Is "Bloquons tout" really season 2 of the gilets jaunes?
Social protest and political crisis. Between echoes of recent struggles and persistent political tensions, "Bloquons tout" reveals the fragility of a representative system faced with multiple social angers.
François Buton, ENS Lyon and Emmanuelle Reungoat, University of Montpellier
Launched in July, the "September 10 movement" or "Bloquons tout" is the object of much attention from society, the government, the political class, the media, territorial intelligence. Several elements of this movement clearly echo that of the gilets jaunes, which occurred in November 2018. It's a mobilization from below, launched by various already-organized groups but amplified by social networks (especially Telegram), without leadership but structured by websites(Indignons-nous and Les essentiels, which show from the outset a strong heterogeneity between protesters who are rather sovereignists and defenders of a Christian France and others claiming to be radical leftists.
Opposition to the draft budget
While the mobilization presents numerous, more or less elaborate demands, it is at first sight motivated by purchasing power and the denunciation of inequalities: opposition to Prime Minister François Bayrou's draft budget, denounced for making workers, the unemployed, wage earners, the precarious and the sick bear the burden of deficit reduction (40 billion euros in savings), echoes the yellow vests' sense of injustice at the announcement of a new fuel tax. The Finance Bill is criticized by all political forces opposed to the government, and seems poorly received by the population, which supports the forthcoming movement, if a widely quoted poll conducted on August 20 and 21 (Toluna Harris Interactive for RTL) is to be believed.
Thus, 59% of French people support the objective of reducing public spending, but 63% support the movement (70% in favor of demonstrations, 58% in favor of blockades), with 75% opposing the abolition of 2 public holidays and 71% in favor of a "solidarity contribution paid by the wealthiest French people". For several weeks now, the organization of local assemblies, the production of maps of upcoming rallies, and the variety of modes of action envisaged (from civil disobedience to blockades of production sites) have also been reminiscent of the 2018 mobilization.
Yellow vests and other struggles
The comparison with the gilets jaunes therefore makes sense, and doesn't fail to be made in the comments: the gilets jaunes are on "everyone's mind", as positive or negative models, as reasons for hope or concern. For us, who have worked on this movement for a long time, the comparison is relevant but tricky to handle. The term-by-term comparison should not make us forget the historicity of the struggles: the yellow vests are a precedent, the potential protesters of September 10 were able to take part, acquire protest know-how, and learn lessons about the effectiveness of the movement's actions, its limits or impasses, its duration or the repression suffered.
But the history of struggles is rich in other protests, both earlier(Nuit debout) and especially later than 2018: huge demonstrations in opposition to pension reform, farmers' protests (some "in yellow bonnets"), occupations against motorway projects (A 69) or agricultural projects (Sainte-Soline), various strikes, the movement opposing the health pass, or the equally huge petition (over 2 million signatories) against the Duplomb law last July. It is therefore necessary to take into account the respective lessons learned from all these mobilizations in what is being prepared for September 10 in different parts of the country.
Comparing the "profiles" of yellow vests and potential "blockers" is no easier, not only because by definition we don't yet know the blockers, but at best some of those who mobilize on social networks and agree to answer questionnaires, or those who meet in assemblies, but also because we have yet to define who was a yellow vest before presenting their profiles.
The vests are there, but not all of them
In our own surveys, for example, we chose to focus on "super Gilets", most often primocontestants, intensely committed (sometimes wholeheartedly), and for a long time (some still are!) to a local group. These Gilets are not representative of the movement as a whole, where others were more experienced activists, and the vast majority of whom only took part in a few acts or assemblies: surveys estimate the number of citizens who took part in at least one yellow vest action in 2018-2019 at 3 million.
When we contact them to ask what they think of "Bloquons tout", what they're doing and what they plan to do, the answers are highly variable. Some, decked out in their vests, have taken to local assemblies or Telegram loops as they have done in most protests over the past 7 years; others, on the contrary, are following from near or far, waiting to see, disgusted by the supposed political "recuperation", skeptical about the chances of success of yet another protest in the streets, or chilled by the lack of public support and the harshness of the repression, including judicial, during the 2018 movement ("let the others get wet").
Many attitudes are possible, which we can finely explain in each case, but which we know do not represent all "the" yellow vests. One thing is certain: some yellow vests are there, and others are ready to participate.
But a major difference with the gilets jaunes, precisely because of their anteriority, lies in the media hyper-attention at work over the past few weeks for the "Bloquons tout" movement. While forgetting to mention the protesters' immense mistrust of them (we're betting the theme will return with the first demonstrations), the media are massively covering the preparation, asking it the usual questions: who are the blockers, who may embody the movement or even be its leaders, who's "hiding behind it", what do they want, what to expect, even what to fear? The media's hyper-attention has undoubtedly had the effect of jostling political and union leaders of all stripes, when they hadn't taken the lead.
Beyond "recovery
Another major difference with 2018, when the parties and unions ignored or even condemned November 17, lies in the early politicization of the coming protest. For us, the term, which has several meanings, does not refer to the "recuperation" of the movement by this or that political force - an expression widely used, but which falls into a stigmatizing political category. Rather, it refers to the idea that all the forces in the political arena agree, beyond their differences, to redefine the movement and its demands as political, i.e. as falling within the scope of "political" democracy (elected representatives and parties) and "social" democracy (trade unions). On the one hand, the confederations are calling for another "massive mobilization" on September 18, amplifying the strikes announced here and there; on the other, since the "political re-entry" of the summer universities in mid-August, party leaders have been speaking out in support of or against the movement, and discussing the legitimacy of its demands and modes of action.
The most spectacular political move was obviously made by Prime Minister François Bayrou , who announced on August 25 that he was committing his government by requesting a vote of confidence from the Assembly on September 8 on his disputed finance bill. This spectacular decision allowed the political agenda to return to the forefront: praise or criticism of the gesture (a return to parliamentary democracy for Jean-Luc Mélenchon), various consultations, positions on this or that point of the bill (notably the deletion of two public holidays). The rejection of the vote of confidence, which is now a foregone conclusion, will plunge the country into a political or even institutional crisis likely to dominate the media agenda, to the detriment of the social "crisis".
Today, it's as if elected representatives are taking over from ordinary citizens. In this respect, François Hollande's latest little phrase ( "I can't get involved in something I don't control" ) reveals a form of unconsciousness on the part of the political class, which says it "hears the exasperation", but only intends to get involved in what it controls, namely political and institutional games, and only gives a voice to the people in the form of electoral suffrage.
Social movements as forces for change
In so doing, elected officials are demonstrating a blindness that never ceases to amaze. Another lesson of the Yellow Vests movement, in fact, is that it has profoundly transformed its primocontestants if not into militants, at least into citizens with the feeling of finally being worthy of being heard, capable of debating and expressing their views on political and even institutional (the RIC) issues that engage the country, and refusing to be content with slipping a ballot paper into the ballot box every five years.
What we read today on Telegram loops or hear in the first local assemblies attests to the same resolve not to be infantilized and sent back to one's daily toil by virtue of a supposed lack of "titles to speak"(Jacques Rancière). Distrust of national elected representatives, strong in 2018, is even stronger today: the famous "popularity ratings", insofar as they have any meaning at all, indicate that the most "popular" opponents are trusted by at best one in three citizens.
It's doubtful that the French are fascinated by the petty games of institutional and political crisis, since those in power don't listen to them either when they demonstrate en masse (against pensions) or when they vote against a majority (in 2024, reminiscent of the 2005 referendum), and respond with citizens' conferences or major debates whose results they ignore, and with increasingly violent repression.
In this context, "Block everything" can mean many things: for some, it's bringing chaos to a country that's nevertheless "already blocked; for others, what poses a problem is rather the blocking or closure of the political field, which intends to reserve decisions for representatives alone (unions and parties). The gilets jaunes not only protested against a tax, they also learned along the way to propose another form of democracy; perhaps it's time to recognize that social movements bring solutions, not just problems.
François Buton, CNRS Research Director, ENS Lyon and Emmanuelle Reungoat, Senior Lecturer in Political Science, University of Montpellier
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read theoriginal article.