest phenomena is as organic as it has been presented.

I very much doubt it.

I think the entire circumstances around its concrption and media reception is absolutely contrived and i as all of you once agsin to consider the image of The Hermit on the Economist 2017 Year in Review magazine cover page and that the owners of that magazine are the former employers of Macron.

DunGroanin
DunGroanin
Feb 11, 2019 3:41 PM
Reply to  Cane Toad

Toaddy,

Didn’t answer my reasonable litmus question. Not a surprise really.

Your halfarse attempt at conflating the NWO with the genuine grass roots is a prat fall fail.

The trouble for psychopaths is that they can’t sincerely empathise – they can’t feel what other people are feeling; and most can’t imitate sincerity without turning into caricature – like the emoting Blair/Clinton masters of that dark art. Look back at their performances from 20 years and it is squirm inducing how people were misled.

Here is what genuine really looks and feels like.

https://thebookofman.com/heroes/professor-green/jeremy-corbyn-podcast/

Of course the establishment is throwing the kitchen sink at it.

‘‘ in April last year, Theresa May set up a ‘Rapid Response Unit’ inside the Cabinet Office as a sub-unit of the Government Communication Service.’

Cane Toad
Cane Toad
Feb 11, 2019 12:44 PM

https://sputniknews.com/europe/201902111072312728-france-italy-macron/

Le Pen on Macrons actions to dissolve Europe.

Wake up people the Yellow Vests were conceived and launched by the derp state.

The participants generally are genuine prople with genuine issues…but the path of the Yellow Vests is pre planned.

Ask yourself why the storyline of its genesis focusses so much of just how spontsineous and organic the whole thing was.

That cute story is the cover for a whopping great dirty deep state lie.

DunGroanin
DunGroanin
Feb 11, 2019 1:17 PM
Reply to  Cane Toad

Canetoad

Your pathetic toad trolling script is a waste of time here.

We don’t believe in your mumbo-jumbo and false representations of facts.

Your classic CIA/Nazi/imperialist/Banker run narrative is defunct – yet you still spew expecting a different result! That is a sure sign of some form of madness as Einstein said.

Either you are a computer bot that does not care.
Or, you are a psychopath workng as a cog in the Pathocracy and you have no normal human sensibility – and don’t care.

Not sure what you are?
Well let me help you – what happens when you hear a baby crying?
What is your instant reaction?

kingfelix
kingfelix
Feb 11, 2019 12:39 PM

Good piece.

Could ease up on impressing upon the world you have a social sciences degree (or aspire to one) with stuff like this:

“Through this sociality and commonality, meaning is produced and then held communally because participants inside varied and infinite contexts (spaces of appearance) and repeated actions of sociality act these meanings in common.”

Gezzah Potts
Gezzah Potts
Feb 11, 2019 12:27 PM

Excellent David, cheers. Hopefully the Gilets Jaunes will start spreading thruout Europe. I also believe they are genuine, given the lack of coverage in the mainstream media; who fully expose themselves for the gutless, chinless, craven presstitutes they are. The determination of these brave people from all over France opposing the cancer of Neoliberalism is so admirable and inspiring. Ya Basta! Screw Neoliberalism, and screw to hell all the paid apologists, gatekeepers, flunkies, yes men and yes women, and the bought politicians of this warped ponzi scheme that has destroyed so many lives. My factory job was one of millions offshored to China. I sell a homeless street mag to survive. I can relate to the anger of the Gilets Jaunes. I wish more here in Australia did as well.

Cane Toad
Cane Toad
Feb 11, 2019 11:57 AM

The Yellow Vests is a colour revolution in reverse. It was spawned by the deep state. Its origin synthetic. It was conceived by the deep state to harness a deliberately fostered sense of frustration. Its participants are genuine. But its conception and direction is state managed. The Yellow Vests are a tool for the deep state. The intention is to fracture France and Europe into 10 kingdoms. One of those kingdoms is Andorra. Macron is a ruling prince if Andorra. Upon Macrons elevation to the presidency he recieved a letter from the Pope asking him to heal the wound Napoleon influcted upon the Roman Church…ie…Napoleon caused the seperation of Church and state by crowning himself King. Take a look at Elliot Abrams on Voltairenet.org and get ip to speed on a thing called theopolitics.

The Yellow Vests are a tool to break the EU into 10 Kingdoms.

Look up Macrons 10 nation Army.

Macron is a word which means ‘mark’

He things to sit upon a green hued throne called the Paris Agreement.

He has changed weights and measures…the kilogram…and other factors regarding Plancks Constant.

Emmanuel means ‘god with us’

Jean means ‘god has been gracious’

Michel means ‘like christ’

Frederik means ‘peaceful ruler’

He compares himself to the god Jupiter…the god of fortresses.

milosevic
milosevic
Feb 11, 2019 12:57 PM
Reply to  Cane Toad

These suggestions of yours are very interesting. They would be even more so, if you were able to provide any serious evidence for them. Failing that, mysticism is fairly unconvincing.

mark
mark
Feb 12, 2019 12:03 AM
Reply to  milosevic

Extraordinary claims call for extraordinary evidence to back them up. This is absent from Mr. Toad’s thesis. You can claim this is a plot by Putin, or aliens, or pixies, if you want – provided you have something to back it up. All the indications are that this is a genuine movement.

Estaugh
Estaugh
Feb 11, 2019 2:48 PM
Reply to  Cane Toad

The EUmperor has no clothes.

bevin
bevin
Feb 11, 2019 5:15 PM
Reply to  Cane Toad

“Macron is a ruling prince if Andorra.”
As is every President of France, as part of the office.
This is information without significance.

mark
mark
Feb 11, 2019 11:27 AM

Paris is starting to look more and more like Hebron in the West Bank. This isn’t altogether surprising – Macron’s Fascist Boot Boys are trained by Zionist thugs and kiddie killers who have been terrorising Palestinians for years.

Antonym
Antonym
Feb 12, 2019 1:44 AM
Reply to  mark

This is the real “mark” folks: dragging in “zionists” with any topic, like a real Karim.

harry stotle
harry stotle
Feb 11, 2019 10:30 AM

“The western intellectual tradition, particularly the social disciplines, has no idea how to address the economic, political and cultural stagnation currently affecting western countries.” – there are a few exceptions, you just have to search for them.

Some good stuff on Renegade Inc – here Danny Dorling makes the case that in Britain we have failed to develop higher cultural values largely because it is too painful to confront the true nature of our Empire’s baleful legacy.

In other words lies and denialism form the heart of historical narratives which in turn feeds the kind of neofeudalism that has long been at the bedrock of our shitty class system – those who challenge such bias such as Rob Newman (History of Oil) are all but ignored by the establishment.

Instead of blaming immigrants for the malaise gripping the country I just wish a few more Brits knew about, and supported grass roots rebellions in neighbouring countries – you never know it finally wake up a few of them up to the constant stream of lies and fake news produced by our corporate loving media?

Narrative
Narrative
Feb 11, 2019 10:15 AM

Item “2. The mainstream media blackout” indicates the French protests are not approved events by the masters of the universe.

When protests happen in Iran, Ukraine or Syria, controlled mass media become obsessed with taking the side of the protesters. Why not with the French?

“It is only necessary to go onto Gilets websites”
Here is one site showing emphasis on one demand: “Référendum d’Initiative Citoyenne (RIC)”
or “Citizens’ Initiative Referendum”. RIC is really democracy in action, I pray, it catches on in the West.

http://giletsjaunes.e-monsite.com/

DunGroanin
DunGroanin
Feb 11, 2019 10:04 AM

Macron was dead man walking the moment Merkel survived.

Merkel was attacked by the same powers that installed Macron; powered ukip/brexit; funded and coordinated all the fancy ‘alt-right populists’ across Europe, set up to counter the real grass-roots voices which have been emerging over the last decade. The attempt at creating identity political division has its limits – how many sub-groupings of humans needing equal rights can they make up? How many heart on sleeve, children crying anti ‘insert generalisation’ fake causes will people believe?

Genuine Grass-roots?
Syrizia, podemos, 5-star, momentum, gillets jaunes…

Set up bullshit ‘populist’ in name only?
Ukip/edl, AdF, ciudadnos, EM, all the fascists from sweden to hungary and ukraine. ..

The militarist monster is cornered, the creators of that gollum are unsure about letting its ultraviolence loose in the heart of their home? Easily done in far off lands with no white people or media.
It is not the violence they fear. It’s that the monster may baulk at killing its own family and neighbours and lay down arms leaving the frankensteins no protection from their victims demands for justice and fairness.

The muted, cowardly msm and worm-tongued academia can’t keep a lid on it – peoples eyes (cameras) and voices (the internet) has made the overthrow of the old despots and their bought silver tongued thugs nearer by the day.

What great terror can they deploy? Natural disaster? Manmade disaster?

There is nothing except spiting their own faces left for the fucking wankers.

milosevic
milosevic
Feb 11, 2019 1:45 PM
Reply to  DunGroanin

how many sub-groupings of humans needing equal rights can they make up? how many anti-“insert generalisation” fake causes will people believe?

I guess that can only be determined by experiment.

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=human+pups

Genuine Grass-roots? Syrizia

Come on, even the Guardian knows that they’re stooges of the IMF.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/09/greece-alexis-tsipras-syriza-austerity-eu

What great terror can they deploy? Natural disaster? Manmade disaster?

you forgot “global warming”.

I predict that after the Terror War and Russian Meddling are completely discredited, giant flying machines will appear over major cities, there will be Shock-And-Awe displays of 9/11-style pyrotechnics, and the ruling-class talking heads on TV will solemnly announce, “space aliens have invaded Earth, and we must do whatever they say, or they will destroy the planet.”

The Evil Moslem Terrorists narrative was promoted by the corporate mass media for more than two decades, before it went live on 9/11/2001. The UFO Alien Invasion narrative (“X-Files”, etc) has been prepared for longer than even that. They must have big plans for it. Bear this in mind, when you see the UFO Death Rays being shown on CNN.

milosevic
milosevic
Feb 11, 2019 2:01 PM
Reply to  milosevic

DunGroanin
DunGroanin
Feb 11, 2019 3:54 PM
Reply to  milosevic

Love it Milo,

But you can’t quote the Graun – here of all places – as valid opinion!

On Greece – how many years now since they were in imminent danger of default, causing the destruction of the € and the whole EU?
Yeah Syrizia was intiltrated by the Bankers, Vannufake-is, just as Corbynite Labour is at the moment. But the way through is by pruning the infected leaves and branches – that way you get a healthy rose garden.

falcemartello 1
falcemartello 1
Feb 11, 2019 9:54 AM

Historical reflection
The period we are experiencing at the moment is similar in nature and form to the turn of the last century. China is the modern day Bismarcks Germany. China is being built up to be the wests new enfant terrible .
The Gilet Jaunes movement is reminiscent of Il Biennio Rosso that occurred in Italy post WW1. .
I concur with the author that this movement is real organic and is scaring the living hell out of the plutocrats the political establishment and the oligarchs. I have been saying for years and more often than not on this blog site( which has given people like myself and many others a forum to voice our opinions)
The Emperor has no clothes. Hence to put it into context the political establishment be it of the right or the so called left have managed to discredit themselves to the point of no return.
Simple analysis with regards to the left side of modern day politics: The only thing left for these political sell outs is their left hand and left foot. From a Gramscian point of view these so called lefties are anything but left. Cruise missile lefties or liberal interventionist to maintain and increase there hold on the dying empire of pax-amaricana brought to you by an anglo-zionist just around the corner.
We must all be gilet jaunes for the largest wealth gap that has exceeded the Gilded age must be addressed and must become part and parcel of today’s political discourse.
If I here one more western politico tell me that more reform is needed in order to energize and increase economic efficiency I will go into permanent emises.
Western political,social and economic system is failing your average Joe and Joanne.
Mussolini first coined the phrase. LO STATO CORPORATO. from that phrase fascism was born. The Corporate state is alive and well and we in the west are living Mussolini’s dream .
Here’s hoping the modern day version of Il Biennio Rosso brings a better outcome than the last one.
Further more lets hope a real working /middle class Gramscian topped with Vico sovereignty style party rises like a Phoenix from the ashes, to the dying soon in a country near you Corporate State fascismo 101.

Cane Toad
Cane Toad
Feb 11, 2019 7:50 AM

I dont think the author is aware of the Economist magazine 2017 Year in Review cover. If he was he would be aware that the cover features tarot cards and one of those cards is The Hermit. If one takes a good y.look at the Hermit image one will see the yellow vests marching under the constellation of Leo in relation to the Moon in its phase. That moon phase and Leo were in the orientation shown in the Hermit on the 23rd of November 2018.

David Studdert is either misinformed or misleading.

The yellow vest movement was foretold on the front cover of the 2017 year in review Economist Magazine.

The Yellow Vests synthetically created to help Macron and the elites bring in marshal law and with that the carbon dollar economy.

Take a good look at that magazine cover and look closely at the Hermit image and see the Yellow Vests and see them marching under Leo and notice the globe atlas with borders of France and the UK cojoined and see the black lightning bolt fusing France and Germany together in Alsace Lorraine.

You are being gulled into supporting the yellow vests against your ow interests.

milosevic
milosevic
Feb 11, 2019 8:18 AM
Reply to  Cane Toad

If you look more closely, you’ll see that the banners carried by the yellow marchers refer to “TTIP”, “TPP”, and “EU”, which might be interpreted as “anti-globalization”.

Martial law was enacted years ago, using the standard pretext of fake terrorism.
comment image

Groundhog
Groundhog
Feb 11, 2019 9:11 AM
Reply to  Cane Toad

Trolly bollocks you spake –

falcemartello1
falcemartello1
Feb 11, 2019 10:27 AM
Reply to  Cane Toad

@ Cane Toad.
My fears exactly that is why I am hoping that the French version of Il Biennio Rosso turns out better than the last one . Following those years Mussolini stormed into power in Italy and my blogger colleague that is my main point . Seeing the legacy media and all NATO countries are giving the gilet jaunes next to no air time or rag time tells me that maybe it is real.

flaxgirl
flaxgirl
Feb 11, 2019 7:34 AM

Point 1 alone kind of says it all.

Miley Cyrus
Miley Cyrus
Feb 11, 2019 7:25 AM

Interesting article….

bevin
bevin
Feb 10, 2019 11:36 PM

UK Column has done an exemplary job covering these protests,. Vanessa Beesley has produced terrific reports. Over here in Canada there is nothing in the news. Nor, from what I see, is it a preoccupation of the media in the UK.
And the reason is clear- the violence is shocking and the victims are, uniformly, unarmed and peaceful while the perpetrators are, those wielding the police, Macron, his ministers and the corporatised interests owning the media.
RT and Sputnik are also doing a good job on this story, as they are, with very limited resources, on Venezuela and the Integrity Initiative.
Our own MSM are committing suicide while desperately working to ban any competition on the grounds that ‘speaking truth to power’ is insolence of the sort that lese majeste laws prohibit. When members of society are allowed to put themselves on a par with professional voices of authority all order is at risk.
It is no coincidence-it can almost certainly be attributed to orders from on high- that the prime targets of the French police are people with cameras.

vexarb
vexarb
Feb 11, 2019 6:31 AM
Reply to  bevin

@bevin: “the victims are unarmed and peaceful while the perpetrators are those wielding the police”…

… and the police wielding what appear to be iron rods a foot long and half inch thick. Reminds me of one of the Palestinian Intifada, where Israeli prime minister Itzhak Rabin, a brilliant military man, replaced the thick wooden truncheons of the old British Colonial police with these clever weapons, ideal for breaking bones. As a result, hospital ambulatory services treated fewer Arabs with bruises but orthopedic wards were congested with Arabs with broken bones — and armed soldiers to guard these Arab “terrorists”.

What a long way La Douce France is travelling backwards toward the age of L’Homme Arme’ led by “the ledgers and the agents with which Rothschild rules the world” (–Heine).

https://youtu.be/tgbJpytkULY

In William Duffy’s Mass, “The Armed Man”, you can hear the thump thump thump of iron rods breaking the bones of unarmed people.

mark
mark
Feb 12, 2019 3:58 PM
Reply to  bevin

Vanessa Beeley is an extraordinary woman and a tremendous journalist, like Eva Bartlett and Lizzie Phelan.
They have done a terrific job in puncturing the lies and poison of the MSM.
So different from the third rate lying presstitute media hacks of the Fake MSM and the Government propaganda mouthpiece BBC.

Over the past few days there have been protracted violent demonstrations by ordinary people in Haiti, protesting against extreme poverty, corruption, and blatantly rigged elections, demanding the resignation of the president. But don’t expect to read a word about it in the MSM – the presidential incumbent is a Washington puppet. So like the 100,000 children who have died from malnutrition in Yemen, or the one million cholera cases, or the kids gunned down in Gaza, they are “Unpeople.”

Fair dinkum
Fair dinkum
Feb 10, 2019 10:41 PM

The Gilets Jaunes is anarchical.
The ruling class fear anarchy (rules WITHOUT rulers) more than anything else.
Anarchy is Truth. It is contagious and it is unstoppable.

Antonym
Antonym
Feb 11, 2019 3:51 AM
Reply to  Fair dinkum

Normal anarchy is a bit like Russian roulette; just review Barère and Robespierre.
Today with modern communication -even though monitored by Deep State- better outcomes are possible, but not guaranteed.

Antonym
Antonym
Feb 11, 2019 4:01 AM
Reply to  Antonym

The problem is with chaotic situations that enable sociopaths (DSM-5) to start torture and summary murder; the most recent one was the Islamic State in Irak / Syria, that attracted many of them from all over. Some Deep States have sociopaths build into their systems.

BigB
BigB
Feb 10, 2019 8:40 PM

There will be no pictures of flics hors-la-roi
Shooting out the eyes of Brothers
[and Sisters] in the instant replay

The revolution will not be televised
WILL not be televised, WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

The revolution will be no re-run brothers
The revolution will be live

{Apologies to Gil Scott-Heron}

tutisicecream
tutisicecream
Feb 11, 2019 7:51 AM
Reply to  BigB

Timely reminder of prophetic lyrics. Of course it depends on whose revolution it is and who benefits from it…

milosevic
milosevic
Feb 11, 2019 8:26 AM
Reply to  BigB

Gary Weglarz
Gary Weglarz
Feb 12, 2019 6:49 AM
Reply to  milosevic

milosevic – thanks for sharing this. Much appreciated.

Frankly Speaking
Frankly Speaking
Feb 10, 2019 8:05 PM

Whether we like it or not, Macron was elected as the winner in a democratic election a couple of years ago.

Before that, on the left, Hollande was a self-serving waste of space and more interested in serving his mistresses than serving the French people and lost popularity massively. Melechon simply did not appeal to enough people.

On the right, Le Pen’s constant association with her ultra-right father and his supporters did not get her past the finish line, despite her changing her public image along the way. Fillon was probably the guy that was going to win it, but was trashed by the media.

We heard all the time how “the people” were fed up of the existing politicians, so enter stage left, the French Blair / Trudeau / Guaido. We know that he / they are neoliberal puppets, but the fact is that they were democratically elected.

What is broken is not democracy in France and elsewhere, rather the ownership and influence of the media, that’s the key. They are not the “free press”, they are bought and corrupted by unaccountable oligarchs, trusts and corporations.

Until this changes, nothing will change, the people’s heads will be filled with their propaganda and they will keep on “democratically” voting for what they are being directed to vote for. The Gillets Jaunes are right to highlight the press as being dishonest, however, trashing Paris and elsewhere is not the answer, it will only lead to far worse, and alienate the rest of the electorate whom they are trying to bring / keep on-side.

BigB
BigB
Feb 10, 2019 8:54 PM

Frankly Speaking

Rhetorical question: are you really young or just wet behind the ears? This has been coming for years. BTW: My friends and relatives in France all say the same thing: they’ve never met anyone who has met anyone that voted for Macron. He got a 60% majority from Paris? Neoliberalism slowly strangles the people of autonomy – depoliticising them …transferring their autonomy to the corporate/finance/bureaucratic nexus. It views the populace as a host. Keep voting for them: it will be all right? I guess the people just had enough?

theyknowyouknow
theyknowyouknow
Feb 10, 2019 10:30 PM
Reply to  BigB

it has been coming for years….noticed soon after 2001 when France ditched the franc for the euro….”softly softly catchee monkey”….the squeeze was on – rural France was left to dangle as the city swingers prospered…..sucking the country dry to feed the Euro banking cartel and Brussels globalist agenda….and now, – the bread tastes no better than cardboard and coffee as bitter as the people feel.

BigB
BigB
Feb 11, 2019 12:06 AM

Talking of depoliticisation: right in the middle of the protest …they made a new country (via the Aachen Treaty). Who actually is the president of Franco-Germany? Mrs Merkon or Mr Macel? Doesn’t that de-legitimate any “democratic” elections …even if they were legitimate to start?

Estaugh
Estaugh
Feb 11, 2019 12:46 AM

Grow up!

wardropper
wardropper
Feb 11, 2019 4:00 AM

No, no, no. What passes for a “democratic election” today is simply an example of Mark Twain’s wise comment, that “if voting made any difference, they would never let us do it”.
Think, for a minute of the truly embarrassing, catastrophic implications for the Royal Family, if Scotland had voted for independence a few years ago.
Think, too, of the similarly embarrassing, catastrophic implications for Washington, if it came to light that nine-eleven really was an inside job – the sacrifice of 3,000 of one’s own countrymen in order to justify invasions in the Middle East which would cost the further sacrifice of countless civilians in other countries than our own. (Operation Northwoods shows clearly that such schemes can be, and have been, seriously considered, and even implemented, within living memory)
Okay, now that we have seriously contemplated those implications, we can immediately see that neither of the two scenarios could be allowed to happen. They are just too awful to contemplate, so we shan’t contemplate them. Were they to happen, they would remove the very ground from under the Establishment’s feet, and the Establishment simply considers that to be a complete mathematical impossibility. So there. Problem solved.
Except that the problem is not at all solved.

VFL
VFL
Feb 10, 2019 7:42 PM

The ‘illegitimate’ corrupt neoliberal globalist French Regime increases the fascistic terror, bloody violence + oppression against the ‘Yellow Vest’ protesters AKA the common people every day, like the French Regime did 1962 in Paris as they gunned down and murdered 3,000 unarmed Protester against the war in Algeria. I fear a new 1962 in the making. The tactics of shooting rubber bullets, gas+shock grenades ect. deliberately at the heads+faces of protesters, the French Regime had adopted from the IDF they are the worlds ‘experts’ in murdering and crippeling unarmed protesters even if they are children, medics, journalist or any other witnesses of their daily terror+atrocities.

Frankly Speaking
Frankly Speaking
Feb 10, 2019 8:07 PM
Reply to  VFL

They are not illegitimate, whether we like it or not, Macoron was voted in with a majority 2 years ago.

grandstand
grandstand
Feb 10, 2019 8:56 PM

It depends on your notion of legitimacy. If a politician is elected on a particular platform and then implements policies that are the opposite, do they remain “legitimate”? Yes in some strictly formal sense you are correct but how can we hold politicians accountable for failing to do what they promise if we just sit on our hands and wait till the next election when another faux populist, with the support of the MSM, promises us the earth and fails to deliver. How many times does this have to happen before we realise that the so-called “democratic process” is failing us and we look for an alternative?

mark
mark
Feb 10, 2019 9:37 PM

Manny “Rothschild” Macron was a creation of vested corporate interests. He is no more legitimate than the neocon puppet Gweedo.

wardropper
wardropper
Feb 11, 2019 4:06 AM

The letter of the law was something the Scribes and Pharisees were very fond of a couple of thousand years ago.
Have we really learned nothing since then…?
Hitler and Stalin had their “majorities” too, but I assume you might question theirs…?
The word, “legitimate”, has to meet certain criteria in order to be taken seriously.
Just saying that something has happened doesn’t make it legitimate, although the mainstream media would prefer us not to make such distinctions.

Backwash
Backwash
Feb 12, 2019 6:45 PM

Frankly downvoted ?….but not by myself – McMoron was seemingly voted in by the People…and even those that Voted otherwise did Willingly enter into the electoral process…..leaving him with the mandate – but for me – the real rigging is in who is “placed” in opposition – Marine Le pen….now it’s well known that the French don’t really like anyone, though they do manage to put up with themselves, just about….but even for them, to Vote in a Far Right connected (FN) like Le Pen, that was going to be bothersome – so it’s a little like the Trump and Hillary show…..bout the only way that Duck could break for the top spot was pitting him against a someone deemed more nasty and corrupt than even he….could the country take another Clinton…..but problem now is, the lower you go, even the darkest of competition seems better looking – Satan v Macron/Trump – who would win ?

okulo
okulo
Feb 10, 2019 7:01 PM

1). I remember posting a translation of the Gilets Jaunes demands very early on and whilst they were very specific, they were also quite contradictory. It is a strength in one way but a weakness when viewed from above.

2). The media blackout may be merely down to the fact that most of the MSM are pro-EU and there is a tangible anti-EU feeling about the Gilets Jaunes. I don’t think that the protests could be covered in any way which suits the pro-EU agenda.

5). The violence is shocking. I have been involved in a lot of bad tempered (for want of a better description) demonstrations over the years and I have seen people with ver bad cuts and bruises requiring hospital treetment but nothing like what we are seeing in France. There is a an extensive record somewhere of the casualties which beggars belief. One might think that after one protester has their hand blown off, there might be a review of the police tactics but clearly not. Some of the images of the police remind me of Don McCullin’s photos of Northern Ireland.

7). This leans heavily on the everybody I disagree with is a Nazi/far right/alt-right mentality. These spectres do not actually exist and so saying that they have disappeared is like saying that the tiger repellent in your Bristol garden is working.

8). There were baby-boomers and retirees in their many thousands at the recent Brexit Betrayal March (organised by Tommy Robinson, incidentally) who were labelled as fascists and Nazis by the likes of Owen Jones whose paltry oppositional gathering found themselves in violent clashes with the police.

10). There have been many commenters who have said that the Gilets Jaunes transcend the left/right paradigm and I would say that there is a lot of truth to this but I would argue that it is a synthesis of left and right rather than a dissolution of them. I think that the way that both left and right tried to seize ownership of the Yellow Vest in the UK shows that there is not the same energy here. The left have largely given up their claim, as far as I can see and those who want to use it as a vehicle to oppose the EU (and are therefore, rightly or wrongly, deemed as being right wing) have the ball.

Lise
Lise
Feb 10, 2019 8:34 PM
Reply to  okulo

@okulo
I think the issue of the Gilets Jaunes either transcending the left/right opposition or synthesizing left and right is easier to make sense of if we consider two different aspects of both left and right. Left: the working left (social axis) vs the middle-class lefty eager to enforce gay marriage, surrogacy and minority rights in general (societal axis). Right: the right of globalized financial markets (social axis) vs the right of traditional values (societal axis). Macron embodies the societal left and the financial right, while the Gilets Jaunes embody the exact opposite, that is to say the left of working people and the right of traditional values. The political movement that is closest to the Gilets Jaunes according to this analysis has been demonized and repressed for years. It’s called Egalité et Réconcialition, its slogan is “Gauche du travail et droite des valeurs” and its leader is Alain Soral, author of “Comprendre l’Empire”.

mark
mark
Feb 10, 2019 9:42 PM
Reply to  okulo

Robinson, or whatever he currently calls himself, is a Zionist creation. Certainly up till recently he was getting £10,000 of Zionist money a month. The EDL was created by Zionist activists in London with Zionist money, in order to serve Israel’s interests by stirring up trouble with moslems.

Antifa and Black Lives Matter are controlled opposition, bankrolled by Soros money.

okulo
okulo
Feb 11, 2019 1:42 AM
Reply to  mark

Do you mean from Rebel Media? I have never heard anything to back up your claim that the EDL is a Zionist creation and can’t find anything to substantiate it.

Funny that co-founder of Rebel Media, Gavin McInnes was repeatedly accused of antisemitism, then.

But anyway, I don’t support any fanatical religious ideology over another nor do I support one political wing or another. If I have learned anything over the years it is what was put very succinctly by James Corbett, in 4D chess, if you take sides, you lose.

Divide and rule.

mark
mark
Feb 11, 2019 4:24 AM
Reply to  okulo

“Robinson” is in the pocket of Zionist interests. (So is Wilders in Holland.)
As I said, he was getting £10,000 a month in Zionist money till very recently. I don’t know if he still is.
He is in and out of Israel like a yoyo and constantly shilling for Israel and waving an Israeli flag about.
The EDL was based on the Jewish Defence League, which is classed as a terrorist organisation even in America. It was created in London by Zionist activists with Zionist money.
When he was jailed for contempt of court recently, the campaign to free him was run from Israel.

okulo
okulo
Feb 11, 2019 8:05 AM
Reply to  mark

But I still haven’t seen any evidence to support your claims about him receiving Zionist funding – you just add more allegations. Okay, I found a photo of him in Israel standing on a tank holding a semi-automatic rifle but can you provide some evidence that he is funded by Zionists or that the EDL was started by Zionists? All the evidence I have found suggests that the EDL was based on the Welsh Defence League.

I’m not being funny but I don’t take hearsay as fact. All I ever heard about Tommy Robinson was that he is a racist but then I learned that he attended one BNP meeting but never went back because they refused to let his black mates in and that the EDL flag had the words ‘Black and White Unite’ and ‘the United Colours of the EDL’. There are stills from an early TV documentary (during which they burned a WWII swastika type German flag) which show one of these flags on the wall.

The definition of prejudice is ‘an unfavourable opinion or feeling formed beforehand or without knowledge, thought, or reason’ and I hear a lot of it aimed at Tommy Robinson. I have been vehemently opposed to racism all my life and was almost discharged from the Royal Navy for being a member of the Anti-Nazi League in the 1980s so, if there is any evidence of him being racist, I’d genuinely like to see it. Speaking out against an ideology, is not racism. If you claim that it is, then your apparent condemnation of Zionism is also racism.

Whilst I support the freedom for anybody to believe what they want, as I pointed out earlier, I have no time for any fanatical religious ideology and Zionism and Islam both epitomise such ideologies. I don’t stand on one side or another because extremes reflect each other. Unfortunately for me, though, it means I get flak from both sides but I’m only interested in the truth backed up by evidence. Wildly flinging allegations around without any corroboration does not impress me – rather, it makes me think, there goes another person who isn’t concerned with the truth.

Incidentally, it seems like a BBC Panorama sting operation on Tommy Robinson just backfired and it might be a good idea to get some popcorn in. I don’t pay propaganda tax so don’t have a television but I’m sure it will be on YouTube.

And you quote his name as if it is a secret that it isn’t his real name.

mark
mark
Feb 11, 2019 12:23 PM
Reply to  okulo

This is all common knowledge, and is quite openly bragged about in Israel.

okulo
okulo
Feb 11, 2019 3:04 PM
Reply to  mark

Common knowledge without any evidence?

You said all that needs saying.

mark
mark
Feb 11, 2019 4:11 PM
Reply to  okulo

The Spectator (not my favourite publication) did an investigation into “Robinson” and the EDL.
“Zionist Puppet and Neocon Stooge.”
Or get it straight from the horse’s mouth.
Read the Jewish Chronicle.
Or any one of 100 other sources.

Drakmare
Drakmare
Feb 12, 2019 7:49 PM
Reply to  mark

Not long ago we had a scandal in Britain about police/secret service personnel infiltrating various organisations and having sex and fathering children with female members of those organisations. From that expose, it transpired that overwhelming number (80 – 90% if I remember well) of organisations that they’ve infiltrated and spied on over the last couple of decades were left of the center groups or parties (Labour Party definitely being one of them). The rest were Islamic and Extreme Right groups.

Conclusion: The power structure is not worried about extreme right in this country the slightest. To the contrary, they covertly support them and use them whenever there is a challenge to their power from their real enemy. The panic about Corbyn coming to power is real and I fear they will use everything in their power to stop that scenario.

Antonym
Antonym
Feb 11, 2019 3:42 AM
Reply to  mark

Islam is doing quite well stirring up trouble for itself, thank you. That is the reason an EDL came up in England, or an Fidesz in Hungary, an FPO in Austria, a DF in Denmark, an AfD in Germany, or an PVV in the Netherlands etc.
Antifa on the other hand looks artificial: Deep State sponsored would be my first guess.

See, it is possible to write a reasonable comment without wrestling those few Zionists!

Antonym
Antonym
Feb 11, 2019 4:16 AM
Reply to  Antonym

wrestling in

mark
mark
Feb 11, 2019 4:29 AM
Reply to  Antonym

A lot of the rabid anti moslem groups across Europe are Zionist Fronts, useful idiots serving Zionist interests.
Like the “Danish” cartoons, orchestrated from Israel.

Antonym
Antonym
Feb 11, 2019 4:57 AM
Reply to  mark

A lot of the rabid anti Jewish groups across Europe are useful idiots serving Islamist interests.
Like the Hypercacher kosher supermarket siege by some North African immigrants, part of the January 2015 Île-de-France attacks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_2015_%C3%8Ele-de-France_attacks

Makropulos
Makropulos
Feb 11, 2019 8:24 AM
Reply to  Antonym

A lot of the rabid anti Jewish groups across Europe are useful idiots serving Zionist interests. Zionists have always benefited from anti-Semitism. Indeed Zionism could not exist without anti-Semitism.

okulo
okulo
Feb 11, 2019 8:33 AM
Reply to  Makropulos

It is astonishing how many useful idiots believe that they are enlightened activists.

mark
mark
Feb 11, 2019 12:30 PM
Reply to  Antonym

A lot of these are false flags where no one was actually killed. Fictitious Jewish victims spirited away to Israel for immediate burial without post mortem. All theatre and play acting.

mark
mark
Feb 12, 2019 3:45 PM
Reply to  mark

Or the 163 bomb threats to synagogues and Jewish organisations in America, all made by one Jewish man from Israel.

Antonym
Antonym
Feb 14, 2019 11:01 AM
Reply to  mark

Actually Islam is really the religion of peace
of the graveyard that is.
Study world history from the 7th century onwards https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Muslim_conquests
Or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_conquests_in_the_Indian_subcontinent
Specially women and slaves “benefited” from its ideology

See how unreliable Wikipedia is: it woz actually the Jews who done that – they are the real deal.

Drakmare
Drakmare
Feb 10, 2019 6:58 PM

Very good post. Yes, the Gilets Jaunes are the real deal and it wasn’t difficult to see why, from the very beginning, despite what the MSM presstitutes tell us. Micron (not a typo) is the least of Gillets Jaunes’ worries. The Empire of Chaos will do everything in their power not to allow a prime vassal state like France to be taken over by proper grass root democratic movement which cannot be controlled and send a “wrong” message to other vassal countries around the world. In that respect, Gilete Jaune’s fight for freedom and proper democracy is universal and should be supported (and replicated) throughout the world. I hope I’ll live to see that day. Chapeau Gilets Jaunes!!

vexarb
vexarb
Feb 10, 2019 6:07 PM

La Revolutione — Gilbert Becaud

Elle mélange la musique et le son du canon
Les discours prophétiques et les chansons
En octobre à Moscou, hier à Varsovie
Elle aime par-dessus tout l’air de Paris

Vince the frog
Vince the frog
Feb 11, 2019 5:52 PM
Reply to  vexarb

This time it is not Paris… Paris is just a museum today anyway.

Sans la nommer – Georges Moustaki (La révolution permanente)

“They tried to bury us; they didn’t know we were seeds”

vexarb
vexarb
Feb 11, 2019 7:10 PM
Reply to  Vince the frog

Georges MOUSTAKI “Sans la nommer” (La révolution permanente).
Nice; reminds me of Georges Brassens, “leading his listeners gently upward”.

Vince the frog
Vince the frog
Feb 12, 2019 7:21 PM
Reply to  vexarb

For me, Moustaki was always very touching physically. I mean, in his face I was seeing an unknown pain. He was not born french, but from Alexandria in Egypt, and was always carrying this nostalgia of a person that was uprooted of an happiness childhood…A person full of humanity.

Vince the frog
Vince the frog
Feb 12, 2019 7:30 PM
Reply to  vexarb

Of course, beside that, my dear daddy is still Georges Brassens. As you used to say on the other side of the channel: One Brassens a day, keeps the doctor away. (you can replace doctor by MSM)

Vince the frog
Vince the frog
Feb 12, 2019 8:00 PM
Reply to  Vince the frog

I have to add now, the power of using the medication of the “gilets jaunes” – once a day could be lethal. Do not take it more than once a week – still keep in mind to use the only threat that works 100% always, the Gandhi way, peacefully, sure of the victory…
Then, take the streets, usually on Saturday, weeks after weeks, until total remission of liberalism…You will then feel in your body that fraternity, equality and freedom, that are still to be constructed… It’s time to build a bridge over the channel. Help is needed.

vexarb
vexarb
Feb 10, 2019 6:00 PM

Macron demission! (tr. Rothschild must go!)

intergenerationaltrauma
intergenerationaltrauma
Feb 10, 2019 5:51 PM

Excellent post. Thank you. It reminds me of why my wife and I miss living in rural France before the Yellow Vest movement began (we’re now back in the U.S.) In our experience the fabric of French village and rural society always resonated with a sense of basic human dignity, decency and connection. We always marveled that simply walking into the waiting room at the dentist or doctor’s office was met with eye contact and “bonjour” from everyone present in the room. Something quite unthinkable here in the U.S.

Here in southern California when I encounter neighbors walking near our apartment I always say hello, and over half the time the person says nothing, does not make eye contact, and simply walks by as if I am invisible. This is not a highly urban area like New York City where saying “hello” to strangers has been considered non-normative for decades now. This feels more “recent” as the American psyche and heart “harden” to each other. To me this is as an example of why I find it very difficult to imagine that we in America will, or can, replicate the Yellow Vests. We seem to have become so individualized and so frightened, and so propagandized against anything resembling “socialism” that the very notion of feeling actual “solidarity” with each other is almost unimaginable for most people.

The homeless population here continues to grow in the shadow of the unequal wealth apparent in Los Angeles and San Diego, visibly reminding all of us with our own basic shelter of the structural inhumanity of our capitalist “system” and the fragility of our own place within it. More and more people every month and year quietly simply “fall through the cracks” – cracks which have now become gaping chasms in the basic fabric of America’s almost invisible social “safety nets.” Many American’s go without food, without shelter, without healthcare, without jobs, without education or job training, and many without hope for anything better. But perhaps I’m wrong about our lack of an ability to feel “solidarity,” perhaps with enough of this shared suffering, perhaps with the growing sense for many that there is “nothing left to lose,” and perhaps with the proper “spark” – we could also ignite? In the meantime the Yellow Vests continually renew my sense that resistance and solidarity is possible and absolutely necessary to our collective survival! To our brothers and sisters in France I wish – bon courage!