The instigator of the French Riots

 

The MSM can be very coy when deciding what is and what isn’t ‘news’, especially ‘news’ deserving to be on their front pages. Firstly, look at this morning’s collection, headlined by good old BBC ‘Staff’: “Newspaper headlines: ‘No tax cuts in 2023’ and TikTok facing US ban” (link). Well, we knew about ‘no tax cuts’ already. Why we ought to be interested in US politics I don’t know. Perhaps it’s because “we” also love TikTok?

There’s one piece of foreign news however which ought to have claimed the top spot of the front pages but didn’t. I suppose we can be grateful that it can at least be found online, under “World News”. It’s about France where the French have been rioting since Macron used a parliamentary trick to raise the French retirement age from 62 to 64.

And so, as riots took place across France yesterday, we’re told that the front door of the town hall in Bordeaux went up in flames. Here is the non-paywalled report by the BBC. There’s also a brief report in the DT where us ignorant plebs are told briefly why the Frogs are revolting (all emphases are mine):

“The uproar over the imposition of the [pensions] reforms – which the government chose to push through without a parliamentary vote – has turned into the biggest domestic crisis of Macron’s second term in office.” (paywalled link)

If you wonder why our Westminster news editors saw fit to report on this particular demo  – wonder no longer: King Charles and Consort planned to visit Bordeaux next week. Meanwhile, The Times editors have put a bit more effort into their report, mentioning that French Trade Unions have been organising strikes for weeks.

Why should we’ve been told about that? After all, we’ve had our own strikes – no riots – which nobody has been taken notice of . However, now it’s not just Paris where the usual images of fire and mayhem are shown:

“An increasingly violent and radical protest movement was emerging against President Macron’s unpopular plan to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64, as more than one million people — a figure confirmed by the government — took to the streets across France to vent their anger.” (link, paywalled)

‘Government figures’ of any demo, never mind actual riots, are always underestimating the number of people protesting. You can imagine how many French took to the streets when you look at this list of towns and cities:

“In Paris tens of thousands of people took part in a march from the Bastille, where the 1789 revolution started. […] In Bordeaux, which the King is due to visit next week, demonstrators fought with police and set fire to the city hall’s front door. In Lorient, a usually quiet fishing port in Brittany, activists sought to storm a government building and to set fire to the town’s police station. […] In Nantes, on the Atlantic coast, activists tried to invade the administrative court, smashing down the front door before being beaten back by police. There was also violence in Rennes in Brittany, Rouen in Normandy and Bayonne in the southwest, […]” (link, paywalled)

That’s pretty much everywhere. These protests demonstrate that it’s no longer about economics, i.e. the rise in pension age. It is about political leaders, here Macron, acting like a proper tinpot dictator by disregarding not just the will of the people but his own parliament:

“The union campaign began in January but has descended into political and social chaos after the president’s decision to use executive powers to deprive MPs of a vote on the legislation last week.” (link, paywalled)

We may shrug our shoulders here in Blighty because the Frogs always riot. We may shrug our shoulders because we’ve been made to work much longer before we receive our state pension. There is however a scary interpretation for Macron’s pension reform, made in an outstanding essay which tumbled into my inbox two days ago:

“[…] it’s about making them [older French people] wait longer to collect a pension in the hope, brutally, that they will die. What to do with an increasingly elderly population more and more confined to institutions, is a problem that no French government has yet faced up to, so why not just help them to die earlier, and so reduce the size of the problem?” (link)

I highly recommend reading the whole essay! It is long but gives a much-needed analysis of French politics, placed into the historical context. The concluding paragraph of this piece, published on 22nd March, was rather prophetic:

“So things may be about to get distinctly kinetic, in a country with a reputation for a vigorous and lively form of street politics. And whilst there are specificities to the French case, most of the complaints are also international. It’s interesting to speculate who might be next.” (link)

Well, ‘things’ won’t get ‘kinetic’ over here. We don’t do that sort of thing. It’s only Antifa and other lefty groups who love smashing things up when ‘fighting’ against demos they declare to be ‘fascist’. Somehow I don’t see our own Trade Unions rioting when a Starmer government implements a “tax raid on savings and investments” (paywalled link) because that’ll hit only the rich toffs.

That’s all I have for today. Riots because a president deprived his Parliament of their vote on legislation affecting the people? Whatever next! It’s not going to happen here because our own ‘leaders’ know how to give a semblance of ‘democracy’. It’s not difficult when there’s only the Uniparty and no opposition. Have a good day.



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