"Yellow Vests": anatomy of a day of anger

The movement born on social networks illustrates the discontent of a rural and peri-urban France that feels abandoned by the state.

Can we understand the movement of "yellow vests" if we do not live in Montigny-le-Guesdier, a small remote village of Seine-et-Marne, on the edge of Burgundy? Or in one of the many cities that resemble it in France, in a rural area or on the outskirts of metropolises? It is from this area of Seine-et-Marne that originated the Facebook page managers who launched the first call for a "national block", Saturday, November 17, starting the mobilization of "yellow vests".

Among them Marion Pruvost, who lives in Montigny-le-Guesdier for seven years, with her husband and their three children, in a house still under construction. To come to meet her is to understand from the outset that a life without a car is not conceivable.

The appointment at home is set Monday morning at 9 o'clock. How to get there by public transport? The answer falls, lapidary, on the website Transiliens SNCF: "No itinerary corresponds to your search. "The first option proposed, a train to Montereau-Fault-Yonne, then line 2 coaches Moreau made arrive at 14 h 46. The problem is that you must then sleep on the spot, the only option to return to Paris being ... the next day at 05:02 ... By car then, we win the village, a national limited to 80 km / h, cutting, in a straight line, beet fields.

Fuel, purchasing power: the reasons for anger

Before the mobilization of Saturday, November 17, interview with the sociologist Alexis Spire, author of "Resistances to the tax, attachment to the State".

Alexis Spire is a research director at the CNRS. He published, in September, Resistances to the tax, attachment to the State, Editions du Seuil. In an interview with Le Monde, he analyzes the movement of "yellow vests" before the mobilization of Saturday, November 17.

Is this mobilization of yellow vests original or is it part of other historical movements against tax increases?

It is a movement that does not look so much like the mobilizations of the 1980s and 1990s around fuel prices, which were mainly driven by transport unions and road professionals.

It also differs from the movement of the "red caps" which was driven from the outset by the local Medef and the FDSEA [departmental federation of farmers' unions], which was anchored territorially in Brittany.

In the case of yellow vests, there is currently no organization that structures the movement and hotbeds of protest are widely dispersed. It is the social networks and the very strong media coverage that make possible the existence of this mobilization that claims to remain at a distance from any form of political and trade union organization.

Some spoke of new "jacquerie", others of Poujadisme ...

We can see a kinship with the jacqueries in the sense that they were popular explosions that gathered in the countryside far beyond the only agricultural workers and that did not have a mandated representative nor a coherent vision of the emancipation. Another common point, these movements were directed against the nobility who was seen as a caste deaf to the difficulties faced by the people.

The comparison must nevertheless be nuanced. The Old Regime was the reign of arbitrariness and tax inequalities were blatant. The jacqueries went to the assault of the castles by sometimes allying themselves with the bourgeois of the cities. They were accompanied by great violence on the part of the insurgents but also in the repression that followed.

A common point with Poujadism is the same anti-elite speech, whether political or economic. The theme of small against big is a thread of mobilizations against tax but it is not enough to make yet another Poujadiste movement, because it is not the same social morphology.

In 1953, it is the independents who oppose a new mode of fiscal control set up by the administration. By claiming to federate motorists, the movement of yellow vests is aimed at a very wide audience and can bring together socio-professional categories that are not accustomed to demonstrate together, including subordinate employees and small independent. This alliance, which is not self-evident, is more reminiscent of the red caps, but is much more widespread in all the territories where you can not do without the car.

The yellow vests speak of fuel price increases as a straw that broke the camel's back. Why now ?

Fuel is a trigger for a general feeling of fiscal unfairness. The idea that there are too many taxes and levies is not new, it has existed for years and it has been fed by the succession of tax scandals: there have been cases Bettencourt, Cahuzac or Thévenoud, Panama Papers, Paradise Papers and other Luxleaks. More recently, the virtual elimination of the solidarity tax on wealth [ISF] has accentuated the idea that those above do not pay anything when those below support everything.

Overseas Minister Annick Girardin has denounced "intolerable" violence by "young people who have nothing to do with" yellow vests".

Paralyzed for four days by the movement of "yellow vests", the island of Reunion is facing a surge of violence as it had not known for nearly thirty years and has largely overwhelmed the issue of power. purchase.

"The evolution of the movement is intolerable: the road blocks during the day are transformed into urban violence at night," said Tuesday evening, Tuesday, November the Minister of Overseas, Annick Girardin, evoking violence committed by " young people who have nothing to do with "yellow vests" ".

Despite a curfew decreed by the prefecture, new incidents erupted in the night from Tuesday to Wednesday, including the Chaudron, a popular district of Saint-Denis, the capital of Reunion. A large area was looted and cars burned. In the town of Port, a "major fire" ravaged a commercial warehouse and a reporter La Réunion was attacked, according to local public radio. Vehicles were also burned in several other communes of the island.

The incidents of the previous night had already led the prefect Amaury of Saint-Quentin to introduce Tuesday a partial curfew in half of the municipalities of the island. Until Friday at least, it will be prohibited to circulate between 21 hours and 6 hours, "a strong measure, unpublished" and "adapted to this threat," according to the prefect.

"Yellow Vests": the mea culpa of the deputies The Republic in march

On the other side, the majority "stands firm" against the movement of "yellow vests". But on the other side, the popular mobilization launched on November 17 poses to Macronist deputies a painful case of conscience. The time is even with the mea culpa to face discovered. "I met a person who participated in the movement. She touches the smic. However, it is exactly to her that the policy we are pursuing by eliminating social contributions, for example, is addressed. If these people are in the street, it is because we missed something, "worries Herault MP Nicolas Demoulin, vice-president of the majority group in the National Assembly.

Like him, several MPs have expressed doubts about the ability of the majority to be heard and to convince. "We are at work, at work, but perhaps it is not explained well enough," says Thomas Mesnier, elected from Charente who received for two hours on Saturday, "yellow vests" in its permanence, in Angouleme.

"Yellow Vests", Italian M5S

The 5-star movement was born during a day of anger. Eleven years later, he came to power.

It's an unclassifiable political adventure. It began in September 2007 with a mobilization to unexpected success: the "Vaffa Day" (literally "day of fuck you"), initially launched as a joke by a successful Italian comic, Beppe Grillo. Born of this momentum, the 5-star movement finally came to power in Rome, having progressively crossed all stages.

And even if it seems to have stalled in recent weeks, rivaled by the rise of a party more "classic" and better prepared for the exercise of power, the League of Matteo Salvini (far right), this anti-system movement The anti-skeptics and eurosceptics have left their mark on the Italian political landscape, imposing a formidable rhetoric of efficiency and completing to break the cleavage between left and right.

Could the "yellow vests" follow the same path, and give birth, in France, to a comparable protest movement? The parallel is tempting, and several French commentators seem to sketch it since the day of action of November 17. In fact, the similarities between the two are not lacking.

The fight goes on!

SAISI