On January 17, 2020, after weeks of labor union strikes and protest demonstrations against Macron’s pension reform plan, the President of the Republic and his wife, Brigitte, went out to see a play at the Bouffes du Nord theatre in Paris.
Also seated in the theatre that evening was Taha Bouhafs, an anti-government political activist with about 40,000 followers on Twitter. Bouhafs tweeted from his seat:
I am right now at the Bouffes du Nord Theatre (Metro station La Chapelle) 3 rows behind the President of the Republic. Activists are somewhere in the area and are calling for everyone to get down here. Something’s getting ready to happen ... it may turn into a bumpy night. |
Chaos ensued as several dozen protesters tried to storm the theatre and were ejected by security forces. They regathered outside, on the street, singing France’s new revolutionary anthem in the faces of the police:
“On est là, on est là . . . !”
“We are here, we are here! Even if Macron doesn’t want it, we are here!
For the honor of the workers and for a better world!
Even if Macron doesn’t want it, we are here!”
|
The Macrons were unharmed. Bouhafs was taken into custody by the police and released the next day.
The story was covered, with video, by France 24, in English.
Today, as hundreds of thousands went on strike and took to the streets to protest Macron’s pension reform plan, once again, the same anthem could be heard.
“On est là, on est là ! Même si Macron ne le veut pas, nous on est là ! Pour l’honneur des travailleurs et pour un monde meilleur ! Même si Macron ne le veut pas, nous on est là !”
The tweet above was sent today by Raquel Garrido. She also sent the one below which shows protesters chanting something else:
“Lalalalalalala general strike!”
Raquel Garrido is a well-known celebrity who appears regularly on the cable TV news journal, ‘Balance Ton Post.’
She’s also a lawyer who served as legal counsel for France’s Left of the Left leader, Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
Garrido’s husband, Alexis Corbière, holds a seat in the Assemblée Nationale as a member of Mélenchon‘s party, ‘La France Insoumise.’ (That’s Mélenchon on the left and Corbière on the right in the photo, here.)
|
The day after the Bouffes du Nord incident, Garrido ended up in hot water when she tweeted a link to a video taken at a Yellow Vest demonstration in the city of Caen which showed protesters chanting another slogan:
“Louis the Sixteenth, Louis the Sixteenth, he was beheaded.
Macron, Macron, we can do it again.”
|
A media controversy, dubbed #Guillotinegate, erupted and it quickly engulfed Raquel Garrido, and by extension, her former boss, Mélenchon, as well as the entire Left. TV talkers reacted in horror like they hadn’t been showing the same Yellow Vests chanting the same slogan for over a year. Garrido’s tweet was meant to invite the public to a protest demonstration scheduled for January 21. That’s the date that Louis XVI was guillotined in 1793, and that’s what they said put it over the line, for them.
Here’s how the news program ‘Quotidien’ on TF1 spelled it out for viewers, with Garrido’s tweet on the left and a lurid illustation on the right.
Twitter, which seems to let almost anything fly, stepped in to scold Garrido and delete the offending tweet. As they put it:
Violation of our rules regarding inappropriate behavior and harassment.
It is prohibited to engage in, or to encourage others to engage in, targeted harassment. This includes wishing or hoping for physical harm.
|
Mélenchon had to answer for it in interviews he was only too happy to give to the major news outlets. He reacted with his trademark sarcastic humor. “We can’t send Macron to the guillotine because we’re against the death penalty.”
"Of course we're not in favor of executing the President of the Republic, or violence in politics. It's not what we do today in a modern democracy. But there was a time during the Revolution of 1789 . . . and all of that is buried deep in the French psyche."