This is one of the most insightful articles I've seen on the Yellow Vest movement in France. For example, one insight of his got me thinking that it had meaning for the election of Trump. When he asked a French minority party official, Asselineau:
Can this Rebellion “carnival” turn into a real Revolution? “What is happening in your country? Is it a rebellion? Can we say that it is a Revolution?” I ask Francois Asselineau , a man well acquainted with French history and EU treaties, deeply Gaullist in his ideology and leader of a small party which campaigns for the exit of France from the EU and NATO.The author writes:
I understand that he is troubled and hesitates to answer – just as with anyone else to whom I have asked the same question. He finally turns to me “I don’t know. Something is missing. There is a portion of the people not ready to risk everything”.
I hear him and what comes to my mind is Wilhelm Reich’s diagnosis. This renowned Marxist-Freudian writer of the inter-war period contributed one of the most insightful analyses of Nazism and was expelled from both the Communist Party and the International Psychoanalytic Association due to his nonconformist and critical thinking. He wrote that the Germans had it bad in the 1930s because they wanted a Revolution but they were afraid of it. Instead of doing it themselves they appointed Hitler to do it for them – and the rest is history.Also, reference to Mirabeau, a figure of the French Revolution, is made here.