RE: User Stories On The YellowVest Protests in France - @algo.coder
A friend of mine posted the following about this movement - because there appears to be a lot of disinformation floating around...
Peter K. Vickers
1 hr
#FRANCE: From an anon.
"My wife is French & in France & said there is misunderstanding of the Yellow Vest movement. She said: "I am seeing a lot of wrong information, so I prefer to explain a bit better: It is not just the tax on fuel; it is mostly the Macron Govt cut the retirement paycheck for everybody (including my parents), and they increased gas and electric bills in all homes, all taxes increased (property taxes, habitation, city taxes, income taxes), and cut the taxes for the ultra rich (ISF). Macron does not care for the ecology. He did not increase gas tax to protect earth but to make more money. One of the best french environmental activists, Nicolas Hulot, was Ecology Minister under Macron but he resigned because it was impossible to do anything sincerely for the environment in the Macron government. Also, fuel was already over the equivalent of $5 per gallon with high taxes, and most people already drive very small cars. Increasing the tax is very regressive, hits the poor hardest. They cant get to work. Another approach to ending oil addiction is needed.
Altogether, it is ultimately class warfare."
"Macron gave huge tax breaks to the very richest and then tried to put the climate burden on the working class. So the working class are rioting. They're not protesting globalism, they're protesting oligarchy and the domination of the very wealthiest. We live under class warfare and we lay down and take it. Time for REAL CHANGE."
The person who posted that seems to be at least a bit educated, but please be sure 90% of the protesters don't even know what class warfare is. Nobody is syndicated anymore, nobody received any bit of political education or has a monetary understanding.
The movement is about taxes, whether it's on oil or anything else (the cut in the retirement paychecks was another tax increase). All taxes are going up because there's debt interests to pay, and it's going only one direction : up. But try to explain that to Yellow Vests and believe me I tried and spoke with a lot of them, they look at you like you're an extra-terrestrial. They want a bit more on their pay-checks, seeing Macron beheaded (french tradition) and that's all, they have no real grand idea or real revolutional spirit (changing the system, turning the pyramid upside down, etc.).
You can also hear a lot of them saying we need to lower unemployment insurance, as unemployed = lazy, that civil servants have too much privileges that need to be withdrawn, thats we're giving money to immigrants instead of helping the "local" poor people, etc. The classical divide and conquer. If the author of these words has really seen a convergence of the struggles and a real class warfare spirit in this movement, we just haven't seen the same people. I'm not saying there are no real revolutionary people in the movement, and that there are no really sincere people, I'm just saying they're a minority.
That's a year and a half now that Macron and its government are upping all the taxes for the middle / working class, and lowering them for the "1%", that's not the first "social rights" movement since the beginning of his mandate. Why is this one taking off ? Some say : "That's the drop that breaks the camel's back". But who really chose to give water to the camel ? Who brought him the canteen ? For me it's just a matter of planning by people behind it. All movements before this one had syndicates (politically educated people) behind them, so not an option. This one is spontaneous as the media loves to repeat, and repeat, and repeat. That only fact tells me that it's not.
People can't accept the destruction of their system (and their unity) by themselves, you need to push them into it. And little by little, my fear is already becoming reality, they're all talking about decision decentralization, making laws at a level nearer to the base... That's becoming official demands from the Yellow Jackets. Anyway, we don't have too long to wait, real powers in play will soon reveal themselves, and what will be gained from this "movement" will be the best way to judge its sincerity.
I really think people do it out of good will, but nowadays, manipulation is so easy it's not even fun.