What Colour is Your Vest?
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- Published on Wednesday, 13 February 2019 04:02
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A Socialist Project e-bulletin ... No. 1761 ... February 13, 2019
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What Colour is Your Vest?
The Gilets Jaunes Revolt Shaking France
Stefan Kipfer and Karen Wirsig
In 1934, the political situation in France was tense and uncertain. The year began with a mobilization of royalist and fascist militias (on February 6) that were followed immediately (on February 9 and 12) by a response from the Communist and Socialist wings of the workers movement. As Norbert Guterman and Henri Lefebvre reported, "all these men are ready for the concrete liberation a revolution would bring -- and perhaps also, unfortunately, the mystique and brutal mythology of the fascists" (1999 [1936], 143, trans. SK). When these lines were written in the mid-1930s, France was experiencing a rising tide of grassroots anti-fascist politics culminating in the strike waves of... the early days of the Popular Front government. Yet Lefebvre and Guterman’s warning was well-placed. The Popular Front disintegrated due to many contradictions, ultimately giving rise to Marshall Pétain’s collaborationist administration, France’s contribution to fascist regime politics.
History does not repeat itself mechanically. But the revolt of the gilets jaunes (yellow vests) in France underway since November 2018 reminds us that we, too, live in times of deep political uncertainty. Today, there are not two large organized political blocs facing each other in a battle for life and death. The political ambiguities of our age express themselves as contradictions within the gilets jaunes, as well as amidst the range of forces trying to claim them. The early analysis by political anti-racist coalition Comité Rosa Parks is worth repeating:
"This unprecedented mobilization attests to a profound dissatisfaction among the labouring classes (classes populaires) facing precarization and contempt at the hands of elites and state power. It would be wrong and condescending to treat it as a product of far-right manipulation, not the least because the initiators refuse to be appropriated by any partisan organization.... And yet, this spontaneity, which is so original and refreshing, also carries with it strong contradictions that we need to consider so as not to join to the movement blindly and blissfully." Comité Rosa Parks, November 21, 2018 [Trans. SK]