Autonomies

From the Crimethinc. Collective, reflections on and testimonials of the gilets jaunes …

The Yellow Vest Movement: Showdown with the State: Reports from the Clashes in Paris, around France, and across Europe

(14/12/2018)

Since November, France has been shaken by the yellow vest movement, a grassroots reaction to President Macron’s proposal to increase fuel taxes in order to force the poor to pay for the transition to “ecological” technologies. Like the Occupy movement, the yellow vest movement cohered around shared tactics and frustration rather than common goals or values; consequently, the movement has been a battleground for many different political agendas and factions. The far right initially took advantage of the movement’s “apolitical” character to gain influence, especially online; but as the movement spread and the clashes with the police intensified, anarchists and other uncontrollable rebels also staked out ground within the movement.

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What is happening is not a “movement” in the political sense of the term, it can become so, structure itself, make emerge its leaders, but for now, it is rather a matter of understanding this “movement” in the sense of displacement, a wandering full of antagonism carried by affects, not yet by conviction.

Les Gilets Jaunes, la gôche, le militantisme et Nous ? (Paris-luttes.info)

No “social movement” is homogeneous or centralised or predictable, unless finally dominated by a political war machine.  The “gilets jaunes” movement of france is a lesson – as others have been in our recent history: brasil, ukraine, nicaragua – of a movement with no fixed ideology or leadership, a movement that erupts and yet remains “open” – perhaps what movements have always been – and therefore such movements are territories of political struggle, where insurrections and revolutions are decided …

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The symbolic use of the yellow vest is clear: what was first imposed as a security device is transformed into social force. The horrible yellow clothing that should normally be worn at the time of a forced stop on the side of the road (this until the arrival of the tow truck or the police) becomes the symbolic vehicle for the coming together of popular anger. This artifact of the controlled risk society has its use diverted, revealing all of the lies of this kind of device. Out of their cars, the yellow vests recognize each other in the emergency caused by the sudden degradation of their livelihoods. What happened this weekend is a reversal: the yellow vests are out, but they may not wait for the tow truck of a company supposed to help them. Because if the car is down, it’s also because of the road itself.

Les amours jaunes (lundimatin 21/11/2018)

The now almost month long “gilets jaunes”/”yellow vest” protests in france, with regular road blocks throughout the country and weekend battles with the police in Paris and other cities, perhaps exemplifies protest and insurrection in our times.  As the increasingly precarious lower and working classes are disciplined by the State management of proliferating crises, discontent and indignation can quickly metamorphosise into protest and insurrection.  The resulting flows of rebellion are then multiple, contradictory, unpredictable, and as they escape immediate State control, they become territories of capture for conflicting ideologies and movements.

It is not difficult to imagine the eruption of similar types of movements, occurring with greater frequency and in evermore diverse geographical areas, especially as the global ecological crisis begins to play havoc with “normal” social relations.  For anarchists and anti-capitalists, the challenges are enormous, as politically, the temptations for authoritarianism and fascism will be strong.  Such “movements” can neither be ignored nor uncritically celebrated; but engaged with, they must be.

In what follows, we share an important account and analysis of the french movement from the Crimethinc. collective (27/11/2018).

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