Can the ‘Yellow Vests’ Protests Go Global?

When it comes to the relationship of U.S. citizens to the politicians and bureaucrats in Washington D.C., there’s no indication that anything remotely resembling self-government is happening. Rather, the relationship is far more like that of a servant to a master.

From the October post: Americans are Stuck in Abusive Relationships with Power

The gilets jaunes, or “yellow vests” protests, emerged seemingly out of nowhere about a month ago and have in a few short weeks shaken the French political power structure to its core. Just yesterday, the exceedingly unpopular President Macron cried uncle and offered a series of concessions to the protesters. Many commentators have come to the simplistic and erroneous conclusion that violence works, but it wasn’t the burning cars or streets filled with tear gas that really scared Macron and the people around him. It was something much deeper than that.

First, powerful elites tend to be control freaks. Abuse of the law, institutionalized corruption and invasive surveillance typically make the powerful feel comfortable their position is secure. What really makes them shake is when something totally unexpected happens — and the virality and force of the gilets jaunes movement caught them off guard.

Second, the diverse, nebulous and leaderless nature of the participants and their grievances made it a difficult narrative to counter through the media or government spokespeople. It wasn’t masterminded by dissident political parties or even France’s activist unions. Though it was catalyzed by rising taxes on diesel fuel, it quickly became a rallying point for a hodgepodge of individuals with a variety of serious gripes against Macron and his neoliberal policies.

Third, and most important, the protests have been very popular amongst the wider French population, with polls in early December showing around 70% support. For Macron, a former Rothschild investment banker nicknamed “president of the rich,” that kind of broad support isn’t something easily ignored (though I’m sure he tried).

As the protests started to attract increased international attention, I began to wonder if they could spread spontaneously to other nations. As such, it was noteworthy to see reports of yellow vest-style protests in Belgium, and to a lesser extent The Netherlands, this past weekend. Then last evening I came across the following headline from the AP.

CAIRO (AP) — Egyptian authorities have quietly introduced restrictions on the sale of yellow reflective vests, fearing opponents might attempt to copy French protesters during next month’s anniversary of the 2011 popular uprising that toppled autocrat Hosni Mubarak, security officials and retailers said Monday.

They said industrial safety equipment dealers have been instructed not to sell yellow vests to walk-in buyers and to restrict business to wholesale sales to verified companies, but only after securing police permission. They were told offenders would be punished, the officials said without elaborating.

You know a government’s weak and paranoid when they’re afraid citizens might wear an article of brightly colored clothing into the streets, but the concern is warranted. Not just in Egypt, but across the world.

We humans are systematically manipulated into seeing ourselves as totally different and at odds with one another, but the truth of the matter is virtually all of us currently living on this beautiful planet share something very significant in common with one another. We all reside in countries run by and for the benefit of a tiny group of lawless and unscrupulous people. While some nations are clearly in far worse shape than others, we all live in very corrupt and increasingly unfree societies.

Because humans are easily divided and conquered, both within our own countries and on a global level, the few are able to easily rule over the many. If we can somehow find a way to resist power elite manipulations and unite to focus our attention on the true root of our problems, there’s nothing we can’t accomplish.

With Christmas coming and the weather in the northern hemisphere set to get colder, it’s certainly possible the gilets jaunes movement dies down a bit. If so, I have no doubt it’ll remerge even stronger down the road, because absolutely nothing systemic has been solved with Macron’s pitiful concessions.

More significantly, the French have provided the rest of the world with an important lesson. That protest movements should ideally tap into widespread grievances and capture the support of the masses in order to be most powerful and effective. This shouldn’t be hard for anyone, since I can’t think of any major governments anywhere in the world that aren’t completely captured by destructive special interests and unprincipled oligarchs.

We live in a global kakistocracy and we’ve been too busy fighting with each other to do anything meaningful about it. Let’s stop doing that.

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20 thoughts on “Can the ‘Yellow Vests’ Protests Go Global?”

  1. And when Ron Paul took off during the 2012 presidential elections what did the establishment do? Started rigging the election for their republican candidate Mitt Romney so that Paul who was clearly ahead in numbers of people showing up at his rallies suddenly taking
    second and third place during the nomination process. No wonder Trump came out of “nowhere” in 2016 and beat the other 15 contestants.

    Reply
    • Yeah, the generational divide is one of the biggest D&C fault lines. Read ZH sometime and you’ll see endless, mindless vitriol toward Millennials. I’m an X’er myself but the reflexive Millennial bashing gets tiresome quickly. If anyone blames Boomers for anything there, they’ll launch into a hasty defense that the seeds of our current problems were sown either before Boomers were born (eg Fed Reserve creation) or when they were too young to be in control (eg Nixon closing the gold window). Takes some serious cognitive dissonance to think Boomers are too young to blame but Millennials are just the right age.

  2. The yellow vest phenomenon could happen here in the US, but I think the response would be far more severe. Our police force is much more lethal and trigger happy than France’s, plus our military would happily chip in if push comes to shove. If enough protesters joined in, I think internet and cell service would be shut down in the affected areas so the media could control the narrative. Shutdowns are more common than people think- India alone has deliberately done it more than 150 times!

    Reply
    • Tengen,

      I agree w/you on the level of violence USGinc. will bring to bear on protest such as this. We’ve already seen them at work in Occupy, BLM and DAP. That said, we must show courage. This is an action taken on behalf of others and our planet for the true common good.

      If we can see through the propaganda as Michael points out and come together, it is, IMO, our only hope for freedom and justice. Yes, they will cut off the internet and phones. We don’t need those things to work for justice. They are recent inventions and humans have worked for the common good a lot longer than these devices have existed.

      If we stay peaceful, focused and care strongly for our fellow humans and this earth, we must do this even if it fails. Not doing so guarantees the outcome.

  3. In Spain also a few have caught the vest, being portrayed by media as appropriated by direction as an attempt to sideline protest as not organic.

    Spain is a politically active hotbed of groundlevel discontent, really have to watch what is turning there. Not only is the level of corruption and unemployment not tolerable, but moderate representation is lacking and the country is becoming polarised in the resulting incompetence. That ranges from a population that intends protest according to poll, untested political tangents forming and taking power, more extreme seperatist movements appearing in Cataluña, loss of adherence to traditional authority (for example royalty), and so on. After Euro the country is more melting down rather than melting up, and the nouveau authority that would be “progress” in evolution is not worth its salt, is not worth anything in fact imo, as it is reliant on siren calls of various vague pathos while the hard power has been diverted more towards making the peace instead of preserving it, something that it cannot but get wrong. It’s pathetic. Wait and watch, each organised official celebration finds an increasingly empty public, eventually it will be a no show and people will walk from the shadows with their true sentiments, those that have been oppressed and sidelined to suit the vanity of the day.

    The yellow vest is a spontaneous representation of people active outside of mainstream. This is as permitted society, in fact enforced, by the fact that yellow vests are obligatory when working outside of programmed around moving traffic. To wear a yellow vest is to say “be careful for the person”. In recent years day glow has increasingly come to represent authority, government services and police dressed in yellow, it catches like the flashing lights of an emergency vehicle, but the misuse of power has it transmitting “we are more important than you, beware and respect us” instead of ” be careful for this person”. So I hope you are able to see how the yellow vest subtly draws out a map of what is a social conflict, the meanings and senses it galvanises when worn.

    Reply
  4. I’d like to see a U.S. candidate say, out loud, ‘they are deliberately trying to divide us… so as to conquer us… (so as to fleece us)… we won’t let them!!!!… and offer ‘tolerance of differences, and unity on our common needs’. (I even have to remember that Trump said, out loud, the Iraq War was the worst mistake this country every made, and is clearly questioning the value of the plutos globalization/free trade.)

    Plus, France has a history of prioritizing the common good… strong unions, worker benefits (35 hr work week), safety net, regularly taking to the streets, etc., etc. That is what Macron faces. I think it’s a failure of Hollande that allowed Macron to be elected.

    So…. let’s have UBI, national healthcare, free public colleges… and then we’ll have real freedom (ala Roosevelt’s ‘Four Freedoms’). (Must add ‘decriminalizing drug use’). This kind of basic security has been abhorrent to the US plutos who worship Mammon (and cling to the cross!)…. and now the global sociopaths want to unwind social democracy in the other ‘developed’ nation (using their subtly instigated immigration as the camel’s nose).

    I think the only thing we can do here now is not give them our $. I shop at thrift stores, liquidation grocers, fill my water bottle from the tap, cook my food, limit driving, etc, etc, etc. (and thank God that I am able to do so : )

    Reply
    • You’re completely misguided… how can you possibly equate UBI, national healthcare, and free public colleges to Roosvelt’s ‘Four Freedoms’ (expression, worship, want, and fear).

      You say those things bring “basic security”?

      I say they bring cultivated dependence on despotic centralized authority, funded by the dwindling productive members of society, for the sole purpose of fielding herds of voters utterly dependent upon the plutocracy for its very subsistence, thus guaranteeing the renewal of the plutocratic charter, ad infinitum, by an increasingly dependent herd of automatons incapable and undeserving of liberty.

      Why should a government pay for someone else to have a UBI? Shouldn’t the weakest members of the herd be culled? If you have to do something, soup kitchens and bread lines… you know, really make it suck.

      Why should a government pay for someone to live longer than nature intends, unless they have a history of producing, in some fashion, more than they consume. Most health problems are due to lifestyle choices, anyway… why should you suffer the consequences of my choices?

      Why should a government pay to educate the impoverished unless they show extraordinary talent? Isn’t that simply inefficient? Why not create national exam boards to identify talent and raise it up versus throw money at institutions that simply offer crap degrees to crap minds?

      How about basic personal responsibility? People come to this country all the time, legally, in pursuit of economic mobility… and if they are smart, work hard, and get a little lucky, they raise themselves up, and sometimes really quickly!

      See, cream rises to the top… the attempt to make everyone feel like they’re a winner is cowardice… parents, teachers, and politicians afraid to say, “sorry kid, you’re just not good enough.”

    • @Nightnthebox
      I’m kind of surprised to encounter this eugenics clap-trap on such a quality blog.

      I fail to see how “basic personal responsibility” should encompass, for instance, someone dying of a preventable disease because they cant afford treatment, even though they work 40 hours a week. This happens everyday in the US.

      Not only is this ethically abhorrent, it’s also incredibly impractical.

      If the increasingly strapped “herd”, as you so charmingly call them (all the while convienently forgetting that you’re certainly a part of the herd) cannot manage to survive, there is no economy, there is no country, there is no survival for anyone, including the “cream”.

      The only choice is to offer the same quality of education, healthcare, food & housing to everyone.

      That way, crime will be drastically reduced, the population will not spend all their time merely surviving and will be free to develop their talents and actually contribute in a substantial way, and the people will also have enough time to pay attention to corruption and safeguard democracy.

      And that is why the elites fight so hard against such advancements!

    • @Trained Patsy
      Gonna learn you up on some statistics here, Captain ClapTrap.

      71% of the US population has 0-2 chronic conditions. This group represents 33% of all healthcare spending in this country, from all sources.

      16% of the US has 3-4 chronic conditions and 12% has 5 or more… that 29% (rounding) accounts for 67% of all healthcare spending, from all sources.

      So, we aren’t talking about preventable diseases… we’re talking about paying for really sick people and their bad choices so that they can go on making them… all while teaching their kids to do the same.

      The better message: if you eat like shit and don’t exercise, you’re gonna die! Early and ugly. Unless you’ve got the cash to pay for your own mistakes… if so, go for it… if not, suck it, fatboy…

      My best friend is an orthopedic surgeon… cuttin’ and scopin’ since 1996… he says most of the knee and joint replacements he does are simply a result of chronic obesity… he’s done thousands of them… after that: snow skiing and soccer.

      As for education: my sister is a public high school teacher in a district that was white suburbia 25 years ago… she speaks Spanish fluently and literally created the ESL program there and has run it ever since.

      That school is now about 80% poverty-line minority. Despite gangs and daily fights and a murder last year, she has stayed right where she is the whole time (Teacher of the Year, twice) because she loves teaching, loves the community and she loves those kids.

      She insists that the single most important factor in determining a student’s success is not the intelligence of the kid or the quality of the school, it’s how important education is to the parent(s). The opportunity is there…

      People are just animals… we are trainable and are ALL trained, both me and you and Michael… we will repeat behaviors for which we are rewarded and avoid behavior that is punished. Poor choices should not be rewarded, nor should we entertain the suggestion to the contrary.

      That’s what I mean by personal responsibility.

      Instead, everyone wants to complain about the game not being fair cuz they don’t like their cards… or they want a do-over cuz they screwed it up earlier… well, tough shit.

  5. Unfortunately power attracts the worst of humans. People who THINK they should lead you are the very one LEAST qualified to do so.

    A terrible tragedy on humans.

    Reply
  6. 2 points.
    1. Americans have a false sense of security because they are armed and think that they can stop the corruption a little further down the road if necessary while corrupt politicians have a false sense of security thinking they can continue the abuse because they have strong police and military forces programmed by a powerful lying media and comprehensive propaganda education machine to control the people.

    2. Politicians and dictators the world over never seem to learn that the longer they abuse power and accept bribes the more brutal will be their demise when the citizens finally do rise up. And what better example than the French revolution.

    Good government is a wonderful thing, but complacency of the citizens always leads to criminals taking over the government.

    Reply
  7. You are sooooo on point with your article brother. I give much thanks and gratitude for you writing this. WWG1WGA. It has begun. Together we are stronger.

    Citizen Kane
    Missoula, Montana

    Reply
  8. The masses of sheeple in America being able to band together in unity is years away. Maybe decades. They are so programmed it’s more likely they will splinter the USA into separate groups or regions.

    This won’t happen proactively. There needs to be a catalyst. Monetary collapse is at least 3-5+ years away for the dollar. Economic collapse where the money earner loses their job and along with it the house, cars, lifestyle and trophy wife is also some years away.

    The sheeple won’t stop anything on their own until they are forced to. It’s human nature.

    Reply
    • Actually, we have already essentially experienced the yellow vest protest here in the U.S. It was accomplished through the election of Donald Trump by the blue collar working class (republicans, democrats, independents). Citizens rejected the corrupt democrat candidate. And it is just media propaganda to portray the working class as uneducated, ignorant, racist, sexist, etc. Many who voted for him were/are college educated, many operate businesses, many work in professional fields. And Donald Trump was elected for the same reasons of the Brexit U.K. vote and these yellow vest protests now occurring in many countries in Europe, Canada, etc.

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