The French Gilets Jaunes revolt is something of a magic mirror. Anyone looking at it sees whatever they want to see.

The left, in France and abroad, has seen a popular uprising against President Emmanuel Macron’s neoliberal economic policies; the right an explosion of discontent by overburdened taxpayers; Macron’s ministers portray it as a lumpenproletarian riot, inspired by conspiracy theories, manipulated by the far right and the far left and, latterly, infected with anti-Semitism; and many journalists, committed to their own versions of conspiracy theories, have searched desperately for leaders, plotters and hidden agendas.

But how do you find a coherent definition of a movement that anyone can join simply by donning a high-visibility jacket and going on a protest or, for that matter, taking to the battlefield on their keyboard?

You can’t. That seems pretty obvious  but it hasn’t stopped the pundits, politicians and armchair activists from crowbarring the phenomenon into their own preconceived scenarios.

The lack of structure, a result of the movement’s online origins, means that anyone could be a Gilet Jaune – the casseur who smashes a shopfront on the Champs Elysées as much as the young mother camped out on a roundabout in the provinces – and anyone can declare themselves a spokesperson, as I found when trying to track down a Toulouse area representative for RFI.

At the start, all we could be sure the protesters had in common was opposition to the government’s green tax on fuel, although it soon became clear that they all hated Macron.

As the movement appears to be drawing to a close, the call for referendums on sufficiently large demand has come to the fore.

So what does characterise this movement, apart from those basic demands?

Here are a few of my observations/hypotheses:

• Solidarity and the internal combustion engine:  As anyone who has ever sat behind a steering wheel has to admit, the automobile is an individualist, not to say egoist, form of transport – a strange basis on which to build solidarity. In its 100-odd years of existence, the internal combustion engine has radically restructured our lives and our attitudes. No more need to live within walking distance of your workplace, shops or other basic facilities. That has made many people regard a car as an essential part of their lives, if not a basic human right. Frankly, that can bring the worst out in people – just try living in a place with limited parking facilities, as I do. But the government’s decision to tax a form of transport people have come to rely on, while letting off big polluters like airlines and ships (taxing them would mean job losses, one minister, predictable, argued), drew attention to Macronism’s class bias. ” People see it as a class war, because it is,” as Naomi Klein pointed out in a tweet. As is now well-known, the Gilets Jaunes shock troops come from rural areas, small towns or the outskirts of larger ones, where public transport and other facilities are poor to non-existent. (That is likely to become worse, by the way, when the government has opened up the rail network to competition, in enthusiastic compliance with an EU directive, and neglected branch lines are found to be unprofitable). So the response has been collective and demands for better public transport and facilities have surfaced.
• Taxes: Nobody actually likes paying taxes and, given the percentage of would-be fiscal freeloaders in the population, there are almost certainly a number in the ranks of the Gilets Jaunes. The right-wing Republicans tried to interpret the protests as a taxpayers’ revolt, something they, their voters and their friends in big business can identify with. That was the government’s spin, too, once TV footage of Paris in flames had convinced it that concessions had to be made.  Ministers promised more tax cuts, a now time-honoured way to tie the less well-off to the agenda of the wealthy, accompanied by an it’s-all-your-fault rider that this would mean cuts in services. But all the Gilets Jaunes I asked insisted they were ready to pay what they regarded as fair taxation and a key demand has been for the reversal of Macron’s cut in the wealth tax. To nobody’s astonishment, the government has absolutely ruled out any such move.
• Macron and elitism: With his declaration that you only have to cross the road to find a job, his lectures to a teenager on the appropriate way to address his august person, his apparent belief that those who have not “succeeded” are “nothing”, Macron, elected on a promise to break the French political mould, has personified the arrogance of the French elite once in power. “It’s the contempt he has for people,” Jean-Pierre, a middle-aged former Macron voter told me as teargas wafted around us on the first national demonstration in Paris in November. To sociologist Laurent Mucchielli, Macron is “a typical representative of that technocracy … someone who has never held elected office, has never had the experience of running a local council … not used to being in contact with either the voters or trade unionists or local councillors, all he’s used to is ministries, technocrats, top civil servants, MPs and journalists.” But it’s not just about style. Macron’s policies have been a continuation of previous governments’ applications of trickle-down theory, regardless of their failure to deliver on promises of a better life for all. To the government, and many media commentators, resentment of technocratic arrogance is populism, raising the spectre of “the white working class” and, with it, bigotry, xenophobia and anti-Semitism (although, confusingly, that seems to be coming from Salafists). There have been instances of these but such excesses seem to be an integral part of today’s world of online invective, rather than a specific property of the Gilets Jaunes. When Macron’s supporters, adopting the elegant soubriquet “the Red Scarves”, took to the streets and the keyboards, class hatred seemed to be pretty much the order of the day.
• Left, right or apolitical? Impossible as it is to establish who can really speak for the Gilets Jaunes – some who’ve tried have received death threats for their pains – a list of 42 demands published after online consultation seems to be generally accepted as representative. The highest number, 22, featured in the programme of left-wing presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon, while 21 featured in that of far-right candidate Marine Le Pen. Justification for the old platitude about the extremes meeting? Not really, if you factor in the relative importance given to the questions in these politicians’ rhetoric. Le Pen’s hobbyhorse of Islam is not raised and immigration hardly gets a mention in the list of demands, although there have been flurries of fake news and on the question and some sings of racism on Gilet Jaune social media networks. The key concern is inequality, with calls for progressive taxation, a rise in the minimum wage and pensions, a maximum wage and a reversal of tax handouts to the rich. A left-wing programme, one might say. But in January a group of researchers found that 60 percent of Gilets Jaunes declared themselves to be neither left-wing nor right-wing (as did both candidates in the final round of the 2017 presidential election – Emmanuel Macron and … Marine Le Pen). This should seriously worry the left. How is it that so many people no longer identify the core concern of socialism – the eradication of inequality – as a left-wing value, or even a political question? 
• Media: Many Gilets Jaunes might be surprised to know that their belief that the numbers on their demonstrations have been underreported and their activity misrepresented is common to practically all activists. Nobody is ever happy with how their cause is reported, leading the committed nowadays to seek consolation in the social media echo chamber, where there is distortion on demand. That said, the sensationalist reflex that leads to non-stop images of isolated cases of violence is automatic in certain media, and could be seen during the demonstrations against Macron’s labour law reform, for example. If you compare the official figures, or the organisers’ claims, those protests at their height mobilised higher numbers than the Gilets Jaunes but you wouldn’t guess it from the coverage, so maybe some of the sensationalism worked in the latter’s favour. Both movements were also on the receiving end of the attentions of law and order, which proved a great shock to many Gilets Jaunes. In both cases, establishment politicians’ cries of indignation about police injuries has obscured the fact that a greater number of demonstrators were injured.
• Democracy, representation: “Be careful what you wish for,” is my own response to the call for referendums on demand. Whether you are in favour of Brexit or not, nobody in their right mind can claim that the debate preceding the UK referendum was balanced and well-informed. Social media have added to the capacity for disinformation that was already amply exploited by certain media moghuls and their outlets. It is not a coincidence that referendums are popular with dictators, who can manipulate the debate and engineer the required result. But the demand does highlight the fact that parliamentary democracy as it is currently practiced is not serving the interests of the majority. Paying MPs the average wage, one of the 42 demands as well as a lonsgstanding hard-left proposal, would surely inspire them with more empathy with their constituents. An interesting proposal for preparing legislation is the establishment of commissions of citizens, a kind of political jury service, that would draw up proposals after interviewing experts and interested parties, thus drawing informed conclusions.