From Vitrolles to Perpignan, how the far right is already sabotaging culture

The political climate is hardening and the bad wind from the far right blowing over territories, budgets, programming and dissident or simply creative voices, the world of culture knows it is in danger, even if it does not dare to say it too loudly and too loudly. Out of fear, caution, wait-and-see, willful blindness…?

“We must now face reality: we are not facing an ordinary political disagreement. We are faced with a project which aims, methodically, to weaken, control and, ultimately, dismantle the cultural sector as we defend it… wrote on February 8 in a column published in L’Humanité the director Kheireddine Lardjam.

“A killing of the artsâ€

“The mechanics are known, he recalls. It is already at work in several European territories. It always begins in the same way: in the name of ‘common sense’, of ‘rebalancing’, of ‘proximity with the people’. And it ends with the killing of the arts.

This killing takes place first in the municipalities, “first laboratory of authoritarian policies: this is where we cut, where we replace, where we normalize. This is where the pressure becomes concrete, daily, administrative…, believes Lardjam.

For the director, it is therefore important to speak, to express the concern of this threat: “The time for hesitation is over. It is no longer a question of preserving our positions. It’s about defending an idea of ​​society. Faced with those who want to restrict the imagination, discipline voices and impoverish thought, only one attitude is up to the task. Talk. Resist. Fight.â€

In his book Cultural Exclusion – Manifesto for a popular response (Éditions du Faubourg), published at the beginning of the year and postfaced by Mohamed El Khatib, Victorien Bornéat, specialist in cultural policies, underlines that the first target of the RN in this area remains the freedom of artistic creation. “The recent offensive led by the RN against the National Center of cinema – which they want to be abolished – is an illustration of this significativeâ€, he explained to us when his text was released.

“The RN wants to hinder the French cinema financing system which, according to them, contributes to financing ‘ideologically oriented’ films. Behind Marine Le Pen’s call for a ‘moral recovery’ of the country is emerging, the desire to bring it into line artists. Here we find the RN’s strategy of semantic and political reversal: accusing the cultural environment of ‘propaganda’ in order, in reality, to align it with its own ideological vision.â€

“A counterculture of RIGHT radical”.

According to Bornéat, culture is “an identity marker for the RN†, even if it is not strictly speaking “a subject of public policy, outside of heritage. Moreover, Marine Le Pen’s program for the 2022 presidential election did not include a section on culture. We are seeing more of a liberal vision emerging which is illustrated in their desire to privatize public broadcasting….

The popular culture that the RN celebrates has only one aim of identity, making folklore and local traditions the sinews of its civilizational war. Added to this vision is a strictly commercial conception, where the “good culture is above all that which pays off†, remarks Bornéat. In small towns, particularly in the South-East, we have seen funding suspended or drastically reduced, for example in Camaret-sur-Aigues, Bédarrides, Béziers, Fréjus, Marignane, Morières-lès-Avignon, Cogolin…

However, the RN’s relationship to culture seems to have evolved slightly since its inclusion in the French political landscape in the 1990s. This is the observation made by several observers of public policies. Vincent Guillon, political scientist, co-director of the Observatory of Cultural Policies (OPC) and associate professor at Sciences Po Grenoble, maintains that we must distinguish two moments in the history of the far right over the last thirty years.

“In the 1990s, the attitude of RN leaders was much less polite than today, much more provocative, he recalls. The National Front sought to assert itself with more brutality, not hesitating to shock. Cultural policies in Marignane, Orange, Toulon or Vitrolles were then considered strong signs of a desire to stand out, to assert one’s difference. A radical right counterculture, focused on the desire to censor contemporary creation because of its elitism, its cosmopolitanism, appeared very clearly at the time. Jean-Marie Le Pen still spoke of ‘cultural genocide’ regarding contemporary creation!â€

Entry into municipal libraries

We remember, for example, cases of entry into the management of municipal libraries to acquire works according to the political orientations of their authors, “to rebalance the collections in favor of authors closer to Frontist thesesâ€. Or by seeking to “bypassing librarians and imposing subscriptions to far-right revisionist dailies ; This was seen a lot in libraries at the time….

And then there was also “frontal attacks on associative actors, like in Vitrolles, where the café-concert Le Sous-Marin was walled up in retaliation for what they called tribal and degenerate music…. Vincent Guillon insists on this culture of assumed confrontation with cultural institutions, such as the Châteauvallon-Liberté theater in Toulon or Les Chorégies, the opera festival in Orange, where mayors did not hesitate to eliminate subsidies and fire directors. “All of this was heavily publicized, which fueled this desire to showcase their ways of managing culture and fueling a patriotic positioning.â€

It was only towards the end of the 2010s, with the desire to demonize the party displayed by Marine Le Pen and her flock, that the narrative of the far right on culture shifted slightly. No more heavy-handed invective, no more devastating slogans: the RN ideological machine began to move forward more discreetly, without trying to make too much of a splash.

In appearance. “We felt a repositioning in different cities managed by the RN, explains Vincent Guillon. This is true for culture, but undoubtedly also for other public policies. The party wanted to make its municipalities showcases of normalization, of a concern for respectability, of demonization. The aim behind it is to present itself at the national level as a real government party.†It is no longer a question of obsessively waving the red rag of cultural leftism (even if it remains a target)…; we seek less scandal, we make less noise, and “we continue certain cultural partnerships with the State, such as in Perpignan, Beaucaire or Villers-Cotterêtsâ€.

A false desire for normalization

For Vincent Guillon, the case of Perpignan is emblematic of this displayed normalization. “Perpignan remains the largest city managed by the RN. It is the only city of more than 100,000 inhabitants where we find all the facilities, events, services and cultural actors of all other cities of this size.

It therefore constitutes a good field of observation to see how an RN mayor can behave in this matter. Here, we may be a little surprised, because what was rather striking and structuring was the logic of continuity in supporting existing structures and cultural events.†All the tools, institutions, festivals and places have been preserved: the internationally recognized photojournalism festival, large musical facilities like La Casa Musicale or even the art museum, the cinema library…

“It is clear that the support has continued, that we have not had a situation of interference or entryism strictly speaking, that the municipality has also opened a new media library in a priority district.†This standardization assumed by Louis Alliot “also hides harsher relations with a fringe of the associative environment, politicized, restless, less visible from an outside point of view.â€

“Relations which have been much less peaceful, with support which has been withdrawn from a certain number of associative actors of popular education or socio-cultural, funding which has been either withdrawn or reduced for the organizations of events promoting cultural diversity or aesthetics of hip-hop, rap, etc. La Casa Musicale, which is a symbolic institution in France in terms of contemporary music, has not lost its support, but it has still seen it decrease significantly. And, conversely, an ultra-classic heritage policy has been reinforced. Behind the facade of respectability and a political relationship with more mature culture there also lies ideology…

A totalitarian vision of public policy devoted to culture

It is ultimately in small towns that the cultural policy of the RN comes to light. “In these small towns, the mayors stood out above all for deprioritizing cultural issues. They are less politically invested and relegated to second place.†But, above all, this is where we saw the manifestation “choices of withdrawal of support from associative actors who conveyed values ​​or political discourses opposed to the RN†.

It is in these small towns that Vincent Guillon perceived the most entryism in terms of cultural management on the part of RN mayors. “The choices often focus on supporting associations or managing a performance hall. We decide on the agreements for providing management of a place and we choose to remunicipalize the performance halls. It happened in Hénin-Beaumont, in Moissac, with the argument of regaining control in the face of experts who would propose programming that would not correspond to people’s tastes. We also have more scandalous and assumed cases, such as in Fréjus, which called into question housing, in particular artists’ studios, by assimilating the latter to lazy people.â€

Beyond these local laboratories, the cultural policy defended by the RN at the national level remains more cautious. It is mainly limited today to 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 safeguarding an identity and a glorious past against the plurality of heritages.

This goes through tax measures, redirection measures, financing, such as the 1% cultural that the RN wants to allocate to the financing of heritage rather than that of the creation of works of public art. In Marine Le Pen’s program in 2022, there was this desire to define heritage as our history petrified. It’s funny that they use this expression. I think we have to understand the question of the stone. However, it’s quite significant.

The RN would like, also recalled the political scientist Emmanuel Négrier in an article in The Conversation, “increase considerably the heritage rehabilitation budget, and support it with the implementation of a national heritage service for 18-24 year olds, lasting six months, renewable once. In these youth projects, which already exist, just as in the other version of the integration projects, we undoubtedly promise to affect the task of ‘moral recovery’.â€

Moral recovery: it is indeed this totalitarian vision of a public policy devoted to culture that the RN is preparing us for. “The only response to the moment is clear: take a public stand– now, Kheireddine Lardjam writes very strongly in his column. Not later. Not half-heartedly. Not in quiet conversations. Publicly. Not to transform our places into partisan apparatuses, but to unambiguously affirm what we defend: freedom of creation, the independence of artists, the plurality of stories, the right to disturb.†All the clues, even discreet, of what the RN is preparing for artists and cultural policies prove him right.