France: From a Social Movement to an Urban Insurgency and Political Violence
The origin of anger and determination embodied by “Yellow Vests” protests against rising taxes and high cost of living in fall 2018, have had turned into riots in the city of Paris, as police fired tear gas and water cannon in street battles with activists; any protests in France turn violent ever since.
People in France are venting anger and frustration against the French president.
Last week, President Macron in pre-campaign charm visit to city of Valence in south east of the country, he was slapped by an anti-Macron individual, a royalist who was standing behind a security barrier, then shouted "Down with Macronia" ("A Bas La Macronie, vive Montjoie Saint Denis,”) a royal army's battle cry during the French monarchies.
Thus, the slap was not to President Macron, but to the entire Republic, this cycle of verbal and physical violence that had been poising France’s political “debate,” was enhanced great deal by the protest movement, however, this violence has sociologically managed to reunite the problematic issue of socioeconomic inequality and political bankruptcy of the conventional political parties and union movements all together.
As a result, this failure of the institutionalized intermediary body has left President Macron, his government and party feeling the winds of winter are definitely blowing, which has made a large majority of the republic “en Marche” (LaRM) party to panic.
Crisis management and bad judgement
Following the COVID-19 healthcare pandemic crisis, and how French government poorly managed the crisis. Consequently, frontal clash between the angry protest heterogeneous movement members and the republic anti-riots police that created an element of wonder among the politicians and the media.
Last July, President Macron named a provincial mayor Jean Castex from the French right party (LR) to lead a new cabinet, replacing another mayor from the French right, Edouard Philippe, who is popular than the president, in the aftermath of May 2020 municipal elections, where the ruling party (LaRM) had suffered a humiliation loss.
Nonetheless, President Macron replaced his faithful lieutenant, interior minister as part of a cabinet reshuffle aimed to re-polish his presidency agenda ahead in 2022. President Macron chose a young ambitious politician like his mentor, former President Nicolas Sarkozy, Gérald Darmanin, as interior minister, replacing Christopher Castaner, who was criticized for being soft with the anti-government “Yellow Vests” (gilets jaunes) protests last year.
More recently, the police ranks also lost faith in Mr. Castaner, whom they felt was not doing enough to protect them from criticism over the protests for Adama Traouré case, a French-Malian man who died in custody, a protest that has coincided with the Black Lives Matters protests last summer.
All went well until 2018 summer, in light of the Élysée political scandal, the “Benalla affaire,” an opportunity that resurrected the opposition from its aches. White France and the far-right party of Marine Le Pen (RN) have never forgot that hot summer episode of French melodrama politics.
Hence, President Macon today is worried about his political future, COVID-19 pandemic’s ghost and Saturday’s riots in the main France’s cities are haunting him. The far-right media, the far-right affiliate police members, and the xenephobic are looking at the COVID-19 pandemic crisis as a blessed bread for their dystopian project, positioning themselves as a credible alternative to this weekend Regional elections, and as a trajectory for next year Presidential elections.
Wag the war and law-and-order narrative
The far-right is taking these law-and-order troubles, the verbal violence, and the absence of the authority that should be incarnated by the president, as an urban-war for a catchy narrative political campaign in the regional elections, and in 2022 presidential election. Nevertheless, President Macron's political “new” paradigm found itself cornered and incompetent.
In this stance, President Macron and his new government have been using a demonization tactic to discredit and to some point criminalize the protesters in the use of violence, meanwhile he is trying to not politicize last week: slap event. Therefore, using the third generation of Maghreb people immigration, creating a new story-line’s narrative: “separatistism” over riding over young Muslims and Arabs. Last Fall, President Macron said: Islam, “a religion that is in crisis all over the world," in a speech addressing what he calls “separatism” in France’s Islamic community.
The end-game strategy to sell France’s socio-cultural crisis nationally and internationally between frustrated social protesters and third-generation Muslims who want equality.Yet, the violence that erupted in Paris almost two years and a half ago, on Saturday was not, however, a banal protest, according to many specialists on social movement groups, it was a semi-urban insurrection, said one C-News TV analyst.
Domestic security challenges and ethnicity imperatives
Their anger is not about simple social demands for a decent and a better life, it has become for a large majority of the protesters a personal fight with President Macron, hence towards the French institutions and eventually the police. Though, the new interior minister has been showing some solidity as an answer to his predecessor’s laxity in his management of his first test in Paris protests.
Minister Darmanin who took office last summer after Dijon’s incident, an intra-Muslim community violent incident occurred between Maghrébins and Chechens. Minister Darmanin uses the incident as his political brand, he told the media: “he won’t tolerate the “ensauvagement” (savage) of the “insecurity” situation in the so-called citiés.”
Causing some analysts and urban security experts to wonder about a faction of pro-”Yellow Vests” in the Parisian police. Paris’ urban insurgency reveals a France divided between the wealthy class and the poor popular class, between the privileged social success and the have-not social struggle of metropolitan France.
Politics in general is based on symbolism and myths, but the “Yellow Vests” extremist and anarchist factions seemed to be okay with a large majority of “gilets jaunes” protests in part because they unveil the mask of President’s Macron administration incompetency and the biased press corporatist complacency.
These elements of political violence and rejection towards the political establishment in general and the president in particular had been orchestrated last winter in the city of Marseille, the most radical provincial city in France towards Paris is protesting against the central government COVID-19 measures, following the rise cases in the Bouches-des-Rhônes department. There were also protests largely “Yellow Vests” and anti-mask demonstrations in the cities of Nantes, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Lyon, and Lille. But no other city had witnessed the anti-system and physical destruction on the largest avenues and grand boulevards as the French Capital.
In this conflictual relation between the president and the angry people, the latter said loudly that its movement is apolitical and non-ideological. In political science theory there is no such thing, it might be for the moment, as their demands and determination are anything, but political. But their fight with a technocratic president would result in the bankruptcy of the classical political parties and their alarmist discourse, despite the constancy of the far-right RN party, and the rise of the hate speech in the country that the French media played a major role in the banalization of the verbal violence and the rise of the RN party political and societal discourse.
However, the dynamic of COVID-19 healthcare crisis and its bad management will change in the coming days the entire France’s political perception. In wake of Paris’ Saturday riots, and the non-event of last slap on the left cheek of the president. The government officials are talking capitalizing on full suppression of the ongoing public health curfew and lockdown to master the domestic security question in the banlieues, and prevent another economic disorder fiasco in Paris, and in France in general this summer, hoping to boost the president popularity. In a recent opinion poll 2 out of 3 of French voters said: “it’s better for the president not to run for a second term bit…” According to BFM TV.
The “Yellow Vests” and the far-right fringe who shaping political discourse in France, so that the far-left movements who are positioning themselves as vocal and physical alternative to the banalization of the political violence. Another political face-off is on the horizon with the government, on the eve of crucial local and regional elections that the outcome would determine the posture and the position of President Macron and his French cheese political partly (LaRM) in 2022 French presidential election.