Front Burner - How and why the "yellow vest" protests spread

Episode Date: December 20, 2018

Economist correspondent Sophie Pedder says the 'yellow vest' protests in Canadian cities are different in some ways from the movement that inspired them in Paris.

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You might have seen this story. Last weekend, there were protests in lots of cities across Canada. Hundreds of people in Toronto, Winnipeg, Regina, and Halifax, all wearing yellow vests. So Trudeau, you gotta go! They're marching against Trudeau, you gotta go! They're marching against Trudeau and carbon taxes and immigration. And you also probably know these Canadians are getting inspiration from France, where thousands of yellow vest protesters have been on the street. The scenes have been dramatic.

There was graffiti on the Arc de Triomphe. But what is the Yellow Vest protest actually about? And are these Canadian protesters part of a global movement? Or are they just copying something that actually has nothing to do with Canada? Today I'm talking to Sophie Petter. She's a journalist with The Economist. She wrote a book about the French president called Révolution Française. And we're going to talk about what is actually going on in France and how it all connects to us. That's today on FrontBurner. Hi Sophie.

Hi. Thanks so much for joining us today. You're very welcome. It's a pleasure. So you've covered Paris for a long time. Have you ever been there at a time like this? I think that the scale of the violence we've seen over two successive Saturdays in Paris, right in the center of Paris, is something I've certainly never seen. There were riots in the Paris region in 2005.

Those were very serious riots and they took place mostly in the banlieue, so sort of outer Paris fringes. But right in the centre of the city, near the landmark tourist sites like the Arc de Triomphe on the Champs-Élysées, that's something that no one has seen in Paris really since the May 68 student uprising. The students were using Molotov cocktails, petrol-filled bottles, which they showered on the police.

Police retaliated with tear gas grenades. The protesters, I know they wear these yellow vests. And can you tell me a bit about what these vests have come to symbolize? Well, it's interesting because the yellow vest itself is something that for the last few years, motorists in France have had to carry in the back of their car. So it just happens to be something that every single person with a car has on hand. And it's therefore been a very easy uniform for them to adopt. And it all began this

protest as a response to the carbon tax, so an increase in a carbon tax on diesel and petrol at the pump. So it was a very appropriate symbol because it's to do with motoring. But I think it's almost taken on a greater symbolism than that, because as the protest movement itself has broadened out to encompass all sorts of grievances, whether it's difficulty living on tight budgets or whether it's difficulty accepting the style of the French president. I think that one of the common factors has been this feeling among a lot of those who are protesting that they haven't been respected and that they haven't been taken seriously, that they've been somehow overlooked. And by wearing

that vest, which is a high visibility jacket, they're in a sense saying, you know, look at us, this is us, we do count, we want to be taken seriously, we aren't invisible, and it's time for you to listen to us. Sophie, could you classify this movement in France as anywhere along the political spectrum? Like, could it be considered a right-wing movement or a left-wing movement? I think the yellow vest movement defies political classification along the ordinary sort of left-right spectrum. You've got a bit of everything and that's part of its force and also part of its weakness. There have been some surveys where we've attempted to look at the political allegiances of those who followed the yellow vest movement.

And if anything, there's a slight tendency towards the far right. But the far left is also very present in this movement. And we've seen a lot of attempts by far left politicians to sort of hijack the movement, which they wouldn't do unless they were quite convinced that there were a lot of people who had sympathies on the left-hand side of the spectrum. So it's such a broad movement. It's united by the yellow vest, which is the symbol, but not by a huge amount of other demands, apart from the cancellation of the fuel tax rise. Some of the demands range from dissolving the National Assembly,

introducing the right for local citizen initiative-driven referenda, abolishing the wealth tax, for example. But people can't agree on what an order of priority. There's certainly no sort of negotiating tactic. There are no leaders who are prepared to come forward and actually meet the government. So it's this sort of amorphous, structureless, So it's this sort of amorphous, structureless, leaderless movement. It's just a very sort of modern, I think, or postmodern movement that has emerged organically. It's structureless and it's politically very difficult to classify. I know these protests, they started very organically, conversations on Facebook.

And then November 17th was the National Day of Action. And so can you take me back to those first weeks? I think the amazing thing about this protest movement is that because of Facebook and social media, it seemed to come from nowhere. So you had a number of people, individuals, who were posting messages on Facebook. There was a woman in Brittany who'd posted a video where she just said, I've had enough of the petrol tax. And a number of others had done the same

and they'd begun to sort of get together and say, let's have this day of action. At that point, it was really not at all clear that this was going to take off and become such a major event, the sort of event that really shook the French government and the presidency. It wasn't until the very first weekend in December the movement turned violent. And at that point, you began to see two sides and two faces, I suppose, of this movement. One of them was a movement that had been infiltrated by some of the ultra-left and the ultra-right, sort of anarchists on the far left, and some of the far-right protesters, agitators on the far right, who came together and really sort of infiltrated the movement in Paris itself. And

that led to a lot of the violence. But if you go out to the roundabouts, as I've done, where the Yellow Vest protesters have been camping out that's really not where you find the violence that's where you find people who are just trying to make their point you know they've set up camps they've lit fires some of them have even brought in a little bit of Christmas decorations and tinsel and there's almost a kind of festive atmosphere on some of these roundabouts these are people who are protesting, you know, peacefully. And these are, on the whole, working people who have just had enough and feel that they are really struggling to get by and that no one's taking their cause seriously. Can you tell me a little bit more about these roundabouts?

What are they? Are they areas outside the city? Yes, the roundabouts where you find a lot of the Yellow Vest protesters are very much sort of in between territory. It's sort of neither rural nor outer city areas. These are places where people are driving, you know, 20, 30 miles to get to work every day on roads in areas where there might be an out of town discount store or a furniture store or a petrol station. These are sort of semi-rural but not urban areas where a lot of people live and a lot of people are driving a long way to work. And the roundabout in a way has become a sort of symbol of that because there are so many roundabouts in France. It's a country where there's been a huge number built in the last

couple of decades. But it's also a place where people slow down. It's an easy place to sort of talk to those who are driving past and try and spread the word. There's quite a lot of solidarity that you find on the roundabouts. I mean, when I was talking to people on one in Normandy, for example, as people slowed down at the roundabout, they would put their horns in support and they would display their yellow vest in front of their windscreen. So there is a sense of these roundabouts, both socially and economically and geographically representing the ordinary working person outside the metropolitan areas. Would you say that what we're seeing here on television, which is vandalism of stores, seeing here on television, which is vandalism of stores, the Arc de Triomphe being vandalized,

fire. There are now 200 cases of arson in Paris. Is that not a fair depiction of what's happening on the ground? Yes, I mean, I think that's right. Obviously, what captures the headlines and what makes for very dramatic television is the scenes that we've seen in Paris. And the violence was intense. It was extreme. There were, the police struggled on a couple of weekends with tear gas and with water cannons to control that violence. It was really quite something. But I think the point, it's important not to forget that there are two sides to this protest movement. Not everyone who's taken part in it has been violent, far from it, and those who are occupying on the roundabouts are on the whole doing that in a peaceful manner. So like all these sorts of protest movements,

what tends to happen is a sort of split between the radicals who want to pursue the more extreme objectives. Some of them say they won't stop until a Macron is overthrown. I think you just have to see that there are two sides of this. I don't want to underestimate or understate the violence because it has been intense, but it's not the only story here.

As for 99% of French people, or those who are here, we've not come to trash the place. It's just a few people who don't care about the movement, or just a few are part of it but they're a tiny minority. They're the ones who are completely lost. They've taken too much on the chin so they've lost all reason and vandalized things. On December 4th, the Prime Minister, he backed off the fuel tax. Then a few days later, Emmanuel Macron, he gave a speech

where he offered concessions to the protesters, including millions of dollars in benefits. It was at first an anger against a tax. And the prime minister responded by canceling and removing all the increases scheduled for the start of the next year. But this anger is deeper. A lot of people watched this speech, 21 million people. It's the same number that watched the World Cup final. And there were clearly concessions.

So why are these protests still going on? Over the last 18 months, when President Macron has faced strikes on the street, and that's obviously a French tradition, it's a very theatrical country where protests often does spill onto the street. Those have often been union led, and they have been easier to handle because there's been someone to negotiate with, there's been a leader. And over time, what has happened is that actually public opinion has swung behind the government rather than the strikers. What's interesting about the yellow vest movement is it's been almost consistently backed

by public opinion all the way through. And that, I think, makes it incredibly powerful, difficult for the government to ignore, but also because of the nature of the yellow vest movement, difficult for the government to ignore, but also because of the nature of the Yellow Vest movement, difficult for the government to handle. The government and both the Prime Minister and President Macron himself knew they had to do something. The force was that intense and the public backing was that high. But what was so difficult for them is that they made these concessions,

which are not part of a negotiation. In the first weekend after the concessions, the numbers on the streets did decrease, but there are still ongoing protests across the country at motorway toll booths, for example, as well as on the roundabouts. It just makes it a very difficult movement for any government to know quite how to handle. We've planned to spend Christmas here, New Year's Day if necessary. We can go on until Easter, until they give up. There does seem to be one thing uniting the protesters.

They all seem to be very angry at Emmanuel Macron. Why is there so much anger being directed towards him? It's a strange thing, really, because if you think back to the origins of Macron's victory, he had created his party en marche from scratch, from absolutely nowhere. And he did this partly through social media, but also through a big listening exercise. He went out and he did consultations on the ground. He sent a sort of army of volunteers out to knock on doors and ask people what they wanted. So really listening was absolutely the core of what his party was all about. But somehow once he was in the presidency, that listening, that sort of consultation, that sense of wanting to involve people or feel that people were being listened to somehow got lost. And I think that that is also what's probably going to change

or what has to change really in the light of the Yellow Vest movement. It's really interesting you say that, and you're way closer to this than I am. But from where I'm sitting, you often see stories where people are criticizing Macron for appearing condescending. For example, I remember there were stories sort of in the early days of his presidency where he was criticized for spending tens of thousands of dollars on a makeup artist. And even when he gave this speech

announcing some of these concessions, he did so behind a gold desk. And this sort of became fodder as well. Is there a sense that he's become very disconnected from regular people in France? There's a sort of paradox here, precisely because of the origins of his political movement itself, the one that enabled him to win the presidency in the first place, which was very much about grassroots consultation and talking to people. But I think you also have to go back and think about the previous presidency, and that was under François Hollande, a socialist, and indeed Macron himself

was an advisor and then a minister for François Hollande. So he's very close to François Hollande and saw, at least he was, and saw up close how that presidency operated. And I think that what Macron's judgment was at the time was that this was too much of what he called a normal presidency, that there was a sort of loss of dignity and a loss of French prestige because of the way that François Hollande exercised power. And Macron also developed this idea that the presidency has to be grand, that France is about grandeur, that he wanted an almost de Gaulle-like presidency. And in a way, coming straight off to Francois Hollande, maybe he was onto something.

There was something in that. But after a while, that became confused and perceived as a sense of disconnection with real people, of a sort of arrogance of power rather than a kind of grandeur that made the French feel good about themselves. It was an arrogance that made the French feel that they had a lack of respect from their president. Is there a sense that the policies that this president has enacted so far benefit people who are wealthy or elite? Is that where some of that anger comes from?

There is a tag that has stuck to President Macron, that is that he's president of the rich. And I think it's fairly easy to see where that came from because of the sequencing of his fiscal policies. He had to sort of plan over five years to start abolishing the wealth tax, cutting tax on companies and introducing a flat tax on investment income. And the whole idea of this was to try and send a message to investors and to the outside world that France was open for business.

This was a country, don't forget, that had previously brought in a 75% top income tax rate and had gained a kind of reputation of being hostile to wealth creators. And Macron clearly wanted to send a very different signal to say, no, you know, business is welcome in France. The sequencing meant that he had to, in order to keep, you know, the deficit within control, he had to postpone a lot of the measures that he had planned that were going to help those on the other end of the income scale. And particularly those at work. France has a generous safety net for those who are out of work. But it's people on the sort of bottom end of the earning scale that were in difficulty. And that's been the real problem for Macron, is that he has introduced fiscal measures that benefit the better off.

And he had delayed those for the more modest incomes. And that sequencing has really been, I think, at the heart of what has felt to many people and those that I've spoken to on the roundabouts is just a sort of injustice of that, that they found very difficult. So you mentioned that the numbers went down this weekend in France, but there are other protests that have been happening around the world. So 5,000 people were protesting in Brussels over the weekend, many of them wearing yellow vests.

And yellow vest protesters have been popping up across Canada. protesters have been popping up across Canada. They're protesting the carbon tax, which is very similar to France, but also they've been protesting the UN migration pact that Canada just signed, which seems to be a different issue from France. So where are you seeing the similarities between these protests popping up around the world and what's going on in France? Well, I think in as far as there's a parallel, I mean, beyond the obvious visible symbol of the yellow vest, which is a very easy thing for people to adopt when they're wanting to mount a sort of

protest movement. I think the main parallel is the fact that these demands that are now being expressed by those wearing yellow vests are just so disparate. If you look at the yellow vest movement in France, and none of it's been about migration, it hasn't been about cultural values, it hasn't been about identity politics, it's been about standards of living and the manner in which they feel the president is governing. That's a very different sort of protest to those who are out there against the migration pact. So I think, you know, what you may see indeed is the sort of unifying symbol of the yellow vest spreading to movements as a way of mobilising people in a very effective way.

It's just so striking to see people in those high visibility vests. It does make for great dramatic visual scenes. But if there isn't a kind of coherent sense of what it is people are protesting against, then I think, you know, one has to be very careful about generalizing. And certainly what we've seen in France is that because of even within one country, because of those sort of divergent demands, it's both the force of the movement originally, because people are drawn into it by there's always something for someone in something for everyone in the movement. It's also its weakness because it's very difficult then for anybody to emerge as a leader and start drawing up a sense of priorities and a list of demands

because ultimately there are just too many different sorts of views expressed by those wearing the yellow vests. Sophie, thank you so much for this conversation. Thank you very much indeed. The protests that took place in Canada this weekend, they were mostly peaceful. But in Edmonton, about 150 people showed up in Churchill Square on Saturday. And a fight broke out. There, the yellow vest protesters were met by a counter-protest. People argued the yellow vests were anti-immigrant and possibly racist for protesting Canada's involvement in the UN migration pact.

racist for protesting Canada's involvement in the UN Migration Pact. Punches were thrown, and eventually two people were arrested. More protests are planned for this weekend, and the Facebook group Yellow Vest Canada now has over 82,000 members. That's it for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks for listening to FrontBurner. slash podcasts. It's 2011 and the Arab Spring is raging.

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