The Yellow Vests protests in France against increases in fuel prices and living costs actually began on Nov 17, before the violence in Paris on Saturday (Dec 1).
The protests take their name from the yellow reflective jackets all motorists in France must carry in their vehicles.
The spontaneous citizens’ movement began to oppose rising fuel taxes but it has shifted into a much broader movement about inequality and poor living standards, reported The Guardian.
The target of their anger has been the French government and French president Emmanuel Macron.
Slogans on during the Saturday protests across France slammed the centrist, pro-business president as a symbol of an elite cut off from the people.
According to the Interior Ministry, around 75,000 people had joined protests across the country, reported German news site DW.
The Yellow Vests enjoy widespread support in France, with an opinion poll published on Nov 28 showing that two in three people backed the rallies, despite the disruption they have caused to traffic and the economy.
Earlier this year, Macron announced tax increases on fuel, due to be implemented in January, reported Citylab, an environment and design news site.
The proposed tax hikes are €0.029 (RM0.14 or 14sen) per liter of petrol and €0.065 per liter (RM0.31 or 31sen) of diesel.
These taxes come after already steep rises in fuel costs over the past few years, leaving the government open to accusations that it is squeezing already stretched workers in a way that shows indifference to their living conditions.
The Yellow Vest protests began over the weekend of Nov 17 - 18, with over 280,000 protesters taking to the streets in urban, suburban, and rural communities across the country, burning cars, blockading highways and fuel depots, and engaging in battles with police.
Anti-elite protests
The anti-elite slant of the most recent protests on Saturday (Dec 1) was evident in Paris.
Masked men burned barricades, set fire to buildings, smashed fences and torched luxury cars on some of the most expensive streets in the city near the famous Arc de Triomphe, as riot police fired tear gas and water cannon, reported The Guardian.
Luxury department stores on Boulevard Haussmann were evacuated as cars were burnt and windows smashed. On the Place Vendôme, a hub of luxury jewellery shops and designer stores, rioters smashed windows and built barricades.
The symbolism of the day’s violence was powerful.
"A modern-day peasants’ and workers’ revolt against a president increasingly disdained for his regal remove turned the country’s richest boulevards and most prominent landmarks into veritable war zones," reported The New York Times.
It took two weeks after the first protests (on Nov 17 - 18) before the government, which had been giving the demonstrators a cold shoulder, agreed to meet with them.
Macron said last week that he understood the anger people felt over the rise in fuel tax.
He promised three months of national talks on how to transform France into a low-carbon economy without penalising people on low incomes who had to drive to work.
Government officials had also offered to increase subsidies for buying (new) fuel-efficient cars and installing less-polluting home heating systems, but the protesters said they could not even afford to buy such cars, despite subsidies.
Macron has already pledged to ban all gasoline-fueled cars by 2040, and it seems that local authorities are getting on board with the changes needed to meet that goal. This month, most of the Paris region pledged to start phasing out all but the newest diesel and gas-fueled vehicles.
In protesting the government’s planned fuel tax rises, the Yellow Vests have avoided an explicitly anti-environmental stance, reported Citylab.
They have pointed out that, while the tax rises are being presented partly as a form of carbon tax, only 20 percent of the tax actually goes toward supporting the country’s transition to cleaner energy.
Infiltrated by extremists?
The Yellow Vests are a grassroots mass protest movement with no explicit wider political agenda or links to existing groups.
They have organised themselves via social media since May (when the movement was sparked by an online petition), with no clear leader and have arrived "somewhat out of the blue".
However, they have since gained the support of both leftist presidential hopeful Jean-Luc Mélenchon and some representatives of the right-wing Republican Party.
Given the movement’s lack of explicit politics, there is a risk of it being hijacked.
Macron himself was careful to distinguish between the many peaceful demonstrators and the others who were violent.
He said that the peaceful demonstrators had legitimate concerns and he would hear their anger, The Guardian reported him as saying.
But he added that their demonstrations across the country on Saturday had also been infiltrated by violent rioters who would be brought to trial in court.
Macron, who was attending the G20 summit in Buenos Aires, said he would lead an emergency meeting of senior government ministers after returning to Paris on Sunday (Dec 2) morning.
Authorities on Saturday stressed the difference between peaceful protesters who marched along some Paris streets on Saturday morning, singing and waving flags, and the violent clashes that followed.
Earlier in the day, about 5,000 Yellow Vests marched down peacefully along the Champs Élysées at midday, some carrying roses, many shouting: “Macron, resign!” and singing the national anthem.
But as Saturday wore on, the situation deteriorated.
The interior minister, Christophe Castaner, said thousands of “professionals at causing disorder” unconnected to the peaceful demonstrations had infiltrated the initial protests.
Authorities suggested extreme-right and extreme-left militants were involved in the rioting.
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