by WorldTribune Staff, December 4, 2018
Far-left extremists have infiltrated the “Yellow Vests” anti-carbon tax movement and are likely responsible for a share of the violence that engulfed France in recent days, some reports say.
The Yellow Vests are a populist movement formed to pressure French President Emmanuel Macron to rethink a fuel tax that is part of his agenda on climate change.
Planned increases to fuel taxes have been suspended for at least six months in response to the protests, in the first major U-turn by Macron’s administration after 18 months in office.
“The violence largely overshadowed the original purpose of the protests,” Breitbart News noted in a Dec. 4 report.
Meanwhile, a new survey conducted by the polling firm Harris revealed that 72 percent of respondents still support the anti-carbon tax movement despite the recent unrest.
The survey of 1,016 people also found that an overwhelming majority, 85 percent, were against the use of violence during the protests with only 15 percent finding violence justifiable.
Former member of parliament Marion Marechal (formerly Marion Le Pen and niece of Marine Le Pen) claimed to have witnessed violence coming from left-wing protesters.
Saying she arrived at the protest site shortly after 2 p.m. on Dec. 1, Marechal said, “When I arrived on the Champs-Elysees, the real ‘Yellow Vests’ were long gone. The movement was totally absorbed by left-wing activists. We heard: ‘death to capitalism!’ If this is the far-right, it has changed.”
Marechal’s claim seemed to gain credibility as the Arc de Triomphe was seen to be covered in far-left extremist graffiti including the phrase, “the ultra-right will lose!,” the Breitbart report said.
The core of the Yellow Vests movement, according to French writer Renaud Camus, is an uprising of regular people who are protesting the globalist elites, who he refers to as the “Davocracy.”
In an interview with Breitbart London, Camus said the core of the movement was about “lack of respect, general exchangeability, being treated by managerial politics like an object, a simple product. A product, a producer, and a consumer all at once, a thing, a number, not a human being.”
Breitbart noted that “Much of the violence has been blamed on vandals, called ‘casseurs’ in French, who are believed to come from a variety of backgrounds including far-left anarchists, far-right extremists, and petty criminals from the heavily migrant-populated suburbs surrounding the French capital.”
French interior minister Christophe Castaner told French media that authorities had identified at least 3,000 suspects connected with the various arson attacks and violence that took place.
“There are people who come from the extreme right, the extreme left, but there are also many people who came to Paris to vandalize,” Castaner said, adding that they were an “extreme minority, an insurrectional minority, they want to break everything, destroy everything. They are basically hooligans.”
Meanwhile, Reuters reported that French student protests intensified on Dec. 4, with various incidents around the country including demonstrators setting buildings on fire and clashing with police.
Local authorities told Reuters that part of the Saint-Exupery high school in Blagnac, near Toulouse in southwest France, had been set on fire. There were also clashes in Lyon, Marseille, Bordeaux and the city of Orleans, while schools were blocked in Creteil and Versailles near Paris.
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Paris climate change tax revolt shocker: Did Left inject violence? added by World Tribune on
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