Currently going viral in France, a video shows members of the Gendarmerie (a paramilitary unit with civil jurisdiction) toss a disabled man out of his wheelchair.

Incident took place in Bessan, France.

It’s a bit unclear how things got to this point, but after a verbal exchange and manhandling from the officers physically lifting the man and setting his wheelchair in the mud (where he can’t move it) he tries to yell at them, they spin his chair away so that he can’t.

From there, it becomes clear that he is stuck in the mud and one of the yellow vests and a regular dressed man approaches to help push him…then an officer seems to decide to intervene again. This one may have been trying to help, it isn’t clear.

But the man in the wheelchair isn’t having any of it and seems to attempt to swat the officer’s hand from his chair… that’s when he gets tossed out of the chair from behind by another officer that seems to be reacting to that exchange.

These comments are machine translated so they’re imperfect and you’ll only get the general sentiment but here are some reactions:

The reaction by the officers here is what the media would call an “isolated incident” but the general structure of yesterday’s protest response is what is really fascinating.

The riot officers fully encircled the protesters and made no attempt to de-escalate the situation.

That’s a strategy, sure, and a viable one. But that’s also called suppression. Force was used in many cases before any action was taken—preemptively, tear gas and flashbangs were thrown. Rubber bullets followed later when things were becoming chaotic.

What hasn’t really been reported, and what I particularly am looking for more information on, is that there was actually a PRO-TAX “Climate Change” march a few blocks from the Yellow Vest march yesterday.

Who exactly financed and organized that I wonder?

And everything about the Pro-Climate protest is suspicious (save for the presence of supporters, naturally that will happen for any contentious issue)…

I’m curious about how structured and organized it is… they had a live band ensemble at one point, loud speakers etc.

VIDEO

Everything about this second protest is suspicious… it’s the exact type of thing that I would organize, if for instance, I wanted to give the media an ‘out’ to say that the Yellow Vests really aren’t all that popular.

Those are the headlines I’ll be looking for.

And since this march was free to form a procession and wasn’t cordoned off, bottlenecked and met with force—while the other one was—I have my suspicions.

I should note that the yellow vests at the front of the queue are not “yellow vests” they’re either officers or organizers wearing those jackets for visibility.

Stuff like this isn’t a coincidence.

So I reached out to a kind French woman that has been nice enough to help translate things for me during these protests. I asked her about the exchange in the video at the top of this thread. Here’s what she had to say: