Description
Over the past two years, scenes of massive protests in Paris and Barcelona have made the headlines in broadcasters and newspapers around the world. In common, at least, one colour: yellow. In France, what came to be known as the gilet-jaunes (the yellow vests) and which started as a widespread and somewhat multi-platform revolt still draws attention due to the (in)adequacy of the public response (security forces included). In Catalonia, the CDR (Committees for the Defence of the Republic) have also caught the public eye as a multi-layer committee-based movement protesting for the independence of Catalonia. The yellow ribbon became the symbol of Catalan resistance against what is considered to be a harsh and disproportionate Spanish reaction to the Catalan bid.
Connecting both sides of the Pyrenees was the states’ responses to the protests, overtly criminalising their actions and at the same time exposing the fractures of both governments in dealing with popular uprisings with social capillarity and internet-connected.
In the attempt to better understand the way in which governments respond to mass protests in the current days, this paper sets from a critical, deconstructive approach and aims to analyse the French gilet-jaunes and Catalan CDR to discuss how the idea of threat and danger are articulated as a state response, in a move which both criminalises social uprisings and constructs the notions of ‘us’ and ‘them’.
