Each successive weekend from late November all the way through December, the streets of Paris have been subject to violent protests. Initially against fuel tax rises and high living costs in France, these protests seem to have reached a point where they have now taken on a life of their own. This so-called “yellow vest” movement has wracked the French capital with violence each weekend for over a month and does not appear to be going away.
The initial cause of the protests was the steeply climbing price of fuel in France, hence the protesters wearing the yellow vests that are mandatory by law for every vehicle in France to carry. It has quickly moved on and morphed significantly from there.
French President Emmanuel Macron’s initial intransience in the face of these protests – that the fuel rises were necessary to fund investment in renewable fuel sources, so essentially the ordinary French family was just going to have to “take the hit” – was the final straw and proved to be the spark that lit a silent simmering resentment that has now ignited into what many fear will become a full-blown resistance movement in France. Certainly at the time of this writing, it seems unlikely to end anytime soon.
Talk of “revolution” is no mere hyperbole on the streets of Paris either. Protesters in the French capital are openly questioning whether this is the beginning of “another Revolution.” The memories of the brutal and bloody le Révolution Française of 1789 are still fresh and very much at the forefront of the minds of these modern-day protesters on the streets of Paris today.
These protesters believe that in this movement they are confronting not just what they deem to be wholly unfair governmental policies, which they see in part as favoring refugees and immigrants more than native French-born citizens, but that they are also protesting the rule of a man they have come to see as a “want-to-be dictator,” a man many in France have come to despise. They are protesting against a man many now regard as openly pandering to every want and desire of the globalists at the expense of normal French men and women, and very much to the wider detriment of the French nation. This man is Emmanuel Macron.
Many in France believe that Macron answers only to a globalist elite that does not answer to, or represent, the French electorate in any way.
Their core aim, however, seems to be to highlight the economic frustration and political distrust among poorer French working families. It is a movement that has widespread support throughout France.
French authorities are so worried by these ever-increasing protests that they have publically admitted to preparing the use of a chemical weapon to potentially employ against their own people if these protests and riots go too far. Let me say that again; the French authorities have admitted that, in the wake of these riots, they have prepared chemical weapons to use against their own people should these protests continue to develop, grow and spread, and become increasingly lawless and violent. (2)
And the open dissent and chaos we are witness to in France is spreading.
In Germany, long-term Chancellor Angela Merkel, once regarded as the single most powerful woman in the world, is rapidly approaching the end of her tenure in power. She is a highly controversial figure, both in Germany and Europe, partly because of her controversial leadership of the European project, but mainly because of her reaction to the crisis of mass migration from the Middle East.
Merkel has effectively opened up the borders of Germany to any and all fleeing from the Syrian civil war, and this has profoundly changed the nature of life in many German towns and cities. All were allowed in, the good and the bad, with next to no vetting procedures. In 2015 alone, Merkel allowed over one million refugees from the Middle East and east Africa to resettle in Germany.
What has further dismayed many ordinary Germans is that the conversation about immigration has been ruthlessly silenced. In Merkel’s tenure, anybody expressing concerns about the numbers of refugees entering the country has been automatically and uniformly labeled a xenophobe and a bigot, immediately killing any and all public conversation. Yet the resentment and the concerns about immigration have remained, now mulled over silently behind closed doors, ever growing, and becoming more and more pronounced with each passing year.
It is just this attitude that has alienated her from her core support. Many in Germany have genuinely come to believe that Merkel’s loyalty is to Europe and globalism more generally, not at all to Germany. Her immigration policy, flying in the face of what many Germans think is right or fair, has caused ongoing outrage among ethnic Germans. Merkel, like Macron in France, is widely viewed as being highly detached from the needs and struggles of ordinary Germans. She is viewed as being aloof, elitist and close-minded to the concerns of many of those who were responsible for propelling her and her CDU party into power in 2005.
And now, as the year has drawn to a close and a new one has dawned, these feelings of resentment and alienation have advanced far and wide. The “yellow vest” movement is spreading. What began as small- scale demonstrations in Paris have now spread to other major French cities, in Toulouse, Bordeaux and Lyon. It has spread across national boundaries to Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. Brussels has seen riots, as has Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, Nijmegen, Maastricht, and Rome. All in the last few weeks. Yellow vests have even been protesting just last weekend on the streets of London.
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