"YELLOW VESTS", THE REVOLT OF THE CENTER.

The insurgent and revolutionary wave of Yellow Vests in France has been extensively observed, analyzed and commented on in the media and on websites. They have been described as either populist, fascist, racist, anarchist, violent, stupid, and so on, or as ignorant activists, true revolutionary socialists, the people on the move, and so on. It seems to me, however, that if we allow ourselves a small historical comparison with the most similar events, that is to say the uprisings of 1788 and 1789, there is another reading than that of the official media, Macronists, Lepenists and Melanchonists. Indeed, this revolt does not appear as extremist, but as a reformist - it wants a better sharing of wealth, a better democracy, a better social welfare, etc. This strongly resembles the first phase of the French Revolution, from 1789 to 1792, when it was a question of transforming the absolute monarchy into a constitutional one. It was the Girondins, not an insignificant party, who represented this trend, popular until the unveiling of the king's treason and the Terror. What the Yellow Vests demand is above all a REFORM of institutions, this time to their advantage, and no longer to that of the ruling classes. To equate them with dangerous extremists is to make exactly the same mistake that Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette made during the beginning of the Revolution: Instead of acceding to the demands and accepting, as the English and Dutch monarchs before them, a new way of ruling, they pushed the Assembly into foolish actions (The war against Austria, etc.), thus allowing the accession to power of Robespierre. What the Yellow Vests want is not a Soviet republic or an ultra-liberal regime but, on the contrary, a republic of the center. They are, however, ready to go on until they to get what they want, and if the Fifth Republic does not reform itself (which seems very unlikely), then we can fear a growing violence. And a justified one, above all.