The fossilized heritage, declining or even eliminated subsidies, and identity values: the management of certain municipalities reveals what French cultural policy could look like if the far right comes to power. But already, voices are rising to fight against this madness.
As the political climate toughens and the ill wind of the far right blows over territories, budgets, programming, and dissenting or simply creative voices, the cultural world knows it is in danger, even if it does not dare say it too loudly and boldly. Out of fear, caution, waiting, voluntary blindness?
“It is now necessary to face reality: we are not facing an ordinary political disagreement. We are facing a project that aims, methodically, to weaken, control and, ultimately, dismantle the cultural sector as we defend it,” wrote director Kheireddine Lardjam in a column published in L’Humanité on February 8.
“The mechanics are known,” he recalls. “It is already at work in several European territories. It always starts the same way: in the name of ‘common sense,’ ‘balance,’ ‘closeness to the people.’ And it ends with the death of the arts.”
This push for death first plays out in municipalities, “the first laboratory of authoritarian policies: that’s where we cut, we replace, we standardize. That’s where the pressure becomes concrete, daily, administrative,” Lardjam believes.
For the director, it is important to speak out, to express the concern about this threat: “The time for hesitation is over. It is no longer about preserving our positions. It is about defending an idea of society. Faced with those who want to restrict imagination, discipline voices, and impoverish thought, there is only one attitude to take. Speak. Resist. Fight.”
In his book “Cultural Exclusion – Manifesto for a Popular Response” (Faubourg Editions), released early this year and postfaced by Mohamed El Khatib, cultural policy specialist Victorien Bornéat emphasizes that the primary target of the National Rally (RN) in this matter remains artistic creation.
“The recent offensive led by the RN against the National Cinema Center – which they wish to abolish – is a significant illustration,” he explained. “The RN wants to hinder the financing system of French cinema which, according to them, helps fund ‘ideologically oriented’ films. Behind Marine Le Pen’s call for a ‘moral revival’ of the country lies the desire to control artists. Here we find the RN’s strategy of semantic and political reversal: accusing the cultural milieu of ‘propaganda’ to align it with their own ideological vision.”
According to Bornéat, culture is “an identity marker for the RN,” even if it is not strictly speaking “a subject of public policy, beyond heritage. Moreover, Marine Le Pen’s 2022 presidential program did not include a cultural component. There appears to be more of a liberal vision, illustrated by their desire to privatize public broadcasting.”
The popular culture celebrated by the RN has only an identity-focused perspective, making folklore and local traditions the nerve center of its civilizational war. Added to this vision is a strictly commercial conception, where “good culture is primarily the one that pays off,” notes Bornéat. In small towns, funding has been suspended or drastically reduced, for example in Camaret-sur-Aigues, Bédarrides, Béziers, Fréjus, Marignane, Morières-lès-Avignon, Cogolin.
However, the RN’s approach to culture seems to have slightly evolved since its integration into French political landscape in the 1990s. This is the observation made by several observers of public policies. Vincent Guillon, a political scientist and co-director of the Observatory of Cultural Policies (OPC), notes the distinction between two periods in the history of the far right over the past thirty years.
“In the 1990s, the RN’s leaders’ attitude was much less polite than today, much more provocative,” he recalls. “The National Front sought to assert itself more brutally, not hesitating to shock. Culture policies in Marignane, Orange, Toulon, or Vitrolles were seen as strong signs of a desire to stand out, to assert their difference. A radical right-wing counterculture, focused on censoring contemporary creation because of its elitism and cosmopolitanism, was very clear at that time. Jean-Marie Le Pen even spoke of a ‘cultural genocide’ in relation to contemporary creation!”
Entrism in municipal libraries
For example, cases of entrism in the management of municipal libraries were seen to acquire works based on the political orientations of their authors, “to balance collections in favor of authors closer to frontist theses”. Or by seeking to “bypass librarians and impose subscriptions to extreme right-wing revisionist newspapers; this was seen a lot in libraries at the time.”
And there were also “blatant attacks on associative actors, as in Vitrolles, where the café-concert Le Sous-Marin was suppressed in retaliation for what they called tribal and degenerate music.” Vincent Guillon emphasizes this culture of confrontational engagement with cultural institutions, such as the Châteauvallon-Liberté theater in Toulon or the Chorégies, the Orange festival of lyrical art, where mayors did not hesitate to cut subsidies or dismiss directors. “All this was heavily mediatized, fueling this desire to stage their ways of managing culture and promote a patriotic positioning.”
It is only towards the end of the 2010s, with the desire for de-demonization of the party displayed by Marine Le Pen and her supporters, that the narrative of the far right on culture shifted slightly. Gone are the overly aggressive invectives, the devastating slogans: the ideological machine of the RN began to advance more discreetly, without seeking too much notoriety.
In appearance. “We have sensed a repositioning in various cities governed by the RN,” explains Vincent Guillon. “This is true for culture, but probably also for other public policies. The party wanted to turn its municipal territories into showcases of normalization, concern for respectability, de-demonization. The goal, behind the scenes, is to present itself nationally as a real governing party. It is no longer obsessively waving the red flag of cultural leftism (even if it remains a target); less scandal is sought, less noise is made, and “certain cultural partnerships with the state continue, as in Perpignan, Beaucaire, or Villers-Cotterêts.”
A fictitious will of normalization
For Vincent Guillon, the case of Perpignan is emblematic of this displayed normalization. “Perpignan remains the largest city governed by the RN. It is the only city with more than 100,000 inhabitants where we find all the facilities, events, services, and cultural actors of all the other cities of this size.”
“It is therefore a good observation point to see how an RN mayor can behave in this matter. There, we may be a little surprised, because what was most striking and structuring was the logic of continuity in supporting existing cultural structures and events,” he explains. All tools, institutions, festivals, and venues have been preserved: the internationally recognized photojournalism festival, major music facilities like La Casa Musicale, and the art museum, the cinematheque.
“It is clear that the support has continued, without any interference or entrism, and the municipality has also opened a new media library in a priority area,” he adds. This normalization embraced by Louis Alliot “also hides tougher relations with a section of the associative, politicized, restless milieu, less visible from an external point of view.”
“These relations, on the other hand, have been much less peaceful, with support withdrawn from a number of associative actors in popular education or socio-cultural fields, funding either reduced or cut for organizations promoting cultural diversity or aesthetics like hip-hop, rap, etc. The Casa Musicale, a symbolic institution in France in terms of modern music, has not lost its support, but it has still seen a significant decrease. And, conversely, an ultra-classical heritage policy has been reinforced. Behind the facade of respectability and a more mature political relationship with culture, ideology also seeps in.”
A totalitarian vision of public policy dedicated to culture
It is ultimately in small towns that the culture policy of the RN becomes apparent. “In these small towns, mayors have mainly distinguished themselves by prioritizing cultural issues. They are less politically involved and sidelined.” But, above all, it is where we have seen “choices to withdraw support from associative actors who conveyed values or political discourses opposed to the RN.”
In these small towns, Vincent Guillon perceived the most entrism in cultural management by RN mayors. “Choices often polarize around support for associations or managing a performance venue. Contracts for the management of a venue are terminated, and a decision is made to remunicipalize performance venues. This happened in Hénin-Beaumont, in Moissac, with the argument being that the local government should take over from experts proposing programs that do not correspond to people’s tastes. We also have more scandalous and overt cases, like in Fréjus, where housing was called into question, particularly artists’ workshops, likening them to idlers.”
Beyond these local laboratories, the cultural policy advocated by the RN at the national level remains more cautious. It mainly focuses today on a few obsessions: the privatization of public broadcasting and the defense of heritage.
“The vision of heritage is very classic, even reactionary: it is about preserving an identity and a glorious past against the plurality of heritages,” passing through fiscal measures, redirections, financing methods such as the 1% cultural that the RN wants to allocate to heritage financing rather than to the realization of public artworks. In Marine Le Pen’s 2022 program, there was this desire to define heritage as fossilized history. It’s funny that they use this expression. I think we have to understand behind the question of stone. Still, it is quite significant.”
The RN would like to “considerably increase the heritage rehabilitation budget, accompanied by the implementation of a national heritage service for 18-24 year-olds, lasting six months, renewable once.” “In these youth projects, which already exist, as in the other version of integration projects, they undoubtedly promise to assign the task of ‘moral revival.'”
“Moral revival: this is precisely the totalitarian vision of a public policy dedicated to culture that the RN is preparing for us. “The only response to this moment is clear: take a public stand – now,” Kheireddine Lardjam wrote very strongly in his column. “Not later. Not in half measures. Not in whispered conversations. Publicly. Not to turn our places into partisan apparatuses, but to affirm without ambiguity what we defend: the freedom of creation, the independence of artists, the variety of narratives, the right to disturb.” All clues, even discreet ones, of what the RN is preparing for artists and cultural policies give him reason.
