PhotographsGetty Images; Reuters>> (Acte IV) on 8 December. He used to culti-
vate flowers; now, like many here, he doesn’t
think he will be able to work again.
“Could the person who shot you have
thought you were causing trouble?” I ask.
“Trouble?” Michaud manages a smile. “I’m
an ex-paratrooper. If I’d wanted trouble,” he
adds, “I’d have gone with my mates – and lots
of them. I was there with my wife. I could see
the atmosphere was deteriorating and I told
her, ‘Look, we have to get out of here now.’
We couldn’t, so we tried to hide behind a
bus shelter.”
“What does it feel like when you’re hit by
an LBD?” I ask.
“I can’t help you there. I don’t remember. I
was in a coma for two days. What I can say is
that it’s not a great feeling to have served as a
parachutiste then get blinded by some cop.”
A passing car runs over a Coca-Cola bottle,
which bursts. Most of the survivors jump:
Michaud a little higher than most.
“Do you ever think about the person who
did this to you?”
“I do. I’d like to lay him out. I mean... I would
like to see him brought to justice. And then,”
Michaud adds, “I would like to lay him out.”
Martin, 51, a Dutch citizen who prefers not
to give his full name, was hit by a Flash-Ball
in Nîmes on 12 January. “It was a planned
massacre,” he says. He touches a faint scar in
the shape of a cross on his forehead. “There is
no skin or original flesh there,” he says, “for
six square inches. It blew off. I was guilty of
nothing. You may have noticed that the people
who’ve been hurt are not militant or aggres-
sive. We were targeted to discourage the
others. What you see here today is proof of a
war crime. It’s psychological warfare, to attack
peaceful protestors. That,” he adds, “keeps the
decent people, who represent the majority of
the population, at home.”
In Nîmes, Martin says, “Demonstrations are
generally calm. But that day, when we passed
police headquarters, we noticed snipers on the
roofs. They rained teargas down on our heads.
People made a barricade to protect them-
selves. Nobody threw anything back. When I
was hit, the street medics tried to take me
away, but when they did they were immedi-
ately teargassed again. When I got to the
hospital, they had a whole room of empty
beds laid out on the floor waiting for ‘injured
gilets jaunes’. They were prepared. But how?
And why?”
I ask how this has affected his life.
“The Flash-Ball is a terrible and insidious
weapon. A real bullet can kill you, but if it
doesn’t it leaves a clean wound. I have prob-
lems with memory, balance and concentration.
I have chronic neuralgia in my face. The pain
is appalling. I can’t work. I can’t sleep. Apart
from that,” Martin adds, “I can’t complain.”On the Place de la Bastille march,
Philippe, a middle-aged gilet
jaune and electrician from
the working-class area of
Aubervilliers, in the northeast
of Paris, who has seen me holding a voice
recorder, comes over to ask me who I work for
and why I haven’t got any questions for him.
“Have you been wounded?”
“Not yet.” He pauses. “Where are your mates
from the British press?” he asks. “Where are
the Americans? Pouring tea for Macron? If all
this had happened in Caracas or Moscow,” he
adds, gesturing towards the group of mutilés,
“you wouldn’t be able to move for the English.”
The only person here whose actions could be
said to have contributed to his injury, albeit by
recklessness, is Antoine Boudinet, a student
aged 26, whose right arm was blown off in
Bordeaux on 8 December.
“My friends and I threw a few eggs at the
police,” he says, “as a symbolic gesture. Then we
went to have a drink. We came back to watch
what was happening. This grey object landed at
my feet. I thought, ‘Well, it’s a regular teargascanister. It hasn’t gone off. I’m about to get this
right in the face.’ I noticed it had a red band
around it, but I didn’t realise that meant it was
a GLI-F4 grenade. I didn’t know what a GLI-F4
grenade was. I picked it up and it exploded. (Film
of the incident, which is not easy to watch, is on
YouTube.) I could have kicked it,” Antoine says,
“but if I’d done that I’d have lost my foot.”
David Dufresne is warmly greeted by the
gathering in Bastille, which includes Lola
Villabriga and Vanessa Langard. The demonstra-
tion around the Catacombs at Denfert-Rochereau
the previous day had been tense, as always, but
relatively peaceful.
There’s a general sense that, faced with the
belated attention given by the mainstream
French press to the mutilés, the Ministry Of
The Interior and the police have shown signs
of tempering their aggression. It’s taken six
months, but the procureur de la république
(closest equivalent: attorney general) has now
announced that certain police officers may
face prosecution for their actions.
“If you’d told me even two weeks ago that
would happen,” Dufresne tells me, “I would
never have believed you. My feeling is that we
have possibly staunched the haemorrhage, butthe blood is still flowing. This period is histori-
cally very significant,” he adds, “because this is
the first time in 50 years that the French state
has reverted to violent repression, rather than
upholding law and order.”
“Does the state’s treatment of the gilets
jaunes,” I ask, “have any relevance beyond
the internal debate concerning the ethics of
French policing?”
“A few days ago,” he replies, “I had a meeting
with special rapporteurs from the United
Nations. Pretty much every serious global
institution, including the UN, has been telling
France that they are screwing this up horribly.
The French have always had a tendency to
believe they are the centre of the earth. And
so France has told these bodies, ‘We hear what
you’re saying. And we don’t care.’ What the
rapporteurs told me is that certain countries in
the grip of ruthless dictatorships have begun
to say to the UN, ‘You may not like the way
we govern, but what we’re doing is no differ-
ent from what they do in France.’ And that, I
think, is very significant and very worrying.”
Will the gilets jaunes be looked back on as a
quirk of history or a radical force, capable, as
Juan Branco believes, of altering the trajectory
of French democracy? Certainly they have
done nothing to boost the ratings of a doomed
president who, when he sets out to attend a
public event, finds that the police have, for his
own safety, emptied the streets beforehand, so
that Macron, touring in the presidential car,
gazes out on what resemble ghost towns. The
centre right could hardly be more broken than
it already is. At the same time, it’s hard to see
the gilets jaunes mutating into a coherent force
that could appeal to a populist vote who are
weary of the existing power structures: an
achievement that Marine Le Pen, Steve Bannon
and friends can deliver in spades.
“Macron,” Philippe of Aubervilliers tells me,
“said during the election campaign that we
had to choose. He said, ‘It’s me or oblivion.’
Unfortunately, he gave us both.”
“How can the gilets jaunes evolve?” I ask.
“That’s not easy to answer,” he says. “It’s
difficult to predict how this movement will
develop or even to define what it is. I can tell
you,” he adds, “three things that it is not.” A
pause. “It is not nothing. It is not worthless.
And it is not over.” G‘ If this happened inCaracas or Moscowyou wouldn’t beable to move forBritish journalists’Emmanuel Macron Says France Needs
A King (Eleanor Halls, May 2017)
Marine Le Pen’s Ideas Won’t Just Disappear
(Matthew d’Ancona, May 2017)
The Story Of Brazil’s Killer Cops
(Bruce Douglas, July 2015)More from G For these related
stories visit GQ.co.uk /magazine08-19FeatureRobertChalmers.indd 172 05/07/2019 15:22
166 GQ.CO.UK SEPTEMBER 2019