All photos by Abdulmonam Eassa

The present order is the disorder of the future.

— Saint-Just (1767–1794)

As I write these words, a veritable earthquake is rippling through French politics and society. Four weeks into its most serious social unrest since the banlieue riots of 2005, large parts of the country continue to be shaken by a groundswell of popular protests, roadblocks and occupations. This past Saturday, the so-called gilets jaunes — a loosely structured movement of angry citizens named after the yellow high-visibility vests all French drivers are required to keep in their cars in case of distress — defied an unprecedented security crackdown to return to the streets of Paris and other French cities in their hundreds of thousands. The protests can only be described as a resounding repudiation of the widely-despised president, Emmanuel Macron, and his neoliberal assault on working-class living standards.

Confronted with a change of tactics by riot police, who now found themselves backed by dozens of armored vehicles and water cannon, the gilets jaunes did not manage to overwhelm security forces as they had during the previous two weekends, when some of the wealthiest neighborhoods of the capital were smashed up in scenes of generalized disorder not witnessed in central Paris since May ’68. Nevertheless, even the mobilization of 89,000 riot police and the arrest of over 1,700 protesters across the nation could not withhold the yellow vests from once again descending upon the main avenues leading up to the Champs Élysées for “Act IV” of their mass rebellion. A police spokesperson noted that, due to the more dispersed nature of the riots, the overall damage from property destruction was much greater and much more widespread than in previous weeks. A number of other French cities also witnessed violent clashes, including Bordeaux, Toulouse, Lyon, Dijon, Nantes and Marseille.

What began four weeks ago as a nationwide response to a widely-disseminated Facebook call by two angry truck drivers to block local roads and highway toll stations in protest against a new “ecological” fuel tax introduced by Macron’s government has now spiraled out into a full-blown popular revolt against the banker president and the wealthy corporate elite he so openly represents. While the yellow vest movement — if it can even be properly defined as such — remains inchoate and contradictory in terms of its social composition and ideological orientation, there is little doubt that it has opened up a major fissure in French politics. The neoliberal center finds itself under siege, and the political establishment appears to be at a loss on how to respond. “We are in a state of insurrection,” Jeanne d’Hauteserre, Mayor of the 8th District of Paris, lamented last week. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Four weeks in, the uprising also continues to confound mainstream journalists and experts. “The gilets jaunes have blown up the old political categories,” one French media activist told ROAR on Saturday night, after a long day of riots in the capital. “They reject all political leaders, all political parties and any form of political mediation. No one really knows how to confront or deal with this movement — not the media, not the government, nor anyone else. What we are witnessing is unprecedented in French history.” While the outcome of these dramatic developments remains uncertain, it is clear that France is currently living through a rupture of historic proportions, taking the country onto uncharted terrain. For the left, the emerging scenario presents both exciting opportunities, but also a number of significant political risks. How are radical and autonomous social forces to insert themselves into this unfamiliar and uncertain situation without losing sight of the dangers that lie ahead?

A deepening sense of crisis

For now, only one thing is certain: the explosion of popular outrage and the implosion of the old political categories has left a gaping hole at the heart of French politics. The resultant sense of crisis and confusion is palpable. For several weeks now, all the major news channels have been airing non-stop footage of roadblocks and burning barricades, while the main newspapers have consistently splashed the gilets jaunes onto their front pages. During “Act III” of the uprising on Saturday, December 1, live TV images broadcast to millions of people from the Alps to the Atlantic revealed how police had effectively lost control over large parts of the capital. As tens of thousands of yellow vests stormed the Champs Élysées, other groups went off into the surrounding beaux quartiers, where they burnt luxury cars, built barricades, smashed bank windows, looted luxury stores and defiled public monuments.

Elsewhere in the country, hundreds of roads, roundabouts and toll stations as well as a number of supermarket distribution centers and eleven Total fuel refineries were blocked by yellow vest protesters, while the port of St Nazaire continues to be occupied as well. Fearing a complete loss of control, some government officials have begun to openly call for a state of emergency and the mobilization of the army to quell the popular revolt — or at least to assist over-stretched police forces in the capital. Authorities on Île de la Réunion, a French dependency in the Indian Ocean with a population of around 865,000, recently declared a curfew after protesters there overran local security forces and blocked access to the main port, the airport and the island prefecture.

This past Saturday, December 8, French authorities — determined to reassert control over the street — placed large parts of central Paris on lockdown, blocking roads, shutting metro stations and sending in armored vehicles and water cannon to reinforce police lines. In the morning, an eerie calm descended upon the French capital as thousands of stores and restaurants shuttered their doors and boarded up their window displays in anticipation of renewed violence. By the early afternoon, it became clear that the government’s unprecedented security operation had — unsurprisingly — failed to deter the gilets jaunes, who once again poured into the streets surrounding the Champs Élysées in large numbers, only appearing strengthened in their resolve to confront the cops and reinforced in their conviction that Macron must go.

Given the heavy-handed police repression, which left at least 120 protesters requiring immediate medical assistance, renewed clashes were all but inevitable. In an appropriate irony, the situation got especially heated around the Boulevard Haussmann, named after the reactionary urban planner under Napoleon III who designed Paris’s iconic broad avenues specifically to maintain social order and forestall further popular uprisings in the wake of the revolution of 1848. Police fired rubber bullets, stun grenades and copious amounts of teargas to keep the gilets jaunes from accessing the Place de l’Étoile where the Arc de Triomphe stands, but repeated attempts to disperse the protesters faltered as different decentralized groups simply kept reassembling on the main avenues. At night, small-scale skirmishes and isolated incidents of looting continued in the area surrounding the Place de la République.