French 'Yellow Vests' Vandalize Masonic Temple

Police inspect ransacked Masonic temple in Tarbes.

For the last four months, the 'Gilets Jaunes' (Yellow Vests) protest movement against the Macron government in France has continued unabated. Saturday marked the seventeenth straight weekend of street protests across the country, and the mostly spontaneous popular movement still has not coalesced around any sort of strong national leadership who might have some guiding influence. Even well-regarded national spokesmen are few. Like any sort of mob action, in addition to the true believers in their initial cause of government reform and anti-globalism, it has also sadly attracted all sorts of far-right, far-left, and freelance malefactors who just want to break things and attack their favorite boogeymen. Or whatever is handy. Consequently, there are many angry participants who are able to hang any sort of grievances, hatreds and conspiracies around the neck of what began as a populist fight against excessive taxation and government overreach. 

Sooner or later, someone was bound to decide both Jews and Masons ought to be a target. It's what bored anti-establishment delinquents do.

A group of 'Gilets Jaunes' street protesters in the southwest French town of Tarbes near the Spanish border broke windows and ransacked a Masonic lodge Saturday night. The otherwise peaceful weekend protest there by a crowd of about 450 took a destructive turn around midnight when a masked and unidentified man in a vest suddenly highjacked the march, grabbed a megaphone and yelled, "Let's go get the police and the Freemasons!"

According to a story in Ladepeche.fr, the same man then led around a hundred followers to a local Masonic temple of the Grande Loge Mixte de France (a co-Masonic order) and began pelting the windows with rocks. As some in the crowd followed suit, he climbed the gate and several protesters smashed the door and entered the building. Once inside, they ransacked the lodge room, overturned furniture, and made off with four ceremonial swords. 

Masked, unidentified instigator seen leaving the lodge with ceremonial swords

From the story, À Tarbes, des Gilets jaunes saccagent le temple des Francs-Maçons by Delphine Pereira:

It did not take 3 minutes for them to retreat, alarmed by a light on the first floor, which they had themselves turned on: "Be careful, there is someone inside, get out!"

The leader came out with four swords that he left on the windows of the nearby Bank of France before another protester changed his mind and returned the objects.

Alerted, [lodge] officials went there to see the damage with the police. Inside, [they found] broken glass, overturned furniture, and twisted and broken objects.

"I can only denounce this degradation" lamented [a lodge officer], noting the damage. "We've had projectiles already, but this is the first time anyone has come back to vandalize. There is material damage, degraded furniture, broken windows, the sound system torn off, theft, breakage, traces of black paint. We will have to secure our premises more dependably." A complaint has been filed and an investigation is underway.

A pro-Yellow Vest Masonic cartoon:
"Fed up with the head tax increases?
Join the 'Yellow Aprons"

Gratifying that some kind-hearted soul so quickly returned the swords. It appears that the actual troublemakers were quite few in number. 

Since the very first high-visibility Gilets Jaunes protests on Paris' Champs Elysées in December, increasing reports of vandalism against Jews, Jewish business, and generic 'anti-Zionism' sloganeering have appeared in the press. Anti-Masonic sentiments have been less reported, and seem to be less frequent. Masons don't appear to a widespread target. The overall movement itself is remarkably impartial and politically and socially ecumenical. But because the Yellow Vests are seen widely as a backlash against growing globalism and a more distant government out of touch with the public, they have attracted a small gaggle of believers in conspiracy theories with the same old usual suspects: Jews, world bankers, New World Order elites closeted in their secret societies like the Bilderbergers, the Trilateral Commission, and of course, the Freemasons. 

Nevertheless, some individual Masons in France have demonstrated their solidarity with the movement by calling themselves "Yellow Aprons." France's Grand Orient Masons in particular frequently take strong institutional stands on political issues, unlike Anglo-American Masons. As a large organizational clot, we're forbidden from taking public political stands.

(RT.com has a video of police inspecting the lodge damage HERE)

H/T Josef Wäges and Yves Polin

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UPDATE 3/11/2019 11:00am:

A video tour of the lodge before it was ransacked can be seen HERE.

The Grande Loge Mixte de France has issued the following press release concerning the vandalism (apologies for translation errors via Bing and my own imprecise efforts):

Masonic Temple of Tarbes ransacked

On the night of Saturday, March 9 to Sunday, March 10, the premises of the Masonic Temple of Tarbes, which is one of the flagships of the French Masonic heritage, were ransacked by several individuals.

These unspeakable acts are in the context of a surge of threats and hateful remarks against the Freemasons in the nation.

The sacralization of violence and attempts to create, within the country, enemies of all sorts by differentiating the human species, are not acceptable.

Is it necessary to remember, with Voltaire, that intolerance has covered the land with carnage?

In the face of this unleashing of noise and fury, the fight must be even more ardent against anything that contributes to eroding the social pact: questioning Republican values and principles, social regressions, precariousness, self-withdrawal and drifts Communitarianism.

Giving to the world what the French-Freemasons and the Freemasons really are, beyond fantasies and myths of all kinds, has become vital, while keeping in mind that if there is a bit of mystery, it proceeds from the initiation journey of each and every one, and falls within the Inner sphere of each Freemason.

In this context of disaggregation of the social body, more than ever, [bringing] our message of brotherhood, to the attention of all and all, must be doubled in a daily struggle in the service of the values and principles of the indivisible, secular, democratic and social.