Cover story

A right-wing group of protesters, supported by some political parties, are left surprisingly unscathed by police after many acts of violence and homphobic and racist insults, and have won controversial praise for denouncing illegal immigrants hiding in a truck they stopped at a barrage.

Exasperated low middle-class citizens protest again the rising taxes and general cost of life, pacifically demonstrating in the streets and expressing solidarity with anyone suffering in the current political situation.

Except these are the same people. You might have heard about the gilets jaunes, the “yellow jackets” movement that began in France a couple of weeks ago. It seemingly started as a protest against the rising cost of fuel but grew into a larger rejection of the growingly unpopular government of Macron, and the only thing we know about it for sure is that nobody agrees on what it is. Media reports are widely contradictory, with the usual focus on admittedly appalling incidents and images, while social media is filled with people arguing that it’s either a group of violent idiots or widely misrepresented citizens.

My only question is, couldn’t it be both? It seems for sure that people are demonstrating, some making comments to the media you hope they wouldn’t – which are, of course, the ones that gain the most attention – while others simply seem to want to point out the fact that their living conditions are becoming insufferable. But this is a movement without clear leaders or structure, that people seem to embrace because they’re frustrated – with a lot of different things – and need to be heard. It seems to me very plausible that some of these people are racist and others are not, some of these people are violent and others are not, just like the rest of us. But the obsession with trying to fit them into a pre-established category, be it on one extreme or the other, is a convenient distraction from considering what put all of them in the streets in the first place.

If journalism is essential, media sensationalism is dangerous, and relying only on evening news coverage or social media outrage is not going to help understand what is going on, much less what should be done to address it. Beware of the tendency to believe only what fits our existing beliefs, and beware of the cover story.