Although the initial Gilets Jaunes movement emerged because of the tax overdose and the contempt of the people showed by Macron, it was soon infiltrated by the extreme left and the “casseurs”, a mix of violent "antifas" and youth from the suburbs which only purpose is to break and spread chaos (for the first ones) and steal (for the second ones).
There were clear instructions from the authorities to let this violent individuals destroy shops and public infrastructure, as showed in many videos where the CRS (police) were watching this without moving, and instead sometimes rushing on some gilets jaunes not showing any agressive behaviour.
That gave an excuse to the government to increase the controls and install roadblocks preventing many gilets jaunes to join the demonstrations. They also patently lied, lowering the official figures of people demonstrating in the streets communicated to the medias (who of course repeated them without questioning them a second).
Worse, everybody agrees that the violence of the police was unseen for decades, and worse than even during May 68. CRS are using flashballs without respecting safety instructions -many think on purpose - at short distance and shooting at head levels. Many demonstrators lost an eye. The serious casualties numbers are huge.
The justice is applying very severe condamnations and even jail terms to some gilets jaunes that were not convicted of violence.
There is also the high profile condamnation of an ex-boxer who fought policemen with bare hands after witnessing some of them hitting a woman on the ground. He was jailed for a year. This is a heavy punishment considering many individuals from the suburbs throwing lethal objects to the policemen or trying to burn them alive in their cars are not even prosecuted.
On the tax level, the situation takes a strange turn for 2 reasons :
- the economic illiteracy of the French people lead many of them to think
that if they pay too much tax and struggle to survive it is because “the rich” don’t pay enough taxes.
Never mind that France is taxing its rich at one of the highest levels, whether it is incomes tax,
inheritance tax and the wealth tax on real estate, without mentioning the hundreds of "social contributions”.
- the extreme left who infiltrated the movement is pushing for higher taxes and the re-introduction of the wealth tax on non property capital suppressed by Macron (one of the few necessary reforms he made, but which should have been coupled with a reduction of government expenses)
So we have a legitimate movement from the people against the tax overdose which is eventually asking... for more taxes paid by others !
The concern is that Macron, who made concessions on the spending side, will finally make others on the taxing side.
Nearly no one is speaking of the other big causes of the problem aside tax : the spending spree of the state, and (connected) the massive welfare fuelled immigration. Only on a very few occasions the problem of the size of government and spending has been raised, mostly by classical liberals whose voices are marginalised.
It is very difficult to foresee where this is going, although regarding France the natural slope is always... more spending, more taxes, more debt. The Yellow Vests issue is dividing the country the same way Salvini is dividing Italy, Brexit divides UK and Trump divides the US.
Additional elements :
The video below with a good sample of demonstrators shows the following :
- some Yellow Vests accuse capitalism or “profit”, but some others are more specific toward "the banks”, the “finance” and their medias partners
- most of them are tired and unsupportive of the antifas / violent appropriation of the movement and want to get rid of them to have them stopping violence
- most of them want Macron out and want more democracy, with the Swiss referendum system as a model (RIC)
- they all say that they have a feeling of unity in the street, they feel again a national link that they lost, and are all very critical against the medias
Yesterday, February 16th, saw another episode that is provoking many reactions. The French Jewish intellectual Alain Finkielkraut, who was actually one of the only intellectuals to support the movement at it’s beginning, was verbally aggressed (it could have been worse if the police was not close) by some Yellow Vests.
Some men shouted anti-Semitic insults at him : “hateful motherfucker...go back to your place...France is ours...big shit… the people will punish you…fucking sionist…Palestine". Videos show clearly that the 2 most vocal individuals are arabs, one of them showing the Palestinian keffieh (scarf showing the support to Palestine) he is wearing.
This incident is going against the power/medias/elites narrative that antisemitism is mostly coming from the extreme right. As Finkielkraut himself analysed later, the aggressors were a combination of extreme left and arab individuals. At the moment of writing one of the main suspects has been identified by the police and was known by intelligence services as a radical islamist.