After Notre Dame bailout Yellow Vests urge more Victor Hugo tributes, starting with "Les Miserables"

The Notre Dame fire is a global tragedy, and it's also raising complicated questions about our present moment, including trenchant inquiries into which church fires merit global outpourings and whose sacred sites get mourned when they are destroyed.

In France, the political conversation has been dominated by the Gilets Jaunes, whose yellow vests have become a global symbol of unrest, with both the right and the left vying to define the movement. The French Yellow Vests have never stopped demonstrating, despite brutal suppression tactics by French police, who have terrorized and maimed protesters with impunity while the neoliberal Macron continues his billionaire-friendly policies.

Those billionaires are at the center of the French controversy over Notre Dame. Though members of the Gilets Jaunes were among those mourning the damage to a national symbol when Notre Dame burned, the fact that a handful of French super-rich oligarchs were able to pledge all the money necessary to rebuild by fishing in the sofa cushions for their lost pocket-change has reinvigorated the debate over France's priorities.

This weekend's Gilet Jaunes demonstrations are full of signs making wry references to the billionaires' outpourings: "Victor Hugo thanks all the generous donors ready to save Notre Dame and proposes that they do the same thing with Les Miserables."

As wealth inequality has increased and faith in social mobility and fairness has waned, we've seen the growth of both left- and right-wing anti-establishment movements. Famously, both the Occupy and Tea Party movements kicked off around the same time, tapping into the same concerns, with very different political valences (and of course the Tea Party was lavishly funded by oligarchs who saw them as useful idiots who would vote for the politicians who would accelerate inequality). Read the rest