• On the street, we come across a tendency towards ascent extremism across the political spectrum;
  • Macron crystallizes the acrimony of all protestors and their language is getting more and more violent;
  • Journalists, law and protestors are at increased risk during demonstrations.

In 2018, the price of petrol was the spark that lit the burn down of the yellow vests, known in France every bit the "gilets jaunes". In 2019, when people took to the streets again, information technology was against pension reform.

Many in France presume the 2 issues are divide, just my experience roofing these protests, week subsequently week, suggests these triggers are non the real issue. In fact, they distract us from understanding the big movie.

The media too plays a part in perpetuating an incomplete view. I'one thousand troubled by how we tend to focus our reporting on the consequences of protest and non on its underlying causes.

I've watched the incremental retreat of the country from rural France: motherhood clinics, district courts, army barracks, post offices and shops disappearing from the centres of small towns. The people affected by this retreat realized, thanks to the cyberspace, that they were on the fringe. What the yellow vests gave them was visibility in the media and rapprochement with each other.

People who had stopped talking to each other as the boondocks centres were hollowed out in favour of strip malls establish each other again at the roundabouts where they gathered to protest. They shared their struggles and bandage off the shame of feeling as if they had "failed" to stay in the middle classes.

The yellow vest movement in numbers

The yellowish vest move in numbers

Macron crystallizes the anger of all protestors and their language is getting more and more violent: "We're going to hang the banker!" and "Macron, we're coming to become you at your identify!"

Information technology would seem the French want a king so they tin cut off his head.

While the 2019/2020 protests confronting pension reform – led past unions – look more organized and less explosive, the feelings are the same. Nothing, in fact, has changed except for the visuals. The yellow vests accept disappeared from the streets, only the same people are meeting, planning time to come actions, and learning how to use the encrypted messaging app Telegram.

Extremes volition converge, violence is not going abroad

In late 2018, the extreme right and extreme left competed, in vain, to seize leadership of the motility. Even so, their movements have gone from strength to strength in recent months.

What we see on the street – and what is not reported in the mainstream media – is this worrying tendency towards increasing extremism across the political spectrum. While the extreme right has increased "anti-migrant operations", the extreme left is increasingly fronting protest processions with "Marx or Strike". Their declared enemies are banks, the police and the state. Farthermost Greens are also planning more action, some of it trigger-happy.

Public reaction to the yellow vest protests

Public reaction to the yellow vest protests

At the end of 2019, the national intelligence coordinator Pierre Bousquet de Florian warned: "Nosotros are facing an unprecedented 'ensauvagement' of our society with a caste of violence and a rapid rise to hatred."

As journalists, we need security guards when covering routine big demonstrations. The forces of law and order are under extreme duress, both concrete and mental, and the demand for private security services has never been higher. How much longer volition the state be able to protect its citizens?

The bike of violence is not peaking; this could be just the showtime.

Police force doctrine buckles nether pressure from the black bloc

Our "French-style" policing which dates back to 1968 is in the midst of a revolution. For fifty years the doctrine has been: "we keep demonstrators at a altitude", no contact and no mitt-to-paw gainsay. But in recent years, new techniques used by demonstrators and current events take disrupted this model:

Paris, Jan 2015: French republic is hit past terrorism, and police are hailed every bit heros.

Paris, Nantes, Toulouse 2016: Demonstrations against reforms of labour police. For the first fourth dimension, journalists are issued helmets. The most radical demonstrators from the far left are at the back of the procession. Violence erupts at the end and police are unable to keep them at a altitude. More than and more than arrests.

Paris, 1 May 2018: For the first time, a black bloc forms at the head of the procession and disrupts the demonstration. The union organizers are overwhelmed and very trigger-happy clashes ensue.

Paris, end of November 2018: Offset yellow vest demonstrations. Police are unable to maintain distance. The most radical elements are the most mobile and the police are stuck in static formations in the streets side by side to the Champs Elysees. The avenue is devastated.

Paris, 8 December 2018: Law enforcement doctrine pivots. After the yellow vests "take" the Arc de Triomphe, police go on the offensive. In Paris alone, there are more than one,000 "detentions" and 126 injured.

The Blackness Blocs are numerically in the minority in large demonstrations but they are driving all the changes in the constabulary tactics and their growing angst.

Mostly associated with anarchism, anti-globalization, anti-fascism, they are an ephemeral grouping of radical elements dressed in black clothing with ski masks or scarves to hide their faces. During big protests, they get support from abroad, generally from Federal republic of germany and the UK.

A molotov cocktail explodes in front of a French gendarme during a demonstration on Act 44 (the 44th consecutive national protest on Saturday) of the yellow vests movement in Nantes, France, September 14, 2019. REUTERS/Stephane Mahe TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY - RC1311F07580

A molotov cocktail explodes in front of a French gendarme during a demonstration of the yellow vests motility in Nantes, France

Prototype: REUTERS/Stephane Mahe

Police are existence called up for duty on days off and divorce rates are ascension. Anecdotally, 1 policeman spoke off the tape almost the term "xanthous vest divorces". Some other told me that he had a double life: ane Saturday, he would join his colleagues to protect the Champs Elysees; the post-obit, he would be masked and among the demonstrators.

The tendency to ratchet upwardly the violence is nowadays on both sides. Tomorrow, a demonstrator, a constabulary or a journalist could dice in a demonstration in France. Nosotros are in uncharted territory.

I believe that journalists can play a role in regenerating the social textile that keeps fuelling this "united states of america versus them" split.

  • Proximity matters: the more afar an consequence is from us, the less attention information technology attracts. What counts for people is what's happening within 10-15 kms. This requires local journalism that engages a younger generation.
  • The media tin facilitate a word well-nigh the demand for a new social contract, i not centred on mass consumerism, but about our values equally a club.
  • The inter-generational divide should be addressed: the post-state of war generation is still stuck in the extractive mindset of the "thirty glorious years" of full employment and mass consumerism. The Greta Thunberg generation is radically different, grounded in an awareness of ecology vulnerability and scarcity.

It is no longer articulate what our responsibility is towards the subjects of our reporting and towards our viewers in the current situation of roiling, permanent, latent anger.