Why You Can't Wear a Yellow Vest Anymore: Ida Susser on the Battle for Democracy in France

00:00:00] Andrew Keen: Hello. My name is Andrew Keen. Welcome to Keen On America, the daily interview show about the United States.

[00:00:20] Andrew Keen: Hello, everybody. As democracy continues to be under threat, we look for movements as ways of saving or, shall we say, battling for democracy. A lot of people saw Occupy Wall Street, about 15 years ago, as a model for challenging traditional structures of authority. Then, of course, there was the Me Too movement, the Black Lives Matter movement, and even more recently, the streets of Minneapolis. Meanwhile, it's not just American movements that people are interested in. There are also the so-called "Yellow Vests" in France—very influential in 2018, '19, and 2020 in challenging certain structures of power in France and in encouraging what people think of as deliberative mini-publics. A lot of thought on the Yellow Vests, whether they're revolutionaries or reactionaries. And I'm thrilled today that we have a new book out on the Yellow Vests and their significance; indeed, the significance in terms of the battle for democracy. The new book is called The Yellow Vests and the Battle for Democracy, written by an anthropologist in New York City. My guest today, Ida Susser. Ida, congratulations on the new book.

[00:01:43] Ida Susser: Thank you.

[00:01:44] Andrew Keen: Um, is it correct, Ida, to think of the Yellow Vests in the same kind of context as Occupy Wall Street, or Me Too, or Black Lives Matter?

[00:01:54] Ida Susser: I think it is. They're all different. Certainly, the Yellow Vests was a big surprise in France. People thought it was unpredictable. They went back to look at the history of the Jacquerie, you know, back to the 17th century—who are these people rushing in from the countryside? Because they were not a movement like Occupy that was in—living in the central cities, students—not only students, youth. They were a movement of people coming from what they call the urban periphery, from, you know, the south of France, from Brittany, from all over. And they had been already demonstrating in those areas around their own traffic circles. And then they came together to Paris. So it was coming from the outside in, feeling very themselves peripheral and neglected and abandoned. So they're not the same as many of the urban movements that we're familiar with, you know, youth movements or even like Black Lives Matter, which is centered in the cities to a large extent.

[00:02:59] Andrew Keen: Ida, as you know better than I do, there's a great debate on the left about the value of populism. A couple of weeks ago, we had Charles Derber, another distinguished sociologist/anthropologist on the show, talking about what he calls "progressive populism." In your analysis of the Yellow Vests in this new book, do you see them as a movement of the right or the left? Or are those terms not really very helpful now in the second quarter of the 21st century?

[00:03:31] Ida Susser: Well, that is the question. To me, when I began this work, I was wondering about that. And like—we are 200 years since the left and the right were first defined, and they were defined in the French Revolution.

[00:03:46] Andrew Keen: In the Mountain, right? Or in the Montagne in the French parliament?

[00:03:51] Ida Susser: Yeah, in the first French parliament. Who sat on which side of the King. So obviously capitalism has changed, cities have changed, the world has changed. But I think at the end of the book, I came to the conclusion that it is absolutely crucial to keep these distinctions. However, the movement itself claimed—and probably was initially—not ideological left or right. No question that the people who came to Paris from the roundabouts of the periphery, they didn't think of themselves initially as coming with an ideological bent. And many of them were not really—didn't really care, like you and I or some of your listeners may care about consistent politics. You know, "I'm a left-wing theorist," really. But many people put different things together, kind of like bricolage. They mix and match, and of course, many, I—or many theorists think that that's—how can you tell what's left and right? But this movement was like that. They didn't have a consistent ideology. And part of what I studied over the last, you know, five or six years was what did this mean politically? And people in France were really worried because it was such an unexpected movement and it wasn't like, for example, Occupy Wall Street. You don't really ask was Occupy Wall Street on the left—at least I don't—or the alter-global movements before that, you know, the World Social Forum. They were left. And I think you would also say that about many of the other movements.

[00:05:31] Andrew Keen: Me too, and Black Lives Matter. I don't think anyone ever has imagined Black Lives Matter as a right-wing movement.

[00:05:37] Ida Susser: No.

[00:05:38] Andrew Keen: And Me Too had various issues, but I don't think they were... or even today on the streets of Minneapolis, it's not a...

[00:05:46] Ida Susser: That's right. Exactly.

[00:05:47] Andrew Keen: So, I've been rather remiss, I think, Ida. It's probably a bit unfair on our listeners because not everyone's going to be familiar with the history of the Yellow Vests. You've written a book about it. You've studied it in some detail. Perhaps before we get into any more theoretical debate about whether they're on the left and the right and what they mean and how they can actually help in the battle for democracy, you give us a brief history. When they began, whether there are any particular individuals associated with their origins, and why we don't seem to hear about the Yellow Vests very much these days.

[00:06:21] Ida Susser: Yeah, when they appeared on November 17th in Paris, the world noticed. Everybody was in awe.

[00:06:28] Andrew Keen: What year was that? November 17th...

[00:06:31] Ida Susser: 2018. 2018, November 17th. And they came on a Saturday and they ran through the streets and they went up towards the Arc de Triomphe, all the places that tourists might go—the Rue de Rivoli alongside the Louvre and the main tourist center of Paris and the center of Paris, you know. So this was the Champs-Élysées where rich people are, and where the government—where Macron lives. So the idea they had was that they were not being heard, and that they had to come to Paris in order to be heard. And what they started out as—beginning in June 2018—they were opposed to a diesel tax. Because many, many people in the urban peripheries and rural areas had bought cheap cars, small cars, that ran on diesel. Because for a long time it had been said—and in fact, diesel didn't have the taxes—it was a cheaper kind of gas than other gas. So people had very little money, or less money, were buying diesel cars. And then suddenly the government imposed what they called an ecological tax on diesel cars.

[00:07:46] Andrew Keen: And this is Macron, right?

[00:07:48] Ida Susser: Yeah, Macron. It was Macron.

[00:07:50] Andrew Keen: And you know, not that I'm always showing off, but Macron actually was on the show back in 2016 before he was president. So we're familiar with Macron. Is Macron the good or the bad guy here? At least from the Yellow Vest point of view. Was he the guy who triggered all this?

[00:08:05] Ida Susser: Oh, he is the enemy. They call him Jupiter, they call him a king... he is the enemy number one. Like from my theoretical point of view, I might think of other enemies, but from the point of view of people coming to Paris, it was Macron.

[00:08:24] Andrew Keen: So it was all—it was triggered by this increase in diesel prices. But were there broader socioeconomic, political, cultural issues at stake here that was driving these people to put their yellow jackets on and demonstrate at roundabouts on French streets?

[00:08:44] Ida Susser: Totally, totally, totally. Like the diesel gas was a question that people had to use cars in the rural areas and outside the cities. They didn't have very good public transportation because the train rails had been cut back—the regular trains—the buses had been cut back. But at the meantime, with all this disinvestment outside the major cities, in addition, so the schools had been put further away. And with that disinvestment, the bakeries, the post offices didn't exist in these little villages. So everybody had to drive much more than like if you live in Paris—if you're cosmopolitan and you have money—you really don't have to drive that much.

[00:09:34] Andrew Keen: Yeah, you just get your electric bicycle, your electric vehicle when you feel like going on a trip.

[00:09:39] Ida Susser: Or you take the Metro. Yeah.

[00:09:42] Andrew Keen: Ida, how multi-ethnic was this? When there have been other demonstrations in France, I think people are familiar with the reality—for better or worse—that Paris itself in particular tends to be inhabited—the expensive part—by white French people, white tourists, and the peripheries are full of immigrants from North Africa. To what extent were the Yellow Vests a white movement or a brown movement? Or is that the wrong way of thinking of it?

[00:10:11] Ida Susser: Well, you know, in France you wouldn't be able to say that.

[00:10:14] Andrew Keen: No, we're not in France, so we're allowed.

[00:10:16] Ida Susser: No, I understand. I just—they call it a movement of the "Old France," which is the displaced workers of mostly French descent. It's not the wealthy in Paris French, and it's not the immigrant Banlieue, which are the—the suburbs are about 30% immigrant and racially diverse. This is people coming from seven, eight hours away, driving to Paris and together sharing cars, whatever, driving into the city. They're people who are civil service workers, teachers, truck drivers, plumbers, nurses... there are secretaries. And they are, I would say they were originally at least, I would say 70 or 80% the way we would see it—the French might call them French descent or Old France—displaced workers. However, there are many also people of other kinds of groups, you know, that—for example, many of Arab descent, many of African descent. But the majority and the way it's seen is a movement of Old France.

[00:11:27] Andrew Keen: Old France being white France, of course. So, how did Macron and, of course, Le Pen, how did they respond? Were these people—I mean, in terms of your analysis and who they voted for—were they disillusioned Macron voters? Were they Popular Front Le Pen supporters? Socialists? Where did they politically come from?

[00:11:51] Ida Susser: Well, that was the big question. A lot of them never voted. A lot of them had never paid much attention. They just were furious at the decline in public services, the decline in investment where they were. They really didn't vote, I'm sure many of them didn't vote. And many of them probably thought of themselves as Le Pen—not all, but certainly a percentage. And there were others from those areas which are very diverse who thought of themselves as La France Insoumise or communists, or you know, a real variation, I would say. But they didn't all vote in one way or another, and many of them didn't vote at all, either for political reasons—they abstained—or because they never got to the polls.

[00:12:44] Andrew Keen: The more you talk about it, the more it seems to me that perhaps another equivalent—rather than Me Too, or Occupy, or Black Lives Matter—the equivalent in the US would be the Tea Party or even the MAGA movement. You've obviously given some thought to this. Is there some truth to that?

[00:13:02] Ida Susser: You are so, so right. To me, what it is—a lesson for the United States or elsewhere—is the way in which people who are enraged by, you know, the poverty of Appalachia, for example, or places where you found a lot of the Tea Party and the Trump supporters... how that rage gets expressed and how it comes out, how it gets organized, what direction people take who don't really have an initial direction. So I think that we're looking at a similar part of the population, people who have been getting earning less and less, you know, in both of these countries—especially in this country but also in France. The wages for a working-class person haven't gone up since like 1980, since the neoliberal turn, right? So people aren't earning, and their services are being cut back. And in France, people regard those services as their rights. Like here, there's this idea that if you accept public assistance, you're like asking for charity, and in the United States, there's a lot of stigma that people look at it that way. But in France, they regard their taxes as being paid for your medical care, being paid for you to get free medical care, for you to get social security for your children when they're born... all kinds of entitlements that come with your taxes, and they regard it as belonging to them. So in that way, they're very, very different than American—like you're saying—the Tea Party. But I think another very big difference is the Tea Party—you know, people have called it astroturf. And there's plenty of evidence behind the idea that this rage was channeled by the right very much so, and by senators and stuff like that, and certainly once it became Trump's agenda. Whereas I think in France, although Marine Le Pen jumped on the bandwagon, I don't think it had much—it wasn't anything to do with her in the beginning. I think it was from the ground up.

[00:15:23] Andrew Keen: Yeah, it's interesting that... and I'm guessing, Ida, that you're not always happy with this kind of theoretical conclusion, because you're a woman on the left, you've done all sorts of research on South Africa and many other traditional right-left issues. And this one is much less comfortable. When I interviewed Macron, it was actually in Las Vegas. He was at a tech conference and he was there really trying to get investment for French tech. When it comes to the idea of progress, were the yellow jackets—are they reactionary? Do they believe in the idea of progress? What was their attitude, for example, to new technology? This was clearly—I'm guessing Marx would have described them as the petite bourgeoisie. Is that a fair sociological term to describe these people?

[00:16:15] Ida Susser: Some of them. Or as Marx talked about the peasants, the sack of potatoes with no politics and no connections between each other. But I think they were building connections, and I think I don't think they're in any way like, say, Brexit is seen as a nostalgia movement. I don't hear that from the French—Brexit being a similar kind of like the Trumps, you know, it's—who knows, they each have to be interpreted in their own national terms, but there's some similarities. And I don't—I don't see a kind of nostalgia in the French movement, not a backwards-looking. They are demanding that the government provide for them what it—what it should be providing. And I don't think they're anti-tech or they're not Luddites. They're—many of them are in tech jobs. But they're—they're saying that what is being destroyed is their safety net. What has been destroyed for the last 30 or 40 years is a constant, you know, cutting of all the ways—and not only the safety net, but the social connections of every little village and every little town. Because the buses are cut, there's cafes people don't come—in the village I stayed in, there was not even a single cafe I went to do research in. And to get your bread—you know, the French are famous for their baguettes—to get your bread, you had to order it to come to you at the post office, like a week before or something.

[00:17:56] Andrew Keen: No wonder there's a revolution in France if you can't get your bread. Ida, in a few days I've got the great British historian Christopher Clark coming on the show. He of course has written all sorts of wonderful books including Revolutionary Spring about 1848, which in many ways he focuses on the French quality of the 1848 revolutions. Of course, the revolution of Paris triggered the whole thing. To what extent is, in your view, the Yellow Vest simply a reflection of the uniqueness of the French revolutionary spirit, the fact that when people get angry in France, they go out on the streets? In America, the reverse seems to be true; they stay at home. To what extent—for all the fact that we might be inspired and intrigued by the Yellow Vest—to what extent is this really just a very interesting but uniquely French phenomenon?

[00:18:50] Ida Susser: That is so... it is a French phenomenon, but it's so far from what happened. For example, to tell you, when I went to Europe I was looking for—so I had just, as you mentioned, done research in other places and I was looking for what's going on in Europe. And I started in Spain, because they had Podemos and they had a lot of important, important uprisings after what we call, I guess, the Indignados or the movements in Spain that was part of—followed the Arab Spring. So Spain was very, very organized. But—and France had nothing at that time. So I was trying to do a comparison, why was Spain this way and why was France that way? They have similar histories in some ways, etc. And everybody said to me, "Oh, don't you know? Spain is the south of Europe and so they're very angry. But in northern parts of Europe, people are not angry, they still have good incomes." And then a year later, you got Nuit Debout, you got the what was the equivalent of Occupy in Paris. And then after Occupy, you got the Yellow Vests, and then much more. So I believe that they're just part of what many places have, comes at different times. You have to look at the moment that these things arise and the exact trigger, you know, and then you can understand those things. I talk about why do they happen when they happen. But I do not think it's just particularly French. France has a French history. 1848 is so exciting. The Paris Commune was so important in framing welfare states, they made... 1968, right, when they tore up the streets.

[00:20:47] Andrew Keen: So, Ida, we had a French historian on the show a couple of weeks ago, Helene Landemore. She teaches at Yale, but she's one of the great thinkers on deliberative democracy. She has a new book out, Politics Without Politicians: The Case for Citizen Rule, and particularly citizen assemblies. To what extent, when we think of the longer-term legacy of the yellow jackets, is this idea of a politics without politicians—a decentralized activism where people literally take the future into their own hands—is that one of its more lasting legacies?

[00:21:28] Ida Susser: I do not think it's just the Yellow Vests in that respect. I think there's a horizontalist movement that began even with the World Social Forum in the 90s. And this horizontalist movement went through Occupy—that means people refuse to recognize leaders. And when you asked me for the names of leaders, I was going to mention that, because the Yellow Vests are vehement that they do not want to have people held up as leaders. And that's why they write their messages on their backs—you know, they're called the Yellow Vests because they write all their messages on their back of their yellow vest. "Macron démission," like "resign Macron," whatever they want to say. Or they put all the dates of the revolution: 1789, 1830, 1848, 1871, 1968 on the backs of their yellow vests. They do not want to have personal recognition. And I didn't put a single name of a Yellow Vest person in my book—they didn't want it. And I changed everything. And I even said, "But you helped me so much," I said to some people. They said, "We don't believe in that. We do not want you to say that." And they will not name people to be interviewed. They believe in direct democracy. And that's what she writes about, I believe. And I think she's talking for a very large portion of the movements today, you know. Helene Landemore, I think she's coming from—it's not just in—in France. I think you can find that in Black Lives Matter also. And I think the people in Minnesota are realizing it's safer not to be known, you know. So I think with the surveillance of today, and also... I begin my book with a quote, something like "Fail—fail once, fail again," you know. It's like you have to begin again and fail again.

[00:23:43] Andrew Keen: That's a sort of Silicon Valley kind of message: keep on failing and eventually you'll succeed.

[00:23:48] Ida Susser: It was long before Silicon Valley. But yeah, it's been—that you have to start again and fail again. And the reason that I used that, it's said about, for example, communism under the Russians with Stalin and all, you know, whoever the—the situation in many, many countries that went not in the direction that people hoped. And so it's like that doesn't mean that you give up, but you try to begin in a different way. And I think that that's what this movement is—believes in and, you know, that they—they have to work by direct democracy. They do not believe in—we're now under the Fifth Republic in—in Paris, in France, and they're calling for a Sixth Republic. You know, they do not believe in the way in which representation currently works. But you know, I don't think it's any different. We had—I know the American Revolution was very partial, many, many people were left out—slaves, women, everybody—many, many people were left out, but it represented a belief that you have to begin again. And I think try again. And I think that's what the French—or also these Yellow Vests were also trying to do. And they did not want to be picked. You know, during the previous what was the equivalent of Occupy, surveillance cameras would show people who were sitting in, and like six weeks later they'd be brought to court. So people were very aware, I think, throughout Occupy, like the way they held their, you know, their signs up like that over their faces. People are very, very aware of surveillance and they don't want to be recognized as leaders.

[00:25:54] Andrew Keen: And they don't want to be leaders. The news from France at the moment, there's a big story about the death of a far-right activist, murdered by it seems some left-wing activists. Is there any long-term consequences now of the Yellow Vests? I mean, you've written in this book about them so you're obviously for you they're an important phenomenon and they're interesting in a theoretical sense. But in February, March of 2026, does anyone still talk about them? Does Macron mention them? Does Le Pen mention them? Are they playing any kind of role in the politics of France in the spring of 2026?

[00:26:38] Ida Susser: My argument in the book is that they came—that there are like streams that come from the Yellow Vests all the way through. That I think the—what followed was the pension strikes that the unions called for about two or three years that has almost, you know, under—well, Macron is still his government is still tumbling in relation to that. And when you walked on those pension demonstrations, they were singing the Yellow Vest songs. You can't wear a yellow vest on a demonstration anymore because you get arrested as soon as the police see you.

[00:27:18] Andrew Keen: However—what would the police claim you were doing if you're wearing a yellow vest?

[00:27:23] Ida Susser: I don't know. I don't know. But I was standing with some people, yeah, seniors on—on one of the places, one of the squares in Paris, and there were police around. And one of the people I was standing with, one of the men I was standing with, put on a yellow vest or had on a yellow vest. And within 10 minutes, the police had come and arrested him and taken him down to line him up with other people in the subway. Even though the other man I was standing with—I was standing with two guys, and one of them didn't have a yellow vest and the other one did. We were doing the same thing: we were standing, we were watching, and we're all like old. Nobody looked like, you know, they're about to be running, beating people up. And they arrested the guy who was like 75 and took him down into the subway. And the other guy who was 50 and actually a lot fitter, but he didn't have a yellow vest, he and I were left to watch. That's how it was.

[00:28:22] Andrew Keen: Is there a generational quality to this or does it tend to be most... or were the Yellow Vests mostly made up of if not older people, certainly middle-aged people?

[00:28:34] Ida Susser: I think there are a lot of youth from the urban periphery, you know, they don't know Paris and they don't have cars and they don't have money, and they would get arrested and not know how to find their way back, like 500 miles. So it was hard for them. But from Brittany I met, from Toulouse, but on the other hand, which is about seven hours drive... But on the other hand, there were many, many retired people. Many, many hospital administrators, principals of schools... the guy, software engineers... Just people—in France you know that the retirement age is as soon as you can get it, it used to be 62, now it's 64, that was a big battle. But they were all there in these demonstrations before the pensions and stuff were threatened, in the Yellow Vest demonstrations.

[00:29:40] Andrew Keen: What are the—Ida, what are the lessons do you think, as I said, we've done lots of shows on the future of the left in the United States, whether it should become more or less populist? Charles Derber has been on the show suggesting that you can have a progressive populism; there are others who don't believe that populism can be anything but reactionary. What are the lessons from your experience in—in Paris and in France and in this book, in your view, for American progressives as they try to figure out how to reinvent themselves in the face of Trump and MAGA?

[00:30:21] Ida Susser: You know, one of the terrible things which is written about historically and about fascism is that there's something you might call a passive revolution, that's an old word. But like that there's in the people like Trump or Steve Bannon, they take on the words of the left and they're these leaders. And Mussolini did the same thing. They take on the words—in fact, Mussolini came out of the socialist. They use these words, just like Hitler called it National Socialist. The people think that they're going to save them from poverty, and so there's a mush. And I would say populism to me, right-wing populism if you want to call it, is a leader using polemics and propaganda to get people to rise up. Whereas the grassroots kind of movements—and you can call them left populism, but what I observed—they're making their own visions. They don't want leadership. They didn't follow either Le Pen or, in fact, Mélenchon, you know, the guy who's the head of the—the left.

[00:31:30] Andrew Keen: The left, yeah.

[00:31:31] Ida Susser: So they didn't see those as like their leaders and they were very critical. I mean they might vote for one of them, but they didn't come following like, you know, they didn't have a cult like Trump has cult. So in that respect, I don't mind what—I don't use the word populist myself for these movements, they are grassroots movements. But I do think that they're not organized unions or organized political parties. And I write a lot about how alone they can get, veer off into anti-vaxxing or any other kind of movement. But if they work with movements that believe in science—like union movements or political parties—and if they're recognized by those groups in some form as a kind of combination, which I call the commons (unions, political parties, grassroots movements), that's where transformation takes place. There would not have been the strength of the pension union movements if they hadn't had the Yellow Vests. The Yellow Vests were kind of like in America the Minneapolis—or people all over this country who are out there in the streets, and they're saying "where's the Democratic Party? Where are the people who are supposed to be fighting for us?" And they're pushing those representatives in a direction, and they're pushing their unions if they have them in a direction. So I think these grassroots organizations are incredibly important. You wouldn't—Ilhan Omar would not have been elected without the movements in New York City around other issues—Black Lives Matter, as you mentioned, Me Too and also the Gaza movement—no, they would not have been elected. So even though it eventually might get represented, Bernie Sanders came out of Occupy in my view, in my understanding of where that energy came from and how it massed. I feel that these large grassroots movement are huge in developing what I call a unified vision, what some people might call a concrete utopia, a way that people come together. They recognize commonality across—like among the Yellow Vests—across the disabled, across age, across poverty, across shame, across, you know, whether they're of Arab descent or—or long-term French movement, you know, descendants of whatever you want to call Old France, New France. They bring people together and they form thresholds between these different grassroots movements and they begin to understand a broader unifying vision. And that is where parties come—get their energy. And that's where...

[00:34:41] Andrew Keen: Yeah, it's interesting. I'm sure you're familiar with the—the Turkish left populist Ece Temelkuran; she's written about love as the thing that unites these people. Finally, and I was going to ask you about Omar, you brought her up already. Finally, Ida, you went to France, you spent a lot of time there, you've talked to a lot of the Yellow Vests. What's the view—I know this is rather a general question—but what's the view from the Yellow Vests and people you've talked to about what's happening in the United States?

[00:35:15] Ida Susser: Oh, isn't that interesting. You know, many of them are not that... some of them will tell me they don't have, like I said, a strict ideology and some—they've heard the news, so they were very, you know, "is Trump fixing America?" kind of thing, you know. It's not like they say "we're on the right" or "we're on the left." They're—they're like picking up news wherever they get it. So I don't think they have a very unified or clear—the people from the grassroots. I'm sure many, many French intellectuals know exactly what's going on, just like you and I and whatever, they know what's going on. But there are people on the ground who just kind of admire or look from a distance and they do not have the same kind of analysis that they would have of their own situation, I don't think.

[00:36:12] Andrew Keen: Well, it's an interesting conversation, interesting new book, an important new book on the Yellow Vests, much misunderstood social movement. The Yellow Vests and the Battle for Democracy, a very creative way of thinking about the significance historically and otherwise of the Yellow Vests. Ida Susser, thank you so much, and good luck with the book. Thank you.

[00:36:34] Ida Susser: Thank you very much. I enjoyed it.

[00:36:37] Andrew Keen: Hi, this is Andrew again. Thank you so much for listening or watching the show. If you enjoyed it, please subscribe... we're on Substack, YouTube, Apple, Spotify, all the platforms... and I'd be very curious as to your comments as well on what you think of the show, how it can be improved, and the kinds of guests that you would enjoy hearing or listening to in future. Thank you again.