In 2005, I was being driven by taxi across Paris. The driver could have been any of the head shots in that article -- a big young guy in a heavy jacket. Every time we stopped, he flipped over a couple of pages of a large printout. I asked him what it was. It was the EU Lisbon treaty, all 400 pages of it. This was the run up to the referendum to ratify this treaty. I have never met anyone else in public reading a large legal document while doing their job. I am sure he was not alone. The French (like the Dutch) voted it down and both were ignored.
I don't know why we have to compare the gilets jaunes with American politics, especially when the account of their politics is as superficial as Lichfield's. He tells us that the rich metropolitans subsidize the poor country people. But France was a 50% peasant society in 1945. Almost all the urban middle classes have a second rural home where they come from and they spend a fortune on fresh foods from the countryside. Terroir is still a powerful evocative word across the board. France is the most visited country in the world and it isn't because of the main cities.
The banks run the EU and the way French banks rule their customers would shock most anglophones. Between 2012 and 2017, the French Socialists lost the Presidency, 6 million votes and 250 parliamentary seats. The centre right party (between them the pillars of the Fifth republic) did badly, but despite their leader being caught with his hands in the till, not as badly. These voters turned to Macron as a saviour from Le Pen. He claimed to be centrist, but only Melenchon and a lot of intellectuals called him for what he turned out to be, the French Thatcher, understudy to Sarkozy before 2008 showed him the value of the French social model.
This man compares himself to Napoleon and his authoritarianism is not bluster. The GJ have had their eyes and hands blown off by police weapons that are banned in all but two other countries. Macron has introduced legislation that would have people who are thought to be dangerous picked up and incarcerated without any evidence. Even centre right MPs are up in arms about this. They see Fascism coming. Then there is the ENA caste that has all the top jobs and he is one of them. There are plenty upper middle class Parisians who resent how the French state is run by a closed clique. And let us not forget the bodyguard thug who beat up a member of he public, was covered up and turned out to be the most reliable way of getting to Macron, like some latter day Roman emperor and his praetorian guard.
Of course I don't know any gilets jaunes, but I do know that it's going badly for Macron in my Parisian circles and in the national polls. Of course attendance at GJ rallies has fallen off, partly because they are using less predictable tactics now and the interested public finds Metro stations and Department Stores closed down, plus innocent bystanders who "look dangerous" can get an eye popped out by a trigger happy CRS goon. What we don't need is comparative sociology from afar asserting social divisions and their presumed psychology that are nonsensical for France. The most important cultural feature here is the French tradition of taking to the streets (manifestation). I would guess that the majority of French voters are glad that somebody is doing it for them. Macron will fall because the French state has been falling apart for a while now and most people now regret having voted for him and want him out. What happened to those 6 million lost PS votes?
Keith