One thing that all governments need to be aware of is that challenges to their authority can sometimes come from unexpected directions. Government’s may keep a close eye on the big picture items, such as the economy, social policy or national security, but they ignore the potential for unexpected challenges that may come up from below, at their peril.
The Yellow Jacket protests in France have been, for the French government at least, one of those occasions when a government takes their eye off the ball about what is happening on the ground. An ill-conceived ‘green’ tax on vehicle fuel should not have produced much more than the usual grumbling from the French citizen. It may have even produced the very French phenomenon of citizens blocking roads or ports or maybe the odd riot or two, but it would not have been anything that would cripple the government. This is not the case with the Yellow Jacket protests.
The Yellow Jacket protests have become something else entirely, they may have started out as a protest against an unjust increase in fuel duty but they are now becoming protests about the way France is being governed. I suspect that there are other motivations behind why people are protesting which may be equally as important to those protesting as the ‘green’ taxes are. These motivations may well be fear of the French government’s imported Muslims along with frustration at the arrogance of a government that was not positively chosen by the people, but instead voted in as the least worst option during the last Presidential election. The ‘green’ tax has been a spark that has lit a fire of dissatisfaction with the French government and I don’t see that fire dying down soon.
The French government is in the alarming, for them, position of being led by a President who is woefully unpopular, 23% according to a recent figure put out by Sargon of Akkad, and which is enacting policies that hurt ordinary people in the back pocket. Couple this with the sclerotic government that French people suffer from and the ongoing and worsening problems with Islam, and we can see that the government of French President Emmanuel Macron is in a very bad place indeed, no matter what he does.
His government has temporarily shelved the fuel duty rise in the hope of stopping the protests and this may cool the protests down, but equally it may not. It may be a climb down by M Macron that will not be enough for the protestors, their blood is up. The time for this climb down was a few weeks or months ago when the grumbling about the tax started, but now it looks too late and too panicky. I suspect that this concession by M Macron may be too little too late and that the protests may continue, but this time they will be motivated by the anger about the other problems that France faces
Revolts against governments do not start only from factors that can be perceived from afar, such as police brutality or some sudden catastrophic breakdown in food supplies, or anything else that can be effectively ‘war-gamed’. Sometimes it can be the unexpected event that can be the starting point for political fires that sweep away governments. It was, we should remember, that it was a lone and desperate man who immolated himself in protest at government policy, that kicked off the Arab Spring. It was also in the 18th Century, as is the case in France today, that unjust taxation by the British government, helped to give apparent credence to fears among some American colonists, that the British were going to bleed America dry and impose strict Monarchical government. Both the Tunisian stall holder who committed public suicide by fire and the fears of a group of colonists, were the unexpected triggers for tremendous social, cultural and political change.
These protests in France could be similar types of triggers for revolt in that country as we saw in the past that kicked off previous revolts in Tunisia and the putative United States. A combination of an arrogant government that is imperious towards the vast majority of its citizens and which imposes unjust policies on those citizens who are either poor or struggling to keep their heads above water, is sailing into dangerous waters with regards keeping order.
I’m beginning to think that M Macron is buggered whichever way he turns. If he goes big with more concessions towards the Yellow Jacket protestors, then that could embolden them to ask for more from Macron, which if refused, could see the protests continuing in their current vein. There is also the possibility that the disruption in France’s towns and cities caused by the Yellow Jackets may also bring out elements in France’s extremely volatile Islamic minority who rarely need much of an excuse to commit acts of violence. Rabble rouser’s in this minority could stoke up fears that the Yellow Jackets or the police are going to attack the Islamic community, especially if the Yellow Jacket protest starts taking up the cause of overt hostility towards Islam (and the French have a LOT of reasons to hate Islam). We could be looking at a whole violent mess starting out with Yellow Jackets fighting the Muslims and everyone fighting with the police and the government. Macron would then be in the extremely invidious position of being in power, but so beset by violent mobs on two sides that he would be unable to act effectively to secure order. He would in that position be unable to make deals with one group to stop protest, without coming under attack from the other side, angry at whatever concession has been given to their opponents.
I fear for France’s future when I look at its current problems but I know that many of these problems, both social and economic, have been caused or exacerbated by both current and previous governments and their policies. France has a bad social situation with a significant minority of Muslims being extremists and a tendency to be both volatile and violent along with hostility among many French to the ideology of Islam. France also has economic problems which dodgy ‘green’ taxes has only highlighted the extent of. and it is these economic problems that have brought people onto the streets. However, it is likely that although it is economic matters that have brought the French citizen onto the streets, it is other factors, such as the remoteness of the political class and the damaging effects of excessive Islamic immigration, that may keep the Yellow Jacket protestors on the streets and fighting.
It was a smallish thing like an increase in fuel tax that has set France aflame and it could be some other as yet unforeseen factor that could make the current conflagration afflicting France and its government even worse. I cannot at this point make any prediction as to what that accelerating factor may be, but I will predict that France is probably in for it’s most bumpy political time since the end of World War II. Unfortunately for the current generation of French citizens this time there is no De Gaulle to take the reins of a disrupted country and bring order. Also this time that France faces peril, the enemy of ordinary French people is not now safely over the border as it was post WWII, but alive and kicking and ensconced firmly within the country.
I would really not want to be a French citizen or even a French President at the moment as things in that country really seem to be going from bad to worse. Macron has more on his hands now than merely a revolt over unfair fuel duty, he and his government face two enemies within one in the form of Islam and the other, a majority population that is opposed to him. At best we could be looking at a relatively peaceful change of government or even a new constitution, at worst we could be looking across the Channel at a scene of long lasting and serious chaos. A France that is in utter chaos of a long term nation is no good for Europe as a whole and is certainly not good for her immediate neighbours, including the United Kingdom.
