[skitout]

Polls showed that a large majority of French supported the Gilets Jaunes or supported the recent strikes. Foolowing your reasonning, the minority imposing their will to the silent majority is the government.

Furthermore, independently to our opinion about the Gilets Jaunes, the way this government use the police on the protest can be questioning for a democracy. Even the journalist of the right Figaro newspaper protested several times against police brutality against journalists.

Furthermore, independently to our opinion about the recent strikes (supported by 100% of the democratically elected trade unions), the fact that the government twisted the constitution to avoid a democratic vote of the democratically elected parliament on the legislative text is "puzzling"

[barrkel]

https://www.statista.com/statistics/945415/gilets-jaunes-app...

Those in favour went from 70 to 50% over the course of 5 months, opposition tripled, strong support went from 50% to 20%.

[skitout]

Few months after the start of the Gilet Jaune, they were not "blocking the country" anymore (I was answering a comment about this)...

And while not supporting the Gilet Jaune mode of action anymore, people still strongly supported and support the main ideas they pushed, like Citizens' initiative referendum, or the Solidarity tax on wealth

[pif]

> while not supporting the Gilet Jaune mode of action anymore, people still strongly supported and support the main ideas they pushed

Imagine how successful they could have been if they had behaved as civilised people from the beginning! I personally like some of those ideas, but I'll never trust people who think that violence is justifiable.

[dtoma]

I don't understand this point, and it's one we see very often. What would have happened if they'd been civilised?

1. We had a convention citoyenne pour le climat. Macron then mostly ignored it.

2. We have elected representatives who can vote on the laws for us. Macron then used article 49.3 to mostly ignore them.

3. Vote? For which candidate? None of them would cover all of the GJs' demands.

If you disqualify protests as a valid form of democratic expression, you also disqualify our famous revolution, the feminist protests that earned women the right to vote, the union strikes that earned us many worker rights, etc.

> I'll never trust people who think that violence is justifiable

Ah, that explains it. You only see violence in protesters who break windows, not in governments who enact laws on their people. Am I correct in assuming that you're ok with making people work 20 hours/week for the RSA as well?

[pif]

> 1. We had a convention citoyenne pour le climat. Macron then mostly ignored it.

The reality is: talking about CO2 emissions is talking about economy. That is the main job of the government.

> 2. We have elected representatives who can vote on the laws for us. Macron then used article 49.3 to mostly ignore them.

Macron did not ignore them. 49.3 means: "I'm ready to go on this point; are you ready, too?". And, by the way, you do remember that Macron was elected, too, do you?

> 3. Vote? For which candidate? None of them would cover all of the GJs' demands.

So what? This is democracy! If you can't, or don't want to, found your political movement, then you have to choose among the available candidates. Do you think Macron's program matched exactly my desires?

The revolution, the feminism and the union strikes were expressions of people who were oppressed and on the receiving side of violence. Gilets Jaunes was none of this.

[skitout]

So basically your are saying that:

- peaceful protest or "convention citoyenne" are not and should not be efficient

- We don't care what the vast majority of people want, and we don't care about the parliament.

- The only thing we should care is what think the President. The one who got the support of barely 20% of the French population on the first round, and them got elected on the second round because people voted against the far right... In a "presidential Monarchy"

What a nice conception of "democracy"

[pif]

> You only see violence in protesters who break windows, not in governments who enact laws on their people.

A government trying to manage a country has a ton of compromises to make every day; I do not expect to be happy with every one of their choices, but I think the current government is doing OK.

On the other side, I fail to see how breaking a window can solve the problem of the protester.

> If you disqualify protests as a valid form of democratic expression

I'm afraid you confuse protest with violence. The ability to protest is fundamental for a democracy to stay a democracy, but protest must not imply violence and, especially, expressing your point does not make it automatically right.

[skitout]

So when your grandma wait hours in her shit and piss in a corridor of an hospital because their are not enough bed and enough nurses, and then suffer bad after effects because of this waiting time, this is not some sort of violence according to you ?

When even journalists from le Figaro (right wing newspaper) have to protest brutality against journalists.... the violence is only coming from the protester ?

[skitout]

Seriously ?

In France the only way firefighter got heard the last few times, after month of peaceful protestation, is by doing violent protest, including throwing heavy thing on the policeman. Then the government accepted to negociate with them. If you don't use violence in France, in many case you don't get heard at all.

Gilets Jaunes, aslo because of their violence did manage to get the government to made some concession.

Millions of French people (more than Gilets Jaunes at their peak) marched several times peacefully against the recent Pension Law, supported by all the trade union democratically elected, supported by more than 70% of the population and more than 90% of the workers. Nothing happen. No concession. Not even a vote in the parliament.

For sure sometimes violence is efficient, sometimes violence in counter-productive. Justifiable ? that is something else...

[barrkel]

To be fair, wealth taxes are a pretty unworkable idea in the large.

[skitout]

Used to work just find in France before Macron

[pif]

> Polls showed that

The only polls that matter are elections. Apart from elections, people have the right to avoid any poll without risking any policy change.

[HourglassFR]

Elections are not, and should not, be the be-all end-all of a functionning democraty. Otherwise you just have an elective aristocracy.

And to be clear, I'm not saying pure polling driven policy is the solution, but saying politician should outright ignore them because not legally binding is a very weird stance.

[dtoma]

If anything, the origin of the 5th republic under its founding president used referendums to validate the president's actions. He literally resigned after losing a referendum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_de_Gaulle#Retirement.

[skitout]

1) I was responding to someone talking about silent majority... polls is then relevant

2) Democracy is not just voting every 5 year for a president and a parliament