Yellow Vests are copying the French left’s worst traditions

On Saturday, I visited Chartres and stood in awe inside its cathedral. I was as stunned by its splendour as I was by the knowledge that men once wanted to blow the cathedral sky high. The Revolutionary Committee was only prevented from carrying out its wish in 1793 by a local architect who warned that removing all the rubble would be a complicated task. So instead they stripped the cathedral of its metal and burned the peat wood sculpture of the black Madonna. The cultural sacrilege of the late-eighteenth century has returned to France in the shape of the Yellow Vest mob, many of whom share the Revolutionaries’ hatred of their country and its traditions.

The real Yellow Vests, the ones who last winter staged peaceful protests throughout France, have deserted the movement this year. Some because they accepted the concessions made by Emmanuel Macron; others because they saw how their movement had been commandeered by a venomous coalition of anti-capitalists, anti-Semites and anarchists.