The 'Gilets Jaunes' Are Unstoppable: "Now, The Elites Are Afraid"

Authored by Christophe Guilluy via Spiked-Online.com, 
 
The gilets jaunes (yellow vest) movement has rattled the French 
establishment. For several months, crowds ranging from tens of 
thousands to hundreds of thousands have been taking to the streets 
every weekend across the whole of France. They have had enormous 
success, extracting major concessions from the government. They 
continue to march. 
 
Back in 2014, geographer Christopher Guilluy’s study of la France 
périphérique (peripheral France) caused a media sensation. It drew 
attention to the economic, cultural and political exclusion of the 
working classes, most of whom now live outside the major cities. It 
highlighted the conditions that would later give rise to the 
yellow-vest phenomenon. Guilluy has developed on these themes in his 
recent books, No Society and The Twilight of the Elite: Prosperity, 
the Periphery and the Future of France. spiked caught up with Guilluy 
to get his view on the causes and consequences of the yellow-vest 
movement. 
 
spiked: What exactly do you mean by ‘peripheral France’? 
 
Christophe Guilluy: ‘Peripheral France’ is about the geographic 
distribution of the working classes across France. Fifteen years ago, 
I noticed that the majority of working-class people actually live very 
far away from the major globalised cities – far from Paris, Lyon and 
Toulouse, and also very far from London and New York. 
 
Technically, our globalised economic model performs well. It produces 
a lot of wealth. But it doesn’t need the majority of the population to 
function. It has no real need for the manual workers, labourers and 
even small-business owners outside of the big cities. Paris creates 
enough wealth for the whole of France, and London does the same in 
Britain. But you cannot build a society around this. The gilets jaunes 
is a revolt of the working classes who live in these places. 
 
They tend to be people in work, but who don’t earn very much, between 
1000€ and 2000€ per month. Some of them are very poor if they are 
unemployed. Others were once middle-class. What they all have in 
common is that they live in areas where there is hardly any work left. 
They know that even if they have a job today, they could lose it 
tomorrow and they won’t find anything else. 
 
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-01-21/gilets-jaunes-are-unstoppable-now-elites-are-afr