Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/12/23/everybody-knows-2.html
…
1 Like
When Occupy fizzled, many people said that the momentum had broken. But that’s not how change works. Change is a scalloped growth curve
This reminds me of the growth curves of some technologies in their early stages. Occupy fizzled because it was an “alpha-stage” movement, with all the fumbling and incoherence and dead-ends that implies. However, it was successful in one critical respect: making “economic inequality” a household phrase in the West where before it was verboten as a discussion topic in the MSM and popular culture.
The Yellow Vest protests are shaping up to be the beta version which builds on the first iteration. As with all beta tests, the broader group of “end-users” means that some of them will use the “tech” for different ends than originally intended. The attempts by right-wing populists to hijack the protests in France might be considered an example of this. The fact that they got pushed back and pushed out is an encouraging sign.
9 Likes
Occupy didn’t “fizzle.” It was drowned out by the most intense, sustained propaganda campaign I’ve ever seen. That includes Election 2016. Why do you suppose the media worked so hard to silence them?
16 Likes
I don’t understand French politics enough to grok this - got a link or anything that can help?
1 Like
Something that should really terrify the elite - Occupy is the only movement I’ve seen in a long time that had ‘trumpanzies’ and ‘libtards’ both in agreement with each other.
That message has yet to play out and once the rubes realize that orange cheezus wasn’t going to be the answer I feel like the backlash will be harsh.
The good news was that when these scumbags showed up the left-wing protesters chased them away, in some cases literally.
It’s not just French politics, though. A leaderless and nebulous populist movement against the corruption and greed of political and economic elites provides an opening for right-wing entryists. For example, here’s an article I read the other day:
7 Likes
I live in the US - trust me when i say I believe.
The root of all these movements is the same though - wages aren’t high enough to cover the bills - it’s why you see people around where I live freak out over a 7% real estate tax increase (avg increase of 4 dollars a year per house) - because everyone is so stretched out there is nothing left to give.
Meanwhile the rich are all bitching because they only get to keep 7 million out of the last 8 they made.
3 Likes
Definitely. It’s just important to keep in mind that, here or in France or Canada, the populist response to this situation is not necessarily going to be a progressive one.
For example, the spark of the protests in France was higher fuel taxes that were (supposedly) going to be applied to green initiatives. Macron was cack-handed in their implementation (as one would expect from a neoliberal aristocrat of austerity), but even taking the FN entryists out of the picture, some of the rhetoric on the ground amounted to “screw the environment, I can’t afford to commute to work or run my small business.” Which isn’t too far off from the kind of thing you hear from Il Douche’s supporters.
5 Likes
Collectively, this could be called “anti-corruption.”
Corruption implies officials taking bribes, stealing, and otherwise violating the laws which dictate how they do their job. Most of what’s ruining our lives isn’t individual officials breaking the law, though, it’s the system working exactly as it’s supposed to - perfectly legal and aboveboard.
More accurately (but less serious-sounding) it could be called “anti-unfairness”. People are upset that society is unfair. Rewards go to those who don’t deserve them, and meanwhile people who need basics can’t get them. We were promised that democracy and capitalism would reward hard work and honest dealing, and instead it’s doing the opposite. It’s not fair.
6 Likes
UK too; as well as the one below, there have been a number of pro-brexit demonstrations involving yellow vests.
3 Likes
3 Likes
The people organising these protests in Ireland are part of the far-right. Please update the post to reflect this:
4 Likes
At first it was a taxpayer protest. Very specifically against the diesel tax. Not about corruption, not about generic greed, not about elites or anything like that. There was an Italian reaction - they were incredulous about French people protesting, when they have some of the most generous social services on the continent.
3 Likes
Watched this earlier today and oh yes there are a lot of boarded up and otherwise locked up empty houses and buildings in this video footage taken in Dublin.
4 Likes
Yellow vests in the UK and Ireland are the equivalent of Q-anon badges. White-supremacist White Pendragons, neo-nazis, all the trash coming out of the woodwork.
So I actually wound up at this protest. I had no idea it was actually happening, we had house guests at the weekend, were showing them around town, and the protest was there. We’re opposed to the violent evictions that have happened and so walked along the end of their route.
I can’t say for sure that the organisers weren’t right-wing - the speakers used a megaphone and were totally incomprehensible, but there were definitely some hardline Republicans in the crowd (by the Irish definition of the term, not the American one), one guy sang verses of Rebel songs through a megaphone, and I saw a large Irish Republic flag for example. But there were also people flying Communist flags.
There was definitely some crank magnetism going on, I saw a group of Chemtrail conspiracy theorists in there.
5 Likes
Remember that the agreement is only superficial. The solutions offered by each side are incompatible in a way that they can’t come to any compromise on.
You can’t meet in the middle when one side is calling for ethnic cleansing. A ‘half-genocide’ is still genocide.
5 Likes
The organisers are right wing, anti-islam, and anti-migrant. Their personal social media posts show this.
1 Like
Worth pointing out that the article in Broadsheet (which is somewhat controversial in my circles for courting far right hits) starts off about People Before Profit - a solid left party. Protests have been ongoing in Ireland for years. Sometimes involving police brutality, cack handedness and political prosecutions of protestors. There are constant protests and have been for years. And they are left led. There has been a housing protest once or twice a week foe the last several months. There was an occupation of a commercial buklding squatted into homeless apartments this time last year. There are bigger things than this on every weekend and they are left wing protests. This is just the media focusing on the their favourite topic: the far right.
1 Like
There was definitely a nationalist vibe at the rally, and looking at what’s publicly accessible on the organiser’s facebook shows they have anti-migrant support at least. I’m definitely waiting to see what happens next with their movement overall, but it’s worth noting that the water protests were organised by progressives and yet would have had support from a lot of the people who were on the street on Saturday.
I’ve become increasingly skeptical about Broadsheet in the last year or two. One of the admins has gone deep into conspiracy theory territory, the editorials they have frequently feel like scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of writing quality, and their unwillingness or inability to moderate the comments have turned them into a cesspit.
2 Likes
