Yellow vest movement

The yellow vest movement (French: Mouvement de gilets jaunes) was a militant protest movement against the French government of Emanuel Macron and its neoliberal policies. The movement began in November 2018 and lasted about three years.

Opening with mass protests over increased fuel prices and further planned hikes in ‘green’ diesel taxes, and starting with actions in which over a quarter of a million participated in Paris and across France on 17 November 2018, the movement widened over the ensuing three years into an almost generalised uprising against Macron’s government and neoliberal policies and became the greatest challenge to his presidency – and to the stability of the ruling capitalist elite.

Yellow Vests revelling in tear gas in Paris on 8 December 2018

The movement was anti-capitalist, directed primarily against liberalisation, casualisation of labour, and the consequent steep decline of living standards of the working class – against the neoliberal answer to the deepening crisis of global capitalism. Wave after wave of exuberant mass protest was answered, on Macron’s part, by the most violent and brutal state repression of the French workers.

Scenes of French teenage students kneeling in detention before an army of police, of striking teachers and firemen being attacked in the streets and defending themselves militantly in what became open battles with police – these scenes of victims of state violence momentarily filled Western news media, and then were silenced, in a breathtaking media censorship that feared the spread of the movement across Europe.

This was a mass militant protest movement that embraced millions and combined political and direct street action. The media preferred to focus, in these months of European resistance, upon its own attempts to destabilise Russia, China (Hong Kong, Taiwan, South China Sea, Xinjiang, human rights …), Ukraine, Belarus, Afghanistan, Syria, Venezuela, etc.

Such was the extent of police violence under Macron, that “according to French Mediapart website, 11 people were killed, five lost their hands due to use of grenades and 23 lost their eyesight.

“Some 2,000 people were injured at the demonstrations. Of them, 268 people suffered head injuries, 15 hand injuries, 64 body injuries, 26 back injuries and 106 leg injuries.

“In addition, 95 journalists, 40 high school students and 30 volunteer health officers were injured in the demonstrations and 145 acts of insult and violation of press freedom by French police were recorded.

“French interior minister Christophe Castaner said the national police investigation unit (IGPN) launched 220 criminal investigations on suspicion of police violence against the demonstrations.

“Some 8,400 people have been arrested since the beginning of yellow vest protests and about 2,000 were remanded in custody.” (Yusuf Ozcan, Andolu Agency, May 2019.)