Wednesday, May 1, 2019
Tipping Point: The Gilets Jaunes are winning, what’s next?
David Studdert
The weekend just gone,
Manifestation 23, marked a seismic shift in the five month battle between the
Gilets Jaunes and the French state. The Notre Dame fire has brought into the
open the strategic shift in public opinion that has occurred over the winter; shifts
all to the advantage of the Gilets Jaunes. While the cold winter months with
their looming darkness only allowed us to glimpse two equal parties grinding
away at each other in the gloom, the advent of spring and its clear light,
reveals how the Gilets are gathering reserves of strength all over France, and
how, now, they are slowly winning in Paris as well. The sight of French police
surrounding Notre Dame and denying access to its ‘own’ population, starkly
illustrates what the state seeks to deny. After all, these sort of monuments
are the materiality through which states demonstrates their connection to the
population, their right to rule and their own power.
The Neo-liberal state is
crumbling and Macron is going be the sacrificial lamb. At this stage he will be
lucky to last two months. His clumsy handling of the Notre Dame blaze has
outraged and enraged more sections of the French population. Indeed throughout
the five months of protest, and despite the wall to wall media propaganda,
opinion polls consistently show continued and unwavering sympathy and support
of the Gilets Jaunes.
In the sharp light of spring
it is clear that Macron’s winter strategy: the Great National Debate, has
achieved nothing for the government and more tellingly perhaps, has further
revealed Macron’s own incapacity to either change himself or shift course. As
one anonymous French state official reportedly said: ‘Mitterrand gave them an
extra week’s holiday, but Macron can’t manage anything’. He simply seems unable
in any form to communicate with either the Gilets or the people of France. His
constant speeches, with their casual insults and lack of empathy, remain one of
the best recruitment tools the Gilets possess.
His recent pronouncements
continue this trend. His promise to rebuild the cathedral in five years was met
with scorn – ‘this is not a railway line’, said one commentator, while his
invitation to the world (a typical empty gesture) angered and aroused
traditionalists. Indeed, as has been widely reported, his endorsement of cash
donations from billionaires, simply provided the Gilets with yet more free
sticks to beat him and the state.
Even his big showpiece speech
was cancelled when the Cathedral burst into flames. And what was his big
announcement? A freeze on hospital and school closures, the index-linking of
pensions to inflation and the closing of the École Nationale d’Administration
(ENA), the university that produces the country’s political and civil elite,
all of which, particularly the last, were seen as too late and totally
irrelevant. After all it doesn’t put food on the table or help the people get
to the end of the month with any money. As I noted in previous articles, this
is typical of Macron, revealing only how his personal authority is slipping
away, and strangely enough, how irrelevant he is becoming to the entire debate.
Above all, Macron is guilty of
being one of those stupid/intelligent middle class people; the sort
neo-liberalism delights in providing for us in many guises: administrators,
legacy media editors, heads of departments, councillors, politicians. He is
bright, he is buffed, he has aspiration, he can speak fluently on subjects for
hours, yet for all of that, every speech he makes simply inflames the
situation. And this, coupled with his inability to convey a shred of empathy
and his apparent lack of understanding concerning both politics and national
history, reveal him to be nothing so much as a messenger boy for the rich and
the powerful. Once again none of this escapes the French population.
Clearly Macron much prefers
international summits to meeting his own people and in truth his dreams of the
future, which is all he has, are as banal as Marinetti’s.
All of this was starkly
obvious in the course of the great National Debate. Billed as a listening
exercise, every photo showed Macron not listening, but lecturing, while his
rolled shirt sleeves made him look like a boy, inexperienced and out of his
depth. The state PR is simply not working and one can’t believe that any worker
in France was fooled by this nonsense.
So Macron is finished and
he’ll be gone soon, but the question remains where does this revolt go from
here? For the manner in which his removal occurs, how long it takes and who
replaces him, will determine the next stage.
Unfortunately for the French
neo-liberal state, Macron’s dismissal will not solve the problem. Firstly
because, in an immediate sense, there is no alternative candidate within ruling
circles acceptable to the Gilets. Secondly, because it is becoming increasingly
apparent that neo-liberalism as a form of governance can only succeed in a
climate of profligate personal credit, which, along with rising house prices
(not counted as inflation), remains the only method available to Neo-Liberalism
for generating wealth among all social classes. They simply are unwilling or
unable to give anything to the people.
The dismissal of the Paris
police chief and the calls by the state for the police to use greater violence
and employ more weaponry, simple confirm the gridlock which has entangled the
neo-liberal state and its bureaucratic class. A gridlock which not only
depresses and represses the rest of us, but also, within the current ruling
dogma, is impossible to transcend; violence and exclusion are all the
contemporary state has left.
And what of the Gilets? Well,
they are everywhere. Every week Facebook is full of online Gilet house-parties,
where films, discussion and reinforcement abound. When they don’t demonstrate
they talk.. Nor, despite the toil required, is there any sign the people of
France are quitting the movement. My roundabout still has people each week-end,
as they have been every week-end through what was a cold and desolate winter,
and in this they are simply duplicating events at the other twenty or so occupied
roundabouts in Gers and all through France. Recently the group at my roundabout
distributed a flyer saying that they were finding it difficult to continue
every weekend and could others come and assist them, something which according
to locals, met with an influx of new recruits. ‘Nous le faisons pour vous’ is
their standard speech as they hand out flyers to passing motorists, almost all
of whom appear friendly and sympathetic; something entirely to be expected,
given all of them are locals.
Some liberal commentators
still persist in presenting the Gilets as supplicant Oliver Twists, begging for
more from their superiors table and these same commentators love to speak of
the revolt as being the periphery verses the centre. As I have made clear in my
previous articles, this is the opposite of the truth.
For the Gilets are showing
rising levels of political consciousness; with an apparent endless enthusiasm
for debates concerning violence, socialism and their demands – debates which
are still, even after five months, managed online with toleration and respect
for the diversity of people’s opinions.
Additionally, from a strategic
perspective the Gilets have already demonstrated their capacity to bring every
major French city to a halt. Toulouse, Marseilles, Bordeaux, Lyon, have all
seen large, persistent demonstrations coupled with massive arrests.
Concurrently, smaller
provincial centres like Tarbes in the south west continue to host their own
weekly demonstrations, something duplicated in similar centres all over France.
And with that is rising, both a hatred of the police, particularly the
metropolitan police, and a sense of unity and determination among the Gilets.
Naturally most of this escapes the metropolitan elite and the official media,
preoccupied as they are with head counts and privates on parade. Yet even in
Paris, there is considerable evidence of the movement’s growing support, with
people increasingly prepared both to manifest at demonstrations and to express
sympathy in media interviews, phone-ins and online.
This narrows the state’s room
for manoeuvre drastically. In short the invisible hand is now visible.
Something clear when the government, in a brief and crude attempt, sought to
blame the Gilets for the Notre Dame blaze – accusations howled down and swiftly
rescinded.
Slowly, slowly this battle is
developing into a life or death struggle for the neo-liberal state and we can,
over the next few months, expect them to intensify their violence during
demonstrations, inaugurate house arrests, seal off more railway routes and
Paris monuments and ultimately intensify various false flag operations aimed at
splitting the movement and fermenting inter-communal conflict.
For the Gilets, this sense
they are winning will only increase their determination. If I could make a
prediction this will lead ultimately to increased demonstrations, perhaps
beyond the self-imposed week-end boundaries, as well as larger, longer
blockades of railways and motorways. The French word for demonstration is
manifestation and that is a useful word here, because in every sense and every
action the Gilets are manifesting their unity, their vision for France and
their commitment to that vision.
The last week has been a good
week for those who believe that neo-liberalism is a con trick, incapable of
providing most a reasonable life, or indeed frankly of governing an
increasingly sophisticated social world and an increasingly savvy citizenry.
The simplistic nostrums of neo-liberalism remain incapable of confronting the
huge problems facing us as a species – a simple truth which is becoming
increasingly obvious.
Finally, this week, both the
Gilets Jaunes and the Extinction Rebellion in London, are revealing that,
despite massive surveillance, militarized, violent policing and the state’s
propaganda apparatus, contemporary populations are developing new methods and
new visions capable of surmounting these obstacles and finally, after this
endless decade of stagnation, moving us forward in a positive, inclusive and
effective manner.
The Waiting is the Hardest Part
Tom Petty was Right
How to account for Americans
being the most anxious, fearful, and stressed-out people among the supposedly
advanced nations? Do we not live in the world’s greatest democratic utopia
where dreams come true?
What if the dreaming part is
actually driving us insane? What if we have engineered a society in which
fantasy has so grotesquely over-run reality that coping with daily life is
nearly impossible. What if an existence mediated by pixel screens large and
small presents a virtual world more compelling than the real world and turns
out to be a kind of contagious avoidance behavior — until reality is so
fugitive that we can barely discern its colors and outlines beyond the screens?
You end up in a virtual world
of advertising and agit-prop where manipulation is the primary driver of human
activity. That is, a world where the idea of personal liberty (including any
act of free thought) becomes a philosophical sick joke, whether you believe in
the possibility of free will or not. You get a land full of college kids
trained to think that coercion of others is the highest-and-best use of their
time on earth — and that it represents “inclusion.” You get a news industry
that makes its own reality, churning out narratives (i.e. constructed
psychodramas) to excite numbed minds.
You get politics that play out
like a Deputy Dawg cartoon. You get a corporate tyranny of
racketeering that herds spellbound citizens like so many sheep into chutes for
shearing, not only of their money, but their autonomy, dignity, and finally
their will to live.
Can a people recover from such
an excursion into unreality? The USA’s sojourn into an alternative universe of
the mind accelerated sharply after Wall Street nearly detonated the global
financial system in 2008. That debacle was only one manifestation of an array
of accumulating threats to the postmodern order, including the burdens of
empire, onerous global debt, population overshoot, fracturing globalism,
worries about energy, disruptive technologies, ecological havoc, and the
specter of climate change — things that hurt to think about.
The sense of gathering crisis
persists. It is systemic and existential. It calls into question our ability to
carry on “normal” life much farther into this century, and all the anxiety that
attends it is so hard for the public to process that a dismaying number of
citizens opt for suicide. There is no coherent consensus about what is happening
and no coherent proposals to do anything about it. Bad ideas flourish in this
nutrient medium of unresolved crisis. Lately, they dominate the scene on every
side.
A species of wishful thinking
that resembles a primitive cargo cult grips the technocratic class, awaiting
magical rescue remedies to extend the regime of Happy Motoring, consumerism,
and suburbia that make up the crumbling armature of “normal” life in the USA.
The political Right seeks to Make America Great Again, as though we might
return to a 1962 heyday of industrial mass production by wishing hard enough.
The Left seeks the equivalent of an extended childhood for all, lived out in a
universal safe space, where all goods and services come magically free
from a kindly parent-like government, and the sunny days are spent training
unicorns to find rainbows.
The decade-long “recovery”
from the Great Financial Crisis of 2008 amounted to ten years of fake-it-til-you-make-it —
with the prospect nil of actually making it to something like economic and
cultural soundness. Are we too far gone now? Some kind of shock therapy is
surely in the offing, and probably in the form of a violent financial
readjustment that will alter the terms of getting and spending so drastically
as to topple the matrix of rackets that masquerades as the nation’s business.
That financial shock has been
coiling and coiling in the fantasyland that banking has become in the new zero
interest rate regime where notions that pretend to be money get levered into
new ways of destroying life on earth and the human project with it. At some
cognitive level the people of this land sense what is coming and the wait for
it is driving them crazy. Tom Petty was right: the waiting is the hardest
part, and a hard way to learn that a virtual life is not an adequate
substitute for an authentic one.
Tuesday, April 30, 2019
Sign the petition: do not extradite Julian Assange
https://internal.diem25.org/petitions/1
On the day of the first extradition hearing in London's court, we are inviting you to join the public protest DiEM25 and Demokratie in Europa will be staging at one of Germany's most iconic monuments: the Brandenburger Gate.
On Thursday, May 2, 2019, we will demonstrate just a few meters away from the UK and US embassies - the two countries that hold the future of WikiLeaks founder and DiEM25 Advisory Panel member Julian Assange and freedom of press in their hands. Please tell everyone you know about the protest!
You see, Germany is not - and should not be - an innocent by-stander.
As we already know from Edward Snowden's relevations on NSA spying on Germany, the sovereignity of Germany - its journalists and the privacy of its citizens - is also under threat. The May 2 court hearing in London is more than just about Julian Assange. It's about our right to know. It's about you and me.
And while Chelsea Manning remains in prison, precisely because she rejected to testify against WikiLeaks, the protection of whistleblowers has never been more important - and urgent, all across Europe, including Germany. The stakes are global.
It's highly likely that the US is preparing to file more charges against Julian. The current indictment is but an attempt to criminalise long-established source protection practices and journalists working with whistleblowers aiming to disclose classified information for the public interest.
Scores of press freedom organisations, news outlets, United Nations representatives, politicians and public figures have denounced Julian's arrest and his possible extradition and have warned of its worrying implications.
Whatever the outcome of the court hearing, the very fact that Julian is being kept in solitary confinement at the "British Guantanamo" Belmarsh prison, is enough for us to gather at the Brandenburger Gate to protest against the inhuman conditions he is facing now and to loudly say Stop the extradition of Julian Assange!
Join us to lend our voice to Julian and to the journalists, whistleblowers and freedom of press activists areound the globe who's lives are at risk for defending our right to know. If you don't live near Berlin, spread the word and spread the petition against Julian's extradition.
The "We are all Julian Assange!" protest will begin at 12:00 with speeches by German theater director Angela Richter, Whistleblower Network chairmanAnnegret Falter, investigative journalist and author John Goetz, biologist and founder of EcoLeaks Esteban Servat, and myself. The speeches will be followed by a reading of a short exclusive statement by Edward Snowden brought by Angela Richter from Moscow to this special DiEM25-led public demonstration.
For Edward Snowden, our demonstration is not just about "a man who stands in jeopardy, but the future of the free press"
And last but not least, a DiEM25 and Demokratie in Europa message to all German voters: don't vote for any party at European Elections that is not ready to stand in the protection of whistleblowers, freedom of press, and, more specifically, to oppose Julian's extradition to the United States.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5GaqdVtNag&feature=youtu.be
There is no future for Europe - no democracy - without the freedom of press.
Looking forward to seeing you at Brandenburger Gate (Pariser Platz) on May 2 at 12:00PM.
Here are some masks you can print for the protest: Mask-Germany, Mask-US, Mask-UK
We are all Julian Assange!
Srećko Horvat
Monday, April 29, 2019
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