When the gilets jaunes first occupied roundabouts on 17 November 2018, in what was to become known as ‘Act I’ of the weekly Saturday protests they embarked on for 70 weeks, they were exercising an act of violence on their fellow citizens. In Savoy on that day, a motorist panicked as protesters tried to stop her car, and she ran over those in her way, fatally wounding one of the protesters. This 63-year-old lady, who was a novice to street protests, was the first accidental victim of the movement, with more to come over the next weekends. The very acts of standing on a road, marching through a city, occupying buildings so that their daily functioning cannot continue, are themselves acts of violence. Although at this particular roundabout in Savoy the use of physical force, to break one of these roadblocks, was limited to the motorist forcing her way through a crowd, I argue that violence was also exercised by the protesters, and moreover that it was legitimate.

Violence refers to a variety of different types of action. For the purpose of this analysis, I draw an important distinction between two main types of violence: physical violence (often referred to as simply ‘violence’), and moral violence (often qualified by other terms, such as ‘spiritual’, ‘structural’ or ‘psychological’ violence). I will come back to the differences between physical and moral violence in a moment, but let me say first what they share in common. Both physical and moral violence are coercive and engender resistance. They are coercive in the sense that they seek to change the behaviour of others. Whether you are occupying a roundabout to stop commuters from getting to work (a physical type of violence), or using guilt to stop people from crossing a picket line (a moral type of violence), both forms are attempts at coercive behaviour. But violence also has a subjective element. For it to qualify as violence, it needs to be perceived as such by others. Typically, violence needs to be recognized as such by those on whom it is exercised. Let us stick to our examples above to illustrate this. If you were to stand alone on a roundabout, it would not have the violent outcome you perhaps intended. Motorists would be able to easily manoeuvre around you and in this scenario you are merely endangering yourself and not exercising violence on others.