OF THE
TIMES
Austerity went on so long it was just viewed as unstoppable and vitally necessary - the idea of a spending program instead of spending cuts stopped being discussed after Marine Le Pen lost the presidential election. Emmanuel Macron's first budget was the 2nd-harshest in postwar French history.
Given these reminders, we should ask in 2019: How many millions and millions of people have marched in France in the past nine years to end austerity, either openly or indirectly?
They all failed - the Yellow Vests did not.
Furthermore, anyone who thought the Yellow Vests are useless have been proven totally wrong. The Yellow Vests have proven themselves to be more powerful than any other group - unions, NGOs, political parties, and also even Brussels, central bankers, the investor class, the mainstream media - because the French government ultimately bowed to the demands of the Yellow Vest demands and not those other groups.
The French government openly said that that a full decade of budget austerity was not possible in the context of massive social protest. No Yellow Vests? Tenth year of austerity, no doubt about it. Far-right Le Figaro's headline read, "A 2020 budget to not wake up the Yellow Vests." Make no mistake: the government did not derail budget austerity because they finally listened to the Yellow Vests, but because they fear them.
So... voila. The Yellow Vests ARE good, ARE effective, ARE anti-capitalist (at least neoliberal capitalism), and the previous 10+ months of repression have NOT been ineffective, 10+ months of sacrifices and risk have NOT been wasted, 10+ months of anti-mainstream democratic involvement have NOT gone unnoticed and unheeded.
It’s been over 6 months since I’ve seen any correspondence in the MSM here around the yellow vests. Wonder if that will change once they hit week 52. Once can only hope...Probably not. The yellow vests are a grass roots movement with genuine grievances. The thuggish response to them, and media blackout reveal the hypocrisy and unpopularity of neoliberal economics and globalization. So, they focus on the foreign sponsored and paid for Hong Kong 'protesters'. The MSM these days pretty much has everything inside out, upside down and back to front.
The real question is: aren’t the yellow vests exercising their Democrat right? And their government has shown that it isn’t listening to the “will of their people”? Where’s the global support for THIS “democracy”?
It’s been over 6 months since I’ve seen any correspondence in the MSM here around the yellow vests. Wonder if that will change once they hit week 52. Once can only hope...