Members of the far-left extremist Antifa black bloc have called on Yellow Vests to join them on May 1st in an attempt to overthrow the Macron government.
Far-left anarchist groups have made the calls to overthrow the French government on social media in recent weeks, including a Facebook event in which the anarchists reference police violence towards Yellow Vest protestors, Le Figaro reports.
In the Facebook post, the group stated, “Today, what is scary for the state is not the rioters themselves, but the adhesion and understanding they arouse among the rest of the population. And this is despite the calls, week after week, to dissociate themselves from the ‘hooligans’.”
“If there is one group that currently strikes France with all its violence, it is not the ‘Black Bloc’, nor the Yellow Vests, it is indeed the government itself,” they said.
The group then called on “all the revolutionaries in France and elsewhere,” to join them on May 1st saying, “Against Macron and his world, let’s take the street together to revive the convergence of anger and hope. Let’s get ready, let’s equip ourselves, let us organise ourselves to overthrow him and drag him through a day in hell.”
There are large far-left and left-wing protests every May 1st in Paris, with last year seeing the Black Bloc extremists smash businesses, set cars on fire, and violently target members of the police.
Police union official David Le Bars described the violence at the time saying, “They came to hit capitalist symbols and burn cops. When you come with Molotov cocktails, it’s to burn cops.”
According to Le Figaro, police identified around 1,200 violent extremists on May 1st, 2018.
The prospect of the overthrow of President Macron has been touched on briefly during the Yellow Vest protests when one of the key figures, Eric Drouet, mentioned storming the Élysée Palace on national television in December.
It was also revealed in December that Macron had been so concerned about protestors trying to potentially storm the presidential palace that he had a helicopter on standby, ready to evacuate him.
The rumours of a revolution came about again in February when Yellow Vest figure Christophe Chalençon made remarks to Italian media, saying that the Yellow Vests had “paramilitaries” ready to overthrow Macron and the government.
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