00:00Wednesday was a day of anti-government action across France, with protesters coming out against budget cuts and general political chaos.
00:09The nationwide Block Everything campaign did seem to fall short of its self-declared goal of total disruption in the country.
00:17But in some areas, there was smoke, flames and tear gas in the streets, and 80,000 police officers were deployed, breaking up barricades and taking hundreds of protesters into custody.
01:18And studies last week showed that they are more politicized than the Yellow West were in 2018 to 2019, and they tend to be mainly from the left, mainly from the radical left.
01:36Yesterday, we saw as well that they are younger, you had a lot of students, they tend to be left overall, but we also had veteran, so to speak, the Yellow West that were there.
01:50But it seems to be far more left-wing rather than what the Yellow West were, which was, you know, nobody was really, really sure what they were.
02:01Right, because I think for a lot of viewers watching and hearing about this, they might be thinking, you know, did this have anything to do with the gilets jaunes?
02:07Is this the gilets jaunes movement part two?
02:09Yeah, it is linked to the Yellow West in the sense that the triggers are the same, economic, social, political grievances, you know, the distrust of the institution, the diffidence against politicians, the desire for a better life, for a different system.
02:30The difference is more sociological and political, younger, more educated, and more to the left.
02:40For now, because what we don't know is whether yesterday was a one-off, or whether it's going to spread and snowball into something bigger, like the Yellow West did a few years ago.
02:52Right, there did seem ahead of these protests to be an expectation that it was going to be bigger, and depending on what area of Paris you were in, you might not have seen anything at all.
03:04So was this not as big or dramatic as people expected it to be?
03:09Yeah, I mean, I think we have to be careful here, because it is a grassroots movement that started on social media.
03:16So to have nearly 200,000 people is actually quite a decent number.
03:23It's not that far from the first day of the Yellow West, but they did not, obviously, block the country, but it's actually quite a decent number.
03:42And if you look, I think there was about 500 to 600 actions throughout the territory.
03:47So it does show that there is anger in the country.
03:50Yes, they haven't achieved, you know, one million, like we saw, you know, in the demonstration against the pension reform a few years ago.
03:59But as a grassroots movement, it's not a bad start.
04:04The real question is, is it a one-off or will it continue?
04:08So what are we hearing from political leaders on the left and right?
04:12Are they categorizing this as a success?
04:14I think the left is.
04:18I was listening yesterday to some of the left leaders, and they were quite happy with how it went.
04:24The trade union, CGT, was quite happy as well.
04:27But I think for a lot of parties, they are more focused on the new prime minister that was announced on Tuesday, or was it Monday, I forgot, and more on the, you know, what's going to happen with a new government on this particular, on what happened yesterday.
04:45Because it didn't feel as if the country, you know, was in turmoil.
04:51There were people, there were action, but it wasn't, you know, it wasn't as violent, for example, as it could have been.
04:58And therefore, I felt that the reaction was quite muted.
05:02And finally, quickly, I was wondering, could you tell us your thoughts on the government and the police response?
05:07It does feel like the police took past experiences and maybe responded differently than they have in the past.
05:13You're totally right here.
05:17I think it's the legacy of the Yellow Vest.
05:20And they really went hard on it.
05:25We had marshall sounding statements from the interim minister beforehand.
05:3180,000 police force mobilized, which is huge.
05:35And you could see that any hint of, you know, any hint of escalation was met straight away with tear gas.
05:45So they went really hard against it.
05:49And I think it's to deter future action.
05:52And the message is, if you do it again, we'll be here.
05:56And that's, to me, that's definitely a legacy of the Yellow Vest.
06:00Because to start with, they didn't really police it as hard.
06:04French politics expert Ariane Bogan, thank you so much for joining us.
Be the first to comment