by Ramin Mazaheri for The Saker Blog
Ever since the start of the Yellow Vest movement – which has been violently repressed for an entire half-year – many people have hoped that French police would put flowers in their rubber bullet guns and join the side of the righteous.
To me… such a hope is not based on reality. It is certainly not based on history.
But French thinkers like Alain Soral, whom we could call the primary intellectual godfather of the Yellow Vest movement, said from the very beginning (40 minute mark) that if the state, “… sends the forces of order against the people, against the Yellow Vests… they will join the Yellow Vests because, fundamentally, they are the same people and they have the same interests. And the day that happens I will be there, I will do my job – with all the risks that entails – and I have been preparing myself for it since around 1985. All my life has been turned towards this.”
Soral had the courage to stand up for the Yellow Vests when he said that on November 30,2018, but six months later he has been disappointed and disproven. The forces of order have been sent against the Yellow Vests 26 consecutive Saturdays and the cops have never come close to joining the Yellow Vests.
Soral is still waiting, and he will always wait. In March I laid out why the Yellow Vests are “Proving police are part of the 1%”: ironclad job security, early retirement, guaranteed pensions, chances for overtime pay, elevated social status, Mainstream Media worship, etc. The working class has none of those things. Therefore, claims that cops are “working class”, made by Soral at that same point in the video, are absurd. No matter the circumstances of your birth: join the police force and you are no longer “working class”. This reality of cops being part of the working class is just as clear in the neo-imperialist West as it is in developing countries, and I will discuss later how France’s 1% has specifically arranged it that way.
Yet many in the Yellow Vests who are risking life and limb every Saturday still persist in thinking that cops will switch sides en masse.
A PressTV report of ours captured this sentiment during “Act 20”, on March 31. That was the second weekend when urban protests had been banned outright; last weekend was the first time rural protests (at traffic roundabouts) had been banned in many areas, a fact which was totally ignored by the Mainstream Media but which I made our headline on May 11. Back on March 31 I interviewed a protester who was helping to carry a rather costly banner which read, “Forces of order: you will go down in history, so don’t wait until you are tried in court. Join us.” Alongside the slogan was a picture of the Nuremburg trials of Germans during World War II. However, despite the comparison with Nazis those carrying the banner were entirely sympathetic to cops – they were there to intellectually convince the cops to join their side.
So what do cops think?
I did an interview with Eric Roman, the National Secretary of France’s 5th-largest police union, the French Union of Angry Policemen (Syndicat France Police – Policiers en colère). The union’s name is rather silly, I think, but the source of their anger is the government, as I will explain later.
Roman is clearly one of the good cops: this is the Police union which every Saturday dares to defy the Interior Ministry’s deplorably low and obviously false turnout estimations of Yellow Vests. Along with the Nombre Jaune, these are the only two sources of credible Yellow Vest crowd counts, in my estimation and experience. However, Mainstream Media only very occasionally reference the Nombre Jaune, as the cop union’s numbers are far more problematic because they clearly indicate dissension within the forces of the government.
You can check their weekly count on their Facebook page, and learn more at this PressTV report we worked on together, Cop union says Yellow Vests undercounted massively. Of equal interest should be the vast disparity between their weekly counts since Week 1, which French Wikipedia has put in a table at the bottom of this page.
Why would a French cop talk to Iranian government TV about the falsehoods of the French government?! LOL, as I said, Roman is a good cop… and he is unionized, and that makes a world of difference when it comes to feeling empowered enough to speak honestly about your work.
He is also experienced at his job and – as many unemployed 50+ year old journalists know – that also makes one bolder to take on management in corner offices. Roman even said that he considered a career in journalism, and he certainly seemed to know more about modern global politics than many of my mainstream colleagues. But his open mind amid four decades of Iranophobia shows that he appreciates that good workers all row in the same direction: for the well-being of society.
Roman even tipped me off to a story which broke a couple days later about how police management has given illegal orders to target Muslims, Blacks, Roma and the homeless. He was disgusted that he and his colleagues were being given such illegal, racist orders.
Not all cops are as bold and sensible as Eric Roman.
There are good cops, certainly, yet ‘The police never go over to the crowd’
Before I get to Mr. Roman’s thoughts, I think some historical context is necessary, regarding the role of police during political turmoil.
If Yellow Vests want to know how revolutions are won in modern times they should read the 2017 book, A People’s History of the Russian Revolution, which overturned mainstream media accounts of the revolution which inaugurated true political modernity.
I wrote a 5-part series on that necessary book because the 1917 Revolution has, at least thus far, many parallels with 2019 France. Of course, the Mainstream Media is not going to write just one half of a single part which sympathetically examines these parallels.
The book proved how the February Revolution was not guided at all by the Bolshevik party (or any party), in a clear rejection of the mainstream media’s repeated, uniformed contention of “dominance by Lenin the dictator”. This type of spontaneous, grassroots development is obviously the same with the Yellow Vests today.
How did the February Revolution occur, which paved the way for the October Revolution (“ October Celebration”, I say, as it was a near-bloodless fiesta)? The Bolsheviks did not call for it – indeed, established political parties are always behind the mood of the average person. The February Revolution to expel the czar occurred via spontaneous protests (the first was by women) – not via calls from Lenin – and then it was allowed the space to achieve its aims thanks to attacks on police.
Well, of course. Was the Shah, excuse me, the czar and his police going to give up their extraordinary privileges otherwise?
Imagine what the Yellow Vests could do if they were not being beaten, gassed, arrested and maimed? The Yellow Vests would have certainly occupied Paris. They tried to, on Friday March 8, and the headline of my report says it all: Paris bans Yellow Vest camp, rejects UN brutality probe. That night the Eiffel Tower was filled with surly cops, who were angry they had to work at night and in the cold rain, and angrier still that they had to get up tomorrow morning for Act 17.
In covering the Yellow Vests I am naturally reminded of my time reporting on the Egyptian Revolution at Tahrir Square. There, nobody feared the army, but they all hated the black-sweatered police force. And that makes sense: the army was a national institution, drawn from all classes of the People, whereas cops were the violent tools of the Mubarak status quo. Time after time in Cairo protesters stood up to the cops, and that is how Mubarak eventually fell. The army never did open fire on the protesters, but the cops merely continued what they had been trained and ordered to do – repress rejection of political conservatism. Indeed, prior to the fall of Mubarak I was detained by a cop, but was saved thanks to the intervention of a young soldier, who insisted he was the higher authority.
Just imagine if Macron had shown as much tolerance as Mubarak at Tahrir Square, LOL? Yellow Vests would have forced the global Mainstream Media to objectively (dare we say, sympathetically) relay their motivations and demands via such occupations and freedom of political expression. (The repression is “daily”, because every demonstration is absolutely surrounded by 3-4 times more cops than normal for France. For example, I estimate seeing 100 cops at this week’s demonstration against Macron’s Americanisation of France’s education system: they faced down maybe 100 super-tough, stone-faced veterans of trench tactics… grade school teachers. That huge deployment is all due to fear of Yellow Vest involvement, and France has had the usual regular non-Yellow Vests protests since winter ended.)
Such occupations would force society to stop ignoring them; they would force politicians to deal with them directly. It is the cops which are preventing all this.
So the police did not “go over” in 1917 – far from it. After all, they had not gone over during seven decades of repression of revolutionary sentiment in Russia. This is because, as the book states:
“The police never go over to the crowd. They are recruited from the most backward section of the working class….Their daily work is a matter of hostile collisions with activists, workers, and the poor. Their hatred of the repressed is reinforced by what is nowadays called ‘canteen culture’. So they become a hardened reactionary caste, immunised against any appeal for solidarity by a psychic armour of indifference and prejudice. In revolution, the police cannot be won over; they have to be physically confronted and routed.”
The day before I wrote this outside my home in Paris I witnessed the arrest of a one young Black man standing on the corner with a half dozen other young men. I stood to observe the proceedings, being a journalist. The oldest cop – and thus the most responsible, one would assume – was the only one who violently threw the arrested young man to the pavement, even though the man put up zero resistance. The cop then gave the man, who was face down on his belly, a parting kick in the back for no reason. I voiced an objection. This is the kind of needless violence French minorities are routinely abused and insulted by. This is why for cops, “Their daily work is a matter of hostile collisions”, at least when it regards the oppressed classes, which are the classes who are most likely to revolt, such as the Yellow Vests.
Furthermore I have never seen a police force with a stronger “canteen culture” than that of France’s police. This must be added on top of the well-known fact (certainly well-known to us immigrants, who are 2nd-class citizens in anti-multicultural France) that France is an exceptionally cliquish society.
As Mr. Roman kindly explained in our report on how cop suicides this year have already neared the level from all of 2018, cops from around the country usually start their career in Paris before perhaps being sent back to their home areas. Thus, young cops are sent to the capital, where they often have no family and friends – only their fellow cops. That leads to suicides, and to the reinforcement of their canteen culture. Unfortunately, this plan of “importing rural mercenaries” is the opposite of the “I live in this neighborhood, too” type of policing – where cops are a genuine part of the community – which is obviously the best policy.
What’s far worse, in my opinion, is the rule for France’s urban cops that they have to travel in packs of four. Indeed, you will never see a cop alone in Paris – he or she is always in their own little unit, viewing the whole street as “them” and not “us”. If they did not selfishly prioritize their own “safety in numbers” with this approach, and thus had to actually engage fellow citizens one-on-one (or one on six), then they could not possibly be so arrogant and aloof. They could not be “cowboys”, as the new generation of cops is disparagingly called by older Parisians. Or, as the joke goes, cops only travel in four because they are always playing cards instead of catching the real crooks.
Despite the diversity of France’s presidential election, which featured 11 candidates, polls showed that nearly 60% of active police voted for Marine Le Pen and far-right National Front in the first round. That would be almost three times as often as the general population – a clear sign of a problem and a major disconnect. In these Great Recession, Frexit-ignoring, neoliberal times, only fake-leftists think the RN is France’s biggest problem – indeed, that’s how we got Macron, who is getting away with an intensity of repression Le Pen never could have – but it’s clear how strong and how out of touch France’s “canteen culture” among cops truly is.
So, will mostly Le Pen-loving cops “go over”?
Each weekend has made cops switching sides less likely… and it was already not very likely
I will quote Roman at length, and then examine his statements out of order, because I think readers would want to follow the flow of his logic and see his statements in his largest context:
“At the beginning of the movement many police were Yellow Vests because we had many demands in common. However, the longer a conflict continues, the greater the likelihood that opinions will go the ‘extreme’. Today, it would be a very difficult thing for us to support the Yellow Vest movement, because many of our colleagues have been hurt by them; we have heard many stories of difficulties for cops. These are the same reasons why Yellow Vests are less likely to support us: many have been hurt and arrested. The government has created a very large gulf between the police and the People, and they have worked at this for years.”
I think Roman means a “gulf” which must be primarily the government’s fault, as they are the ones who have given the appallingly repressive orders to cops to attack protesters. Cop management now has “no mental restrictions concerning the use of force”, according to Nantes departmental director of public security of Nantes last weekend (Nantes was the focus of “Act 26”). However: with whom does the buck stop – we are to accept that violent cops are merely the victims of bad management? This logic was obviously addressed by the Yellow Vests with their “Nuremberg” banner….
But the gulf was originally created by the policies which “they have worked at… for years”, to foster a police canteen culture which can be truly called “anti-community”, which I described in the previous section.
Roman’s belief that hard feelings are getting harder seem perfectly logical, and… certainly in keeping with the traditional French policeman’s unforgiving view of the world. That is not a knock on Roman – he is simply describing the mood in the police locker room, which is obviously increasing anti-Yellow Vest.
I would say that even though chants of “Everybody hates the police” are ubiquitous, the majority of Yellow Vests will likely continue to try and win over cops week after week after week.
Is the Yellow Vest a revolution or just a protest movement?
When I put my cards on the table, I must say: the Yellow Vests are not revolutionary – they do not truly want a “new” France.
A majority of them could probably be bought off by meeting some of their key demands: pension increases, no Value Added Tax on necessity goods, installing RICs (citizen initiated referendums), and not a whole lot else. This is why Macron is so foolish: by giving such paltry concessions, and by only saying their name in public for the first time on April 27, he is risking that the Yellow Vests will become a conflagration and prove my previous paragraph wrong… but when did the 1% ever give back any of their ill-gotten gains when they weren’t forced to? But will it become a conflagration?
Firstly, answer me this: which modern country that has had a modern revolution (and I am wiling to generously include the French Revolution here, even though modern political thought should be considered to start with Marx and socialist democracy)… has had another modern revolution? None, except China. Result: they are about to be #1 for a very long time.
(I thoroughly explain why I rename the Cultural Revolution the “Chinese Socialist Civil War” during my ongoing 8-part series on the Chinese Cultural Revolution, which, is only waiting for Part 8, titled, What the West can learn: Yellow Vests are demanding a Cultural Revolution.)
Iran can also be included – and the short timeline doesn’t change it – first came the 1979 Islamic Revolution and then came the state-sponsored, three-year Iranian Cultural Revolution, the world’s only other such revolution and which is the reason why Iran created an Islamic socialist democracy instead of foolishly install a Western liberal democratic regime after the shah’s regime. Result: Iran is the only Muslim country with an independent government, anti-capitalist & anti-imperialist policies, and a revolutionary outlook.
But the Yellow Vests are not Chinese nor Iranian…. They are quite content to live off the legacy of the (bourgeois) French Revolution.
That explains why the French are very self-satisfied: they do not want to create a “new France”.
The whole world knows the French think the whole world should change before the French would ever have to seriously change their own culture. France remains incredibly neo-imperialist and racist (Islamophobic) – this can never be considered “politically modern”, thanks to the conception of socialist democracy, which did not exist at the time of the French Revolution. Just because France wants a little more economically egalitarianism than austerity allows, and wants a little less bourgeois democracy (via more referendums) doesn’t mean that France is a society which is willing to throw of their liberal democratic/bourgeois chains.
And, of course, cops are perhaps the least willing to throw off their chains (they are a part of the 1%, after all).
Roman reflects this view. Again, that is not a knock on Roman, and I asked him if French cops would go over.
“We cannot ‘change sides’ because President Macron was legally elected by a majority of the people for five years. A million people is not a majority of the French people. Even though we can fairly say that the Yellow Vests’ demands are supported by a majority of the French people, we are only taking about a poll. We can’t change sides because Emmanuel Macron was legally elected. In three years a new president will be elected, and we will serve him because he will have been legally elected by a majority of the French people.”
I quoted Roman at length again for the benefit of the reader. What I read is an honest cop who puts his job first – upholding the law.
The Yellow Vests and Alain Soral forget the primary role of cops, which Roman just expressed: to be apolitical. They defend “the law”, regardless of whoever is in power, and regardless of the moral correctness of the law. Cops have personal political ideas, being human, which they put aside when on duty. Roman’s union expresses this with their crystal-clear declaration of being “100% apolitical”.
It is not for cops to change the laws. However, it is the job of cops to prevent laws from being changed as France in 2019 proves yet again.
The reader can draw more conclusions from Roman’s dependable words, but it does not change the fact that France’s police is no “Revolutionary Guard”, as seen on the streets of Iran, Cuba and very few other nations.
So what would it take for French cops to go over?
“We can’t change sides unless there is something like a catastrophe – like if there are 20 million people in the streets. Or if President Macron becomes crazy and orders us to fire on protesters until no one is left standing, which he will never do. We are not at that point (revolution, editor’s note) – we are very far, in fact. One million different people demonstrating is very impressive, it’s very popular, but it’s not enough – it was just one day. We are waiting, as we are in a democratic regime – we must wait for a new vote, otherwise it is impossible for us to change sides.”
Roman’s “One million different people” refers to his union’s count of Yellow Vest Act 1, on November 17, 2018 – they counted 1.3 million people, whereas the Interior Minister claimed only 288,000. The Interior Ministry has always reported 3-5 times fewer people than Roman’s cop union – shame on the Mainstream Media for never even considering that the government might have self-interested motives for undercounting anti-government protesters.
But Roman says what politically-experienced people know, “it is impossible for us (the police) to change sides”.
And that is from the Secretary General of the “#5 union power in the Interior Ministry and the #1 opposition force of the National Police.”
Voila. French cops are not going to join any revolution.
I hope this article answered some questions about French police and their relationship with the Yellow Vests. This article is not anti-policeman, but anti-police; with a name like “Syndicat France Police – Policiers en colère” or “the French Police Union of Angry Cops”, it’s clear that many policeman are “anti-police” in that they are against this current version and structure of the 1%-managed police force of France.
After all, what are they “angry” at? They are “angry” not at the People or simply “angry” in general, but at the government, which the have viewed as poor bosses. And that means some police are allies of revolutionary change, but not the French police force as a whole. Not in this current structural form. You don’t need to have lost an eye in the past 6 months to realize that.
The idea among Yellow Vests that cops will switch sides could only come from those who are fundamentally conservative and thus have never attended an anti-government protest before… as is the self-professed case with many, many Yellow Vests. Six months later they still don’t believe their own eyes, mainly because the idea causes such intense cognitive dissonance due to their “glorious” view of France’s “revolutionary” history – but because they have not updated their political thought in 200+ years, they cannot be revolutionaries in the 21st century.
That declaration is not set in stone – people do change; they are made into revolutionaries, not born one.
But revolutions take time, and certainly some cops can be allies… but not the cops as a whole, and not French cops as regards the Yellow Vest anti-government movement.
Given that French cops will never go over, we thus know that France’s terrible repression can only continue. That makes the order of the day to address the French state’s new tactic of “initiate violence in order to divide and conquer peaceful protesters” which will be the subject of a future article.
Ramin Mazaheri is the chief correspondent in Paris for Press TV and has lived in France since 2009. He has been a daily newspaper reporter in the US, and has reported from Iran, Cuba, Egypt, Tunisia, South Korea and elsewhere. He is the author of I’ll Ruin Everything You Are: Ending Western Propaganda on Red China. His work has appeared in various journals, magazines and websites, as well as on radio and television. He can be reached on Facebook.
I quoted Roman at length again for the benefit of the reader. What I read is an honest cop who puts his job first – upholding the law.
Only problem I see here is because “the law” is currently on trial, you had better be on the right side of the laws of nature vs defective human law, or one risks becoming a casualty of peace.
As I understand it Ramin; the entire origin of the French policing system is very foreign to what i was taught was the original democratic form of the establishment of the British policing system. That being a localized, proportional representation of the immediate community. Which led to local community accountability and control. Many British police administrations are regional, hence have their origins in community basing. The primary significant British exception being the London Met, which was set up by the London merchant Bourgeoisie specifically to protect them from the urban working class. This resulted in the London Metropolitan police setting the standard for reactionary anti-people attitudes and bourgeois corruption throughout the British policing system.
I believe this is widely know in England, but not too openly talked about for obvious political reasons. When the British establishment wants some nasty reactive violence to go down anywhere in England they send the London Met cops in to do it, as they are more reliably fascist and politically controlled. The local cops are not trusted for such dirty work in many cases because of their long tradition of democratic localism. In the main, that is. The American system tends to display this British tradition of local control of police, which helps to explain why many American cops have the belief are democratically working for the local people.
All of this admittedly frayed tradition of democratic local control of police in the English system (which in my opinion accounted in considerable part for the relatively civilized and relaxed attitude to these matters which graced England for a long time) is to be seen in stark contrast to the traditional origins of the French policing system.
The contrast between the two countries is extremely instructive. In direct contrast to the origins of the English system the French policing system was originally set up by the centralized French monarchs as a political-military organ of the Monarchal and the centralized Catholic French feudal state. From the very outset the French police (Parisian) has been a politico-military people control operation with one overriding aim. That being to politically protect the French King from all political and military threats. It was even glorified with the famous stories of the Three Musketeers. Consequently from the very outset the entire tradition of French policing is colored by this over-riding attitude. “We are here to politically protect the central power.” From there they may actually set about a little actual crime fighting.
I believe this has a lot to do with why you find the French policing structure to be so reliably centralized and fascist. It was set up like that by Catholic monarchs for that very purpose. In institutions their originating impulses retain great ongoing influence. I expect you find the historical fruits of this medieval Catholic centralism expressing itself in a great variety of ways throughout French society. Is that not so?
I’ve spent very little time in France, and was mostly in touristy places in Paris, and yet I witnessed a lot of gratuitous police violence there.
I worked for a former Met policeman years ago. He was the only person I’ve heard of who was forced to leave the UK “in disgrace”! (after that he also left Hong Kong – where he was also a cop – “in disgrace”. He was a Toff, but I got on well with him and appreciated his intellect… although eventually I left as the work load he expected out of me was unreasonable.
Thank you Ramin, and yes, the people cannot even think that the cops will support them. The lines have been drawn too starkly.
For those interested, it may be a good thing to again read a recent submission to TheSaker blog, explaining the stance of the cops. Those that think that the cops have the nouse to support what they are supposed to support, well, the stories of the good cops and the bad cops make no sense any more. In our environment today, the cops are there to support the rules of the rulers, no more, no less, and screw anyone else.
/police-and-political-protests-a-different-look/
Here in the states we have the private side of the fbi, the invisible menace, they target the citizens and then react once said citizen reacts badly to their actions. They are accountable to no one but themselves and ignore anything that doesn’t fit their model of failed ideology.
Little minds but in the majority, they ignorantly create cancers and then pass the cost onto the social system while refusing to discuss said matters in any fashion.
They use every trick in the book and then prosecute aggressively, they have no trespassing signs and cameras everywhere on their property, and if they know you don’t, they’ll invite themselves on your property to damage or raise your cost of living anyway they please.
They are a true menace to society at large and with today’s new tech tools, it makes their job even moore fun.
One has to take into account the French mentality. French society is traditionally introvert, having great difficulty changing things on it’s own initiative, and thus laying basis for violent acts, revolutions,when problems accumulate. Currently France is a republic, but in reality it is a semi-feudal institution, where 600 families control the country, politically and economically. And the French police ? They are a reflection of French society. They are not expected to change things as some hoped, by joining the Yellow Vests. They just follow orders, especially those who come from the interior of the country, and who themselves possess the introvert mentality.
Once, an ex-wife of mine had her handbag stolen near the entrance of a metro station in an upmarket part of Paris – 8th Arrondissement. There were several CRS police a few steps away. They would not get involved. They were just standing around and there was no protest or anything nearby – and that was 30 years ago.
The reason that the French cops and army will not switch sides is simple: the State knows that it must maintain the loyalty of the security services at any cost if it is to hang onto power.
Macron grants the most timid requests of the Yellow Vests grudgingly, but the police can demand more pay and overtime and these are given without a second thought.
Superb article. Keep on teaching us so much Mr. Mazaheri.
Commenting about the cops in groups of 4, it could be because it takes 4 persons to guarantee a victory against 1 adversary who could be very motivated or extraordinarily skilled in fights without weapons (weapons are force multipliers, so these numbers would be altered). Of course, there could be other logistic arrangements that set 4 as the basic force unit.
And there were never “French” or “Russian” Revolutions. They were Khazarian/Masonic Revolutions. That’s why France has been under the yoke of the Kosher Mafia for more than 2 centuries, and Russia got rivers of spilled blood of the “cattle” (goyim).
This is a fantastically important essay, since so many people around the world have the false idea that the police would ever be on the side of the people. Canteen Culture, indeed !
There is one item where I hope Mr. Mazaheri’s usually excellent strategic vision may have failed him.
“Just because France wants a little more economically egalitarianism than austerity allows, and wants a little less bourgeois democracy (via more referendums) doesn’t mean that France is a society which is willing to throw off their liberal democratic/bourgeois chains.”
Sometimes that social movements set out to achieve “goal A” and after finding that is impossible, they transform their movement into something more durable and stronger, and then go on to achieve a “goal B” which went beyond the original goal.
After many decades, France has arrived at a point where it is probably not possible to put the snakes back in the box and if goal A is not achievable, they will go on to a bigger goal B.
Sitting in the US, reading mainly French dissidents including Alain Soral on E&R http://egaliteetreconciliation.fr/ and after my paying zero attention to the 100% predictable French MSM lügenpresse, I have formed some relevant opinions. If I’m mistaken or inaccurate, please do me -us- a favor and correct me. Here goes:
1. France has started to wake up and by now, it’s extremely unlikely that they will be able to go back to sleep.
I never needed convincing, but I think the average Frenchie in their 20’s or 30’s (i.e. not ossified) would only need to read less than an hour of E&R to discover the basics. Mr. Dieudonne still draws sold-out crowds of ca. 8,000 all over France, where tickets cost 40-50 Euros.
At least a third of the people know things like
a. The .01% in France are 100% in bed with the Zionists, and they would never break that alliance.
b. The French government does absolutely nothing for the farmers, who are suffering tremendously from the sanctions imposed on Russia.
c. Macron is selling off the public infrastructure at fire-sale prices and the people are truly angry. The selling price of the 3 largest airports and the national lottery is on the block for a mere $15 billion, for Macron’s masters to steal.
d. The people were “sold a bill of goods” with LREM and they would never do that again, according to
all polls. For example, Paris-Match – and all the other MSM, too – published endless glossy photo spreads before the 2017 elections, creating the illusion that Macron was a sort of Johnny Holiday movie star, on a real fling with his granny wife. Now, we know Macron is probably gay or bi (pics of him obviously excited with an African dance troupe), and the granny marriage is sort of a fig leaf. I assume that French people hate being lied to and that having been deceived on very important matters (their wallet -!!!), will no longer look to the MSM for political direction.
What we have here is like night and day. When the MSM lies seamlessly and the public doesn’t realize they are viewing a seamless wall of finely-crafted deceptions, then the frauds never stop. That was America in the 1950’s. Also, me until January 2014 when the estimable Diane Johnstone wrote about the shameless censorship of Dieudonné M’bala M’bala, who had been 100% banished by the MSM since 2003 but had made a great non-MSM comeback. The censorship of Dieudonné was a real spectacle: the Conseil d’État, headed by the top civil servant, a 95 year-old Jew, overturned all the courts (quite legally under the 5th Republic), but it did it with a record-breaking 4-1/2 hours start to finish, as the previous record for any Conseil d’État decision was about 48 hours. That reckless speed did make the news and marked Dieudonné as a comedian worth paying special attention to. So the wall is not at all seamless anymore, and I believe that now the MSM is forced to talk about the existence of the dissidents, if only in an attempt to further smear them. Since the dissidents now have a public presence, the state has moved on to outright repression, with a jail term for Soral on a charge of publishing drawings that (((hurt the feelings of a special interest group))), that in the US would have zero legal standing and would be laughed at.
In short, when a high enough percentage of the public know the truth and are willing to talk about it, then the whole set of frauds starts to collapse. The fraud of the “Socialist Party” which screwed the people 2012-2017. The voluntary suicide of the leadership of LR when Fillon, who could have won the 2017 election, was attacked on BS charges, and these leadership puppets pointed the finger at Fillon instead.
As you and others have pointed out, the main achievement of the Yellow Vests is to bring all this into the public arena, and to couple it with some concrete proposals, such as the RIC (citizen initiative referenda).
2. Having woken to the thick layers of lies and total indifference of the elites to the plight of the rest of France, the real question is how far people will need to push this, before they can get satisfaction and go back to “the good old days”. I think it can’t be done, so the situation will escalate and escalate until “goal A” is replaced with many “goal B’s”. One estimate claims $15 billion can restore the pensions and other social spending cut by Macron and before him, the “Socialists”. Since French GDP exceeds $ 2700 billion, 15 B is not too much. The larger question is the future of French industry as the basis of a prosperous democracy. Yellow Vests have yet to raise that huge question, if I’m not mistaken. But the question will have to be addressed.
At a strategic level, Macron is pursuing a “strategy of tension” which simply builds up the pressure, and at some point it will explode. I would not suggest France is near that point, but the escalation has shown no real inflection, and we have seen that the French refuse to be bought off with what are clearly only short term palliatives, like the BS of a 6 month delay in raising fuel taxes.
So as this escalates, the French people are finding themselves in uncharted territory. They know they can’t count on the traditional parties – the “alternance” of the “Socialists” and Les republicains, and, sad to say, probably not the NR (National Rally, the former FN) either. The “Left Party” of Mélenchon isn’t worth the ink wasted on him, and the polls confirm this.
These are tremendously huge issues, broad and deep, even involving changes to the French character. This will evolve over the years to come simply because the basic challenges will still be there.
To me, the only real question is why the French elites chose to take the path of full resistance. Is it simply arrogance, either on their own, or at the behest of Washington / Tel Avis ? Or does this elite have something disastrous up their sleeves ?
Any feedback would be very welcome.
My hunch: 1) Tel Aviv and 2) ruthless factions related to the Roman bloodline families (who are still there) going back to the Middle Ages and before.
The prolonged, mercilessly cruel and brutal assault by the Roman church against the Cathars in southern France is most instructive. Before that, the savagery of Caesar’s legions against the Gauls is also instructive. Caesar stationed two legions in the Carnute’s territory (present day Chartres) to put down the periodic rebellions that the Carnutes staged. against the Roman invasion and occupation of their territory. The present-day cathedral at Chartres was built by the Knights Templar in the Middle Ages over the ancient Druidic well, hewn out of the solid rock, in the middle of the ancient, sacred grove maintained by the Druidic priests at Carnutes, now Chartres. The well is still there, under the altar. The Knights Templar built the massive cathedral over the site where the sacred grove stood, and constructed the altar directly over the sacred, Druid well. Twenty years ago I visited Chartres and paid a modest fee to enter by a side door, go down under the cathedral and visit the well. The Roman Catholics recognized the Natural power of the place and sited the cathedral to capture the Druid ic Nature energy for their own use. (As a parenthetic aside, the Roman Catholics did the same thing here in Ecuador where I live. Under the Spanish conquest the Roman Catholics took over the Inca temples and built their own cathedrals on top of them. There are at least two Roman churches in Quito that are constructed on the foundation blocks of prior Inca temples.)
The Celtic spirit still lives. As one example, please see:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkBAZKCC3sI
It is related to the living spirit of the land and based on communicating with Nature, especially as regards trees.
See Robert Graves’ magisterial, magnum opus: The White Goddess, which has to do with the ancient Indo-European system of musical divination as related to the sacred trees.
This tension between those who want to live in harmony with Nature and those who wish to destroy and subjugate both Nature and those who are in harmony with Nature, is an extremely ancient conflict.
The conflict is for all the marbles. It is war without quarter. It has been playing out for millennia and is now approaching a definitive denouement in our day and time.
Who will prevail? Nature and those who love her? Or the violent, soulless ones?
I repeat: look to Tel Aviv and the ancient, bloodline, Roman families (who are still here). Talmudic Judaism came out of Babylon, and Abraham out of Ur of the Chaldees (whence the German word: Ur-alt.). Interestingly, Julius Caesar’s next, major, military campaign was to be in Mesopotamia — but that was cut short by Brutus et al. What did Caesar seek in Mesopotamia? Please note that the ancient conflict in Mesopotamia rages to the present day. Commentators spill an ocean of digital electrons over this ancient war, notwithstanding that many of them absolutely fail to understand iits true, historical, cultural, racial and spiritual dimensions and antecedents. Who are the Iranians after all but the ancient Aryans? (Aryanians) They’ve been there for thousands of years. And look who wants to reduce them to nothing.
Look deep beneath the froth of day-to-day events for the truth of what is happening on this planet and in France. The entire planet matters, and the whole of humanity and Nature matters,. France is one of the places that the Dark Forces have been focusing on for at least the last 2,000 years.There is something there, in the land and in the people, that the Dark Lords keep violently repressing, again and again. They are trying to stamp it out, to kill it, to eliminate it. The Dark Lords fear life, they fear freedom, they fear Nature. They are artificial shells that have the semblance, but not the substance, of human beings.
Forgive the unfocused character of my feedback, but I believe that in my words you will find a thread that may prove more productive than the superficiality of what passes for informed political discourse and commentary these days.
In what I believe speaks directly to your question, I would suggest that you seek out the Bulgarian, Sylvie Ivanova’s “newearth” YouTube channel, and watch as many of her videos as you can. The same goes for the YouTube channel of the Ukrainian, “vlad9vt”. In watching hour after hour after hour of their videos you will come to see some of the dimensions of the mind f*ck that we are operating under and realize that the present, global insanity is but the latest, most confused phase of a thousands of years-long conflict that is being waged in a far different way than most people realize, even supposedly “intelligent” and “educated” political commentators, many of whom are actually gate keepers for the corrupt status quo, either wittingly or unwittingly.
Finally, if you examine the Russian language it is related to ancient Sanskrit, the language of the ancient Aryan peoples. The Russians are an ancient, Aryan people as are the Iranians. I would suggest that the war against Russia is an ancient one, and the latest political economic, diplomatic and military tensions are but the most recent, flimsy excuses du jour to continue prosecuting an ancient conflict that continues unabated.
Governments and political movements are transitory phenomena analogous to wind whipped waves on the surface of the sea. Look much deeper, for the ancient historical and cultural currents that are the underlying framework on which current events are played out.
Thanks to Ramin for an extremely informative article, from which I learned a lot. I did not know that the French police was like that, but after watching live transmissions from the yellow vests protests over the last 6 months it all makes sense. Also thanks to the commenters Cosimo and Richard for the thought provoking follow ups.
I want to endorse the comments by Richard on the references to the youtube channels newearth and vlad9vt. At first it may seem totally irrelevant to the issue of the Yellow Vests, but in fact this information shows that the human history must be completely rewritten, and that is something the current western power structures will not allow because it demolishes their power base. I interpret the current struggles in France and ‘the west’ to be the 1% fighting with violence to keep their power base. When the average person realizes that the world history as taught in schools is wrong, the relation to the current power structures will have to change significantly. And that is a no-no.
I would also pay attention to the youtube channels of Antonio Zamora and Brien Foerster, read the books of Joseph Davidovits and Robert Schoch. In sum, they reveal conclusive factual evidence that the history as written of our civilization is wrong, the wealth of evidence buries the fundamental untruth that the current western culture is original and therefore ‘exceptional’. Civilization did not begin with the Sumerians or the Egyptian pharaos, that was just a reboot of human civilization that was almost completely obliterated by a comet strike on the Laurentide ice sheet 12900 years ago, which also exterminated the North American megafauna and started the Younger Dryas cooling event that lasted 1200 years. It took some ~7000 years after that strike for civilization to recover and reboot.
The people that hold power today know these facts but will not allow them to be universally accepted as it will rip the power base carpet under their feet. They therefore promote all kinds of diversions like ‘terrorism’, ‘global warming’ or ‘climate change’ and the baseless accusations against Russia and Iran. Also throw Venezuela and North Korea into the mix. Almost everything the 1% promote these days is a reflection of their understanding of the real facts, but it is always promoted in an inverted fashion, taken directly out of George Orwell’s user manual.
So what does it take for the Yellow Vests to achieve some success? The power base of the ‘elite’ today is the endless lies of the MSM. One must understand that the MSM lies are not limited to current political events like the Yellow Vest protests, but extends to lies about science (‘climate change’) and world history (origins of civilization). So to make some progress I believe it requires exposing the truth on these matters, it is of utmost importance. Flip over one of these dominoes and the whole thing falls apart.
The French police in action today in a Paris Burger King:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=42&v=wK8b4plAlJQ
I would implore EVERYONE who arrives at this page to read Mr. Sauder’s comment, above, very carefully. He is keenly attuned to a good number of the historical dynamics responsible for what is at play presently on the global “stage”. And, be warned — to dismiss his points would be to commit a grave, perhaps even fatal, mistake.
Humanity truly is at a crossroads like at no other time ever before. The events we are seeing take place now, in many cases, were not planned or formulated in recent history; indeed, some date back millennia. This may be very tough for the average “modern-day” human to “wrap their minds around”, but I can assure you this IS the case. It is absolutely imperative that we understand this.
Nature always prevails, by her grace we live on the planet, all life she can remove, at will. That the earth has prevailed through thousands of epochs, human and inhumane, is a testiment to the timelessness of `space`. I try not to get too wrapped up in the human drama dogma, our time here will be short, although we are an Apex Survivor species, who knows but God, what plays out for us.
“The French cops will never join the Yellow Vests” ? Well, I don’t know, and I’m French myself.
It is my considered opinion that the so-called “European Elections” are the last opportunity for the French to get rid of Macron peacefully. If we miss it, and given the unbelievable behavior of the media this is a distinct possibility, then we’ll have civil war, and a bloody one at that.
Before the end of 2019.
If we have civil war, I think that the cops will split into opposing factions, just like the rest of the population.
And I don’t think that Macron will survive. He will very probably commit suicide.
If it’s any consolation for France, the French police for all their repressive behavior are likely choir boys compared to America, which despite its laughable boasts about being the Land of the Free, increasingly have police that are the domestic shock troops of the American police state
Drivers Beware: The Deadly Perils of Traffic Stops in the American Police State
https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2019/05/13/drivers-beware-the-deadly-perils-of-traffic-stops-in-the-american-police-state/
Thankyou for your reportage on this phenomena. God bless you Sir.
Voltairenet has some interesting things to read about Notre-Dame and the we live in. Here is an english teanslantion from google of the following article on voltairenet:
https://www.voltairenet.org/article206522.html
The real estate renovation operation of the Ile de la Cité and its transformation into a tourist walk began with the awarding of part of the Hôtel-Dieu to Novaxia, the group of “transitory urbanism” of philanthropist »Joachim Azan (photo).
This mega-operation was imagined in 2016, at the request of President François Hollande and the Mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, by the director of historical monuments Philippe Bélaval and architect Dominique Perrault.
It plans to take advantage of the renovation of the Tribunal de Paris, the Prefecture of Police and Hôtel-Dieu, in order to draw all the tourist potential of the Notre-Dame cathedral and the Sainte-Chapelle.
The fire of the cathedral was a “divine surprise” for the public authorities who will be able to carry out this project and commercially exploit the whole island. What the Minister of the Interior, Christophe Castaner, summed up by declaring that Notre-Dame de Paris is “not a cathedral, it’s our common”.
Rented 144 million euros for 80 years, part of the hospital of the Hotel-Dieu will be transformed into housing, luxury shops and gourmet restaurant. The hospital unions, which argue the compression of emergency services Paris, protest against this choice.
The tender had started before the fire of the cathedral.
Adopted in accelerated procedure, an ad hoc law was voted in first reading by the National Assembly to manage the collection of donations for the restoration of the cathedral. It provides incidentally that the Government will be authorized to make any derogatory
– 1 ° “To the rules concerning town planning, environment, construction and preservation of the heritage, in particular with regard to the compliance of planning documents, the issuance of works and construction authorizations, modalities of public participation in decision-making and environmental assessment, as well as preventive archeology;
– 2 ° Rules relating to public commissions, public lands, roads and transport. ”
The real estate project provides for the construction of a network of tunnels that will allow tourists to access the crypt of Notre Dame, but especially to relieve traffic on the island.
The ultimate goal is to turn the island from an administrative city into one of the busiest tourist areas in Europe.
About the fact that France already had a revolution, you are correct but must take into account the fact that it was a masonic revolution against Christianity and the King. The french republic has been governed by masonic networks since its creation in 1792, networks which initiated and ed the revolution and have controlled the state since then. While all french “revolutions” (1789, 1830, 1848, 1968) were initiated/led by those networks, the yellow vest are rising up against the french “republican” (masonic) state, and that is brand new.
Regarding cops violence, one can understand the astonishment of the yellow vest who are often in their 40s or 50s, as it was not like that before during protests before 2010 (notably 1968). The fact is that a few significant things have changed in the past ten years. One thing is that the deontology of the police has officially changed while the zionist Manuel Valls was interior minister: in 2013, he changed many things, and the main mission of the police is officially now to mainly protect the state, while before it was to protect the state And the population. Another thing is that after the numerous “terrorist” attacks in 2015, the french police developed links with Israelis, and has been taught the “methods” of the Israelis. That is why it seems so obvious that the yellow vests are being treated as were the Palestinians at the beginning of the second intifada (rubber bullets, gas, grenades, gratuitous violence and cruelty, repeated insults, extreme judiciary severity etc..). The third thing is that the police are routinely told to let go in the suburbs of big cities, even when their life has been threatened and while they are routinely insulted: some of the cops are so frustrated that it can be assumed that some of them vented their frustration against the yellow vest, as this time the police hierarchy told them to “clean the streets” with no restriction.
Worth repeating,
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Anonymous on May 10, 2019 · at 10:33 am EST/EDT
Just wondering how long the delusion of being able to win without resorting to violence is going to last.
The old ‘bringing a knife to a gunfight’ comes to mind.
The police will not back down and this can go on indefinitely. It is unfortunate but the reality is that until the police refuse to attack protesters, there is no chance of success. The only way the police will stop is if they are in fear for their lives.
I do not encourage violence. But there comes a time when it is time to give up or escalate……..
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“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family?
Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?… The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If…if…We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.
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