A peaceful Revolution from below has promised Macron his countrymen in 2017. 18 months later, the yellow West cripple the country. Contemporary writers is not surprising. They had seen it before.
Also Marianne, France’s national symbol, came the uprising of the yellow West is off the hook. Last week, she was hitting an eye. Recently, it was smeared with Graffiti. The yellow West, the prey in these days of cultural monuments and even the arch of triumph, edit it with a hammer, it is not to destroy culture, but to make the state power, the French writer Annie Ernaux: “If it were not really the yellow West [what is safe, note. d. Red.], are you trying to say, probably: The Republic is not good to us – they let us down,” she said of the weekly newspaper “die Zeit”.
Left in the lurch, the French felt in the course of their history often. In 1789 the French Revolution began with the destruction of the Bastille. You inflamed at the time of the increase in the price of Bread. This time everything started with the announcement of the increase in the petrol price. And again, it is a revolt of the poor against the Elite. It is truck drivers, nurses and farmers, who go on the road and against social injustice protest.
Between peaceful protesters violent anarchists, mix themselves again and again
Uprising of the Dissatisfied
A leader the insurgents have not, so far, the protests via Facebook will be organized. The neon yellow safety vest has become the trademark of all the Malcontents, who can live from their wages. “With the level of poverty in Bangladesh this is not to compare, of course,” the political scientist Hans Stark of the French Institute for international relations in Paris. “But when you’re here in France with a minimum wage of 1000 euros and in the end, only 100 to 200 Euro to life, then an increase in the price of Petrol by seven per cent to beats already solid.”
Political Scientist Hans Strong
The valiant French protest culture explains Strongly with the political structures of a country that had no regional base or Mittelbau. “In Germany, we have valves due to the Federal structure of the state elections, many of which, steam does not drain, it is so in France.” There, you must come to Paris in order to be heard: “You must practically demonstrate in the courtyard of the Elysee Palace.”
Protests are not surprising
Even if most of the more than 100,000 Yellow jackets are peaceful, it always comes back to looting, burning of cars and street battles with the police – a scenario that took Michel Houellebecq in his novel “submission” 2015 in advance. The writer have always had an instinct for the public mood, said the literary critic Dirk Fuhrig in the Germany radio.
In Michel Houellebecqs “submission” burning cars and petrol stations on Paris’ streets
Also, for the author, Annie Ernaux, whose family hails from the working class, the uprising of surprising: “I think, in France, the Desire for ‘Egalite’, for social equality is still a lot more alive than in England or Germany. It belongs to the Foundation of the French Republic.” The depth of the moat between the city and the French province has existed for a very long time, she is convinced. The privileged class in the big cities dominate the culture and the means of communication. On Land, however, the middle class is slipping more and more.
President Macron gesture, like a king, criticize many of the yellow West
Add to this the arrogance of the Parisian Elite, against the yellow West. So it was taken the President of Macron a very bad time, that he said an unemployed person, he had only to go across the street to find a new Job. “There is a lot of contempt”, Ernaux is enormous compared to the “time”.
The arrogance of the ruling class
The empathetic and detailed description of the Suspended – was also the theme of Frenchman Nicolas Mathieu, for his novel “Les enfants après eux” (dt. According to them, the children) Goncourt this year, the most important literary prize in France, the Prix, brought. A Coincidence?
Also, the sociologist Didier Eribon, and the writer Édouard Louis tell in their works, of the gap between city and country, between Poor and rich. Eribon describes in his autobiographical book “returning to Reims” the Childhood in a poor suburb of the Northern French city of and addresses the question of why the former Left, now choose the Front National. Louis, also from an increasingly poorer growing work environment comes from, writes in his novels, “The end of Eddy” and “In the heart of the violence,” among other things, social exclusion and bitterness. In the French weekly “Les Inrockuptibles”he wrote: “I feel personally affected by the contempt and violence with which the bourgeois classes of this movement immediately.”
Protesters were fired upon with tear gas
Because, as Louis writes, he can see in the photos of the yellow West is “the body that are ravaged by the fatigue and labour, Hunger, and the ongoing humiliation by the Ruling”. And further: “the bodies of The people you see in these photos, similar to that of my father, my brother, my aunt. Of these people, whose health is ruined by misery and poverty, I heard again and again, my whole Childhood long: ‘no one counts. Of us, no one speaks’. Everyone who insulted vest with a Yellow, insulted my father.”
Many of his compatriots, 26-Year-old from the soul speaks, even if you will read his lines, probably never. After all, 72 percent of French people to stand behind the concerns of the yellow West.
What measures announced Macron?
On Monday evening President Emmanuel Macron has spoken to the yellow West. “Many people want to increase the minimum wage by 50 percent,” says a political scientist. “Such a measure not to be able to announce Macron, if he has the certainty, that they may financially be implemented without France increased its public debt. And that is not so easy. The is a quadrature of the circle, which is required of him.”
The fight goes on. For next weekend are in any case already announced demonstrations. As a precaution, the Eiffel tower, the Arc de Triomphe, the Centre Pompiodou, the Opera, theatres and museums close their doors and under police protection, then out of fear of further rioting. “This is absolutely catastrophic, especially for retail and for tourism”, stated Hans. “The damage in France to go far in the millions.”
For reasons of safety culture will be closed monuments on the weekend again
Whether the majority of the yellow West, Macron really want to chase out of the presidential Palace, however, is doubtful: “If Macron would go, then it would be dark in France,” says Strong. “Because the Opposition is limited to two figures: on the extreme right side of Marine Le Pen and the extreme left side of Jean-Luc Mélenchon. With other words: there Would be elections, then the great danger is that we would have a Situation as in Italy, there would be, in fact. And this is not helpful.”
The white, the majority of the French. It remains to be seen how the citizens after the speech to their President. Perhaps the national icon, Marianne then comes back to rest.