Yellow Vests Escalate, Experts Warn Populism DESTROYING The EU
Yellow Vests Escalate, Experts Warn Populism DESTROYING The EU. As we enter "Acte 11" of the Yellow Vests (Gilets Jaunes) protest in France the question arises as to whether this is the beginning of the end of the European Union.Many experts, even George Soros, have said we are witnessing the collapse of the European union before our very eyes as populism takes hold in several EU member states.The narrative was made ever more dire when 30 historians and Nobel laureates penned an op-ed for numerous papers begging people to reject the populist narrative.But with the rise of the yellow vests protest and the expansion of nationalist parties one can only assume the experts are right and we are seeing the beginning of the end of the EU
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The Yellow Vests protest has kicked off its 11th weekend in France, and some of the images are pretty devastating.
We've seen cars on fire.
In one instance, the protesters almost pulled a cop out of his vehicle.
Now, many people believe that populism is a really, really bad thing for Europe.
We recently saw an op-ed where a bunch of scholars and Nobel laureates wrote that, effectively, Europe is collapsing before our eyes due to populism.
And I'm not trying to say that the Yellow Vests is necessarily entirely a populist movement, but many people have likened it to that.
So I had to wonder if what we're seeing from the Yellow Vests resisting Macron's policy and this internationalist policy, could this be a sign that populism is rising up and the common folk, the middle class, are refusing to abide by the rules of the European Union?
Could this spell the end of the European Union?
At least many scholars think so.
So today, let's take a look at the latest news coming out of the LFS protests, and then look at some of the commentary from the experts as to why this could be really, really bad news for the EU.
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But let's get to the news!
French Yellow Vests protests march through Paris, keeping pressure on Macron.
Protesters marched through Paris and other French cities on Saturday on the 11th weekend of action against the government, suggesting President Emmanuel Macron has yet to defuse public opposition to some of his policies.
The protests, named after the fluorescent jackets French motorists are required to carry in their cars, began in mid-November over plans to raise fuel taxes before developing into a broader revolt against the government that mobilized tens of thousands of demonstrators nationwide each Saturday.
In one of several marches planned in the capital, a few hundred demonstrators headed down the Champs-Élysées, the famous avenue that has been the scene of protests every weekend, en route to the Bastille Square on the other side of the city.
In a change of approach, Some protesters have also called for an evening gathering dubbed Yellow Night, due to start at 5 p.m.
at Republic Square, a common venue for demonstrations in Paris.
As on the last two Saturdays in the capital, the demonstrations were mostly peaceful in contrast to the violence seen in December, the worst trouble of its kind in decades in Paris.
Something interesting happens in the news cycle where even though these protests keep happening, people eventually get bored and stop talking about it.
But we have seen some commentary talking about the populist aspects of the Yellow Vest protest.
Now, I think it's kind of unfair to assign a political ideology to the group because we've seen many different political ideologies coming out of the Yellow Vest protests.
It's not really about politics, for the most part.
It's kind of about class.
But then you have to recognize that at a middle-class level, it's kind of Populist, from CNN.
Macron vowed to fight the populists, now he's being engulfed by them.
This story from just a couple weeks ago.
When French President Emmanuel Macron won the presidential election in May 2017, beating Marine Le Pen, the leader of France's far-right National Front, the markets heaved a sigh of relief.
The populist wave that had led to the United Kingdom to vote to leave the European Union, and that propelled Donald Trump to the White House, appeared to have been stopped, at least in France.
Macron embraced this victory and presented himself as the new leader of the free world, a champion of a newly unfashionable multilateralist globalist vision.
Having changed the French political landscape with his candidacy, which he ran on the independent ticket on March, Macron promised to fix Europe, fight climate change, stand up to the US, and take on the populists gaining ground elsewhere in the EU.
So it's perhaps surprising they should have been so slow to see the populist threat growing from within.
The story says some yellow vests have already decided to go into politics themselves and are now preparing candidacy lists for the European elections this May.
An Ipsos poll ordered by Macron's party showed those candidates could potentially win about 12% of the vote, mainly at the expense of the far right and far left.
Macron has long warned that he expects the poll to be decisive to the future of Europe.
Le Pen's far-right party is currently leading voting intentions in France.
Other European populists, many of them Euro-skeptics, are also expected to do well in May's election.
Now, another populist force looks set to enter the European Parliament, becoming a new force and feature of the political landscape in France.
Far from putting an end to the populist wave, Macron appears to have overseen its expansion.
And that's the narrative that leads us to this story just the other day in The Guardian.
Europe coming apart before our eyes, say 30 top intellectuals.
Group of historians and writers publish manifesto warning against the rise of populism.
The group of 30 writers, historians, and Nobel laureates declared in a manifesto published in several newspapers, including The Guardian, that Europe as an idea was coming apart before our eyes.
We must now will Europe or perish beneath the waves of populism, the document reads.
We must rediscover political volunteerism or accept that resentment, hatred, and the critege of sad passions will surround and submerge us.
They write of their regret that Europe has been abandoned from across the channel, an oblique reference to the drawn-out Brexit process that has arguably brought Anglo-European relations to their lowest point since the Second World War.
And they say that unless efforts are made to combat a rising tide of populism, the EU elections will be the most calamitous that we have ever known.
Victory for the wreckers.
Disgrace for those who will still believe in the legacy of Erasmus, Dante, Goethe, and Comenius.
Disdain for intelligence and culture.
Explosions of xenophobia and antisemitism.
Disaster.
Abandoned from across the Channel and from across the Atlantic by the two great allies who in the previous century saved it twice from suicide, vulnerable to the increasingly overt manipulations of the master of the Kremlin, Europe, as an idea, as will and representation, is coming apart before our eyes, the text reads.
Pro-Europeans no longer have a voice, they say.
We must sound the alarm against the arsonists of soul and spirit that from Paris to Rome, with stops in Barcelona, Budapest, Dresden, Vienna, or Warsaw, are playing with the fire of our freedom.
One thing I find particularly fascinating about this story is that there's not one perspective on what's happening in Europe.
Now, the Yellow Vest protesters are clearly upset they keep protesting.
But the populists are rather happy.
And it's not like you can just call populist individuals racist or evil.
Many of them, in fact, aren't.
But the prediction of the European Union collapse is not a new concept.
Back in May, Business Insider published this story.
George Soros warns the European Union is on the brink of collapse and Trump is partly to blame.
The European Union is mired in an existential crisis, Soros wrote in a blog for Project Syndicate.
For the past decade, everything that could go wrong has gone wrong.
Soros effectively argues that some in the bloc has moved so far away from its founding goals that the EU can no longer sustain itself in its current state.
There is no longer any point in ignoring the reality.
The sentiment was mirrored only about a month later.
This from the Express.
to the EU's goal of ever closer union," Soros said.
The sentiment was mirrored only about a month later, this from the Express.
EU is weakest world power.
Historian says EU facing collapse over next decade.
British historian and political commentator Niall Ferguson envisaged an apocalyptic future
for the EU drawing a similarity with the Holy Roman Empire.
And then another story in the Express, this one from December.
End of EU.
Brussels in vulnerable position and this could prove fatal, predicts expert.
The European Union could soon face collapse.
Because of the weak and vulnerable position, the volatility of the euro and clashes with member states have created, European affairs expert Ian Kearns claimed.
Kearns said to the Express, The EU is in a weak and vulnerable state.
If there were, for example, a new financial crisis, which lots of people are speculating might be on the horizon, I think that would be enough to destroy the single currency.
Does that happen in the next six months?
Does it happen three years from now?
Five years from now?
I don't know, but my analysis would be, if the European Union is in its current state, and its arrangements for managing the Eurozone are in their current state, and a financial crisis happens, the single currency wouldn't survive it.
And that leads me, ultimately, to Brexit.
Admittedly, I don't know too much about Brexit or why so many people in Great Britain wanted to separate from the European Union.
But there are some issues I can understand.
Article 11 and Article 13, for instance.
Many people have taken opposition to this, effectively where they want to put a content filter over the internet in the European Union.
And thus, I have seen many people who live in the United Kingdom saying, hey, maybe we don't want any part of that.
But when you see story after story talking about a collapse of their currency, how they're not going to survive, the wave of populism threatening Europe, why wouldn't anyone vote to leave the European Union?
I'm actually surprised there are more people in the UK who want to remain in the EU after we've seen all of these stories.
Now look, I've highlighted a few select stories talking about the yellow vests, the rise of populism, and why many experts are predicting doom for the EU.
But it doesn't mean any of it's true.
These are just select stories, and I'm trying to explore this particular idea.
It's entirely possible there's a million other stories saying, no, everything's fine.
But I want to point out that there are many voices, not just one, including George Soros, who are saying dire straits for the EU are coming.
So then can you really blame those in the UK who want to leave the European Union?
Honestly, I can't.
But the last thing I really want to address is the idea of the yellow vests protests spreading.
Because the truth is, they're technically not.
Though the imagery is spreading, the issues are still very different.
But maybe the core is that, at its root, they're populist protests.
The Washington Post ran this story.
Egypt banned the sale of yellow vests.
Are the French protests spreading?
Ultimately, this is the point they make.
That democracy protests do not tend to spread, we argue, because they are about domestic issues that are generally unrelated to what is happening in their countries.
Democracy protests tend to arise when elections, economic crises, and other events within the country focus on the public's existing anger about political, social, or economic grievances prompting collective action.
In general, protests in neighboring countries do not provoke new discontent in other countries.
Nor do they bring people together on behalf of existing discontent.
In fact, most democracy protests are small, short-lived, repressed, and unsuccessful, and are thus poor models for protests in other countries.
But they do say that even if protests don't spread, their symbols and strategies might.
Although democracy protests and anti-government protests do not spread to other countries in general, their symbols, strategies, and tactics can.
By wearing yellow vests, activists outside France have been able to make their protests appear to be part of a larger movement, attracting more international and domestic attention.
The Egyptian government's decision to ban yellow vests may not be absurd after all.
But many of these protesters have made demands, including anti-Muslim demands in Germany, that are very different from those seen in France.
These non-French protests were often triggered by events within their own countries, and sometimes even began before their French counterparts.
In Bulgaria, the so-called yellow vest protests against fuel prices began a week before those in France.
Protests only began wearing yellow vests after they had become iconic in France.
In Iraq, protests against unemployment, corruption, and poor public services had been going on for months before Iraqi protesters began sporting yellow vests last December.
If we are witnessing a yellow vest wave, it is not a wave of unified protests, rather.
It is a spread of the symbols.
I am not a big fan of the Washington Post, but I have to agree.
The issues in these countries are rather different.
But I think what we're actually seeing is just a wave of populist protests.
People who think their governments aren't representing them.
I don't think it's fair to say the protests aren't spreading necessarily because people have unique causes in their specific region.
And essentially, the Yellow Vests protests inspire similar populist protests.
Again, the issues may be different.
But I also think it is fair to point out many of these protests started before the Yellow Vests.
But if people do take that symbol and use it, it will spread their message, and people will say, hey, maybe this is something larger, or at the very least, it highlights the mass discontent in many different countries.
Now, does this mean the end of the European Union?
Honestly, I don't know, but I will say there are many experts who have said as much, and maybe that could be the case.
It's gonna be really interesting come May with the next EU elections and with Brexit going on.
So let me know what you think in the comments below, we'll keep the conversation going.
More of an analysis piece on what it means for the Yellow Vests.
Do you feel the Yellow Vests protests are really about populism?
Or is it simply that France protests and this kind of happens?
Comment below, we'll keep the conversation going.
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