While they hide the other 100 million they made overseas, paying no taxes at all?
I take your point, but I also think that calling this anti-corruption is more pushback than it is getting the word wrong. I think part of what’s happened over the last few decades is defining corruption down so that if there is no burlap sack with a dollar sign printed on the side, there’s no corruption.
We can’t really define corruption as being only illegal things, because the people who write the laws are the ones who are corrupt. Making legislative decisions to curry favour with a company so they will hire you to their board when your term is up is, to me, completely corrupt. The corrupt people who do it aren’t going to pass a law against it, though.
Funny thing is, a lot of those lawmakers would agree with you about corruption, at least insofar as the behaviour of those lower than them is concerned. When they themselves do it, it’s “just how the system works, you wouldn’t understand, dear.”
It quickly became that, though, because the diesel tax was yet another example of how adherents to the neoliberal consensus always address problems: first through austerity measures on ordinary citizens (in this case a regressive fuel tax) and second (if at all) through placing the burdens on large corporations or on entities of the government itself. For populists of both the right and left this is going to be seen as “corruption and greed”. For those who question “free” market orthodoxy Macron’s bungling yet arrogant of the tax’s implementation looks like Third-Way business as usual.
And so what could have been an opportunity to demonstrate how all of French society – from corporations to government to ordinary citizens – had to contribute and sacrifice in an equitable way to supporting green initiatives instead turned into the genesis of an international movement that’s now attracting right-wing populists and ultra-nationalists and their toxic issues (as well as the anarkiddies of the left who regularly ruin peaceful protests).
It would seem odder to Americans, if most of them could be bothered to consider the world outside their borders as having institutions worthy of emulation. None-the-less, this protest was born in France: a place where the neoliberal aristorcrats of austerity are in the process of cutting or dramatically and suddenly altering some of those services in a particularly arrogant way that’s dismissive of the concerns of ordinary citizens. That sort of behaviour by leaders has never gone over well there.
Yeah, totally. But I guess the real distinction I’m getting at is individual/discrete vs. systemic. “Corruption” carries with it a story about some specific dudes somewhere who are being corrupt, and that’s why everything is unfair. It implies that if we could replace those corrupt people with “pure” people, that things would be OK.
I think if people in France believed that, they would be organizing to go to the polls, rather than burning luxury cars. There seems to be a recognition by at least a lot of the Yellow Vests that the entire structure of society is wrong in a way that transcends individual personalities. I guess you could say it’s corrupted in another sense…
Do you think it’s possible that this particular one shows evidence of the far right trying to co-opt the protests? Wouldn’t be unprecedented for them to do that (in a larger historical context, not just this particular one).
I wonder if there’s a name for the phenomenon of things getting renamed with more exciting and dramatic names over time, because the original name is simply too dull to go viral or get people upset. Calling what they do in France “austerity” is similar to calling what they do in Israel “apartheid” or what’s happening to whites in America “genocide”.
And don’t kid yourselves about the yellow vests. These people consider themselves the “real French”, just like Sarah Palin’s “real Americans.” They are not leftists. Like miners in Kentucky, they want more benefits for themselves, but less for others.
It’s ridiculous. France is a generous state with great social services. Very different from the UK, among others. Yes, unemployment is high, in large part because it is so hard to fire someone. I worked in France for three months (contractor, so not the same thing; one reason they like contractors is to avoid firing), so I have a small experience there. But try to change that, watch the riots happen. It is a real thing that for some people, once they get the job, they know perfectly well they can kick back and do very little… if they want to.
Not that there isn’t a lot of truth to the phenomenon of top-down decision making without regard to consequences. That’s true, and they’d be smart to change that. That’s been in the culture since well before Louis XIV.
It’s more complicated than that. The urban protests tend to be left wing, while the rural protests lean right. Both sides do not want the far-right involved.
Occupy Wall Street did fizzle, because they lacked a focus. Looking at that list of grievances, I think the Yellow Vests will also fizzle out, unless they manage to build up a clear focus and message.
Very definitely it IS happening and part of that is the variance on the reporting of ongoing popular left resistance and this little novelty. We have already had our equivalent of gilet jaunes: the water protests. Water was a synecdoche for what was wrong just as the fuel tax was rather than the thing itself. That was belittled, under reported, and infantalised. People knew what the y were doing and it wasn’t about water but rather the idea of a Republic.
The far right sees fertile ground here as those protests and the huge swing left in voting haven’t achieved much (the traditionally warring center right parties have allied in order to deny the will of the people. This is huge. Traditionally they hate each other more than the left) so there is scope. During the presidential election they cleared their throats with racist populism (mostly focused on travellers who are the traditional butt of racism in Ireland) with encouraging results. The press loved this of course and lapped up that shit like it was ambrosia served on pussy (please forgive me, they treat shit like its the best thing ever) because that is what they do… That is what this is.
It was never going to get a focus because they made two mistakes. They let Ron Paul supporters join in with the socialists, then they insisted on consensus politics.
