Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/02/26/vest-on-vest-conflict.html
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Seems like, in the UK, the right, specifically those fuckers at the EDL, were the first ape the “Yellow Vest” movement. I’m surprised if anyone on the left wanted to associate themselves with that shitshow.
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Thanks for posting this. It’s another reminder that populism is not an exclusively left-wing phenomenon, and that fascists, xenophobes, and other right-wing and authoritarian entryists are always looking for a way to slime their way into and co-opt these anti-elitist movements and their symbols.
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Yeah, here in Alberta it’s an entirely right-wing populist movement, ranging from right of centre but not lunatics, to openly calling whole ethnicities trash / UN NWO conspiracy nonsense / calling for hanging the prime minister for treason because he’s following the law regarding refugee claimants.
And of course the YV guy in BC who recently got busted for pulling a gun on a neighbour who had offered to help him look for his dog, and when the cops searched his house they found so many assault weapons it took three pickup truck trips to bring them all back to the station.
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One issue that a lot of racists do have is a sense of disenfranchisement. Nobody feels as threatened as the racists.
In Canada, we had this group called the reform party that was started by this guy called Preston Manning (just to be clear, Preston Manning was never a racist, and his political party never ran on racist platforms).
The problem that occurred is that as a party founded in (really white, and reputationally conservative) Alberta as a protest party, the Reform party of Canada wound up getting a lot of racists trying to dial in and make it their party. (This racist flocking problem would not have happened if the party had been founded in Ontario by someone like the current head of the NDP like Jagmit Singh who is Sikh, because the racists would have seen brown and fled).
The flocking of racists was a huge headache for the Reform party, and a public relations nightmare. It took a while for them to sort this out.
I view the racists glomming onto the Yellow Jacket movement in much the same light, but there is no party leader that can specifically message that the Yellowjacket movement has no place for the racists… A lot of people feel disenfranchised, and the racists feel that they identify with the sense of disenfranchisement, and use the momentum of a movement to speak their views and implement their policies. The fact that it is so free form, means that everybody feels they can interpret the movement in their own light/vision.
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Back in the day, there were all kinds of right wing militia and conspiracy types claiming to represent Anonymous on YouTube. I think Alex Jones was trying that for a while. Yeah, no thanks buddy.
It looks like Yellow Vests Canada are from that bunch too.
(I guess it makes sense that it’s a habit with them. They already claim to represent that large group called “white people”.)
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The kindest and most accurate way to think of political racists is as literal dogs. Their thinking begins and ends with pack loyalty, and everything else is as far over their heads as a quantum mechanics lecture directed at a Chihuahua. So if they see a white person saying “we want a new politics that includes everyone”, all they will hear is “join my pack and we will bark at outsiders together”.
And it’s hard for earnest left-wingers to turn someone away simply for being a wretched, pathetic moron – that’s an oppressor move – so at the grassroots level you will sometimes see woke types forcing themselves to tolerate ignorant scum out of a misplaced sense of inclusiveness. It’s very difficult to be a progressive without blinding yourself to how stupid and horrible 20-40% of ordinary people really are.
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And now there is the PPC, after Reform shifted into the Conservative Party and the Conservatives shifted even righter and more racist, but not enough far-Right and racist for Maxime Bernier.
If you don’t deal with the racists swiftly and decisively, they will take over. As is evident with the yellow vests.
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The UK Light-Brownshirt contingent has attracted the White Pendragons (which is to say, white-trash-supremacists).
And through pathways that are entertaining, but too complex to summarise easily, it has attracted a circus of loons who fly a fringe emblem of New Zealand Maori sovereignty - the 1835 flag of the United Tribes - in the conviction that this symbolises the illegitimacy of the UK Gubblement. I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP.
Still not making this up!
The more details you discover of their conspiracist, apocalyptic belief system, the easier it is to believe that we are all living in one of Cory’s as-yet-unwritten novels.
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Hmm you’d think the Eureka flag would be more appropriate, as it has actually been used to challenge the British government.
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We clearly know some of the same people.
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The way I understand Adam Curtis he is sceptical of the spontaneous mass uprisings of the 00s - Arab Spring, colour revolutions etc. In HyperNormalisation there are examples of how FB organised revolt without significant prior debate and organisation quickly can turn nasty.
EDIT: I am trying to find an old BoingBoing post where Cory (if I recall correctly) was applauding Gene Sharp and how his “handbook” had enabled the many colour revolutions in former USSR republics. The more spontaneous the better!
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The far right has always tried to disguise themselves into a people’s movement. Remember that the nazi party was officially called “national socialism”. Therefore, if there is a somewhat spontaneous uprising of disenfranchised people, as I believe the French yellow vest movement is, the far right will try to use it to their advantage.
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Look at the English Tory party…
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Forgive me for not following these stories or really understanding the whole thing, but reading some of these comments made me think of what the Democratic Party, which had become essentially the more populist party, went through in the civil rights era in the 60s - specifically they had to decide whether they would ignore or repudiate racism. They eventually did repudiate it and it lost them the south for generations. (It was obviously the right thing to do). I just mean, this seems to be a reoccurring dilemma…
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As you already mentioned AfD: This party is a great example how radical forces can hijack a movement. In the beginning, AfD was “just another” very conservative party (anti-EU, anti-Euro, yada yada), but mainly with a focus on financial autonomy of Germany. But over the course of several chairmen/women, it swerved more and more to the right and into extremism, and now has openly nationalistic factions.
AfD has taken in people from other right movements/parties like Pegida, NPD, Identitäre. But suprisingly, they have also attracted people who voted left (e.g. Die Linke or the Greens). Some people don’t seem to care about the actual politics they support, as long as it promisses simple solutions and opposes the establishment.
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Meh. If you don’t have a least some guiding principles, it’s not a movement, it’s a pudding.
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It’s not precisely on topic, but I’ll share a personal observation.
We’ve been in France since early December, just a few weeks after the protests began. At the beginning, I noticed many, many cars – maybe 70 or 80 percent – with their “gilet jaune” displayed on top of the dashboard as a symbol of solidarity with the movement. In the past week, it occurred to me that the proportion of cars still sporting that symbol has declined dramatically, to perhaps just one car in twenty.
I’m not sure what to make of the shift, but it’s certainly been dramatic.
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Much like UKIP, the AfD was full of all of that kind of stuff from the outset. And like UKIP over time, they have become less and less able/willing to put a facade over it.
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It was bad enough when those assholes in Charlottesville ruined Khaki pants and Tiki Torches. Now crossing guards can’t go to work without making people wonder if they’re associated with fascists.
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