France's elected monarch concocted this "Debate," whose limits were set in advance (taxing the rich and the corporations was off the table), as his "answer" to the Yellow Vests' demand for participatory democracy. The results were unsurprising: the French want "lower taxes, no cuts to services" (NYT April 9). Asked if the "Great Debate" was a "success for Macron and his government," only 6% of those polled by BFM-TV answered "yes." Another poll revealed that 35% of French people still approve the Yellow Vests (down from 70% last December) while only 29% approve of Macron.
PR aside, the Macron government's real answer to public opposition posed by the Yellow Vests has been brutally stark: slander, violent repression and strict new laws limiting the right to demonstrate - a right enshrined in the Declaration of Human Rights and the French Constitution. Macron and his ministers have publicly denounced the Yellow Vests as "anti-Semites," "fascists," "a hateful mob," and a violent conspiracy of "40-50,000" terrorists "of the extreme left and extreme right," out to destroy French institutions.
This vicious caricature, echoed endlessly by the media and reinforced by scary images of violence and vandalism against the symbols of wealth and power in Paris, is designed to dehumanize the protesters, otherwise easily recognizable as poor provincials who are tired of being ignored. Thus demonized, the Yellow Vests' actual demands for dignity and justice can be ignored. As a threat to France, they must be repressed by any means necessary.
Since November 2018, when the Yellow Vest movement suddenly sprung up 300,00 strong, the government has unleashed unprecedented police brutality, using military grade weapons against unarmed demonstrators, provoking hundreds of serious injuries (including blindings, loss of limbs, and broken faces). Although invisible on French mainstream media (government subsidized and corporate owned), this French government violence has been repeatedly condemned by human rights panels in France and the European Union, as well as by Michelle Bachelet, former President of Chile and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
On Saturday March 23, as President Macron was visiting the Riviera, 73 year-old Genià �ve Legay, local spokesperson ATTAC (the 20-year-old international NGO that proposes taxing financial transactions for social purposes) joined the Yellow Vest demonstration at Nice to speak out against this repression. Interviewed on local TV carrying a rainbow peace flag, she declared "We are here to say we have the right to demonstrate "We will leave this square when we choose. And if they use force" Then we'll see. I'm not afraid. I'm 73 years old, what could happen to me? I'm fighting for my grand-children. Against tax havens, and all the money the banks are laundering, against fossil energy."
Moments later, Police Commander Souchi ordered his heavily armed riot police to charge the peaceful group in which Genevià �ve Legay was standing, and she found herself on the ground, surrounded by riot cops, bleeding profusely, with a cracked skull and broken ribs. She is still in the hospital with serious injuries.
On Monday, the Public Prosecutor and President Macron categorically denied that she had had any contact with the police, and the President, interviewed by the local paper, made a hypocritical apology, "wishing her a speedy recovery and hoping that she might learn some 'sagesse" (literally "wisdom" but typically applied to children in the sense of learning to "behave.")
According to the President of France, as a fragile elderly person Mme Legay should have known better than to go out to the square in the first place, and so had got herself trampled in the crowd. (The haughty Macron, like the arrogant Trump, seems to enjoy adding insult to injury.) But, as her TV interview makes clear, Genevià �ve Legay knew very well she was risking her life to defend the democratic freedom to demonstrate and foresaw such an attack moments before it was ordered by police Commander Souchi.
Indeed, videos taken on the spot and the testimony of street-medics and other eyewitnesses (including policemen) told a different story. Apparently a policeman wielding a had shield hit her in the head and knocked her down, whereupon he and other cops stridled her and dragged her away bleeding, refusing to allow street-medics to attend her. They may also have kicked her when she was down, which would explain her cracked ribs.
Later, police entered her hospital room, where Mme Legay was alone (her daughters having been barred without explanation). They repeatedly tried to get Mme Legay to admit that a "cameraman" had pushed her down, but when she repeated that it was a policeman, they stopped taking notes.
Meanwhile, videos of the attack were all over the Internet, and the independent, subscriber-supported news site Me'diapart gathered eyewitness evidence and presented it to the Public Prosecutor, who on March 29 was obliged to reverse himself and affirm police involvement.
Then, on April 8, Me'diapart exposed the deliberate official cover-up of this attack. It turns out that the person placed in charge of the investigation, He'là �ne P, one of the policewoman who had pressured Mme Legay in her hospital room to declare that she had been pushed down by a "cameraman," was none other than the common-law wife of Commander Souchi, who had shouted the order to "Charge! Charge!" at the peaceful group in which Mme Legay was standing.
This scandal has finally broken official silence on French police brutality after five months of violent, indiscriminate attacks on Yellow Vests - visible on YouTube but not on TV. Even the death, during a housing demonstration in Marseille, of Zaineb Redouane, an 80 year-old woman who was killed on Dec. 4 at her upstairs window when shot directly in the face with tear-gas grenade, went unacknowledged. (She was only an Algerian.)
Macron's Lies and Cover-upsThus, the President of the Republic was caught outright lying to cover up police brutality. Not as strange as one might think, given the scandal that has clung to him like a tick since last summer, also uncovered by Me'diapart, is the Benalla Affair - named for Macron's Security Chief, who last year was captured on a video, wearing a borrowed riot police uniform, viciously clubbing a demonstrator lying on the ground - apparently for the fun of it. It then emerged that Macron's prote'ge' and left-hand man Benalla was also involved in a variety of international intrigues and scams, which continue tarnish Macron's Mister Clean image in France as new evidence emerges.
Nonetheless, Macron, a former Socialist, is still seen internationally as a progressive, democratic leader, efficiently modernizing France's archaic "exception" to neo-liberal dogma, basically a friend to human rights. The extraordinary violence of his regime has remained hidden behind a smokescreen of demonization of the Yellow Vests and de facto censorship by the mainstream media. Even the liberal New York Review of Books, which in the 60s printed a diagram of a Molotov cocktail on its front page, has clung to this line, placing the blame for "violence" on the protestors. So before leaving this subject, let's look at some unpleasant statistics and then examine the role of the Black Block of so-called casseurs ("trashers") in sustaining this image.
Whose Violence?The official narrative is that the Yellow Vests have been attacking the forces of order, and indeed they are often seen on TV throwing teargas canisters back at the police. Interior Minister Castener has been categorical: "I know of no policeman who has attacked the Yellow Vests." Here are the statistics.
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