The European Spring or the Radical Network

The European Spring or the Radical Network

By: Erreh Svaia

Caprine Dispersion

For many, the phenomenon of recent weeks is the emergence of so-called "yellow vests" in France, a massive group of violent street protests allegedly arisen in opposition to a "green" tax on gasoline and diesel announced by the government of President Emmanuel Macron , something that seemed a "spontaneous" movement, without political affiliation and without union affiliation (difference of previous protests) gathered thanks to Facebook, a bizarre and grotesque version of the "Arab Spring", the narrative that has been wanted to give is the of an apolitical and spontaneous phenomenon, with an origin in the already mentioned tax, but it starts to be suspicious that the events have also started after Macron's statements about forming a European army and its distancing with Donald Trump, if we analyze it none of these two news would not be pleasant to someone like Tsar Putin (who curiously suffered similar protests in 2011 convened via Facebook), if we add to this the legendary Russian tradition of misinforming, it starts to become quite suspicious that Russian propaganda agencies such as Russia Today, Sputnik, Russia Truth and Russia Insider, among others, are not only the main propagators of the most "yellow press" on the matter, "prophesying" the fall of Macron, the use of paramilitary forces, the repression by a supposed army of the "European Union", and even the rebellion of the forces loyal to the president, should not be strange considering that Russia and its disinformation agencies were responsible for spreading rumors during the presidential campaign against Macron and in favor of its main opponent, Marine Le Pen, whose political party, the National Front, is known to have been financed by the Kremlin, for Russia economically fund subversive movement as in the past did with "liberation guerrillas", it would be impossible, but if through social networks a Korean K-Pop group can cause Chile euphoria without investing large amounts of money, what could the Russian propaganda apparatus and its traditional disinformation ram not do?

Another fact that raises suspicion is the origin in Facebook of the so-called "yellow vests", if we consider that Putin usually applies a counter-inverse attack on history, pretending to divide the West in the same way he perceives the Soviet Union was divided by the West , the reverse of the so-called "color revolutions" that were so frightening in Putin, it could well be this "yellow revolt", so it would not be surprising that now a movement like "The Arab Spring" comes out of social networks "trying to overthrow" the government of a Western country, extending to other countries such as Belgium and the Netherlands in the same way that the Arab Spring spread throughout most of the countries of the Middle East, for the West, the key lesson and the great "Achilles' heel" are social networks, just as Facebook became the spearhead for Russian disinformation that influenced presidential elections in the US, Donald Trump, it seems that the same strategy is being used to create an exacerbated feeling of anger not only against the French government, but against the very heart of the European Union, at a time when nationalist movements seek to seize Europe from the South to the North.

What seems like a global cooptation plan in which Russian intelligence seeks to take power from groups of angry and radical youths in order to attack Western democracies from within, skinheads, neo-Nazis, motorcycle gangs and street protest groups violent seem to be the Russian objectives to be used not to conquer power in those countries, no one in their right mind would ensure that the protests of the "yellow vests" end in the destitution of Macron or in a "social revolution", Putin does not pursue establishing a puppet government as their Soviet predecessors once did, but what is certain is that the Russian offensive continues in order to sow chaos in the West and diminish the credibility of the people in their governments, and if in addition to this, it helps when a nationalist candidate came to power, it will surely be key to weakening the process of globalization, damaging multinational agreements such as NAFTA, to NATO or the European Union.