The latest rally by the Yellow Vests saw something which inevitably happens to mass peaceful protests. Sooner or later, other kinds of people join them. And they are ready for violence and rioting. At this point, this peaceful protest and all it stands for has been compromised. As the initial organizers of the peaceful marches against the government now have to answer for the actions of an uncontrolled third party that's there to cause mayhem. It seems that that's how events developed in France.
In Paris, the Saturday protest of the Yellow Vests movement was joined by radical anarchists and anti-globalists ready to demolish everything in their way. When 10,000 peaceful protestors gathered on the Champs Elysees, ultras in black clothes and masks joined the crowd. According to police reports, there were approximately 1,500 of them. They started demolishing famous luxury retail stores, which are practically sacred sites on Paris's main street. The windows of Lacoste, Hugo Boss, Longchamp, and Bulgari stores are reduced to glass dust. Stores with expensive children's toys, chocolate and coffee, eye-wear and mobile phones: everything was ransacked. Parked luxury sedans were burnt down. Along the way, they set a bank branch on fire along with an upstairs apartment. The firefighters had to rescue a mother with a child out of it. A police minivan was also set on fire.
A very expensive restaurant on the Champs Elysees included on the UNESCO List of World Heritage Sites, Le Fouquet's, which hadn't been closed for a single day from the 19th to the 21st century, was ransacked, the dishes were broken, the silverware was stolen, and in the end, it was set on fire. One of the vandals threw a Molotov cocktail at a marquise. Then, the fire took its toll. To get an idea of the class of this restaurant, it suffices to say that Sarkozy chose it to celebrate his victory in the presidential elections, and was then accused by the press of immodesty. He was said to be detached from the life of ordinary people. Le Fouquet's is indeed a venue for the most luxurious celebrations. That's where the gala dinner of France's main cinema award, the César, takes place.
Many celebrities from Russia visited Le Fouquet's too. Alexey Tolstoy in his novelette A Manuscript Found Under the Bed described it in all subtlety. Wishing to emphasize the extent to which the immigrants who came to Paris from Russia put on the ritz at the beginning of the last century, he wrote, "For breakfast, we would go to Le Fouquet's on the Champs Elysees. Mikhail Mikhailovich ate extremely little, as he preferred to drink. His speech was confusing, yet he could not keep silent for a moment even when while eating a magnificent filet or enjoying some steak and wine. Shoot! Breakfasts at Le Fouquet's were great".
All of it lasted for 120 years. That is until Paris became a very different city last Saturday thanks to the work of vandals.
