Street Fighting Man

The Yellow Vests, like Occupy, are yet another post-modern example of what Mark Fisher described as "ideological rubble" and the images coming out of Paris coincide perfectly with this descriptor. For several days none of the commentariat was willing to hazard an analysis; interviews of participants made clear it was mostly carnivalesque riot in the old French tradition, but because it ostensibly stemmed from a raise in gas taxes, a little political meaning could be attached. depending. Like Occupy, it is the perfect empty signifier, a revolt or rebellion based on wide-ranging grievances, lacking unified manifestos or spokesmen and any consensus is arrived post-event by pundits with their own cause to promote.

The leftist Edourd Louis sees a popular rather than populist formation, but what are these "popular classes" he sees,and does this "rural poor" display any more class-belonging than they do here in the US? Noting the instances of racist and homophobic speech, Louis claims it is "our responsibility to transform this language" into something emancipatory, but this is tricky business at best. It takes slogans and coalescing around demands. Those who still find hope in a vague "horizontalism" or the fact the yellow vests haven't been "hijacked" by established political parties could find the movement disappears as rapidly as it formed.

Less optimistic observers like Daniel Cohn-Bendit see a populist right revolt against "the political class", whatever that is. This would be in line with global trends of rising resentment and fear of the unknown. In either case, it is a movement against. Maybe the problem is the "1%", maybe it is migrants, maybe it is access to credit. Maybe it just feels good to smash something on the weekend, before going back to some bullshit job.

In any case, I can imagine the cops taking this as a practice run for when the real food riots break out. It is increasingly a shadowy line between order and breakdown and I wonder if the fact that in the US the "rural poor" are so well armed that it actually contains and subdues them in some strange, counter-intuitive way?