This November 17 is the anniversary of the birth of the Yellow Vest movement. And as it stands, a return to mobilization cannot be ruled out, warns a former member on RMC.
A return that cannot be ruled out. Like every year for six years now, the authorities are carefully observing the date of November 17, the day which marks the birth of the Yellow Vest movement.
Moreover, publications calling for mobilization are multiplying on social networks. Lists of roundabouts on which actions are planned are circulating even without it being possible to know who is at the origin. These calls attempt to cling to the growing anger of farmers, the FNSEA and the Young Farmers having already planned “a resumption of actions” from this Friday.
On BFMTV, Jérôme Fourquet, director of the Opinion and Strategies department of the IFOP, assures that “ingredients exist” but that a “trigger” is still missing that will make this social movement “go up in flames”.
At the same time, Emmanuel Macron is breaking unpopularity records. According to an Ifop survey, only 25% of those questioned give him their support. Unheard of since December 2018, in the heart of the yellow vest crisis.
On the set ofEstelle MidiAnne Sophie Simpere believes that “all the ingredients are there” with purchasing power issues and since the dissolution, “the impression that the losers of the election govern”.
“The union organizations were unable to embody the anger”
In 2018, it was the price of gasoline that brought together anger: “No one saw the scale of the Yellow Vest movement coming,” recalls Benjamin Amar, teacher and trade unionist, on RMC and RMC Story. “The current social reality is harsh and is coupled with a political crisis of incredible gravity. We vote and we find ourselves with a right-wing government without a seat in the National Assembly. There is a feeling of not being listened to” . It is the unions which have the keys in hand, Benjamin Amar believes.
“We need to know if the union organizations are able to embody and crystallize social anger. The Yellow Vest movement happened because the union organizations were unable to embody the anger,” he believes.
An old yellow vest brought back
For his part, Fred Hermel does not think the Yellow Vest movement would mobilize because Jean-Luc Mélenchon is not Prime Minister: “On the other hand, it is rather people who would mobilize if Marine Le Pen is prevented from running in the 2027 presidential election”, he believes, while the leader of the National Rally risks a sentence of ineligibility in the context of the affair of fictitious jobs of parliamentary assistants of FN MEPs.
“A return is not impossible but perhaps not in the form of the Yellow Vests,” according to Benjamin Morel, doctor of political science, who believes that the poor economic situation can fuel anger.
“The Macron government took people for idiots,” complains Evelyne, a former Yellow Vest, who believes that the far left and far right political parties wanted to take over the movement, leading to the violence. “When you demonstrate and you are not heard and a few years later it is worse, you are angry,” she warns. “The government shook once, it could well shake a second time.”
