Rioters or citizens rebelling for good reasons? Since November 2018 people in warning vests block roundabouts in France, they demonstrate in cities, they deal with police officers. Tax increases on gasoline and diesel triggered the protest, which evolved into a move against social inequality. Although it has calmed down in recent months, the reporting in Germany has subsided - but the protests of the Gilets Jaunes continue: recently, the yellow vests in Paris, Bordeaux and Lille celebrated their 50th day of protest.
The movement has been polarizing since it existed. Critics point to right-wing tendencies and complain of violence or anti-Semitism. Sympathizers argue that rights and anti-Semites are in the minority, that violence comes from the state. A German Parisian now offers a way out of this polarized debate with her book "We should trust each other". She writes about her transformation from a skeptical observer to a yellow vest discussing strategies for social change in plenary debates of a regional group. The author belongs to the movement, her book is partisan. But those who expose themselves to critical reading will be rewarded for a contradictory interior view.
The author lives in the district of Belleville, a so-called quartier populaire in the north-east of Paris, also known as a "difficult" quarter. It is close to migrant activist groups. She has a dachshund. And she writes under the pseudonym Luisa Michael. It remains anonymous in the tradition of the "invisible committee", it is said on the first pages, that is, the group that wrote the revolutionary book "The Coming Revolt" of 2007 - the document led to arrests, the security authorities made activists for the text and for responsible for the sabotage of a Castor transport.
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Some things are very clear to the author - such as the question of violence. The source of the eruptions identifies them in a place other than the critics of the yellow vests. The real violence is "in the rapidly increasing marginalization and precarization of large parts of the population and especially the youth," she writes.
Elsewhere, it allows for more contradictions. Some learns the author's own body, for example, when yellow vests relate positively to the French national flag. Time and again she asks how a movement that wants to be open to all can deal with rights or with conspiracy theorists. She also manages to refute the point of criticism racism - as she writes about joint demonstrations of yellow vests and the anti-racist Comité Adama, named after Adama Traoré, a young black man who died in police custody in 2016.
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Luisa Michael
We should trust each other. The uprising in yellow west (Nautilus pamphlet)
Publishing company:
Edition Nautilus GmbH
Pages:
240
Price:
EUR 16,00
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However, the author only half-heartedly faces the accusation of anti-Semitism. In February 2018, yellow-vests on the verge of a demonstration denounced the controversial Jewish philosopher Alain Finkielkraut as "dirty Zionists". In the book, she describes the incident as anti-Semitic. At the same time, however, she exposes herself to the anti-Israeli boycott movement BDS and complains in a lengthy passage about discrediting campaigns by the government and the umbrella organization of Jewish organizations, rather than self-critically reflecting when criticism tilts into anti-Semitism. Credible does not work.
Nevertheless, the book is still worth reading - simply because it comes close to the insurgents and their motivations. The author also lets other yellow vests have their say: there is the tired mid-forties Fabienne, a single mother and textile designer who has worked as an employee, sometimes as a self-employed, including short-term contracts and periods of unemployment. She says, "I'm always on the brink of financial ruin, and I'm qualified and actually enjoy working in my profession, it's just unworthy."
Or a man the author writes about: "The GJ from Burgundy has the bad teeth of the poor, and he already looks like he will probably look like an old man, only that his hair is still full and dark." Social inequality, which often remains abstract in political debates, becomes very concrete here. The anonymous author asks: What would this man look like if he had lived like "Monsieur le President"?