Yellow Vests from France to Taiwan: A globalized icon of resistance

What does the French Yellow Vest movement have to do with the Brexiteers and the  people in Taiwan protesting against unfair taxation on the other side of the world? They came up with wearing this icon of resistance via the virtual structures of modern (social) media. The internet and (digital) media enabled people all over the world to adopt the idea of wearing a Hi - Viz yellow vest in social protest. In a way it can be said, that people worldwide protest in these characteristic vests, because a maintenance engneer from France decided to share this idea in a video on social media.

29th of may 2018. A 32 year old usiness woman from Paris, called Priscilla Ludoski, launched a petition on Change.org, in which she called for a reduction in fuel prices. The fuel prices in France had risen in one year by 23% for diesel and 14% for gasoline. When Ludoski realised the government could act by lowering taxes, she shared the petition. In July, the French government came up with a series of measurements targeting motorists which were not received happily by the French citizens. By the advent of November 2018, Ludoski’s petition was signed over one million times. In October 2018, two truck drivers, Éric Drouet and Bruno Lefevre, called for a national blockade of roads and roundabouts to denounce a rise in fuel prices. By the advent of November 2018, Ludoski’s petition had been signed over a million times.

Meanwhile Ghislain Coutard, a maintenance engineer, invited people to wear their Hi-Viz vests on YouTube in support of Drouets initiative. The video quickly reached 5 million views and when 300.000 people across 2000 spots in France took for the streets to block roads, tollbooths and vehicles, an icon of resistance had been born. From the first event shared on the Facebook group ‘’La France en Colere’’ on October 2018 till early 2019, people wearing yellow vests were seen in nearly thirty different countries all over the word.

Wearing a Yellow Vest, in protests all over the world, is the story of the power of the internet and (social)media and the quick ways in which we now communicate globally. The motor behind the rapid and global spread is what Castells calls the Network Society. The internet 2.0 has become the central technological structure to reshape society as a whole (Castells, 2010). In the case of the Hi - Viz yellow vests, the characteristics of these new digital communication structures, are fully put in practice.

The Hi-Viz Yellow Vest as an international icon of discontent

From November 2018 to June 2019, protestors wearing Yellow Vests have been seen all over Europe as well as in Canada, America, Australia, Tunisia, Libya, Israel, Iran, Iraq and Egypt. As the Yellow Vest as an icon of resistance and discontent, is adopted worldwide, the ideology behind it doesn’t necessarily move alon. This was a conclusion of research conducted on pro - democracy protests, by Brancati  Lucardi (2019. They argued France's Yellow Vest demonstrations to not have inspired unrest abroad, because democracy protests result from local issues that are prioritized to issues abroad. The same idea comes op when comparing media reporting about the Yellow Vests in different countries.

Whereas the Yellow Vest movement as we know it in France started as a grassroots movement without connections with a specific ideology or political party, the Yellow Vests in Canada for example is a farright movement that has been xenophobic from the beginning. The Canadians have only ''borrowed the idea'', says Charles Smith, associate professor at the University of Saskatchewan. In several countries, people started wearing yellow vests while defending national issues as in the case of the Brexiteers, saying ‘’We voted leave’’. Although groups of Brexiteers are seen to be wearing yellow vests, they do not emphasise the same issues as the French, but were hijacked by the far right. So although the idea of wearing a yellow vest in social protests is a globalised aspect, accelerated by the infrastructure of (social) media, and many get their inspiration from the French, they go onto the streets for the causes connected to their own countries and governments. In Taiwan they ‘’hope that Tsai IngWen will listen to people and give concessions like Macron did’’, but although there can be many similarities, the case is never exactly the same. Some more examples of protestors 'borrowing' the idea of wearing the yellow vests, are from Iran, Israel, Egypt and Iraq, where protests were already present before the emergence of the Yellow Vest movement in France

''As the Yellow Vest as an icon of resistance and discontent, is adopted worldwide, the ideology behind it doesn’t necessarily move along.''

The yellow vests as a globalised icon of resistance mobilizing Dutch  protesters in these vests as well, is an example of the Yellow Vests  being a culture scape, as Appadurai calls it. The Dutch then add local indexes (characteristics) to the movement when they protest against prime minister Rutte or when they complain on the FaceBook site about a supermarket renaming their advertising folders in a perceived favour of 'foreigners'. This is globalisation to be the blending of the local and the global into a culturescape (Appadurai, 1996). In the case of the ellow vest movement, the index of wearing a yellow vest is the global aspect that gets blended with local reasons for protest and dissatisfaction. These reasons can overlap with reasons to protest abroad, like the people in Taiwan, Canada and France demanding Tax justice and people in he Netherlands and Iraq protesting against corrupted governments, but the protests remain based on local issues.
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This icon going global could not have been possible without the existence of web 2.0. This is the flow of more sophisticated websites and platformsthat were able to connect people and their content directly to each other. It was through the social media, Ghislain Coutard was able to reach millions of people with his idea that went global.

Internet in times of the web 2.0 is the central technology that reshapes society, making the world transnational, flexible, dynamic, less predictable and complexvirtual. What were once stable communities, have become flexible networks which became focussed on shared ideolog and interests.  Although traditional communities still exist, we can also be members of new networks (like the ellow est movement in our country), that operate on a transnational and fully globalised level (Castells, 2010). The same transformation from local, fixed communit to transnational ‘imagined’ communit, is the cause of the Yellow Vest phenomenon. We can be part of different Yellow Vest acebook groups simultanously, for example being member of 'Gele Hesjes NL', 'Gele Hesjes Tilburg' and 'Yellow Vests Europe' at the same time. 

Slacktivism in the Yellow Vest movements

Although the social media from which most Yellow Vests groups have emerged do create enormous events on the streets in several countries, there is also a force in social media that decreases the amount of people physically protesting. A reason for the decrease of protestors that are actually visible in the streets, is slacktivism. How does it happen, that people on Facebook call for mass demonstrations and thousands of people show their interest in them on social media, but only a hand full of people actually show up on these events?

Slacktivism: 5000+ interested, 744 going

One of the main reasons for this is slacktivism. Rotman et al. (2011) define slacktivism as low - risk, low - cost activity via social media to raise awareness, produce change or grant satisfaction to the person engaged in the activity. Slacktivism can be done by 'liking' an activists' page on Facebook, sending a Tweet with an activistic symbol in it or by altering one's profile picture, for example. (Social) media is often the reason why people know about social issues to begin with, but it doesn't always lead to concrete offline actions.

A social issue, according to et al.'s their diagram starts with the identification of a social cause and the recognition of a need for awareness. Then the information and need for awareness is distributed via social media, which can either lead to activism or slacktivism (that does not leave the online space of social media). In the case of activism,  direct, proactive and often confrontational action is used to attaining a societal change. Slacktivism is however more common if we look at the numbers of people being 'interested' in certain activistic activities and people actually showing up in demonstrations. 

''How does it happen, that people on Facebook call for mass demonstrations and thousands of people show their interest in them on social media, but only a hand full of people actually show up?''

In Nijmegen, the organisers of an event in ay  expected 500 to 2500 people to attend the demonstration. About 160 people actually showed p according to the local media. Although the moderators and admins of the Dutch Yellow Vests put great effort in mobilizing people to protest, they d't really succeed. Despite the Facebook site to count more than 32.000 members, there have never been protests attended by more than a few hundred people in The Netherlands. Slacktivism is intended to show support towards a certain social issue on social media, but the mass media only count the amount of people in the streets. For the mass media, decreasing numbers of Yellow Vests physically protesting, means the movement to cease in time.

The mass media have a great influence on the visibility of the yellow symbol, but slacktivism is not as easy to see as a group of people actively protesting. The politicians and mass media respond on actions that have effect in everyday life. When a dozen of protesters block a highway, the effects are bigger than when a thousand new members suscribe on a ellow vest Facebook site.

Slacktivism is not local and can be seen in international events on central places in Europe. Take as an example the picture abovereferring to an event in Brussels that more than 5.000 people are interested in and 744 of them are intending to go to. The official Facebook site of the French Yellow Vests, counts more than 1.7 million members, but the iconic protests in Paris  have only attract a few hundred people recent weeks. 

Figure 5: A snapshot taken by Ashna Coster of Nikki by NikkiTutorials The power of makeup video that went viral.

Nevertheless even in the peripheries of The Netherlands, the yellow vests are known. The election board during the provincial elections in Goirle, a village in the south of he Netherlands, was decorated with a yellow vest. Another example of the icon reaching the peripheries is a digital newspaper from Ooij, a very small village on the border with Germany, to report about the Yellow Vest protesters in Nijmegen. Wang et al. (2014) argue globalisation to be a transformation of the entire world system including the most remote margins. Globalisation is as influential to margins as wel as metropols. This certainly is the case for the globalisation of the yellow vest symbol. 

Where are they now: one year later

Despite the decrease of protestors, the Yellow Vests are far from gone a year after the first event in France. New initiatives rise, like the Black Vests who fight for a better treatment of undocumented migrants.  The Yellow Vests have recently, on November 17, celebrated their first anniversary, in november 17th. Organisers of the Yellow Vest anniversary think about 40.000 people have rallied on the birthday of the movement, whereas the interior ministry of France estimated the number on 28.000 protestors nationwide. 

On november 19th, Dutch yellow vests have visited the Dutch prime minister for the second time , to evaluate the agreements they have made before. In Canada, where the Yellow Vest movement is an extreme - right, anti - immigrant and hate spreading group, the Yellow Vests are protesting in Vancouver at the moment. They are protesting against immigration and carbon taxes.

The conclusion of this article is that the idea of wearing the iconic vests in social protests has gone global by means of the network society. Because of web 2.0 and (social) media it is possible for individual ideas or grassroots movements to reach the national and international public and to grow expontially. Although protestors abroad are inspired by the French Yellow Vest movement and can have (many) overlapping reasons to protest, the local social issues are the reason they demonstrate. By the mixing of a globalised icon (the Hi - Viz yellow vest) with national aspects (for example Brexit campaigning), the phenomenom of the Yellow Vest becomes a culturescape. There is a lot of awareness for social issues on social media, but on the other hand social media is also a system that enables slacktivism.  'Yyellow vests' are now often used in the same phrase as 'protestors', whereas before november 2018, these vests only had meaning in the context of highly visible clothing. 

Appadurai, A. (1996). Modernity at large: Cultural dimensions of globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Brancati, D. & A. Lucardi (2019).  Why Democracy Protests Do Not Diffuse. Journal of Conflict Resolution 63(10): 2354-2389.

Castells, I. (2010). The Rise of the Network Society. Second Edition with a new Preface. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell, pp. xvii-xliv.

Rotman,D,, S. Vieweg & S. Yardi. (2011). From slacktivism to activism. Participatory culture in the age of social media. Proceedings of the International Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2011, Extended Abstracts Volume. Vancouver, BC, Canada.

Wang, X., Spotti, M., Juffermans, K. C. P., Kroon, J. W. M., Cornips, L., & Blommaert, J. M. E. (2014). Globalization in the margins: Toward a re-evalution of language and mobility. Applied Linguistics Review, 5(1), 23-44