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Comment on FB about the Yellow Vests from a Venezuelan leftist hostile
to Maduro currently teaching in Doha.
Jairo Lugo-Ocando:
Over the years, there are have been two key discursive resources used by
neoliberalism to advance its political agenda. One is the notion of
‘common sense’ (highlighted by Gramsci), which dictates that the evident
and immediate issue is treated in isolation. That is pretending that the
issue of high costs of fuel in France has happened in a vacuum, when in
reality the fuel prices would not be a problem if there had not been a
disinvestment in French public transports (many times is more expensive
to travel by car or mobilize merchandise by trucks than by train), if
the taxation system was fair or if wages and employment had not been
stagnated for so long. The second is the notion (false notion) of choice
-i.e. giving parent vouchers so kids go to a ‘better’ private school
when in reality a single mother working 12 hours in the Bronx and who
does not have a car, family support or time has cero chance of making
use of these vouchers that end up not only helping those who do not need
that help but also widening the gap between rich and poor as middle
class kids end up taking advantage of those vouchers and leaving the
poor kids behind. Regarding this last point, Macron has fallow the same
narrative of his predecessors; that is, he claims that he is imposing
these taxes as a way of addressing the environmental issue, which is
false. The French state has total discretion at how it uses those taxes
and most of what collects from fuel go to other areas such as the
military. More important, at no point there is evidence that high fuel
prices have made people go to public transport because they also
increase in equal proportion their own tickets. The whole thing is a lie
that seems almost thought to create a backlash against environmental
policies. The taxes upon the gasoline prices is NOT an environmental
policy. It is only a decoy to make people think that their ‘consumer’
actions can transform the system (which is BS). Having said that, yes
Macron is a prick, no doubt about that. But let us not forget that he
was elected in a particular context where you had to vote for him while
puking because of the real possibility of the National Front getting
into power.
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