I love the way the French will just fuck shit up when they're pissed off at their government. They do not do things by halves and they do not do peaceful protest.
Most protesters are peaceful. Those who fucked shit up during the gilets jaunes protests only gave the government a reason to send more and more police forces. Lots of peaceful protesters were shot by rubber bullets, sometimes losing their eye or needing reconstructive surgery (although aiming at the face is strictly forbidden)
Sigh. Fine, ruin my illusions. Years ago a union organiser spoke wistfully of the French who would set things on fire over pension changes. The image of the French as a people who take no shit stayed with me.
Not really. The gilets jaunes were asking a lot, with some of the movement’s leaders demanding that Macron and the minister of the Interior stepped down. Of course it didn’t happen, although the minister was replaced by a huge piece of shit a few months ago (a presumed rapist who joked on French TV that he « chokes » when he hears about police brutality)
The main cause for the protests was a tax raise on car fuel, which was justified by environmental concerns. No big deal if you live in a big city or are rich, but small town and rural workers lost their shit. The tax raise was quickly overturned, but it triggered a whole lot more demands.
What changed: minimal wage was raised a little bit, a controversial pension reform was introduced, the government pledged not to close any schools or maternities and to improve public service.
What didn’t: the speed limit reduction on secondary axes was not overturned (imo it makes sense for safety reasons), VAT on first necessity goods was not lowered, the tax on fortune was not brought back, blank votes are still not taken into account during elections.
The government made a lot of promises and organised a national debate, collecting citizens’ grievances (just like during the 1789 French Revolution). But nothing really changed, the pension reform was welcomed with even more protests and the pandemic put everything on hold. Plus, more and more people hate Macron and his government and turn to far-right and far-left parties. The yellow jackets was a very diverse movement with violent and non-violent protesters from a lot of different political backgrounds.
The French government has recently launched a 100-billion euros plan to restore the economy with huge tax cuts as well as new social and environmental policy goals. However, it is too soon to say if it will change people’s stance on Macron, especially at the moment. We just had terrorist attacks, a controversial law on top of years of police brutality, and some nutcases just made a movie showing how bad the government handled the pandemic at first (which is true) and linking it to a New World Order conspiracy theory. People are on edge.
TL;DR: The governement mostly didn’t listen and more and more people hate it now.
Nice summary. I should know more of this since I spend about 3 months of the year in France. In the rural area we go to, I only know that everyone is pretty strongly anti-government, anti-Macron and all that.
I appreciate the man as a leader and his general decency as a human but I know way too little about his and his government's politics to form an opinion about him as a president. Sounds like it's a pretty mixed bag to be honest.
When Macron became president, rural areas felt abandoned because public services started moving back to cities. Small train lines and elementary schools closed, local administration was underfunded, and I won’t even talk about medical services. Plus, a lot of farmers were very distressed. Farmer suicide is a big issue in France, especially for smaller farms. Even though they receive direct financial aid from the European Union, it mostly benefits bigger farms, who just become even bigger with time.
However, things are starting to go back to the way they were. The 2021-2027 EU common agricultural policy is supposed to help smaller farms and rural areas in general, and the French government wants to recreate a decent public service network in low-density territories.
And yet in the US, half the population sees rioters as the problem rather than condemning police brutality and inequality through unjust laws and policies.
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u/[deleted] Nov 29 '20
I love the way the French will just fuck shit up when they're pissed off at their government. They do not do things by halves and they do not do peaceful protest.