Against this backdrop of waning political legitimacy, the government announced an increase in fuel taxes in November 2018 to help curtail carbon emissions. The ratio of tax to gross domestic product (GDP) in France has historically been one of the highest of the member countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). For instance, France’s tax revenues for 2019 represented 45.5 percent of GDP. After the announcement, a petition posted online several months earlier—calling for a reduction in fuel prices—spread with great speed and morphed into a series of widespread demonstrations across France. Protesters leading these demonstrations rejected the support of unions and political parties, instead insisting that politics should be conducted by and for ordinary people. Initially, their demands were aligned with Macron’s campaign promises: lower taxes, greater purchasing power, and a better democracy. But they did not predict the Macron government would fulfill these promises since lower taxes meant the abolition of the wealth tax for the top 1 percent, a campaign promise Macron had quickly pushed through, while the fuel-tax announcement was a tax increase for the most vulnerable populations—those who cannot afford to live in urban centers and are highly dependent on their vehicles. The movement became known as gilets jaunes, or “yellow vests,” because the protesters wore fluorescent yellow jackets that French law requires all motorists to carry in their cars. A true populist movement, the gilets jaunes were structureless, leaderless, and highly volatile. The movement, soon joined by ultra-left anarchists and far-right agitators, turned against Macron and the French political establishment. Referring to the eighteenth-century bread riots that fomented the French Revolution, the head of polling for the IFOP remarked that the price of fuel was as politically and sociologically sensitive as the price of wheat was in the days of the ancien régime.