'Yellow Jacket' riots rock Paris, leaves 133 injured, 412 arrested
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
PARIS — A clean-up operation was underway in Paris Sunday after violent protests injured 130 people and led to the arrest of 412.
Some 5,000 demonstrators — known as "Yellow Jackets" due to their fluorescent garb — descended onto Paris' streets Saturday in the latest round of protests against rising gas taxes and the high cost of living.
Rioters tore apart parts of the city, torching cars, smashing windows, looting stores and tagging the Arc de Triomphe with multi-colored graffiti. Police fired tear gas and water cannons as some demonstrators launched projectiles over police lines.
Officials said those hurt when the demonstrations turned violent included 23 police officers.
At one point, a group of protesters encircled the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier located under the Arc de Triomphe and sang the French national anthem before being dispersed by police.
Officials were cleaning the streets Sunday and removing graffiti from the arc.
The demonstrations, which kicked off on Nov. 17, were sparked by planned tax hikes on gas but have morphed into a wider rebuke of French President Emmanuel Macron's governance and his attempts at economic reform.
For over two weeks, motorists have blocked highways across the country by setting up barricades and deploying convoys of slow-moving trucks.
The “Yellow Jacket” activists — named after the neon vests French drivers are obliged to carry in their vehicles in the case of roadside emergencies — want Macron to call off the tax increases. Some have called on him to resign.
Tear gas surrounds riot police as they clash with protesters near the Arc de Triomphe on Saturday. Veronique de Viguerie / Getty Images For his part, Macron has condemned the violence and has said he would hold an emergency meeting on security with the prime minister and interior minister on Sunday.
On landing in France after returning from the G-20 summit in Argentina, Macron traveled straight to the Arc De Triomphe to survey the damage.
He has vowed that those responsible for the violence will pay for their actions.
"I will always respect disagreements, I will always listen to opposition but I will never accept violence," he told reporters at a press conference in Buenos Aires on Saturday.
He added that the violence had "nothing to do with the expression of legitimate anger" showed by peaceful protesters.
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It's rather shocking to see regular people behaving this way. I can understand anger, but not vandalism.
Can Macron's governance stand or will his government fall?
This is almost SOP in French politics because those citizens take a very hands-on and active approach to their government. It might benefit us if we took to the streets occasionally.
Don't get the cart before the horse. Nancy Pelosi isn't POTUS, yet...
And most likely, never will be.
She can barely garner enough support from members in Congress to get the Speakership--don't think the public out of California will be conned into voting for her.
Pelosi got 86.8% of the vote in her reelection bid and easily won the Speakership so I am sure you don't know what you are yapping about...
Did you read "Outside of California" in my post?
Nancy Pelosi has less of a chance at getting the Democratic Party nomination for President than Michael Avenatti does.
Pelosi need not win anything to become POTUS. When Trump and Pence are finally removed she is next in line...
You did not say, "Outside of Califirnia". You said, "Democrats out of California". Why misrepresent what you said when we can all see what you actually did say? So, no, I didn't read, "outside of California" That is not what you said...
That would be a hoot !
Wally and JBB,
Kind of took a L O N G detour there from the subject. We are talking about France.
Thanks!
Wouldn't Democrats out of California mean they are not IN California? If I meant Dems IN California I wouldn't have written OUT of California.
smh
Seems to be a worldwide phenom. Remember the damage in D.C. form the leftist goons right around the inauguration in 2016?
That was a minority of people, but this is the French population at large. Vandalism is never the way to get your point across. I thought that Dr. King taught us that.
He did and he was very wise. But it's obvious many didn't learn or agree.
The reality is, most of the people doing this sort of thing probably weren't even alive back then.
Tru nuf!
I wonder why it's necessary for Macron to increase the taxes? Actually, that's not true. It should be obvious to anyone who has followed what has been happening in France over the past few years why the income from taxes is insufficient.
One thing about the French is they are always on the cutting edge of fashion, even in the worst of times.
haha
Riot gear in France, a strip club in the US.
If his goal was to be offensive as possible- he definitely succeeded.
I didn't know they had a Folsom Street in Paris.
I guess the rioters don't realize they are helping to increase the cost of government and cost of living? All of the damage must be paid by someone. Whether it be in the form of higher car insurance; stores increasing costs to pay for their insurance going up due to damages; government expenditure of national monuments and streets; or extra pay for police to keep the peace.
Economics is not their strong point.
That is an understatement.
Of course we have the same problems here in the US with rioters destroying property. Not on that scale thankfully.
There is just something so typically French about this. Weren't they doing stuff like this 200 years ago, minus the head chopping?
Rmando,
You got a good point there. Well done!
Who can blame them?
They're already paying over three bucks a gallon in gasoline taxes. Where does it end?
I don't have a problem with protesting. I have an issue of destruction of private and public property. So really they are losing it as a nation and I am not sure where this is going.
Yep, i agree. The destruction part of the protest is REALLY a non sequitur in all cases.
This is reminiscent of our riots in the 60's. People were looting and burning down their own neighbors property. It was nuts and pretty wild when you see an Army APC patrolling down your residential street.
The more things change, the more they stay the same i guess.
From the peoples perspective, Macron may as well have stated "LET THEM EAT CAKE!!!"
(NOTE: The articles use of the words "gasoline and in some instances gas" should be understood as diesel.)
‘Yellow Vests’ Riot in Paris, but Their Anger Is Rooted Deep in France
“Yellow Vest” protesters at a roundabout in St.-Vaury, France. They wait in the rain and cold and mud under makeshift tarpaulin shelters and tents. Credit Credit Andrea Mantovani for The New York Times
By Adam Nossiter
GUÉRET, France — At the bare bottom of Florian Dou’s shopping cart at the discount supermarket, there was a packet of $6 sausages and not much else. It was the end of last week, and the end of last month. At that point, “my salary and my wife’s have been gone for 10 days,” he lamented.
How to survive those days between when the money runs out and when his paycheck arrives for his work as a warehouse handler has become a monthly challenge. The same is true for so many others in Guéret, a grim provincial town in south-central France. And it has made Mr. Dou angry.
So he used what money he had left and drove 250 miles to join the fiery protests on Saturday in Paris , where the police moved in with tear gas, water cannon and rubber bullets.
“We knew they were sent in to get rid of us,” he said the day after, “and believe me, they were not into Mr. Nice Guy.” But he vows the protesters are not going anywhere.
The “Yellow Vest” protests he is a part of present an extraordinary venting of rage and resentment by ordinary working people, aimed at the mounting inequalities that have eroded their lives. The unrest began in response to rising gas taxes and has been building in intensity over the past three weeks, peaking on Saturday.
With little organization and relying mostly on social media, they have moved spontaneously from France’s poor rural regions over the last month to the banks of the Seine, where they have now become impossible to ignore.
On Sunday, President Emmanuel Macron toured the graffiti-scrawled monuments of the capital and the damage along some of the richest shopping streets in Europe. All around France, the protests left three dead and more than 260 wounded, with more than 400 arrested. Mr. Macron convened a crisis cabinet meeting, weighing whether to impose a state of emergency.
Mr. Macron has previously insisted that, unlike past French governments, he will not back down in the face of popular resistance to reforms like a loosening of labor laws. It’s a harder line than many other western European countries have taken.
The protesters ridicule him as a president of the rich and say he is trying to balance his budgets on their backs as he remains deaf to their concerns.
But if it was the shattered glass and burned cars along Rue de Rivoli or Boulevard Haussmann in Paris that finally got Mr. Macron’s attention, the movement — named for the roadside safety vests worn by demonstrators — has in fact welled up from silent towns like Guéret, an administrative center of 13,000 people, lost in the small valleys of central France.
Far from any big city, it sits in one of the poorest departments of France, where the public hospital is the biggest employer. The cafe in the main square is empty by midafternoon. The hulks of burned-out cars dot the moribund train station’s tiny parking lot, abandoned by citizens too poor to maintain them.
In places like these, a quiet fear gnaws at households: What happens when the money runs out around the 20th? What do I put in the refrigerator with nothing left in the account and the electricity bill to pay? Which meal should I skip today? How do I tell my wife again there is no going out this weekend?
Florian Dou checking his shopping list at a grocery store in Guéret, France. Credit Andrea Mantovani for The New York Times
The stories of Mr. Dou’s neighbors who also joined the protests were much like his own. Inside Laetitia Depourtoux’s freezer were hunks of frozen meat, a twice-a-year gift from her farmer-father, and the six-member family’s meat ration.
On these cold nights, Joel Decoux’s oven burned the wood he chopped himself because he can’t afford gas for heating.
It is not deep poverty, but ever-present unease in the small cities, towns and villages over what is becoming known as “the other France,” away from the glitzy Parisian boulevards that were the scene of rioting this weekend.
“We live with stress,” said Fabrice Girardin, 46, a former carpet-layer who now looks after other people’s pets to get by. “Every month, at the end of the month, we say, ‘Will there be enough to eat?’ ”
Since the acidic portrait of Guéret in novels by a famous native son, the anti-Semitic 20th-century writer Marcel Jouhandeau, the town is used to being mocked as the epitome of provincial backwardness.
The Yellow Vest protesters, the descendants of those who inspired Jouhandeau’s characters, can now be found waiting at the road blocks as you come into town — truck and school-bus drivers, nurses, out-of-work electricians, housewives, warehouse handlers, part-time civil servants and construction workers on disability aid.
On cold nights the oven of Joel Decoux, left, and his wife Roselyne, center, burned the wood he chopped himself because he can’t afford gas for heating. Credit Andrea Mantovani for The New York Times
Mr. Dou — who says his 9-year-old son has never been on vacation and his gross salary of 1,300 euros a month, about $1,475, “disappears immediately in the bills” — was among them. There is little left after high taxes and costly utilities such as electricity.
To protest, he and the other protesters wait at night in the middle of the roundabouts, in the rain and cold and mud under makeshift tarpaulin shelters and tents in the darkness of early morning. “The People’s Élysée” is scrawled on one, mocking Mr. Macron’s Élysée Palace, seat of the presidency. “Macron, he’s with the bosses, Macron, he’s against the people,” a singer intoned in a reggaelike jingle from the radio.
Mr. Dou said he had joined the movement from the beginning, and he was an assiduous presence over several days last week on the traffic circles at Guéret. He was there at 11 p.m. on a rainy Thursday, after putting in several hours that morning, and he was there the next day as well.
“We don’t even need the social networks anymore,” he said.
His motivation, he said, was to “recover the country’s priorities. The values of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.” The gas tax “was what set it all off.”
Now, he felt that the Yellow Vest protesters really have the government on the run.
“They don’t know what to do. They’re really in a panic.”
Virtually every car that passes honks in sympathy. But the protesters know that their shouts grow faint over the long distance to real power in Paris, and that is what has propelled them to move their demonstrations there.
By Friday, Mr. Dou was preparing to make the drive in a shared car up to Paris: checking in with his comrades at the traffic circle and buying last-minute supplies — including solution to protect his eyes from tear gas.
Yoann Decoux, an out-of-work electrical lineman in his 30s who was presented by Guéret’s Yellow Vest protesters as their spokesman, had been arrested in Paris the week before.
“I’ve never been in political demonstrations before,” he said. “But we said, enough’s enough.”
“They don’t even know how we get by with our tiny little salaries,” he said. “But we are humans too, for God’s sake!” He was getting by with vegetables and help from his part-time farmer-father.
None of the Guéret protesters expressed allegiance to any politician: Most said politics disgusted them.
“They are all the same,” Mr. Dou said.
When Guéret’s mayor, Michel Vergnier, a veteran Socialist with decades of connections in Paris, went to see the protesters, they were not welcoming.
“There’s a rejection of politicians,” Mr. Vergnier said. “They are outside all political and union organizations.”
Inside Laetitia Depourtoux’s freezer were hunks of frozen meat, a twice-a-year gift from her farmer-father, and the six-member family’s meat ration. Credit Andrea Mantovani for The New York Times
It was the end of the month. To a man and woman the Yellow Vest protesters of Guéret said their accounts were tapped out.
“Right now, I’m at zero,” Mr. Girardin said. His wife had done the shopping with 40 euros the day before, a Wednesday. Now there was nothing left to get them through the weekend.
“You get to the end of the month, there’s nothing,” he said.
That is why Mr. Macron’s plans to raise the gasoline tax, modest an increment as it may seem, was the final straw for so many, the spark that finally set off a seething rage that has been building for years.
There was no gas in his car, said Mr. Girardin, a carpet-layer who quit a job with a stagnant 1,200-euro a month salary to strike out on his own. But he was no better off now.
“Once we’ve finished paying all of our bills, there’s no money left.”
Tonight’s meal: noodles, with maybe a little ground beef. “I’d like to be able to take my wife to the restaurant from time to time, but I can’t,” Mr. Girardin said. Weighed down by financial stress, she had gone into a depression. “She’s totally closed in on herself,” he said.
Up the road the next morning, Ms. Depourtoux, a night-shift nurse at the hospital, was up at 6:30 a.m. with her husband, Olivier, an optician, to see their three daughters off to school in the darkness. Their modest house at a country intersection at the edge of town was pleasant but not spacious.
Guéret is located in the Creuse, the second poorest department in France. Credit Andrea Mantovani for The New York Times
She gently mocked him because “there is never any gas in your car.” With four children and many bills, their money — 1,800 euros a month for her, 1,500 for him — was “very quickly gone,” Mr. Depourtoux said.
The bank refused to lend them any more money. Both had joined the Yellow Vests, and both had gone to Paris the preceding weekend to demonstrate. “As long as it continues, we are with it,” he said.
“We live, but we’ve got to be careful. We can’t go to the restaurant. All the little pleasures of life are gone,” Mr. Depourtoux said. His parents, after a lifetime of work, were reduced to penury: his father in a nursing home and his mother forced to accept meals from charity.
She fills the freezer with deep-discount frozen food from the hard discounter Lidl. They wait to get paid to fill up the car and to do the shopping.
“We just don’t make it to the end of the month,” said Elodie Marton, a mother of four who had joined the protesters at the demonstration outside town. “I’ve got 10 euros left,” she said, as a dozen others tried to get themselves warm around an iron-barrel fire.
“Luckily we’ve got some animals at the house” — chickens, ducks — “and we keep them for the end of the month,” she said. “It sounds brutal, but my priority is the children,” she said. “We’re fed up and we’re angry!’ shouted her husband, Thomas Schwint, a cement hauler on a temporary 1,200-euro contract.
To a man and woman the Guéret protesters expressed fury at the government, and determination to keep going.
“Their response has poisoned the situation even more,” Mr. Depourtoux said. “The citizens have asked for lower taxes, and they’re saying, ‘Ecology,’” he said in a reference to Mr. Macron’s speech of last week where he outlined France’s plans to transition from fossil-based fuels to renewable energy.
At the roundabout, Laurent Aufrere, a truck driver, was deciding which of that day’s meals to skip.
“If I stop rolling, I die. This is not nothing,” Mr. Aufrere said. “What’s happening right now is a citizen uprising.”
Why tax fuel? Or, today's easy target for a troubled Europe and France today. Let's put other reasons for added tax revenue in the EU for now.
So how do "we" "fix" a problem that we knew was running straight at us for years now and failed to act? Failed to mitigate? Just basically sat on our asses.
What do we do? Well, of course we TAX it. Ta Da!
You mean we are running out of diesel? Yep and here's why.
For Whom is Peak Oil Coming? If You Own a Diesel Car, it is Coming for You!
By Antonio Turiel , Ugo Bardi , originally published by Cassandra's legacyAt the beginning, the idea of “peak oil” seemed to be relatively uncomplicated: we would climb from one side and then go down the other side. But no, the story turned out to be devilishly complex. For one thing, there is no such a thing as “oil” intended as a combustible liquid — there are tens, perhaps hundreds, of varieties of the stuff: light, heavy, sour, sweet, shale, tight, dumbbell, and more. And each variety has its story, its peculiarities, its trajectory over time. Eventually, all the oil curves have to end to zero but, in the meantime, there is a lot of wiggling up and down that continues to take us by surprise. Mostly, we didn’t realize how rabidly the system would deny the physical reality of depletion, much preferring to “legislate scarcity” on the basis of pollution.
Here, Antonio Turiel writes a fascinating post telling us how the peak is coming “from below,” affecting first the heavy fraction of crude oil: diesel and fuel oil. That’s already causing enormous problems for the world’s transportation system, as well as for the owners of diesel cars, and the situation will become much more difficult in the near future. The light fraction, the one that produces gasoline, seems to be still immune from peaking, but that will come, too.(U.B.)
The Peak of Diesel Fuel: 2018 edition.
As in the previous two posts, we will use the database of the Joint Oil Data Initiative ( JODI ). This database provides information about most of the world’s oil and refined products, but not all of them. The countries not included are countries with serious internal problems and a great lack of transparency, either because of wars or because they are very tight dictatorships. For this reason, the figures that I will show are around 10% lower than they should be if they were representing the whole world. However, given the characteristics of the excluded countries, it is most likely that their data did not change the observed trends, only the total amounts.
As seen in the graph, the year 2015 marked the maximum so far. There had not been such a marked drop in production since the crisis of 2008-2009, but in the case of the fall of 2015 we find that 1) there has not been a serious global economic recession; 2) the descent is lasting longer and 3) the levels of diesel production show no sign of recovery. Although it is still a little early to ensure that the peak of diesel has occurred, stagnation – even falling – is starting to drag on for too long to be ignored.
Looking at the data of JODI, two other very interesting things are observed. On the one hand, if one analyzes the production of all the fuel oil that is not diesel (fuel oil) it is found that its production has been in decline for years.
As the graph shows, since 2007 (and therefore before the official start of the economic crisis) the production of fuel oils is in decline and it seems to be a perfectly consolidated trend. The diehard economicist interpretation is to consider that there is simply no demand for these fuels (which, although of the same family, are heavier than diesel). When oil is refined, it is subjected to a process called cracking, in which the long molecular chains present in the oil are broken (by means of heat and other processes) and then the molecules are separated by their different properties of fluidity and density. The fact is that if you have made changes in the refineries to crack more oil molecules and get other lighter products (and that is why less heavy fuel oil is produced), those molecules that used to go to heavy fuel oil now go to other products. By logic, taking into account the added value of fuels with longer molecules, it is normal that these heavy fuel oils are undergoing cracking, especially to generate diesel and possibly more kerosene for airplanes and eventually more gasoline. We must not forget that from 2010 the fracking in the USA began to take off, flooding the market with light oil, which is not easy to refine to make diesel. It is therefore quite likely that the refineries have adapted to convert an increasing amount of heavy fuel oil into light fuel oil (diesel). It reinforces this idea that, if we add the volumes of the two previous graphs we have, there is a certain compensation for the trends of diesel production, increasing until 2015, and the long-term trend of decrease of the rest of the fuel oils.
This figure shows that, after the 2008-2009 slump, it has been very hard to raise the total production of fuel oils, which peaked in 2014 and have remained there for almost a year; and at the moment it is suffering a resounding fall (about 2,5 Mb/d from the levels of 2014).
This last observation is quite relevant because if, as you can guess, the industry is cracking less heavy fuel oil to ensure that the production of diesel does not go down too much, the rapid fall of heavy fuel oil will quickly drag down the diesel production. In fact, the graph shows that, after falling in 2015 and 2016, in 2017, it was possible to stabilize the production of all fuel oils, but it is also seen that in recent months there was a quite rapid fall.
Surely, in this shortage, we can start noting the absence of some 2.5 Mb/d of conventional oil (more versatile for refining and therefore more suitable for the production of fuel oil), as we were told by the International Energy Agency in his last annual report . This explains the urgency to get rid of the diesel that has lately shaken the chancelleries of Europe: they hide behind real environmental problems (which have always troubled diesel, but which were always given less than a hoot) to try to make a quick adaptation to a situation of scarcity. A shortage that can be brutal, since no prevention was performed for a situation that has long been seen coming.
The followers of that religion called economic liberalism will insist with all their strength that what is being observed here is a peak of demand, that old argumentative fallacy that does not agree with the data (who can think that people are stopping to consume oil because they want? Maybe because they have better alternatives? Which ones?). They will argue that there is a lower demand for diesel and that this is why production stagnates and that the production of fuel oils drops because, as they are more polluting fuels, the new environmental regulations do not allow their use. It’s a bit of the old problem of who came first, the chicken or the egg. With regard to the fact that the demand for diesel does not increase, prices have a considerable influence: this is how shortages are regulated in a market economy. And, as for the environmental reasons, the production of heavy gas oil has been dropping from 2007, when there was not as much regulatory interest as there seems to be now. There is one aspect of the new regulations that I think is interesting to highlight here: from 2020 onwards, all ships will have to use fuel with a lower sulfur content. Since, typically, the large freighters use very heavy fuel oils, that requirement, they say, makes one fear that a shortage of diesel will occur . In fact, from what we have discussed in this post, what seems to be happening is that heavy fuel oils are declining very fast and ships will have no choice but to switch to diesel. That this is going to cause problems of diesel shortage is more than evident. It is an imminent problem, even more than the peaks in oil prices that, according to what the IEA announces, will appear by 2025.
The second of the interesting things that the JODI data shows us is how the volume produced of all petroleum products has evolved.
he volume produced has been able to continue increasing during these years thanks to the energy subsidy that the US is giving to the world by means of fracking. However, fracking oil only serves to make gasoline and that is why the diesel problem remains. But you can also note how the end of the graph above shows the same trend in the production of diesel, with a drop of more than 2 Mb/d. What does that mean? That the contribution of fracking to the whole volume is also hitting the ceiling, it does not get any higher. It is a further indication that we are already reaching the peak oil of all petroleum liquids.
That is why, dear reader, when you are told that the taxes on your diesel car will be raised in a brutal way, now you know why. Because it is preferred to adjust these imbalances with a mechanism that seems to be a market (although this is actually less free and more adjusted) rather than telling the truth. The fact is that, from now on, what can be expected is a real persecution against cars with an internal combustion engine (gasoline will be next, a few years after diesel). Do not say that you were not notified (and I was not even the first to do it in this blog). And if it does not seem right, maybe what you should do is to demand that your representatives explain the truth.
Regards
AMT
Note: this post was translated from Spanish using Google Translate, which did a pretty good job, necessitating only some retouches — although the result is still somewhat “Spanish-sounding” even in English! One problem is the use of the Spanish terms “gasoil” and “diésel” which may not mean the same thing as they do in English (in Italy, btw, diesel fuel is always termed “gasolio”). But these two terms indicate a very similar entity, even though maybe not identical. So, I reworked Turiel’s text a little in order to use only the term “diesel”.
Bingo!
We have finite resources.
It's interesting that we are so easily confounded by the dynamics of trying to deplete them.
:~\
Very informative articles Dave. I had no idea how bad it was for the average Parisian.
The irony about diesel is that Europe was told to switch to it so save money. Now it is killing them.
Yes.
Some will argue we have untapped reserves and this is true. Still, this is the game of kicking the can down the road.
I am sure these reserves will come in to play in some form or another, but it will still run out unless we come up with other via and practical solutions.
Thank you Perrie.
It seems, these days, so called democratic, representative governments have forgotten the representative part.
It seems in many cases fiat has replaced representation. Which in turn leaves the democratic part to the self imagined and self appointed "smart people" to vote for or against the things they ponder in their small world. In their vacuum?...and for some reason, regardless of platform, too many follow this path once voted in.
I think this is a clear cut case of the "smart people" in "power*" being completely out of touch with the reality of the citizens.
Deep hole and I would tend to think there were many contributors to hod deep and big the hole is.
* Note: JMO, the concept of representatives "being in power" is an oxymoron with regard to representative democratic forms of government.
As for the diesel problem. Looks like they are running out of credit that cracking technology afforded, given current oil producing sources.
Reminds me of the old adage; measure twice, cut once.
It is easier the cut a board (shorten a molecule chain) than extend it (lengthen a molecule).
Not to mention the gymnastics diesel has been put through in the past 20 - 25 years. Prime examples of politicians playing the roles of engineers.
This is becoming a huge problem. Not just at the federal level but at the local level as well.
We had a issue that was put to the vote of the people for redoing one of the oldest and busiest roads in our city. Basically fix the road as is, two lanes each way with one bike path or one lane each way with one turn lane and two bike paths. The public overwhelmingly voted to keep the four lanes option. The elected officials ignored the vote and went with the other option. Basically by paying for a biased urban planner to say the people didn't know what was best for them. Totally nuts!
They were all defeated in the next election but it was too late for that road project. It got done as they wanted it. So congestion has just gotten worse but no worries. The road has two killer bike paths that might be available for use about half the year. I even saw a couple bikes on them the other day ......
Good times ....
That is a prime example of the smart people living in an altruistic vacuum.
Too often, too many forget why classroom examples stay in the classroom.
Is there a social media imprint on these protests to ascertain the organizers?
No idea.
I see fingers quick to blame the right, because one right wing leader came out in support of the protest and against the violence.
In the same article 8 in 10 support the Yellow Jackets. Politics, the never ending game.
Also, as of now, Macron has recently delayed implementation of the taxes.