Yellow Jackets movement continues with major protests in Paris.

An aerial view of the protest. ABC News/AP.

France's Yellow Jackets protest continued this weekend with a major protest in Paris ending with 200 arrests and 92 injuries. ABC News. The French government estimates that 5500 people showed up in Paris alone. Some violence and disorder occurred in Paris as protesters threw rocks and police, set cars on fire and erected barricades. Rioters fought with police at the Arc de Triumph monument before being pushed back by tear gas and water cannons. The Yellow Jackets protests, named after the high visiablity vests that most of the protesters wear, started in response to fuel tax increases and has spread from the countryside into most major French cities. 

The Yellow Jackets movement has also spread to Belgium where police and protesters fought in Brussels. AP. The Yellow Jackets movement has been in Belgium for awhile now but this was the first time they protested en-mass. 60 people were arrested in that protest. 

My Comment:

I spent the morning watching the protests unfold live via RT's livestream. I have a few observations to make. First of all, I was stunned at the makeup of these protests. Some of the more "front line" people were the typical younger male troublemakers that were there to have a fun time rioting. But the vast majority were older people. Men and women who were over the age of 30, established in their life and presumably with a lot to lose. 

That's pretty unprecedented as far as I am concerned. I don't know if it is different in Europe but in America it seems that these kinds of protests only attract younger people. The social class seemed different as well. Though it is obviously impossible to tell someone's social class just by looking at them, the protests seemed a lot more "blue collar" than most. In most protests I have seen it's usually made up of a combination of spoiled rich kids, professional protesters who have been doing it for money since the 1960's and the underclass. To see the middle aged people who look like they have their lives together there, a group who usually avoid protests like the plague, is pretty amazing to me. I guess it is possible that France has a different protest culture but it still appears significant to me. 

This protests also seemed a lot more serious than other ones. There was quite a bit of civil disorder going on and at times it looked a lot like the Euromaidan protests in Ukraine that toppled their government. People were lighting cars on fire, building barriers and digging up cobblestones to throw at the cops. The cops were pretty aggressive too as I saw them utterly destroy one man who was hit with a water cannon and a tear gas canister/smoke grenade at the same time. There were more than a couple of direct skirmishes between the cops and protesters as well, but most seemed content to watch and kept their distance. I know that Europe has a different protest culture than America and lighting cars on fire is kind of a hobby for France in particular but it was still fairly shocking to me. 

I am somewhat surprised that the Yellow Jacket movement has moved on outside of France. From what it sounds like there has also been protests in Italy and Belgium. That tends to show that high fuel taxes are only one of the reasons people are protesting and there is probably an anti-globalism undercurrent to these protests. High taxes are an European universal though, so I shouldn't be that surprised. 

I do have to say that it is fairly interesting to me to hear reports that the far right and far left are working together against the government in France. That seems inconceivable to me from my American perspective and just goes to show how unpopular Emmanuel Macron's moves have been. I can't imagine, for example, The Proud Boys and Antifa teaming up to fight cops here in the US. Of course the far right here almost never fights with police, which is different than in Europe, but even still, I can't imagine either side coming together to fight against the government. 

Speaking of Macron, I wonder if his government will survive this. He seems pretty tone deaf and has been handling this crisis poorly. He's not even in the country right now and is instead glad-handing it in Argentina with the other G-20 leaders. He has offered to have the tax increase be tied to gas prices but that has done nothing to placate these people. If he had backed down right away and got rid of the gas tax he might have been ok, but I don't know if these people will be satisfied unless he steps down. 

How bad could things get? Like I said before, the disorder I saw looked a bit like the Euromaidan protests in Ukraine that ended up with a new government, a civil war, and a whole lot of dead people. It obviously isn't to that point yet. Nobody is making Molotov cocktails on an industrial scale and establishing camps and the cops aren't shooting protesters. But I think they are getting closer to that point and if it does get there things will spiral out of control very quickly. 

I think that Macron should probably step down. It's clear that the country doesn't want him anymore and if he doesn't there is a real chance of widespread civil disorder at best and civil war at worst. He could try and back down and reverse these unpopular policies but I don't even know if that would work at this point. The best thing he could do is just drop out and let someone else fix this mess. Time will tell if that happens.