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by maeln
2752 days ago
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> [...] is a beast born almost entirely from Facebook No, it's not. Yes, a lot of the communication circulate through social media (like most things nowadays), but the movement was also covered a lot in traditional medias at the very beginning of the movement. It is also completely disregarding that there was a lot of movement "against the government"/a specific law before this specific movement (train worker, public hospital workers, students, ...) and that protest have become more and more violent in recent years (with a big increase during the labor law from the previous president). Maybe Facebook help people organize and in some case radicalize. But you have to be completely oblivious to the current state of France politics to not have seen the problem brewing. |
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When Paris was shut down for 4 days due to student protest for Macron's new labor laws, it lasted on the front page of "Le Monde" for about 3 hours. Agriculture protests ? Not a peep. Taxi protests ? A mention. Public sector strikes ? Mention. Students again ... and again ... and again ? Not much at all. And yet all of these were massive protests. Tens of thousands of people at least.
Essentially, there has been protests against Macron's policies with a huge strike every 2 months at least (and every month in the last year). But reading the media you would never know this.
And of course, the net result of the censorship is that protestors know: they need to grab international attention ... or just go home. Well the "gilets jaune" have gotten international attention. By massive turnouts, and by violence. Is this bad ? Well, yes, but nobody in government can say this is the least bit surprising.
One example I thought was particularly glaring was the "yellow vests" going outside of France proper. This was 3 weeks into this protest. Nothing in the local newspapers whatsoever. Then suddenly a message "half the country's police force (not just the city's) deployed to Charleroi because 3 yellow vests seen". Wait, what ? Why the hell would the police do that ? Well, now we know. And even now, the reporting about the extent of the protests is ... well let's just say it doesn't match what Twitter and Youtube are (effectively) reporting. From the cities I know, I must say, especially the Youtube videos looks quite convincing, and I don't think at all this is fake news. But you won't find the extent of the protests in the newspapers even today.
So I must say, one gets the feeling rather strongly a significant portion of the government complaints is about the government first gaining, then losing the ability to censor information about social protests. They want to prevent information spreading through facebook/twitter/youtube/...
I don't feel they should get that power. At all. Not even if there are violent incidents during the protests, because let's face facts here: the government doesn't care about the violence. They care about the protests becoming public knowledge.
And keeping a Goldman Sach's banker in power.