

I'm beginning to think that the people of France are a bit upset.

It isn't just the French. The Yellow Vest protests have spread to Belgium, Holland and Hungary.

What do these protesters want?



The protesters, who are of all ages, professions and political factions, don’t seem to want to back down. “I’m prepared to spend Christmas protesting at this roundabout,” one told The Guardian. They want a more equal political and fiscal system, including the reintroduction of the tax on the mega-rich (from 0.5 percent to 1.5 percent, starting from incomes worth more than €800,000), which Macron abolished after his election. Crucially, they want Macron, also known as the “president of the rich,” gone.

All of that sounds reasonable and enlightened, but that's not how TPTB have reacted to the protesters.

The ruling class views any disruption in the way that they do things in a very familiar way.



Right from the start of this movement we have seen “experts” and “politicians” in the media belittling, condemning, and mocking the gilets jaunes and the revolt that they embody. I saw the words “barbarians,” “idiots,” “yokels,” “irresponsible” spread across social networks. The media spoke of the gilets jaunes’ “grunting”: for them, the popular classes do not revolt, but instead grunt like farm animals.

This sounds suspiciously like a "basket of deplorables".

(now that I think of it, it sounds like the sans-culotte.)

It also sounds like the way the Brexiters were portrayed in the media. In fact, any time that working class people act up in a non-deferential-to-power way they suddenly become less than human.

They become subhuman in a very specific way.



The gilets jaunes speak of hunger, of precarity, of life and death. The “politicians” and part of the journalists reply: “the symbols of our Republic have been tarnished.” But what are these people talking about? How dare they? What planet are they from? The media also talk about racism and homophobia among the gilets jaunes. Who are they kidding? ...

For the dominant, the popular classes are the perfect representation of what Pierre Bourdieu calls a class-object; an object that can be manipulated by discourse, one day represented as the salt of the earth — the authentic poor — and the next day as racists and homophobes. In both cases, the underlying intention is the same: to prevent the popular classes’ speech, about themselves, from ever coming to the surface. Too bad if you have to contradict yourself from one day to the next, so long as they keep quiet.

...When the ruling classes and certain media talk about homophobia and racism in the gilets jaunes movement, they are not really talking about homophobia and racism. They are saying “Poor people, shut up!”

We see it time and time again.

Bernie Sanders and his supporters wanted to talk about inequality in America. So suddenly Sanders supporters were a bunch of racists and sexists. No proof required.

Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters want to talk about inequality in Britain. So suddenly Corbyn and his supporters are anti-semites. No proof required.

Brexiters and Yellow Vests rebel against globalization, so they must be a bunch of racists.

I'm sure that in every movement some a**hole can be found, but if perfection is the standard then the ruling class fails in much worse ways.

Speaking of the ruling class, does anyone really think that the people yelling "racism and sexism" at Sanders and Corbyn supporters actually gave a sh*t about racism and sexism?



But since when have these media and “politicians” been so concerned about racism and homophobia? What have they done to combat racism? Have they used their power to speak out about Adama Traoré [a twenty-four-year-old black man who died in police custody] and the committee for Adama? To speak out about the police violence that strikes blacks and Arabs in France every day?

What exactly did Hillary ever do to combat racism in a measurable way?

Did Obama and the Clintons march with BLM, or do anything meaningful to stop police violence?

And speaking of violence, these same people denouncing the violence of burning trash cans are also the ones who celebrate the start of wars. Especially the wars where they send out children to die, the same children that are now throwing rocks at police.

When it comes to violence and racism, the media and ruling elite are shameless hypocrites.

The real racism and violence in society is written into the rules and laws. Those rules and laws were put there by the ruling class, thus making the ruling class the most racist, sexist, and violent class of all.

Somehow the stereotype of racism and sexism is a working class Archie Bunker, when in reality it should be a guy with a corner office and an address in the Hamptons.

[side note: Archie Bunker was the hero of the show, who always did the right thing in the end]