France on the brink—of what?
I don’t speak French, but Ace has kindly translated this article from Le Figaro:
Fearing that an “enormous violence” will be part of “Act IV” of the mobilization of the “Yellow Jackets,” authorities have announced the mobilization of “exceptional measures” of more than 65,000 security forces deployed throughout France, and putting the finishing touches the security presence already in Paris.
As the fourth Saturday of mobilization of the “Yellow Jackets” approaches, l’Elyssee dreads that “an enormous violence” will explode in Paris this weekend. Throughout France, the calls to gather in Paris and demolish the current establishment rule are multiplying. Last week, a young man encountered by Le Figaro near the Saint-Lazare station was shouting: “This is not a protest, this is the Revolution!”…
“What is at stake, is the security of the French and our institutions,” pronounced the Prime Minister Edouard Philippe Tuesday.
I’ve noticed that in general there are two kinds of people who talk about a revolution. The first is self-aggrandizing Romantic (in this sense of the word “Romantic”) fools who have no idea what a revolution is or what it would entail. The second are those who are deadly serious.
Sometimes they’re even the same people. Sometimes not.
“What is at stake, is the security of the French and our institutions,” pronounced the Prime Minister Edouard Philippe Tuesday.
Indeed.
The security of the ruling bureaucrats, who all come out of the same two elite universities (I forget the names), trained to rule. Legacy admissions are commonplace.
The French have never gotten it right. Their “liberte, egalite, fraternite” Revolution was in short order, after many decapitations, followed by the rule of Emperor Napoleon, whose rambunctions caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands. Gave them the Napoleonic Code of law, which persists, even as a remnant in the formerly French Louisiana, and stands entirely in contrast to our US code of justice.
France, along with most first world countries, including the USA; are approaching the place where you run out of other people’s money. Here, as in France and elsewhere, voters want government benefits, but they don’t want to pay for the benefits via taxes.
My tin foil hat tells me the globalists will not easily back down, tensions will rise, and we’ll see what happens next. Bloody revolutions? Islam conquers the West? 1984 becomes reality? Somehow it all is resolved and utopia arrives at last?
Hedge against the arrival of utopia.
Don’t forget the “Paris Massacre of 1961”:
The Paris massacre of 1961 occurred on 17 October 1961, during the Algerian War (1954–62). Under orders from the head of the Parisian police, Maurice Papon, the French National Police attacked a demonstration of some 30,000 pro-National Liberation Front (FLN) Algerians. After 37 years of denial and censorship of the press, in 1998 the French government finally acknowledged 40 deaths, although there are estimates of 100 to 300 victims.[1] Death was due to heavy-handed beating by the police, as well as massive drownings, as police officers threw demonstrators in the river Seine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_massacre_of_1961
“France, along with most first world countries, including the USA; are approaching the place where you run out of other people’s money. ”
They, the people themselves, are also running out of patience. You can only push nice, polite middle class people so far. You can only tax them so far, and claim its for their own good and the good of the environment. You can only tax them so far (and spend that money on foreign invaders…I mean ‘immigrants’ who are allowed their own enclaves and their own culture and rape gangs and suicide bombers).
Right now, I’m hoping some Frenchman, as yet anonymous, walks onto the world stage and is revealed to be the reincarnation of Charles Martel.
Vive la France.
Its not just about the taxes.
France and Britain both need a Trump or a Reagan badly.
Germany needs another Adenauer.
Here’s a suggestion:
It’s sound and fury, signifying not a whole lot. The mobs will go home, the fires will be put out, and the politicians will kick the can as far down the road as they can manage.
By the time another Charles Martel might emerge and gain the support needed, it will be much too late. The majority of the French public still buy into the delusion that their socialistic system isn’t working because the ‘right’ people have yet to be put in charge. They’re unhappy with Macron and France’s leadership rather than awakening to their own delusional fantasies.
Far too deep a look into the mirror is required of that public for a good outcome to manifest.
dialog from the movie “The Wild Bunch”:
Pike Bishop: A hell of a lot of people, Dutch, just can’t stand to be wrong.
Dutch Engstrom: Pride.
Pike Bishop: And they can’t forget it… that pride… being wrong. Or learn by it…
Imagine whatever…. there is no there there. You might as well imagine Yoko Ono has a clue about what “kicking the can” means. Absolutely nthing.
FR,
Correct it is not just about taxes. It is about wanting more than you are willing to pay for as you expect some mysterious other will pay for what you want but do not deserve, simply because you (in particular) did nothing to obtain what you believe you are entitled to receive.
So what is it all about, really? A gas tax? I do not think so. This is a historically typical French way of changing. See 1848, the year of riots, called The Peoples’ Spring (!). So velly clever to call the recent Muslim upsurge the Arab Spring, no? Before that, take yourselves back to the happy days of Robespierre and his merry band of decapitators.
I do not believe these riots are spontaneous. There are rats behind the arras, many rats, organizers, motivators, sources of money…Obama and Alinsky-like figures.
I shall watch it all with great interest. There are lessons to be learned.
I think it depends on how willing the protesters are to be shot by the police, and how willing the police are to shoot them. In a way, it is a game of chicken.
To set off an actual revolution, the protesters will have to be willing to be killed by the government.
you left out the third..
people stuck in the middle who never wanted it and could have stopped it if they just decided not to sit and watch till it got so far all they can do is kind of continue discussing it over the bushes dividing lots
Not having lived in France but having spent some time there, I wonder about the future. There seems to be two populations in France. Before the Revolution, there was a majority of French people who did not speak French. That was spoken mostly in Paris and a few larger cities. The first book I read about this was “Citizens,” a history of the Revolution. The second was “Peasants into Frenchmen,” which is rather dull but makes the point that, outside Paris, there was no Revolution until the “Committee Public Safety” conducted massive executions in cities like Lyons. The Vendee Uprising also resulted in massacres.
Estimates of those killed in the Vendean conflict – on both sides – range between 117,000 and 450,000, out of a population of around 800,000.
We shall see if this is a revolution.
The NY Post has a pretty good summary of the issues in France.
None of these decisions please anyone in the country, save the clone-like Macronista hipsters in Paris and a few large cities. They are men and women in their 30s and 40s — affluent, well-educated, in competitive jobs, able to afford the crazy rents in places like Paris, Bordeaux or Lyon.
Safe in gentrified neighborhoods, they welcome “diversity” and see themselves as morally superior. They welcomed a president in their own image, especially as he faced the National Front’s Marine Le Pen, the perfect foil, in last year’s election.
Sounds like San Francisco.
More evidence the protests are by provincials.
A group of four protesters who came to Paris from Normandy on Saturday told The Associated Press that they saw people wearing yellow vests turned away at train stations all along their route. They said fellow protesters trying to reach Paris from Toulouse in southern France reported the same problems.
A national police spokesman said officers stationed at train stations around the country are under orders to verify all passengers and turn away any carrying equipment that could be used to “cause damage to people or property.”
Keeping those deplorables out of Paris.
Before the Revolution, there was a majority of French people who did not speak French.
You had the langues d’oil and the langues d’oc. Those of the former were more kin to each other than any one of them was to any Romance tongue outside of France. The latter were part of a continuum which ran in an arc from northeast Spain to northeast Italy. Official business such as court proceedings had been conducted in the Parisian dialect for centuries by 1789. In Italy, the Tuscan dialect was adopted as a court language all over the place in the late Medieval period.
The second was “Peasants into Frenchmen,” which is rather dull but makes the point that, outside Paris, there was no Revolution
The Estates-General was elected and convened in 1789, a new constitution was completed and promulgated in 1791, and there were in the interim mob actions in the countryside wherein documentation of feudal dues was seized by peasants and burned.
Another view of the Paris riots.
She is much more sympathetic to Macron but has good observations.
I concluded they were just what they were advertised to be: family men and women who couldn’t make ends meet and who were tired of Macron’s attitude. Why this protest, why now, I asked? The fuel tax was just the straw that broke the camel’s back, they said; it made the difference between “able to make ends meet, barely,” and “not able to make ends meet.” It had just been getting steadily worse every year since the economic crisis began. They had run out of hope.
My heart went out to them. I was prepared to go home and report that the protests had fizzled out. “There isn’t much to this,” I concluded. I had no sense that if I continued walking, toward the Charles de Gaulle Étoile, I’d find myself amid the worst riots Paris has seen in decades. These protesters weren’t about to vandalize a thing, and no one seemed to mind them. The cops seemed sorry for them.
That was one group, but there was another.
People at the Charles de Gaulle Étoile saw something else entirely. There, the police were physically overwhelmed by about 5,000 Gilets Jaunes who had come explicitly prepared to do violence. About 200 demonstrators showed their ID and allowed police to search them before they entered a security zone on the Champs-Elysées, but the rest refused to play by the rules. From about 8 am, hostile crowds of Gilets Jaunes emerged, in large numbers, from all the avenues around the Arc de Triomphe, trying to push their way onto the Champs-Elysées. The police were physically overpowered because so many of them were protecting the Champs-Elysées and the perimeter around the area where government buildings are concentrated. They were overrun. There were no cops behind the rioters to stop them from burning cars on the other avenues around the Étoile.
The Estates-General was elected and convened in 1789,
By lawyers, most of whom did not represent the peasants.
WAR IN PARIS: RIOTS ROCK CITY…
Tear gas, mass arrests…
Looters raid shops…
Rush on presidential palace…
Macron remains invisible…
Clashes in Belgium, Netherlands…
America Next?
Why not? Not like we dont have our own KPD and such internal armies (built up how? oh, how i said… and loyalty? also how i said, not like macron, or the USA middle class are offering the fringe anything but a return to the fringe… and not like its hard to tell since the fringe will say the deer is a horse…)
I like butter on my popcorn..
Might as well (try to) enjoy the show
Anyone want to compare the images of France with the images of Slovakia back in the day? nah. too much work…
and I’m sure it wouldn’t interest, anybody, outside of a small circle of friends
Outside of a Small Circle of Friends- Phil Ochs – Lyrics Video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ta_iKeH4tsg
A perfect song for the moment…
and yet, so long ago…
By lawyers, most of whom did not represent the peasants.
I believe all taxpayers in France had a vote for the 3d Estate.
The fuel tax was just the straw that broke the camel’s back, they said; it made the difference between “able to make ends meet, barely,” and “not able to make ends meet.” It had just been getting steadily worse every year since the economic crisis began. They had run out of hope.
In the United States, gasoline and other fuels accounts for 2.4% of personal consumption expenditure. I’ll wager it’s higher in France, but we’re talking about an x% point increment on whatever the proportion is in France. They’re not going to go under because of that. And, in terms of real income, France is more affluent than it has ever been. Let me offer a different hypothesis: this is an emotional reaction to the latest jab from the arrogant Mandarin class of which Macron is an exemplar. (Singapore’s has a Mandarin class who know how to make good decisions. France has got a Mandarin class which makes decisions as messy as those made by the U.S. Congress).
France needs a Thatcher: someone who leads, who knows her own mind, and who will face down obstructive veto groups. They won’t get that person. A critical mass of the British public were willing to queue up when Thatcher issued the call. Not going to happen in the Herd-o’-Cats Republic.
I believe all taxpayers in France had a vote for the 3d Estate.
No argument. This issue is the identity of the taxpayers. The Lamoignon Edicts sparked the calling of the Estates.
As a member of the Bishop’s Court in Arras, Robespierre joined his local legal colleagues in protesting against the Lamoignon Edicts. In recent years he had argued passionately for reform of the criminal code and judicial system, yet in siding with the parlements against the government he was in fact arguing for the perpetuation of privilige against the erosion of the parlements’ established rights, and against the government’s attempted reforms.
And:
Since 1614 the Third Estate had grown exponentially in numbers and wealth: it now represented 98 per cent of the population, including the rising tax-paying bourgeoisie – against the erosion of the parlements’ established rights, and against the government’s attempted reforms. This made sense in a situation where the parlements were still the most promising sites of opposition to the absolute monarchy. The full scale of imminent change in France was still unimaginable. There was nothing new for a provincial lawyer like Robespierre to play for yet, so in May 1788 he dutifully – perhaps even somewhat cynically – joined the demonstration of support for the parlements, knowing, as everyone knew, that they were highly improbable promoters of a less corrupt regime, but still the strongest site of opposition to the monarch’s absolute power.
Those quotes are from “Fatal Purity” a biography of Robespierre.
The Estates General were not elected by the people.
What is Really Happening in France?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=117&v=RJxVCsWzRx8
The Truth About the ‘Yellow Vest’ Protests
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=58&v=LCwWpENkIwA
The Estates General were not elected by the people.
No, it was elected by local assemblies elected by taxpayers and guild members
https://alphahistory.com/frenchrevolution/estates-general/
And, again, there was quite a lot going on in the French countryside in 1789
https://alphahistory.com/frenchrevolution/great-fear/
Art Deco, I don’t think we are disagreeing. The “taxpayers” were a small group in most areas, mostly in cities.
When we were in southeast France in 2001 we found people were still unhappy about the Parisians invading in the 1200s.
When we were in southeast France in 2001 we found people were still unhappy about the Parisians invading in the 1200s.
Provence wasn’t under the suzerainty of the King of France until the 15th century.
When we were in southeast France in 2001 we found people were still unhappy about the Parisians invading in the 1200s.
I am reminded of a friend who went to India. In southern India, one local told her, “We don’t speak the conquerors’ tongue.” The reference was NOT to English, as she was being spoken to in English. For this speaker of a Dravadian language , the “conquerors’ tongue” was Hindi!
Languedoc, Albigensian crusade.
India: Yup. Plus, Indians are very color-conscious. In Maharashtra we heard them calling Dravidians (usually darker) “black.” This was not a compliment.
Languedoc, Albigensian crusade.
See Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie’s Montaillou. That was an Ecclesiastical inquisition.
The last straw doesn’t have to be particularly heavy. If the total exceeds the specs of the camel, the back breaks. It’s all the stuff that went before, picky regulations, substantial fines for minimal offenses, high taxes elsewhere. And, whatever the make up of the load prior to the last straw, the inability to make ends meet long enough with no hope leads to desperation.
the inability to make ends meet long enough with no hope leads to desperation.
If these demonstrations were composed of people at or below the 30th percentile of the income distribution, that observation would make sense.
NB real domestic product per capita in France is as we speak
2.2x what it was at the time of the May 1968 crisis
3.3x what it was at the time of de Gaulle’s accession in May of 1958
9.3x what it was when the Germans were expelled by the Allies in 1944
5.4x what it was at the time of the February 1934 crisis
4.7x what it was on the eve of the Depression in 1929
9.3x what it was at the time of the Armistice in 1918
“That was an Ecclesiastical inquisition.” Supported by troops from the French Crown. The legend, which is likely not accurate, was that when asked, at Beziers, how they could tell the heretics from the true Catholics, de Montfort replied, “Kill them all. The Lord will know his own.” True or not, there was a massacre.
When I was a kid, I belonged to the Book of the Month Club. One month the book was by Zoe Oldenburg and was The Cornerstone.
It was about the Crusades, including the Albigensian crusade.
NB real domestic product per capita in France is as we speak
How about the distribution ? I can’t find a site that shows economy by department. California is a classic example of maldistribution. I’ll bet France is another.
Income distribution data is soft and usually heavily footnoted to indicate before taxes and transfers or after and to indicate whether it’s actually an income assessment or a consumption assessment. FWIW, the most recent World Bank assessments are as follows for the share held by the most affluent decile and the most impecunious quintile:
United States: 30.6% / 5% (2016)
Canada: 25.3% / 6.6% (2013)
Australia: 26.4% / 7.3% (2010)
Britain: 25.4% / 7.5% (2015)
France: 26.6% / 7.9% (2016)
Germany: 24.8% / 7.8% (2015)
Italy: 25.7% / 5.9% (2015)
Spain: 26.2% / 5.8% (2015)
Sweden: 22.9% / 8.2% (2015)
Netherlands: 23.0% / 8.9% (2015)
Switzerland: 25.2% / 7.8% (2015)
Poland: [data not availabe]
Czech Republic: 22.1% / 9.7% (2015)
Roumania: 24.7% / 5.1% (2015)
Ukraine: 21.2% / 10.1% (2016)
Russia: 29.7% / 6.9% (2015)
Israel: 29.6% / 4.7% (2012)
Turkey: 32.1% / 5.7% (2016)
Egypt: 27.8% / 9.1% (2015)
Tunisia: 27% / 6.7% (2010)
Japan: 24.7% / 7.4% (2008)
China: 31.4% / 5.2% (2012)
South Korea: 24.2% / 7.3% (2012)
Indonesia: 31.9% / 7.2% (2013)
Thailand: 28.4% / 7.5% (2015)
Philippines: [data not available]
India: 29.8% / 8.3% (2011)
Argentina: 30.9% / 5.0% (2016)
Brazil: 40.4% / 3.6% (2015)
Colombia: 40.0% / 3.9% (2016)
Mexico: 34.8% / 5.7% (2016)