Mick Hartley

Baffled by what's going on in Paris, with the Gilets Jaunes? Claire Berlinski takes apart the contradictions and absurdities:

The Gilets Jaunes’ complaints are incoherent because they do not, truly, have a complaint that the government could possibly solve. They are consumed by resentment and the sense that other people are having a better time than they are. Getting together once a week to be a cheerful mob is an end in itself. They love their Saturday get-togethers. They are like play-dates.

The colère makes much more sense if we assume that the issue is psychological, not economic. But that doesn’t mean this can go on. They are having this fun at the expense of the rest of France, and the rest of Europe, as well.[…]

If the mass of the Gilets Jaunes have no firm ideas, politically or economically, nor an allegiance to a political party, France’s political radicals certainly do. The Gilets Jaunes are fertile minds and very useful idiots. The shared goals of France’s far Left and far Right are to end the European Union, realign France with Russia, and destroy NATO. Under normal circumstances, American headlines would read, “Backed by Vladimir Putin, France’s far Right and far Left have joined forces violently to destroy the French Republic.” That is not an exaggeration, but such matters no longer seem to rank as news in the United States. Americans would traditionally consider a threat to France contrary to our ideals and interests, but we are distracted these days. […]

The Gilets Jaunes are not behaving this way because they want to talk things over. Nor are they behaving this way because they have legitimate grievances. The French peasants are not starving and crying out for bread. Macron is not Marie Antoinette. This is not about the fuel tax, and it’s not about the cost of living either. No one knows what’s really causing this. It is hard for rational people to find reasons for irrational behavior. Obviously, however, whatever the reasons are, it is not what the perpetrators say it is.

There is, however, one obvious possibility. The Gilets Jaunes are behaving this way because they like it. The more violence they see, participate in, and hear about, the more excited they become at the prospect of it. When they see video clips of thugs attacking and overpowering the police, it does not make them think, “My God, that is terrible, where did our movement go wrong?” No “last men” here.

Those who were inclined to that reaction, or revulsion, have already left the scene. They had it when the Arc de Triomphe was desecrated during the third week of protests. Peace requires a Leviathan. But they have since seen that the Leviathan doesn’t have enough cops.

Destroying France will not meet anyone’s needs, of course. But the simplest logical calculations do not seem obvious to those afflicted with this unnamable problem. We’re living in a strange era where the obvious, even the axiomatic principles of civilization, are no longer obvious. Reason no longer counts. This worries me.

If you had asked me three years ago who would lead a violent uprising against the French Republic, I would have said, “The same people who attacked Charlie Hebdo. Obviously.” But the Islamists are, so far, sitting this one out. They’re not gone, although many did leave to join ISIS, and few are ever coming back. But more likely, they are waiting. After all, as Napoléon reminds us: Never interfere with an enemy in the process of destroying himself.