THE FRENCH Revolution of millions of workers and youth is hotting up with the news that the hated French riot police are now deploying with semi-automatic weapons and live ammunition against the Yellow Vest protestors.
CRS riot police were filmed brandishing Heckler & Koch G36 weapons near the Arc de Triomphe in Paris on Saturday afternoon. This proves that President Macron is preparing for a civil war in France. His supporters, including former conservative minister Luc Ferry, are now calling for live fire to be used against the ‘thugs’ of the Yellow Vest movement.
Until now, the guns used have mainly been associated with specialist military units, as well as the elite GIPN police intervention squads and the BAC anti-criminal brigade. Workers are convinced that Macron is preparing a massacre of the working class and youth! Also, that he is seeking the time to prepare this massacre by attempting to involve the French people in a fake debate that he has just announced with a lengthy letter to the ‘French Nation’ – asking people to express their views on government policies as part of a ‘national debate’ that will last till March 15th .
He is aiming to try to calm public anger and end almost two months of the Yellow Vest demonstrations that have shaken his regime to the core. In his 2,330-word open letter to the nation – published on Sunday – he urged it to ‘turn anger into solutions.’
However, this letter was published a full nine weeks after the protests, which initially erupted in rural France over a planned hike in fuel prices, have grown hugely. The French president was forced to back off and suspend the plan, but his policy shift failed to ease the anger. In fact, the movement has grown massively and even become international.
During the ‘debate’ French citizens are to be asked to discuss issues – such as cutting taxes and public spending, the use of referendums and immigration quotas – in town hall meetings across the country or in online questionnaires.
‘For me, there is no banned issue,’ said Macron in the letter. ‘We won’t agree on everything, which is normal in a democracy. But at least we’ll show we’re a people which is not afraid of talking, exchanging, debating. When taxes are too high, our economy is starved of the resources that could be usefully invested in companies, creating jobs and growth,’ he added.
Among the questions are: ‘Which taxes do you think we should cut?’ and ‘What kind of public spending savings do you think we should make a priority?’ The president will also give his own conclusions within a month of the end of the debate on March 15. However, the revolution will not be halted in favour of debates until March 15th – it is growing massively on a daily basis, which is why the state is now arming itself with automatic weaponry to prepare a massacre of the Yellow Vests to try to extinguish the fire.
Macron has however failed to even curb his arrogance. He has further enraged the French masses in this letter stating that his government ‘will not undo the measures we have introduced to put this right, encourage investment and ensure that work pays more.’
Macron, now known as ‘president of the rich,’ initially acknowledged the protestors’ anger was ‘deep, and in many ways legitimate,’ promising a minimum wage rise and tax concessions.
The 41-year-old leader, however, hardened his stance on the movement earlier this month when he dismissed the Yellow Vest protesters as ‘agitators,’ whose only aim is to topple his government. Macron’s ‘Letter to the French’, released on Sunday evening, said the debate would be ‘neither an election nor a referendum’ and would revolve around 35 questions on issues including taxation, democracy, the environment and migration. He said there were ‘no forbidden questions’.
However the Yellow Vests want answers, not time-wasting questions, and are setting up popular committes that they say must be able to veto government policy. They are raising the revolutionary question of which class holds the power! Already last week, Chantal Jouanno, a lawmaker who was to lead the commission piloting the debate, withdrew following outrage over her 14,666 euro monthly salary.
Benjamin Cauchy, one of the Yellow Vests’ spokespersons, said the outcome of the debate ‘is already known. Emmanuel Macron is letting us know this will serve no real purpose. What a lack of respect.’ The French revolution has begun, and it has no illusions that the CRS riot police and the French state, which is permanently at war with the working class and the poor, must be smashed and destroyed to go forward to socialism.
The French workers also regard the Brexit movement of the UK workers as their closest allies! In fact, there is no doubt that the revolutionary unity between the French and UK workers will revolutionise Europe, and lead to the overthrow of the bosses’ and bankers’ EU and its replacement by the Socialist United States of Europe.
