I didn’t want to talk about politics in these blogs and quite frankly, I’d like to go back to complaining about grumpy waiters. But one does not choose the times one lives in, and in what is becoming something of a pattern, I find myself having moved to a country just in time to catch the biggest sociopolitical upheaval in modern history.
Rosie’s in the US this week, so I’m looking after Sam. This morning I dropped him off at his Nanny’s, and made my way to work. My route took me past the local high school, which was barricaded with hundreds of teenagers while black clouds rose from makeshift bonfire made from garbage cans and gasoline.
I was briefly stopped by the police, who seemed to have chosen to stop cyclists going to work in place of stopping the kids attempting arson, and continued along my way. My usual route goes slightly out of my way to ride along a ‘rightsized’ street where the bikepath runs parallel to a tramline and lets me imagine, albeit briefly, that I live in a utopian world where no-one uses cars.
Today, the effect was rather different - another angry mob, another gasoline fire and hundreds of thousands of Euros worth of damage to city public transport infrastructure where the reinforced glass separation between the bike path and the tramline had been smashed in with a sledgehammer.
And that was just my personal experience this morning. The local newspaper chronicled similar, and sometimes worse, stories around the city.
And that was just my personal experience this morning. The local newspaper chronicled similar, and sometimes worse, stories around the city.
These were not, for the record, all the actions of ‘Gilets Jaunes’. The fires were the actions of high school students who have sensed the general atmosphere of protest and have chosen to voice their discontent on education fiscal policy by attempting to burn their schools down.
But the sentiment is almost universal. The people are pissed, and they want to break stuff.
I took issue with the original movement (which started some weeks ago) for environmental reasons. I believe personally that a carbon tax is a necessary thing, and I’m happy to debate the issue (admittedly, whether you brought up the topic or not). With the benefit of hindsight, this tax perhaps could have been sold and implemented better - but this now seems beside the point.
The support for the movement is colossal. In Toulouse, it seems like roughly one car in four has a yellow gilet on the windshield, but in the mountains last weekend it was more like 4 out of 5, seeming more like a revolution than a democratic sociopolitical discourse.
Each week the movement becomes more chaotic, violent and incoherent. What was a single focused issue has become a widespread chorus of discontent encompassing all of those who feel like the system has left them behind.
But clearly it goes deeper than that. I won’t pretend to understand the intricacies of why the French populous find themselves in this position, but from my brief experience, there seems to be three main factors:
First is an anger with the political elite separated from the needs and concerns of the people. This seems to be true for any president, but particularly acute for Macron, seen as serving only the rich as a result of his ‘original sin’ of cutting taxes on businesses. Revolutionary language is commonplace, and the signage in the protests occasionally talks of France no longer needing its “king”.
Second is the general slow-motion western democratic slide into inequality. While the French system offers health system safety nets and benefits - a large fraction of society has very little disposable income. The minimum wage is 1200 Euros per month, and the median is 1400, while parts of Paris pay significantly more than that for an apartment - this stokes the same kind of resentment that resulted in Trump and Brexit, and caused the population to erupt at the proposal of another regressive tax.
Finally, and this is the explosive catalyst, is a disrespect for authority (compared with the US or the UK at least). Even in peaceful times, graffiti is ubiquitous, speed limits are constantly ignored and petty theft is commonplace. It’s a minority, but the effect of that minority makes the world feel more dangerous - and when it comes to protests, it means that the “casseurs” join in with the simple motive of breaking some shit. This lowers the boundaries for those who would otherwise be protesting peacefully to transition into violence.
No rationalization makes this easier to experience, though. To see one of the world’s first serious efforts to implement carbon pricing fall down to an angry mob who have the support of the vast majority of the population makes a sad day, compounded on a personal perspective with the visceral effect of seeing the city’s bike infrastructure being literally smashed to pieces.
I really like bike infrastructure - if you want to make me mad, this is how you make me mad. You want to lower taxes? Then maybe don’t fucking break everything - is something I didn’t actually say to anyone, instead giving them disapproving stares and cycling away quickly before they had a chance to respond.
But life moves on. Just as France has a history of resorting to protest, it has a history of resolving disagreements through protest as well. Maybe we should think harder about our choice of living in a Chateau’s grounds though...
Comments
Post a Comment