Where did France’s Yellow Vests go?

Where did France’s Yellow Vests go?

By: Rachel Marsden

PARIS — Exactly five years ago, on a Saturday afternoon in November 2018, tear gas and the smell of police smoke grenades wafted through the Parisian air. It was the beginning of what would become one of the most significant resistance movements in a country synonymous with them. So why did France’s Yellow Vests disappear?

The group marked its fifth anniversary and called for renewed protests around the country, but mustered little support on a rainy day here in the French capital. A handful had gathered the day before on the Champs-Elysées to remember the 11 dead and estimated 2,495 protesters injured over the course of the years-long weekly protests, according to French interior ministry figures. It’s a sad end to a movement that’s arguably more relevant than ever.

Named for the yellow vests that all motorists here need to keep in their car for roadside emergencies, the cause was born when French President Emmanuel Macron was on the verge of implementing a punitive environmental tax increase on fuel.

“The same people who complain about the increase in fuel prices also demand that we fight against air pollution because their children are suffering from illness,” said Macron. But is gouging the working class, really the solution? It’s not like people who take their cars to work have much of a choice. No one in their right mind actually wants to drive in Paris. So why make it more difficult for workers to continue being productive? And how much of a difference would such a tax increase really make on the environment? Even the French government has admitted that due to technological progress, “between 1990 and 2019, emissions from passenger cars decreased for all the pollutants studied, with the exception of CO2, which was still increasing (+ 2% over the observed period).”

It was as simple as the average working- class person being fed up with yet another shakedown that few could afford — including some government family members. Jean-Baptiste Djebbari — then spokesman for Macron’s party in the National Assembly, and who later became transportation minister — said in defending Macron’s policies on a TV show that his own mother was 65 years old and made €500 per month working. A Yellow Vest on the program then asked him why that wasn’t sufficient to make him a Yellow Vest himself.

Things would get even worse in the years ahead. First, there would be the heavy handed government handling of Covid that further denatured the economy. Then amid the Ukraine conflict, the European Union bureaucrats would move away from cheap Russian energy in favor of much pricier (and polluting) American liquified alternatives — all in a misguided effort to stick it to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Ultimately, it just sent French and European industrial production costs and consumer prices into orbit while the Russian economy is set for a 1.5 percent growth this year, according to the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

But the Yellow Vest movement isn’t around anymore for much- needed pushback on the establishment. Several factors effectively killed it off — not the least of which was good old- fashioned state repression. The loss of an estimated 30 eyes and five hands to rubber bullets and hand grenades was the result.

It’s the kind of police violence against protesters over which France is still routinely chastised at the United Nations by allies like Sweden, Denmark, Lichtenstein, and Norway.

The average person who made up the initial massive crowds became deterred by the perceived increased risk of harm.

The Covid lockdowns that ordered the French to stay inside their homes for a couple of months under penalty of hefty fines or imprisonment also broke the movement’s back as public focus shifted. Suddenly, fear of surviving a virus displaced fear of not making ends meet — particularly when the government was dousing everyone with helicopter money to just stay home and watch the scary virus play-by-play on TV.

There was also an establishment effort to portray the movement as the product of political manipulation, blaming the magnification of protest coverage on Russian-linked social media accounts. You’d think that Russia had hacked Macron’s brain and made him do dumb things with gas taxes in the name of shadowboxing climate change.

Even today, the movement suffers from the perception that it’s been hijacked by extremists — the “red-brown alliance” of right-wing and left-wing ideological convergence against the establishment status quo. It’s not hard to understand why only the more hardcore actors would want to get into urban combat situations with the police at this point, given all the amassed civilian casualties.

The average Yellow Vest is currently busy just trying to stay above water in their daily life, completely surpassed by the multiplication of crises from Ukraine to Gaza. If they can take solace in anything, it’s the fact that the cause to which they sought to draw attention — the cost of living crisis — is now a focus across the entire Western world, and that the establishment they denounced is on the verge of single-handedly kicking the chair out from under itself.