Pushkin from Pushkin Industries. This is Deep Background, the show where we explored the stories behind the stories in the news. I'm Noah Feldman. This week we talk about France. When we Americans hear the word French, we often think that the next word is supposed to be revolution. In our imagination, France is a place where the revolution didn't just happen in seventeen eighty nine, but happens every so often ever since. Turns out, the French think about themselves exactly the same way.
Starting last November, protesters wearing yellow safety vests began to block rotaries and roundabouts all over France, and eventually they marched on Paris, where they talked seriously and threw stones and made a protest about a whole range of economic issues that were bothering them. The protests continued and the French present, Emanuel Marcran was required to take major steps
in response. And since today is Bastille Day, the day that France celebrates as the recognition of its own revolutionary independence, we thought this was a perfect time to review the movement from beginning to end. To do that, we're joined today by Ann Yes Poirier, a French journalist based in the UK who wrote a wonderful article about her uncle Jojo and his role in the Giles Jean or yellow vest protests. And yes, thank you so much for being with us my pleasure. I want to ask about the
concrete element of the metaphor of the yellow vest. What are they for? Why did the French carry Giles Jean in their cars. It's actually compulsory to have a yellow vest or high visibility jacket in your car in case your car breaks down. It means that you have to pass your car as safely as possible, put on your jacket, leave the car and put yourself in a safe place.
So the upshot is that everyone who has a car has a yellow vest, making it a very simple thing to put on as part of a mode of protest. But it was also connected to the origin of these protests, which began with a tax on petrol or gasoline. Yes completely a car drivers basically very angry at a carbon tax on petrol and diesel started the movement. Hence the yellow vest probably And also you know it's a metaphor.
It's a kind of call for help. You know, you're putting your yellow vest because you want to be seen. You want to be seen in order to be helped. So in a way, it was very appropriate symbol, if you'd like, of that movement, at least when it started. I wanted to ask about that petrol tax, the tax
on diesel that started this, the carbon tax. Now seen from the outside, that tax looked like France acting is a good global citizen, saying we're going to reduce carbon emissions in order to do our part to contribute to the reduction of global warming. All economists that you speak to tell you that the only realistic way to reduce carbon emissions is to tax them. And so the government to France decided under Manuel Marquante to adopt such a tax.
Were the protesters being anti environmentalist in protesting this tax or was there another nuance to it? Well, actually it came as the last straw, if you'd like, because it started early in the summer twenty eighteen, when the speed limits on French roads was reduced from ninety to eighty kilometers, and that raged a lot of people in provincial France, if you'd like, especially people who rely on their cars to go about their day, to drop their children's score,
or to go to their work. Then there was a hike in petrol and diesel prices. Then there was also more if you'd like, compulsory measures for when you do anmot when you have to get to certificate that your car is in good shape, which you have to do regularly in France, and there have been more implemented just a few months later. And so that carbon tax was
really the last draw it was. I don't think on its own it would have created any movement in particular, but it came after a long series of measures that were deemed affecting primarily car drivers. And we're not talking about you know, city dwell as, we're not talking about metropolitan farms if you'd like people living in major cities or Paris, because they don't need to rely on their car to go about their day every day. We're talking about people in rural France. And they felt, you know,
in a way targeted. So in the first instance, this felt like an attack on drivers, and in the French context that also means an attack on rural people, people who are not in the elite centers of the city and people who rely on their on their cars to get around. And indeed, the first form of the protest was to block roundabouts or rotaries as we call them in American English, and block traffic from traveling through at all. And that too connected to the idea of freedom to drive.
And it's as though the protesters were saying, if you're going to impinge on our freedom to drive, then we're going to impinge on your freedom to get around the country. Then the protests moved into the city and some began in Paris itself. Tell us about how that happened, Well, protesters didn't come from you know, the cities or Paris. They came to Paris on Saturdays, if you'd like, like tourists a day trip to protest um. It was never a Persian revolt. It was very much a provincial revolt.
And and you know, at the beginning, we use the words of Jacques Lie if you'd like, which is sort of peasant the seventeenth century peasant revolts against a centralized power, and those are typically driven by genuine starvation. I mean, that's that's the that's the old president, of course, but it was also revolt against the local elite, if you'd like. So so the first Yellow Vest, if you'd like, when they started running on social networks and they said, okay,
well we need to strike. We're going to strike on Saturday, the seventeenth of November twenty and eighteen. That will be our first action throughout the country. And there were quite a lot of them. Were just under three hundred thousand. I mean, by French standards, it's not enormous, but it's enough for the country to stop and to think, okay, what's happening here? And so those first Yellow vest belong to what in Britain we would call the squeezed middlewa
if you'd like. That is to say, not destitute, not you know, very poor people, not at all, but not reach either. And in francing means a lot of people. We're talking about lower middle class middle classes, people who perhaps are too rich to get you know, a lot of benefits and not written obviously to be able to afford living in places where they don't have to rely entirely on their car. I mean, class consciousness and class
politics are deeply embedded in the historical French story. But when one thinks about that, historically, one doesn't think about the squeezed middle One thinks about the rises of the peasants. As you described in the pre revolutionary period. One thinks about the rise of the bourgeoisie, which is a kind of rising middle class. One thinks about an aristocratic elite, or later a technocratic elite. But there hasn't been a
central place. Correct me if I'm wrong in the long French narrative of class for people like you're describing, is that? Is that so? And if it is, what's the French term that or what language have have French commentators or observers used to describe this social class? I mean, you're you're You're right in a sense that it was novel, and it took time for sociologist, for demographers to grasp the movements, and one of them actually said, it's not
a class, it's a mass. What's the difference between those things? In the sense that poinstante. If you take the age of the Yuno vest, actually you had people from the age of seventeen to the age of seventy seven, really people from all ages, all ages. Also a lot of artisans, a lot of self employed, also some entrepreneurs. You know my that's why perhaps well took about my own call later. But he's a self made man, so it makes him in a way, you know, part of the year of
the People, if you'd like it. Also, it doesn't come from the aristocracy, comes from middle lower bourgeoisie as say. It was, you know, and a lot of men and a lot of women, a lot of also single parents and single mothers who had difficulty making ends meet, a lot of professionals from you know, a lot of nurses, some teachers, so you know, it was a mix, a very very diverse mix. So it's quite difficult to apply the class system to it. And that's why also resorted
to a very English, as in British term disguised middle class. Right, But you don't think it's it's not. Actually it doesn't exactly captured. But I do have the sense from from reading that most of the people who have come out for the protests do experience themselves as suffering from economic privation. It's not impoverished, but barely making it in some sense. And it seemed to me that that was why your story was so fascinating, precisely because your uncle didn't fit
into that category. No, you didn't. My uncle Jo is in his sixties. Um, he's well off. He was the CEO of a large European Company, although he belongs also to you know, category of retired people who do have wives for their children and grandchildren, as somebody who lives in the provinces, somebody who feels quite lonely and whos corvet. Sort of fraternity on those roundabouts, and a lot of
people started talking two neighbors they wouldn't talk to otherwise. So, especially at the beginning of the movement, it was really striking to see that there was this fraternity which is so French. And also given the very striking figure of cafes. You know, sixty years ago there were two hundred thousand cafes in France. There are only now thirty six thousand. And in sharp contrast, the roundabouts didn't exist fifty years ago and now we've got more than fifty thousand. So
the roundabout became very much a place for conviviality. I mean, they built a sort of canteen you know, and tents, and they you know, for weeks, because now the movement has disappeared from the roundabouts, but for weeks, weeks and months they would converge and they would have their little commune and debating societies on the round about. So there. When you talk about fraternity, you're translating the French word fertonite, which for Americans means something like solidarity or a way
of feeling some sense of connectedness to other people. And so you're suggesting, if I understand you correctly, that one thing about this particular protest movement is that it offered some opportunity for connection to people who might feel in certain ways isolated, and that they actually could take the roundabout of the rotary which they had taken over, and make it for a Saturday into a place to hang out, a place to interact with each other, in a place
to feel human connection, like you belong to a common project, which in French terms, is a crucial element of national identity. It's one of the three big commitments of the French, the French model completely. And so we're talking about this mass rather than class of people who also feel you know,
underprivileged or vulnerable because they are lonely. A lot of single parents, a lot of lonely retired people, and you know, living in isolation in provincial France and often only having a relationship through social networks in front of their computer screen. And then suddenly they rekindled with, as you said, very rightly, a very French way of life, because those cafes that have disappeared through you know, the last sixty years in
France haven't disappeared from city centers. There's still plenty of cafes in Paris. It's out in the countryside where you don't exactly you know, in villages there used to be many cafes and now you know you are there's perhaps one left, but often there's none. So we're talking about a disconnection between part of France that is successful, young, metropolitan, that travels abroad, that is a sort of the radiant
face of globalization. Just like President Michael, who is young, who is elite, who is sophisticated, who wears tailored suits, who is comfortable in multiple languages. He's the outward facing picture of the modern French elite, and he's very far from the world of the small provincial town where the cafes have closed and there are jobs, but maybe not
enough jobs for everybody completely. And that's why also, I don't know if you remember at the beginning, this hatred, which we didn't quite understand because it was so it came from the guts you know, and this hatred against Michael. The figure of Michael was to do with what he personified, and you're saying is a symbol of the elite. Of
course he is, because he's now the president. It's also very young, and somehow they disliked that fact, if you' because at the yellow vests, I thought, rightly or wrongly that they belong to the losing France, if you like. So here it gets really really interesting and also really
complicated for outsiders to understand. So let's try to figure out a little bit the politics side here, because until now you've described very movingly, in fact, the sort of psychological experience of people who feel that the center doesn't care about them and that the elites aren't thinking about them,
and that makes them sound extremely sympathetic. Politically, though, the movement did, as you've just described, focus on a kind of great anger at the French president and at the idea that his politics somehow stood for making France in some way more like the United States more market driven. Marquin's first major reforms involved changing French law to make it easier for employers to fire employees, which has been
very difficult under French law. That's a kind of market oriented reform, and so the criticisms and the protests seem to take the form, in part at least, of an attack on this tendency of Maquant's to be efficient, rational and market driven and in that sense distant from the more centralized, organized, top down French system. Have any of the major French political parties that criticize Macran been able
to capitalize on the movement? For example, Has the French far right, which in some ways you would think would have shared a lot of the interests of the protesters, you know, peripheral, not necessarily from the center of Paris, appealing to people who aren't the poorest but are also not the rich elites. Have they Has anyone been able to capitalize on the movement for political gain, Well, it's
the heart of the matter. Right from the start, our rights and the far left and their respective leader Main Lupin for the far right and Jean Luc Minochen for the far left try to stuff on the way of the yellow Vest. They appeared with them, they put on yellow jackets, but the yellow Vest didn't want to be associated with them, at least to start with. They were a leader less movement. But the problem, of course is when you constituted movement, there's a moment when you need leaders.
But it's time they elected leaders. They were designed, they were rejected, and when the government said why don't you send your representative so that we know what you would like, so that we can stop the violence on the Saturday protest and we can start talks, they didn't send anyone. So it's never became anything else than a rebel, if
you'd like. One very interesting thing is that a lot of Yellow Vest when you met them, said I have never voted in my life before, But more importantly, a lot of them said it's the first time we take to the streets. So it's true that we're talking about politically disenfranchised citizens. And the far right and far lept were very eager to capitalize on the Yellow Vest anger
and they felt, they completely felt they were. At the latest European elections, two Yellow Vests sort of lists people could vote for, and they got zero point five percent of the vote between the two. So in a way it's you know, it's the death of the Yellow Vest
rebellion because they never managed to become anything else. That's completely fascinating in its own right, the idea that a movement had a desire to be heard, that the participants had a desire to be known, that they rejected again in a sort of inspiring way, the idea that they could be co opted by either the far left or
the far right. But then there's something that seems almost tragic about the idea that the movement simply peters out and gets close to dying by virtue of the fact that they've been heard, They've said their piece, the whole world has looked at them, the whole world has paid attention to them. France has paid attention to them. But they have they fundamentally changed anything. Have they changed the perspective on politics of any of the players, even if
they haven't ultimately joined. Is there going to be a long term effect on the language or the ideas of French politics. We're talking about you know, people here in farms who asked for more public services and less taxes. How do you square that? Um? You know, nobody can. And they also wanted a kind of direct democracy that is in my view, the opposite of democracy. For instance, they said, oh, we we want to bring down the government, we want my gone to resign. We don't want to
have a National Assembly anymore. We just want direct democracy. We'll just vote on the internet, you know, through our Facebook or whatever. On laws. You know, we should have a system of referendum, for instance, for every single idea. I mean, things like this the universe are symptom rather than you know, giving any answers to an anger, it's it's a feeling. And they certainly didn't come up with any possible rational political recipes or ideas that could be
later implemented. But is that asking too much of the movement to to be If they were rational politicians, they would form a political party and they would you participate in electoral politics, or they would be journalists or commentators or you know, political scientists sitting in a seminar room and offering theories. That doesn't sound like what the movement
was trying to be. Well, we still don't know what they were trying to be, because in a way we're still focusing on the early stage of the Yellow Ves movement, because perhaps we should also say that the Yellow Ves became extremely violent. Let's let's turn to that, and was the movement hijacked to some people say hijacked by thugs
or anarchists from the right or the left. Yes, completely professional anarchist, professional thugs, which are very well known in SOMs and come from the extreme right and the extreme left. And so we're talking only about people who sort of insurrectional.
And at some point, you know, there was I was in Paris, and I was present during the Saturday protest, and there was a sort of insurrectional perfume in the air of Paris, but of course they were never they didn't have the number I should like to stay to coup because that's what they were calling for. So I like the idea of an insurrectional perfume. It sounds like anacion would be the great name for a forever a
new do or perfume. But what does that mean? Do you mean that feeling in the air as though let's go burn it all down? Oh? Yes, completely, Look I'm in my early forties. I've to take to the street. Is part of a It's a rite of passage for
any French citizen. I've been to countless demonstrations in Paris, and the level of violence I experienced in the streets of Paris during the Saturday Yellow Vest, where unlike anything we've seen before, and even people who were old enough to attend sixty eight nineteen sixty eight demonstrations in Paris said the same, you know, simply because they wanted to kill.
When I say they the thirds that infiltrate to the Yellow Vest or some of the yellow Vests wanted to destroy and to also kill a policeman if they could. And two thousand policemen were actually injured, which is a very high figure for funds. Because don't forget the arts. We have mastered the art of demonstration. We know how
to do this. It's very theatrical. Yes, everyone has a role, everyone knows what to do so that things don't get out of head completely and it can appear violent, but it's actually quite safe, or it used to be until the Yellow Vest. Because the Yellow Vest was about really very quickly on became about violence and pure violence. Even the police, the right police was very astruct by that. They actually didn't know how to react the first few Saturdays.
Sometimes they were too passive and they were completely out of their depths if you'd like, and a lot of destruction took place of buildings, but also some protesters were hit by rubber bullets. Which is a non little sort of riot control guns that the French police is allowed to use. But so there were a lot of injured, a high high number of injured, but nobody died. And that's a miracle because the violence we all have seen industries of Paris was unlike anything we had seen in decades.
Did the violence ultimately contribute to the discrediting of the movement completely? I mean, that's why the real Yellow best if you'd like the people who really had something to say and had perhaps you wanted to be helped by the government. In the end they were actually I think we should say that President macall actually gave seventeen billion euros worth of different benefits and tax incentives and bonuses and canceled the carbon tax. I mean it went much
further than the original demands of the Yellow vests. I mean that goes to the question of the long run impact of the movement. It did have, at least any immediate Some of the movements demands, even if they were in co ed, were in fact mad oh matt and further than the original demands, because in France, that's the way it is when the people take to the streets in numbers. The government always responds, if you want a bit of history, we have to go back to the
French Revolution. The legitimacy of the power in France lies with the people. Okay, in Britain it lies with the parliament. It's a question of history. It used to Oh yes, it used to until flexing. That's another story. But so to go back to France, you know, the poor is the power, and as a French citizen you know you
have this power and you play with it. But the violence, to go back to your earlier question, meant that a lot of the early year now vests decided they had nothing to do with violence and the violent people, and they stayed at home. So from three hundred thousand people we very quickly went to what twenty thousand, So there was a natural trajectory. As it were, the people, or some of the people expressed themselves. They said they spoke
on behalf of a broader people. The violence discredited the movement, The government responded, and then, as if on que, the movement began to recede in numbers, perhaps having achieved the goal of drawing attention to the problems of the people who marched, but without offering a permanent kind of a solution completely. And also the fact that at a few yellow vests that tried a sort of democratic exercise of presenting themselves at the European elections felt so lamentably, you know,
is the kind of and to the movement. Yes, the kind of coda. Thank you any us. That was very, very fascinating, and I really really appreciate your time. I look forward to reading more of your work going forward. Thank you. It's with great love and admiration for France that I note that only a French person would describe a day of riots and protests in Paris as a day when there was a perfume of insurrection in the air.
Yet the truth is, there's something very powerful and significant about the trajectory of the yellow vest protests which tells us something not only about France, but about the way that populist movements all over the world express their anger, express their demands, and ultimately still have difficulty turning them into concrete, long term political action. That's something that I think we should watch not only in Europe, but everywhere in the world, including right here in the United States.
Populism is our constant refrain It's in the news every day, but populism that isn't transformed into long term political movement is just the expression of emotion. It clarifies, it expresses, but it doesn't fix things. It's one of the most powerful impulses in all of our political lives. It's also one of our most dangerous. Deep Background is brought to you by Pushkin Industries. Our producer is Lydia Jeancott, with engineering by Jason Gambrel and Jason Roskowski. Our showrunner is
Sophi mkim. Our theme music is composed by Luis Gerra. Special thanks to the Pushkin Brass, Malcolm Gladwell, Jacob Weisberg, and Mia Lobel. I'm Noah Feldman. You can follow me on Twitter at Noah R. Feldman. This is Deep Background.