The yellow vests confirmed the democratic possibilities of the digital. And the fact that the lives of precarious citizens cannot be adjustment variables.
To think about the mobilization of yellow vests is first to recognize the complexity. Behind the apparent unity of a symbol, the fluorescent chasuble, the movement is actually plural, contradictory, diverse, touching, chaotic, disturbing. It would be fair to see not a lake whose surface is frozen but rather a lively and moving river, as Arthur Rimbaud opposed “the black and cold wolf” with “surf and currents”. The place is the unacceptable violence we saw last Saturday, in Paris among others. But these drifts should not hide the fact that yellow vests who wear reflective vests with reflective tapes know how to assemble in a responsible way. Their demands are sometimes confusing but they also carry a glaring demand for social justice and a more participative democracy: denunciation of class contempt, improvement of purchasing power, the crisis of consent to tax.
This plasticity and spontaneity have a corollary: fragility. The extremes try to infiltrate it. They all play, with minor variations, small identical music. “The elites have betrayed”. “The elites are deaf”. “The elites are disconnected”. The ecological emergency is evacuated in a silent cynicism. This dangerous speech, everyone can measure the effectiveness of our fellow citizens in precarious situations, destabilized by decades of crises and a pessimism forged by inequality and lack of prospects. There is an echo to these attempts at recovery: the misunderstanding and disinformation between which the power seems to oscillate. One day qualified by a minister of “guys who smoke cigarettes and ride diesel”, another time reduced to far-right thugs in a hurry to fight, the majority of yellow vests see their sincerity denied and their claims discredited. This trait is accentuated by a media treatment that is now primarily the first place to excesses and slippages.
In the course of a lifetime, it is increasingly difficult for workers or employees to access the status of a manager, for example, an inequality that is also reproduced between generations.
The recognition of this plasticity-fragility is a base around which can engage a suture work. It is to be conducted in three directions.