Populism in its Pure Form
Alain de Benoist
Interview by Nicolas Gauthier
Translated by Greg Johnson
....Even if the lower classes and the lower middle classes are the driving force — which gives the movement an extraordinary class dimension — the yellow vests come from different backgrounds; they bring together young and old, peasants and businessmen, as well as office employees, blue-collar workers, and managers. Women as well as men (I think of those septuagenarian pensioners who do not hesitate, despite the cold, to sleep in their cars so that barricades can be held fast, day and night). People who do not care about the Right or the Left, and who for the most part never even participated in politics, but who fight on the basis of what they have in common: the feeling of being treated as second-class citizens by the media caste, considered as conscriptable and exploitable at the mercy of the predatory oligarchy of the rich and powerful, never to be consulted, but always to be deceived; indeed, to to be the “scapegoats” (François Bousquet) of France’s dregs, this “peripheral France” that is today undoubtedly the most French in France, but who are nevertheless abandoned to their fate to be victims of unemployment, declining wages, insecurity, relocation, immigration — and after years of patience and suffering, they ended up saying: “That’s enough!” That’s the yellow vests movement. I respect them, I respect them all!
